Friday, August 17, 2007

MORE SEPRATIST THAN THE SEPARATISTS-CNN IBN,INDIAN EXPRESS AND CSDS

Learn the art of lying from Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar.A dash of spice from Sagarika Ghose and the plate of lies presented by Rajdeep Sardesai and Co.
A CNN IBN Circus presentation,showing on a TV Screen in your house.
CNN-IBN, DAWN, INDIAN EXPRESS POLL on KASHMIR/INDIA/ PAKISTAN

What about Poll results from POK and Ladakh?
by Kshmendra Kaul

Significant geographical areas that seem to have been left out in the Poll are Ladakh and what is called Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) in India.

Part of POK is referred to by Pakistan as Azad Kashmir. Contrary to the Indian position, the geographical regions of Gilgit and Baltistan are considered by Pakistan as not being a part of "Disputed Kashmir".

Unless there are some unknown developments, Ladakh is very much a part of "disputed Kashmir".

Why these exclusions? The Poll loses it's credibility by not presenting viewpoints that encompass all of the disputed "Kashmir".

What makes it stranger is that Poll results from Jammu and Srinagar are highlighted in the summaries. One would have thought that such summaries will also be presented from Ladakh, Muzzafarabad, Mirpur, Gilgit etc

Is it being suggested that Jammu and Kashmir are disputed areas but Ladakh and POK (including Gilgit and Baltistan) are not? Do the people of Ladakh and POK have no say in the "Kashmir" dispute?

What is surprising is that three Indian organisations CSDS,Indian Express and IBN-CNN have allowed this distorted representation to take place. If it is not by conscious collusion then it certainly is by ignorant enthusiasm. It only serves to strengthen the impression held by many in India that the India's English Media is "more separatist than the separatists" .

To the credit of DAWN of Pakistan, their reporting of the Poll is very balanced. DAWN covers various topics and areas of common interest and makes no derivative value judgments.

In comparison the "Indian" duo of Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar are obsessively focused on the "Valley" and gleefully highlight aspects of the Poll that will feed the "separatists" .

Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar are also woefully unaware of the regions they are commenting upon. The Poll has confined itself to Srinagar and yet the duo call the results as those from the "Valley". They obviously have no idea that Srinagar is only a small part of the "Valley".

Using the 2005 Electoral Rolls as a guideline, Srinagar voters account for 0.67mil (22%) out of 3.11mil in all of Kashmir "Valley". So any Poll results out of Srinagar can by no stretch of imagination be called as being representative of the "Valley".

Interestingly Srinagar voters are only 11% of the total eligible voters in all of Indian controlled J&K

In Jammu 255 people were polled and in Srinagar the number was 226, a ratio of 1:1.13. However, there are 1,058,540 voters in Jammu and 673,648 in Srinagar, a ratio of 1:1.57. The sample sizes chosen from Jammu and Srinagar have some inexplicable and certainly not credible rationale.

Similarly, with India's population five times larger than that of Pakistan, the respective sample sizes of 2030 and 1010 are askew and make little sense.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

15th Aug Protest-Ponderings and Media Clips

15th Aug,a date etched in our memory…the day we achieved what is everyone’s right-freedom.Another landmark in our history of 5000 years…shouldn’t this day be a reason for celebration and joy.
Ideally yes, but that’s if you are free. For a half a million souls in exile since 1989 freedom means just another remembrance of the day when they were forcibly thrown out their homes. It also leaves them with a lingering feeling of deceit that the state has played against them.It was this that moved hundred odd homeless and uprooted Pandits to tie their mouths with black clothes, a sign that they have lost voice, carrying Indian flags as if they carry the cross,a cross because of which they were forced out of their homes. As someone in the crowd said”We are paying a price for being Indians”.
We are Indians,is that too much of a sin…I wondered as I sat among the protestors. How could one reconcile to the truth that Pandits were suffering because they are not “CRY BABIES” like their Muslim brethren or the fact they are not politically significant because of their numbers.
Maybe Indian democracy has come of age. PIONEER

ASIAN AGE

DAINIK JAAGRAN


HINDUSTAN TIMES

http://www.ptinews.com/pti/ptiphoto.nsf/AllByUNID/EB8CB2FA917EEF6D65257338004E2954
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

http://naknews.co.in/newsdet.aspx?9332

NAK NEWS

http://www.dailyindia.com/show/166032.php/Displaced-Kashmiri-Pandits-cry-government-apathy

Daily India.com

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070816/139/6jien.html

YAHOO NEWS

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070815/481/xgo10208151336

YAHOO NEWS WITH PIC

http://www.newkerala.com/july.php?action=fullnews&id=54175

NEW KERALA.COM

http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20070816/743380.html

NEWS.WEBINDIA.123.COM

http://tvscripts.edt.reuters.com/2007-08-15/2da2cb8f.html

REUTERS

http://www.andhranews.net/India/2007/August/16-Displaced-Kashmiri-Pandits-11941.asp

ANDHRANEWS.NET

RIK Protest at India Gate on 15th Aug,07







As nation celebrates Kashmiri Pandits perish..RIK protest at India Gate..some pics...

PTI...http://www.ptinews.com/pti/ptiphoto.nsf/AllByUNID/EB8CB2FA917EEF6D65257338004E2954

Monday, August 13, 2007


ROOTS IN KASHMIR
...A Kashmiri Pandit Youth Initiative

"Be There! To Bring a Change"

As India celebrates its 60th year of independenceKashmiri Pandits are in 17th year of exile.

RIK commemorates the day with a sit in at India Gate!

Please be there with your family and friends.A solemn occasion- freedom means exile to many.Let us assemble in a peaceful sit at India Gate,5 PMon the Independence Day!

We appeal to the civil society, NGO's, various social groups and students to be there for support.

Date: 15th August, 2007
Time: 5:00 pm
Venue: India Gate (Front Side), New Delhi

Blog: http://www.kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com
http://www.rootsinkashmir.wordpress.com

Website:
www.rootsinkashmir.org


On behalf of..
Roots in Kashmir(a KP Youth Initiative)

"Exiles at Home"

Bushan Lal Pandit with his family at Mishriwala Camp.

Outside the Pandita home in Mishriwala camp is a walnut tree. It has never produced a walnut, and never will, in the heat of Jammu. However, its jagged green leaves symbolise a lost home and a lost life. For 5,000 Kashmiri Pandit families crammed into squalid one-room tenements on the outskirts of this city, the past is not another country; it is a living thing. On this July afternoon, it’s there, waiting for you, in one stiflingly hot tenement after another—in fading pictures of pretty brides in pherans against green hillsides, in incessant conversations recalling cool weather, streams, ruined orchards, homes abandoned overnight and cattle-sheds "bigger than this room". In the tears that spring to the eyes of Santosh Pandita when she talks about her husband, tortured and hanged by militants in the Valley. In the moans of Dhanwati Pandita who, on her deathbed, wants to go back to Pulwama. Even 11-year old Pooja who can’t speak Kashmiri (to her parents’ chagrin), and only knows camp life, trains her light eyes on you and says, in the broad Hindi Jammu has taught her, Kashmir jannat hai.
Of the roughly one lakh Kashmiri Pandits who fled in fear from the Valley in the chilly spring of 1990, most have secured a better foothold in a new world. The Jammu camps, packed with the families of petty government employees and former agriculturists, widows and old people, are for those who couldn’t find a more dignified life. On a scale of human misery, they are not the worst-off—indeed, they provoke envy because they get a government dole, free rations, and a roof over their heads, even if a tin one. But they are still people with middle-class sensibilities trapped in shanty towns. The effort of adjustment shows in 9x13 ft homes overflowing with piles of children’s schoolbooks, ironed clothes, English newspapers, plastic flowers, small fridges, steel cupboards. Every inch of encroachable space has been colonised to add dignity to their lives—a small toilet, kitchen shelves, a child’s study space....
Avid consumers of newsprint and TV footage, the camp Pandits are acutely aware of their irrelevance. They note that their most vocal political champions, the bjp, only use them to make propaganda points. Liberals, they say, fail to see them as genuine victims of conflict, preferring to believe that their exodus was manufactured by former J&K governor Jagmohan to stigmatise militants (whereas the truth, as many Kashmir scholars have noted, was far more complex). For 17 years, they’ve been told that their slums are "temporary" homes. They listen as every actor in the Kashmir conflict, from government to separatist, routinely calls for their safe return to the Valley—but does little to make it happen. The precarious condition of 4,000-odd Pandits who still live in the Valley makes them despair.
The other day, the prime minister came calling, briefly illuminating their forgotten lives. He announced the building of a more salubrious ghetto several kilometres away, with two room sets, community centres and parks. And so, the Pandits brace themselves for another migration, to a new home. Once again it will be "temporary".