NEW DELHI: The future of the Kashmiri migrants hangs precariously between the valley which they have fled and the government, determined to send them back.

Tom away from their roots, the migrants from Kashmir, can neither get accustomed to the uncertain future in the refugee camps in the capital city here nor can they return to the valley where peace has been shattered. “We don’t want the migrants to stay here and are trying our best to create such conditions in the valley so that the people can go back to their homes safely,” Subodh Kant Sahay, the state minister for home told PTI here recently.

“The government’s aim is to provide “relief” but not rehabilitation to the people. We are providing ‘adequate relief and with a missionary zeal,” said Sahay.

It has been nearly six months since 60 year old Frail Bhan, a father of three daughters, has had a peaceful sleep. War cries of militants, a bomb attack on his house, the agony of seeing his grown up daughters suffer humiliation all constitute the nightmares which jolt him each night.

Sitting sullenly in a migrant relief camp in the capital, Bhan’s is one of the nearly 8,000 migrant families registered with the Delhi administration, who had fled to the capital to escape the wrath of the militants.

Nearly 350 families, once well to do middle class families are at present living in miserable conditions in 10 camps set up by the Delhi administration.

Nearly 350 families once well to do middle class families are at present living in miserable conditions in 10 camps set up by the Delhi administration.

“The migrants are provided Rs 500 per family and dry rations Tice, flour, tea, salt and kerosene. Apart from this, one kitchen kit, including a stove, is also given as relief” said DS Negi, the deputy commissioner of Delhi.

’ However, most of the inmates off the camps complained that the ration quantity and distribution was not enough.

“We have been given rice and dal but no masala. Tea leaves are there but no milk or sugar is provided,” said a frustrated teacher Kanta.

For 47 year old Mr. Kumar, the village home and his vast agricultural land, seems all a distant past as he sits on the bare floor of the camp, sweating in some donated clothes uncertain about the future. His wife, sitting patiently beside him, complained of the hot weather and said pathetically, “I with I was back home. At least I could die in pleasant weather and familiar surroundings.

The migrants are sore. Just a meagre sum of money and dry rations is not enough to sustain the educated and middle class Kashmiris, most of who have run away to Jammu and Delhi, with not even a change of clothes with them.

The government is “callous and insensitive to the migrants problems” said the general secretary of the BJP, Kidar Nath Sahni, who recently resigned from the all-party panel on Kashmir following the resignation of former governor Jagmohan.

“We are facing an identity crisis today, being branded Indians in Kashmir while outside the valley we are just alien Kashmiris,” said an agitated migrant.

A 60 year old lady remarked “we have come under “kala right” (a specific period when no one survives) thereby summing up the “tragedy” of the Kashmiris today.

Article extracted from this publication >> June 8, 1990