No India Without Kashmir & Vice Versa: Indian Columnist at US Cong

Indian columnist Sunanda Vashisht questioned the silence of world leaders over the Kashmiri Pandit exodus.

Sunanda Vashisht at US Congressional Hearing.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Indian columnist Sunanda Vashisht, while addressing a US Congressional hearing on Human Rights in Washington, on Thursday, 14 November, said Pakistan-trained terrorists had caused "ISIS level of horror and brutality" in the Kashmir Valley long before Islamist terror targeted the West.

Vashisht told a Congressional hearing on Human Rights organised by Tom Lantos HR Commission in Washington:

“We have seen ISIS level of horror and brutality in Kashmir, 30 years before the West was even introduced to the brutalities of radical Islamic terror. I am glad these hearings are happening here today because when my family and everyone like me lost our homes, our livelihood and our way of life, the world remained silent.”

She further said that India has "not occupied" Kashmir and that the northern state was always an integral part of India. "India is not just a 70-year-old identity, but a 5000-year-old civilisation. There is no India without Kashmir, and no Kashmir without India.”

She questioned the "silence of world leaders" over the Kashmiri pandit exodus in the 1990s when Pakistan-backed terrorists targeted the group.

"Where were the advocates of human rights when my rights were taken away? Where was the saviour of humanity when my feeble old grandfather stood with kitchen knives and an old rusted axe ready to kill my mother and I, in order to save us from the much worse fate that awaited us? All deaths have been happening due to terrorists trained by Pakistan. This doublespeak is not helping India in any way."