‘Hum sharminda hain,’ says Srinagar MP Aga Ruhullah Mehdi apologising to Kashmiri pandits

Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) Member of Parliament from Srinagar, Aga Ruhullah Mehdi has apologised to Kashmir Pandits for the party’s failure to stop their migration in the 1990s. Ruhullah, who won the recent Lok Sabha Elections, said that he was embarrassed about whatever happened to the minority community in the erstwhile state and that Kashmir was incomplete without pandits.

“Hum sharminda hai (we are embarrassed) and I insist that we, as a community, feel morally incomplete without the presence of Kashmiri Pandits. It is their home too, and we hope they can come back,” Mehdi told The Wire in an interview.

Mehdi defeated PDP’s Waheed Para from Srinagar in Lok Sabha Elections 2024.

Mehdi said in the interview that during his election campaign, even though there weren’t many Kashmiri Pandits in his constituency, he often used my platform to apologise for that past.

“It was not our fault and it was not in our control … we are aware that foreign powers were involved and the state was involved, but I still join my hands and apologise for what happened,” Mehdi said.

Mehdi accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the centre of misusing the issue of Pandits.

“The Modi government has sold the idea of Kashmiri Pandits as an election campaign issue. They have turned the plight of these people into a narrative, a rhetoric for electoral gains. The BJP might want them to come back to Kashmir, but they expect them to live in ghettos, disconnected from their society, in an atmosphere where Hindus and Muslims are turned into enemies,” he said in the interview.

Before being elected as an Member of Parliament (MP), Mehdi, a popular Shia leader, has served as member of the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly for three terms from 2002 to 2018.