The chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, extended greetings to the Kashmiri Pandit community on the occasion of Mela Kheer Bhawani and appealed to them to return to their ancestral homeland.
During his sermon at the historic Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, Mirwaiz Farooq said: “I would also once again ask them to return to their motherland which awaits them, and live here as they did in the past, in our common and shared heritage.”
“It’s time to reconcile and rebuild the broken bonds. We owe it to our next generation,” he added.
The Kashmiri Pandits, who were forced to flee their homes in the wake of the eruption of militancy in the region in 1990, have long been displaced from their ancestral homeland.
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits paid obeisance at the Mata Kheer Bhawani temple at Tulmulla in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district on Friday. Mela Kheer Bhawani is an annual event at the Kheer Bhawani temple dedicated to Rangya Devi, celebrated in various shrines and temples across Jammu and Kashmir, marking Zyeth Atham or Jyeshtha Ashtami.
The Hurriyat leader was released from prolonged house arrest in September last year, after being detained on August 5, 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated.
