Roots in Kashmir

Not until Justice is Done......

2011-09-23T09:47:00.003+05:30

The Government of Jammu and Kashmir is trying every trick in the book to somehow get Kashmiri Pandits back to Kashmir.It would be a welcome gesture if it would not have been wicked.An year before the government announced that it would give jobs to Kashmiri Pandits who wish to return.The applicants were asked to fill a discriminatory bond saying that they are prepared to work in Kashmir under all circumstances and if they dont then their jobs stand annuled.

The Government also formed a committee of its hand picked people who would,I bet you would laugh,represent Kashmiri Pandits.Since most of the people on this commiitee were people of doubtful credibility with no popularity or mandate from the community we all knew where it would head.A group of yes men and some women too was thus formed to facilitate our return to valley.Basically what it meant was that some bread crumbs would be thrown at Pandits and from their concentration camps they would be flown to the idyllic valley.

A slew of measures was also announced.We would be given jobs,money to build houses,a transit camp to live but no justice.We would have to live alongside the same people who raped our women,killed our brothers and sisters,burnt our houses,razed and desecrated our temples.Unsursprisingly the so called Apex Committee concurred ,well not only concurred but even suggested that there is an urgent need for intercommunity dialogue between whom,i bet you will laugh again,between the predator and the prey.One has to be brain dead to even believe that a man whose brother or sister has been killed by a Yasin Malik will go back and live in the next lane in Maisuma where this monster Malik lives.

But since these Apex Committee members were simply his/her masters voice there was little else they could have done but agreed to wilfully let the community be exposed to pack of wolves.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the Pandits will go back to Kashmir but is this how it will happen.What happened to the good old adage that there can be no development unless justice is dispensed?Needless to say that the dummies or figurative heads that Government nominated to the Apex Committee do not represent us.Let it be known that most of the names are not even familiar to Pandits or some of them are so hated in the community that they are simply the agents of the enemy.

Roots in Kashmir is the voice of the young Kashmiri Pandits and the young Pandits want to return to their motherland but not until government acts against the people who killed and raped Pandits.If Omar Abdullah and his tin men the Apex Committee members believe that by throwing bread crumbs at us they will make us follow them then it is time they smell the coffee.

The Geelani Farce

2011-04-19T13:11:00.003+05:30

The spin doctors told him so and off he went to Vessu to "assure" Pandits who were driven away by his ilk some 22 years back.What he said is here.
Our reply as reported by the media is here.

Geelani - Among the Civilised!

2011-03-24T12:34:00.006+05:30

There is an interesting take away from the following press report (on Geelani at the recently concluded India Today Conclave) of a gentleman called Arpit Parashar in the Tehelka. It nomenclates Syed Ali Shah Geelani as Chairman of the Hurriyat Conference but prefers to call us as a right wing Kashmiri group.Even by my own godless ways of life and belief in the Nietzschean ideology of a dead god I wouldn’t be apologetic to call Geelani an Islamic Bigot. Look at the inverse logic that our journos including Arpit use.Geelani to them needs no affirmative fixing label irrespective of his regular pronouncements that Kashmir should merge into Pakistan because it is a muslim majority area.That he believes Islam is the glue between Kashmiris and Pakistan obviously isn’t feeding any frenzy at all,right or left.That he got Abdul Ghani Lone killed because Lone had apparently looked towards India for a solution doesn’t set any alarm bells ringing into our friend Arpit or the likes of many such apologists of hate.That Geelani invokes religion (Islam here) to drive mobs and to frenzy is pious and just because we protest against such ideologues of hate is being right wing.

I wouldn’t mind being branded a radical Hindu provided I was one. In 22 years of our exile Kashmiri Pandits have not killed, maimed or even injured one Muslim. They have not brought down,burnt,ransacked or even partially destroyed the properties of any Muslims despite the fact their own houses lie destroyed and their places of worship desecrated.Yet Arpit and likes have a nomenclature for us.

But humko kahein kafir, Allah ki marzi Hain

The idols nomenclate me as the infidel,there must be God’s will in this.

That brings us back to the India Today Conclave. We at Roots in Kashmir do believe that we must be statesmanlike when it comes to finding solutions to issues as vexed as Kashmir. Neither is it our argument not to involve people who differ with our viewpoint on Kashmir.Infact we would welcome every move that would result in a solution to the Kashmir issue. What we all need to decide is whether people like Geelani are or can actually pave the way forward for any kind of solution at all, or are they a part of the problem itself. Before a reputed media organization like India Today decided to call Geelani(unless they wanted to call his bluff, which I do not rule out) to address the conclave don’t they believe that it is necessary to do a basic background check on the man who is a sworn Islamist and known fascist even by the most liberal standards. It is not for nothing that even NDTV calls him a hardliner. Not the first time though has India Today invited a killer of humanity to its Conclave.Earlier in 2008 they had Yasin Malik to address a session on Youth.Yasin Malik is to Geelani what Chemical Ali was to Saddam Hussein.So it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to expect the Burmese dictator or even a Qadafi next year.

If India Today believes that such people could be a part of the solution then either they are too naïve or too conspiring.

Now that he was allowed rather graciously to be a part of the Aroon Puri’s solution to Kashmir let us see what he brought to the table. He looked sheepish from the word go. Clearly this wasn’t his territory.There weren’t many in the crowd albeit some Pakistani diplomats and was Nayeem Khan there too, who would purchase his blood red wares. He was incoherent, gone was his nonchalant way with which he dismisses opponents in Kashmir.The village boy looked clearly like a cat on a hot tin roof that too in a huge city. Obviously he had nothing new to say. He mumbled the usual stuff but had neatly packaged it, though he couldn’t deliver it well. He spoke of “human rights violations” and the” brutality” of the Indian State the same state that paid his medical bills and appealed to the US government to grant him a visa. Haven’t we heard that before? He didn’t explain why it took him a week despite huge public pressure to announce a hartal when two girls in his hometown were recently murdered by forces loyal to His Master’s Voice. He tried to his best evoke some sympathy among his listeners and was getting exasperated by the second because people could see through his spiel.

Though he was the last speaker of the session and thus had the opportunity to reply to Arif Mohammed Khan’s fervent, logical and passionate speech but it seemed Geelani had clearly lost it. Seemed someone had understood the essence of Holy Koran better than Geelani and obviously had more to do with Kashmir’s glorious but pre-islamic or even secular past. He was stumped by Arif Mohammed’s references to Kalhan, Lalleshwari and Nund Rishi.Arif Mohammed had his day.But the worst for Geelani was yet to come.It was left to a young exiled Pandit to tell the audience how his mother wrapped him in a cloth to escape death at the hands of Geelani’s zealots when he was barely nine months old.The more inconvenient question was why Geelani had Abdul Ghani Lone(one of his own Hurriyat members killed). Aditya Raj Kaul had the audience cheering and when Geelani tom tommed the usual conspiracy by Jagmohan it was received by jeers from the crowd.

(Conclave Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGxT646o4CA )

It is well known that people with dictatorial tendencies brook no opposition and therefore are not used to civil means. They are at their wits ends when questioned about their ideology or the means that they use to achieve their ends.No one in Kashmir dares ask Geelani such questions. That person would be history. Pity Ghani Loni made that mistake.

Mobster Syed Ali Shah Geelani stands exposed at the India Today Conclave

2011-03-21T18:49:00.000+05:30

Aditya Raj Kaul, a young journalist and Founder of Roots In Kashmir in the audience, talked about his own experience and accused Geelani of being true only to his "masters" in Pakistan and not even to his own moderate leaders, such as Abdul Gani Lone who was allegedly killed by the Hurriyat hardliners. This happened at Taj Palace Hotel where the India Today Conclave 2011 was taking place.

Reh 2011 - Kashmiri Pandit Youth Festival

2011-02-05T17:50:00.000+05:30

Be it the chords of music or the cords of emotion, it does create ripples. Far away from home, a new generation of us has grown. Time may have elapsed and distance may have hazed our view but the moment the chords strike and the music begins ,it sets us all swinging, singing and turns back the wheel of times, the valley in us resonates.

On the 13th day of this March we will all sing together, dance together shout aloud til...l our voice resonates in the valley. As a new generation of Kashmiri musicians change tacks from Chakri to Rock to fusion or the more mellowed form of music, we will sing to the celebration of life in a new way and mark the arrival of the next gen of the Kashmiri Pandits.

Renowned bands like Prithvi, October, young Santoor masteros and the nightingales of the valley will set the stage on fire and illuminate the flame within us. The flame of continuity – Reh as it is aptly called in Kashmiri.

Reh - the flame of eternalness, the flame of warmth and togetherness, the flamer of love and brotherhood, the flame of enlightenment, the flame that keep the young generation of Kashmiri Pandits treading.

Come, lets all celebrate the joy of togetherness, the commonness of our roots, the bond of love.

Lets Rock!!!
-Entry by Complimentary Pass only.

To obtain passes contact:

Amal Magazine - 9873900479
Anoop Bhat - 9911543003
Sanjay Peshin - 8527764911

A Roots In Kashmir Initiative

“Yi chu poore Kashir hyu….”

2011-01-20T10:29:00.000+05:30

It is cold in here. It’s chilly enough in April; January is pretty much a lost case. The rain joins in randomly from time to time... October was bright and red. Today is white, with amassed snow. But the rain overshadows it all; it is slushy and gloomy.

“Yi chu poore Kashir hyu”, Mumma had said, back when she was visiting.

….

It is cold in here. You need a strong wind-and-rain-proof jacket outside.

But, indoors, the pheran will do.

The one I’m wearing is my first actual big pheran. At least the first one bought in my name. It has pastel-coloured kadhai on a camel base. I didn’t like the look of it at first, aside from the small matter that it reached right until my ankles. My grandmother, expert tailor that she is, immediately took out a one-inch lad, out in the front. The pheran remains voluminous. I was also sceptical of bringing it here. This is as un-American as it gets. But a week ago, I took the bait of wearing it, feigning élan. It works. People like it and the other smaller pherans I keep on wearing. Though a friend did get curious, seeing me repeatedly wear these ‘traditional clothes’. “Is it by any chance because you hate the West and are making a statement out of it?” I clarified; this was traditional ‘winterwear’. I just like wearing it, I said.

But who knows if I was making a statement out of it? Kashir, and any connection whatsoever with it, has always made me feel special. It is entirely possible that I show it off. Knowingly and unknowingly; before Indians and Americans.

“Where are you from in India?” - standard question anybody mildly interested in you will ask. “Oh! That’s complicated.” “How so?” “Umm…so, I belong to one part, Kashmir; I was born and brought up in another part - a small town in the east called Ranchi, but I live in yet another part – Delhi.” “Oh Delhi!” “Yeah, Delhi.” “That’s so cool!” “Yeah.”

Few understand the ‘belong’ part. You don’t belong to places in America, in general. And certainly not if you have spent a grand total of 9 days in that place.

….

That fall night, there was a cool breeze, yet it was warm enough to sit outside. My favourite tree in the college courtyard was glowing. It was the tree, for me. In daylight, it was bright orange, shining above the humble green ones and making me smile. That night though, with the lamp shining right below its hood, it looked like it had been set on fire. The moon had long hidden itself; the sky was illuminated.

But the carpet of dried leaves at the bottom of the tree kept on growing, with every gust of the wind. There were beautiful leaves up there – most had a shade of the lightest green at the base changing into the brightest red at the tip - but slowly and surely, the dried ones were falling off.

The moon had long hidden itself; the sky was illuminated, but the tree was undoubtedly dying.

I didn’t understand what to make of it.

Or probably I did.

…

Then came nausheen. My dark and gloomy Yale suddenly metamorphosed into a white princess. Beautiful is a gross understatement.

People huddled indoors… I went walking out in the snow; I danced, out in the snow. I caught it with my lips…I kissed it, I ate it. Euphoria is a shallow word.

This was way too similar to the first time I had ever seen falling snow. But that was Kashir, right? This was America, for goodness’ sake.

The happiness persisted. It felt like a new dawn.
…

Perhaps exile begins when you start making new homes, outside home. As someone who values stability zealously, I doubt if I have ever been able to have it truly, or ever will. I left Ranchi midway while growing up; I reached Delhi too old to really grow up there again. Kashir I made up in my mind. None of them belong to me.

This place is different – I haven’t joined it midway; I will not leave it midway. This is real. Nobody can kick me out of here. These four years are mine to make what I want of them. I will belong to them. And they will belong to me, forever.

Above this hard, strong, reality however, I will make my castle in the air.

Because thankfully, castles in the air don’t need roots.

I will keep on thinking that I’m a Kashmiri, much as that Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha kept on thinking that he was a knight errant.

I will speak my language, till I am the last one left to speak it.

I will wear that pheran, with the lad taken out.

I will look at those orange elm trees in the fall as if they were the red chinars of Tulmulla.

I will look at the falling snow as if it were falling in Srinagar.

I will live what I can of my land. My grandmother’s stories and my own eyes have given me enough to do that for a lifetime.

Oh, I know it might be too hard for you to believe it.

Just like it was for the Kashmiri Muslim guy I met at JFK, traveling with his wife and baby.

“Toh chuv Kashir?” I had asked, imitating Papa, as soon as I heard my tongue in the melee of the airport. He was speechless for a few moments. But his eyes betrayed his disbelief, in me. He couldn’t believe that a Kashmiri-speaking Hindu girl, alone in America, could exist. Let alone the fact that she had asked him if he was a Kashmiri.

Delude yourself. I will live on.

Burn my pheran and call it ‘unfortunate’; I will keep the ashes. Shred it and call it ‘a thing of the past’; I will keep the threads.
Because these aren’t just any threads; they are the same ones that made my parents’ pherans, my grandparents’ pherans, my bhagwanji’s pheran. They are the same threads that root me, that root that burning orange elm tree. The winds will come and go, and winter will approach. But I will be the last leaf. I will burn and never fall.

Let the moon hide itself; the sky will still shine.

- Radhika Koul

Radhika is a freshman at Yale University. She can be reached at radhika(dot)koul(at)gmail(dot)com

Photos courtesy Eun Sung Yang, Yale '14.

"Yi chu poore Kashir hyu" means "This is just like Kashmir."
A pheran is a loose fitting woollen gown, reaching below the knees.
Kadhai is embroidery.
A Lad is a fold made near the bottom of the pheran to reduce the length. The fold was made on the outside among the Hindus and on the inside among the Muslims.
Nausheen is the first day of snow in the winter.
The chinar is an oriental plane tree, big, with maple-like leaves, indigenous to Greece and Turkey but very common in Kashmir.
Tulmulla is a shrine devoted to the Mother Goddess in south Kashmir, held extremely sacred by Kashmiri Hindus.

I did my best to stem the Exodus-Jagmohan

2011-01-14T09:16:00.000+05:30

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/i-did-my-best-to-stem-the-exodus/737340/0

We are not writing the editor's note on this one simply because a word that we may write may be construed as support by the jaundiced eye.

Here is what the ertswhile Governor of J&K has to say on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits.

I am deeply dismayed to see that a national daily of the standing of The Indian Express should have given so much prominence (‘Forces, Jagmohan, Mufti Sayeed drove Pandits out: Farooq’s brother’, IE, January 10), to an apparently false allegation of Mustafa Kamal, a politician of little standing, about the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in “early 1990”. Is it believable that practically all the members of a highly intelligent community like that of Kashmiri Pandits would leave, from every village, town and city, their hearths and homes, without caring for their properties, business, children schooling and their future, merely because some one in government asks them to do so? The concoction is writ large on the face of the allegation itself. And yet, shockingly, it has received wide publicity in your newspaper!

Let me tell your readers, on the basis of concrete facts and contemporaneous records, what the conditions were in the Valley before my arrival on the scene on January 19, 1990, and how a permissive and paralysed coalition government, headed by Dr Farooq Abdullah, had virtually abdicated all authority to the militants and allowed them to establish complete sway over the Valley.

From June 19, 1989 to January 19, 1990, that is, in six months, there were 319 violent incidents in the Valley — 21 armed attacks, 114 bomb blasts, 112 arsons and 72 incidents of mob violence. To demonstrate to the whole world their total hold over the Valley, the militants kidnapped, on December 8, Dr Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the Union home minister, from the gate of Srinagar’s Lal Ded Hospital, and released her only after the state and Central governments capitulated and conceded their demand of freeing five top terrorists. This capitulation left the general public in no doubt about the ultimate victory of the militants. Even the doubting Thomases went over to their side and swelled their ranks.

Under a sinister plan to throw out “infidels” and “agents” of the Union from the Valley, Kashmiri Pandits were especially targeted. Prominent members of the community were picked up for slaughter, one by one. For example, Tikka Lal Tiploo, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was shot dead on September 14, Judge N.K. Ganjoo on November 4 and journalist P.N. Bhatt on December 28.

The terror-stricken Pandit community, in a memorandum dated January 16, 1990, to the then governor, General K.V. Krishna Rao, said: “Instead of the government, it is the militants who are the de facto rulers in the Valley today... Happenings in Anantnag, Sopore, Baramulla, Tral, Nurran, Pulwama, Ishber, Vicharnag, Shopian and other places in the Valley are indicative of the fundamentalists’ designs regarding their planned targets of attack on the minorities... The pace of exodus has further accelerated now... Not even a single assailant of the minority leaders and others has either been identified or apprehended by the police.”

Soon after I took over, I did my best to stem the exodus. This would be clear from the press note of March 7, 1990, which was given wide publicity at that time. This note, inter alia, said: “Jagmohan appealed to the members of the Pandit community who have temporarily migrated to Jammu to return to the Valley. He offered to set up temporary camps at four places, namely, Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla and Kupwara for those who return from Jammu.”

In the meanwhile, treacherous and brutal killings of innocent Kashmiri Pandits continued in the Valley. Those killed included prominent persons like engineer B.K. Ganjoo, poet Sarvanand Premi and his young son Virender Kaul, Professor K.L. Ganjoo and his wife, the teacher C.L. Pandita. Press notices were prominently put out in the widely-read Srinagar dailies Aftab and Alsafa, requiring Kashmiri Pandits to leave within 48 hours, failing which they would run the risk of being exterminated. Photocopies of these notices have been printed by me in my book My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir.

There are many other pieces of hard evidence which show that the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was caused by relentlessly pursuing the ISI-sponsored plan of “killing one and frightening 1,000.” Disinformation was built into this plan. Tragically, for petty political ends, persons like Mustafa Kamal have been committing the crime of disinformation. They have been butchering truth, while the militants have been butchering individuals.

The writer was governor of Jammu and Kashmir between January and May 1990

The Garden of Solitude by Siddhartha Gigoo - An Extract

2011-01-04T13:39:00.000+05:30

To order your copy write to utpalpublications@gmail.com or visit http://utpalpublications.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-release-garden-of-solitude-by.html

Book:                The Garden Of Solitude
Author:              Siddhartha Gigoo
ISBN:               978-81-291-1718-2
Binding:            Paperback
Publisher:          Rupa & Co.
Pages:              260
Language:         English
Price:                195

‘Life teaches us that there is beauty in ugliness,’ Sridar said.

Then Pamposh said something that Sridar was not prepared for.

‘Every day I lead the life of a centipede. I crawl. I lick. I hide. I sting. I wake up to the fumes of kerosene in the morning and the sting of speeding ants, feeding ravenously on the sugar spilled on the floor of the tent. It feels as if I have never had a morsel of rice for ages. I wake up hungry and go to bed hungry. I lead the life of a centipede, I crawl. All around the camp, there is stench of human excrement and waste. People wake up in the morning, hungry and muddled. The awakenings are pallid. The water in the water tanker smells foul, and children lie whole day in their own vomit. The quivering smile on my mother’s face is false. I want to peel off that false smile from her face, so that she is beautiful once again. Father spends most of the time playing cards with the other migrants near the highway tea shop. I am a mute spectator to the horrors of the life inside my tent. The air inside is squalid. My grandfather barely speaks. He lost his voice while leaving the village. A young man had shown him a gun as he was returning from a butcher’s shop. He still thinks that the young man is hiding around a corner, with a gun, waiting to scare him. He stopped talking after we crossed the Banihal tunnel. I saw him look sadly at the fading mountains for long, till they disappeared completely, one by one, into his frozen dreams. And he swallowed his fright. Today I cannot hear what he says. His words do not come out of his mouth. When we are asleep, we cannot even stretch our arms and legs. There are no hangers to hang our clothes on. No cupboards to keep our personal belongings in. We have no portraits of our gods and goddesses. No pictures of our ancestors. During the day, we hide from the blazing sun. At night we live from one insect bite to another. Centipedes, millipedes and spiders are our companions. We must learn how to live with them.

‘My grandmother does not recognise the insects. She confuses a lizard for a plastic toy paralysed on the wall. Her gaze is fixed at the crucified lizard. For hours and hours, she just gazes endlessly into a dark nothingness! It is a vacant gaze into a world of oblivion and amnesia. Petrified with a sense of desolation, she does not even feel the presence of hundreds of mosquitoes circling her head constantly, while she stares into blank space. I do not know if she is hungry or thirsty. When asleep, she resembles a corpse. She perspires. I wake up to feel her pulse and feel happy that she is still breathing. She would be happy in her death, I pray. My mother and sister wash their clothes and the utensils in a puddle of water outside our tent. They line up for hours in the morning to use the makeshift toilet made of torn shreds of canvas, pieces of cardboard and tin. They await their turn at the filthy and stinking toilets while the loitering men watch the women wait to relieve themselves. Many women prefer to go to the stinking latrines at midnight, away from the stare of men. Even the mosquitoes keep away from the foul smelling latrines. Sometimes, I hear women shriek, fall silent and then cry in solace behind the filthy tank. The nights bring squalor, pallor and heat. We live in fear of the mangled and naked electric wires, crisscrossed around wooden poles that hold the canvas of the tent together.

‘There is a large rash on my grandfather’s leg, a rash perhaps from the bite of a millipede. The rash has swollen and become a sore now. It oozes puss and resembles a horrifying wound. He scratches the wound with a knife. The festering wound will never heal. I want to burn the wound. The old man looks at my sister change clothes at bedtime. She puts out the light. There are no curtains to hide behind. She sleeps in snatches, sandwiched like an insect between her mother and her grandmother. She dreams nervy dreams of crawling insects in the sun and the shade. The old man wants to touch her clothes hanging from the hook. He smells the clothes of his own granddaughter. And he relishes their putrid smell. We lick the hours that weigh heavy on our half-asleep existence, and tread laboriously into an endless strain of nightmares. The earthen pot in the tent is empty. A discarded plastic bottle used for the toilet contains a few drops of water. I grab it and empty the drops into my parched mouth. My tongue is dry. It can fall off anytime. My grandmother shrieks when she sees the sun. She dreads stepping out of the tent for fear of fainting in the sun. She soils her clothes every day. She can’t even use the bedpan which my mother got for her. From morning to evening she clings to the old box, which she brought along. It sticks inseparably to her chest. I wonder if there are any ornaments or valuables left in it.

‘Never before have I felt the desire to unknow myself and others. The smell . . . the touch . . . . the breath . . . the sigh!

‘In an adjacent tent a family of five torture an old man, their foster-grandfather, who lost his mental balance upon seeing his house fade away in a hazy distance. The old man is a burden for his son and daughter-in-law. Another mouth to feed, they feel! He moans at night constantly, and intermittently wakes up to a cold shiver - a nightmare. His son and daughter-in-law taunt him for their amusement. They whisper in his ears that his mother was dead and that she was beaten mercilessly to death. The old man groans and pleads them not to utter the atrocities. Every evening, the torment continues. The maddening laughter of the men ricochets from the tattered canvas tent. Every night the old man cries. He gapes at his son and daughter-in-law and gives them his blessings.

‘Darkness! Darkness!

‘I wonder what is moral and what is immoral.’

Sridar stopped breathing for a while as Pamposh described his experience and condition. He picked up Pamposh’s pack of cheap cigarettes. For the first time, he lit a cigarette and took a puff. The smoke danced its way into the air and disappeared in the whirl of the ceiling fan.

That day Sridar wrote his thoughts in his journal. He wrote about Pamposh and the horrid mine of his consciousness.

‘What would it be like to be Pamposh?’ Sridar mused. He remembered the last words Pamposh had told him the previous day. ‘I long for a child’s laughter,’ Pamposh had whispered in Sridar’s ear.

Pamposh never spoke of his days in Kashmir. Sridar tried to strike such conversations with him to get to know about Pamposh’s childhood days in his village in Kashmir. Pamposh’s family came from a village in Kashmir. Some students in the camp told Sridar that Pamposh’s family owned an orchard in Kashmir and grew pomegranates, cherries and walnuts. Pamposh’s childhood may have been full of pranks, Sridar thought. Someone mentioned that Pamposh’s family was the only Pandit family in their village, and that they had to run away from their home in the most horrifying of circumstances. No one was able to narrate what had happened. Pamposh had lost one home and he was not in search of another.

The migrants sat all day long on a rocky mound and discussed the affairs of their community. Days were spent sitting and talking about whatever came to their minds; their plight and their sordid condition. Waiting kept them busy. For many it was a lacerating wait. They had not yet realised that this waiting was not to end. They did not know what they were waiting for. This waiting was not for returning to their homes, not for peace in the Valley, but for a new day to dawn and the new evening to descend. They prayed for a day without a sunstroke and a night without a snakebite.

Pamposh met Sridar every day after school near an anthill. He wished to demolish the anthill with a spade and to render the snakes homeless, so that no snakebites would take place in the camp.

There was only one question to be asked during the funeral processions that left the camp every day.

‘Snakebite or sunstroke?’

In the coming days Sridar and Pamposh saw many camp dwellers line up, one by one, in the crematorium. Between them breathed words bereft of any meaning! Words! Silence! .....................................

...................................

The author Siddhartha Gigoo can be reached at siddhartha.gigoo@tcs.com

Eid Gift

2010-09-09T09:55:00.000+05:30

Omar Abdullah keeps coming to Delhi every now and then and the reasons are not hard to find.With total anarchy in Kashmir he seeks his little spa in Delhi,eases himself off by transfering his worries to whoever cares to carry the cross of Omar's blunders.

But yesterday was different.

For once he had an agenda.He was here,we are told, to push for removal of AFSPA or as the bleeding hearts would say,to make it more humane.Humane being the key word here.Now imagine here is a country beset with insurgency and here is an army which is fighting the likes of Lashkar and Jaish not to mention Hizbul and others and is expected to be "humane".It reminds me of Mark Antony's famous lines(from Shakespare's Julius Ceaser) '"we are so meek and gentle with these butchers".They who trade in death and their sympathesizers seek a humane face of the enemy!

It makes for an interesting reading as to how our neighbours in the subcontinent are handling their insurgencies.The Srilankan army simply bulldozed the LTTE into submission without a care in the world about collateral or any damages whatsoever.The country that is so worried about India's human right excesses in Kashmir uses air power,artillery,infantry and navy wherever needed to quell its insurgencies and after doing all this have the gall to lecture us on our human rights.

The argument for removal of AFSPA is that things have improved in Kashmir and hence it is no longer needed.Well have they?

The Army has made it clear time and again they do not wish to enagage themselves in counter insurgency operations yet it is being extensively used to do so.Now let us understand what it means to take off AFSPA and ask army to enagage in counter insurgency operations.They will have to seek a warrant from local police everytime before they have to raid a hideout or act on a tip off.What a dumbhead one has to be to believe that the terrorists meanwhile would munch biryani and wait at the "appointed spot" till the time army gets a search warrant.

The army's record in counter insurgency has been close to impeccable.It has instituted enquires and initiated action against its own people found to be guilty of any form of human rights violations.A concerted and orchestrated campaign has been unleashed by the separatists and the bleeding hearts to tarnish the image of the army.The NHRC and other institutions of the State have found that less then 0.02% of the complaints of human right violations carried any weight and the rest have simply been unsubstainted and baseless.Now this new demand of setting up "greviance cells" would simply mean that more unsubstantiated complaints would be lodged and then used by the bleeding hearts and some sections of the media to simply cast more aspersions on an institution that makes us all proud.

While we understand that the Manmohan Singh government wants to be seen as doing "something" to "assuage" the feelings of the "alienated" Kashmiri Muslims but pray what an Eid gift would it be to tie the arms of your armed forces behind their backs and make them sitting ducks so that the "alienated" population armed with stones,bullets and Islamic venom could tear them to shreds and we here in Delhi would await for the bleeding hearts to give us character certificates for good human rights record.

Kashmiri Pandits expose separatist propaganda - catch Aditya Raj Kaul and Radhika Koul on Face the Nation, CNN-IBN

2010-08-20T15:19:00.000+05:30

Kashmiris protest against Separatists Propaganda in New Delhi

2010-08-09T15:21:00.000+05:30

Under Separatists Threatning, Kashmiri Pandits forced to leave Kashmir valley

2010-08-09T14:53:00.000+05:30

Media Frenzy

2010-08-06T08:41:00.000+05:30

I have a question first up.Have more Kashmiris(Kashmiri Muslims-now the media uses Kashmiris for them so liberally that even people like are me are brainwashed into thinking that the only Kashmiris who exist are the Muslims,forgetting that I am not) been killed in the last one month or is it less than the average number of people killed in Kashmir.The separtists keep shouting that more than 1 lac(100000) people have lost their lives in Kashmir in the last 20 years.Now if I believe them as Barkhas and Sagarikas do then every year there are 5000 people killed in Kashmir which means approx 13 per day.Now since July11,the total number of people killed is only 50.Isnt it less than what the figure ordinarliy should be?Am I being a death monger or am I belittling the loss of human life?Quite on the contrary,I am only calling the separtist bluff and the media naivette or willfull suspension of dibelief whichever suits you better.

We are bombaried these days with columns in newspapers and TV programmes who lecture us on how the Indian State has failed in Kashmir.Well it has.And how should understand the anger of the stone pelters(read roiters).We are consistently told that these people need to be listened to and they be given emplyoment while the Islamic Don Syed Ali Shah says quite the contrary.He says we are not fighting for better civic facilities or jobs.He is unequivocal in saying that we want Independence and not good governance.Yet column after column,one programme after another makes this nation feel guilty of "genocide" of "innocent Kashmiris".Now can anyone please tell these self appointed moral guardians of our "collective conscience" to please listen to Geelani and hear the speeches of Hafiz Saeed that mosques in Kashmir are loudly playing these days.

Fathom this..a young man or a woman or even a kid who throws petrol bombs or stones,burns public property,tears the unfirom of a policeman or simply lynches him.Does it give any sane man but the sleeveless siren any idea of this "innocent victim".Yet for the Indian media(except for one odd man out) such a person symbolises the innocence and purity of thought (of the Islamic kind may I ask?).What is the state supposed to do with a person whose intenet is reflected in the way he appears on the street.Is it the time to hear his greviances-real,imagined or perceieved.What about the Policeman whose eye was taken out by such an innocent group of people?Doesnt he have a family or are his human rights less legitimate than those of the mobsters who are the Indian Media's idea of an "innocent Kashmiri".

True human life is pious and shouldnt be lost and we keep repeating here,that no cause is worth one human life but doesnt the onus lie on both sides.Isnt it for the parents of these "innoncent Kashmiris" to tell their young ones that there are other more civil modes of protest available than the Islamic mode of protest.What does the Indian Media want?Should the CRPF and the local Police Garland the people who hit them with an intention to lynch them,should they cook mincemeat for the "innocent Kashmiris" who attack them?

And now all this bullshit about the "children of conflict" which a senior journo keeps going back to.My daughter is 5 and goes to a local school in Delhi.A month back me and my wife were asked to come to the school to discuss about my child.I was taken aback by the teacher told me.She said, my daughter needs a psychatirst because she belives that her father's house was burnt and one day they will go back to some land which she hasnt even seen.The teacher told me that my daughter is imagining things and should be shown to a child psychologist.Is she a child of the conflict too or just because she is a Hindu none of it sticks to her or just because Barkha looks the other way.

13 July, 1931 in the pages of history...

2010-07-13T23:53:00.000+05:30

Run a Google search for July 13, 1931 and Kashmir and you will be hard pressed to find one mention of Kashmiri Pandits.

Grand and nostalgic articles you will find – some call it ‘Martyrs Day’, some call it the ‘first day of the Freedom Struggle for Kashmir’…

21 Kashmiris (read Muslims whenever you read ‘Kashmiris’ in journalese) were ‘massacred’ by Dogra soldiers that day, not unlike the 15 Kashmiris killed by Indian security forces this past fortnight, due to their opening fire on demonstrators. This connection, of course, has ‘noted’ historians (whose only works of note according to Google have been predicting when Allah will bless Kashmir with azadi) waxing eloquent on how things have not changed – poor Kashmiris are still at the receiving end of the atrocities of Hindu/Indian governments.

Left to be tacitly understood is that these poor Kashmiri demonstrators of 1931, 1990, 2008 and 2010 - then as now, had and have all the right in the world to pelt stones at the security personnel, beat them and shoot them, not to mention riot, loot and kill people who just don’t feel like doing the same. How else can they express (and show to the world) the immeasurable frustration they feel? Listen to any of the Kashmiri separatists, representatives of the current Opposition in Kashmir (party doesn’t matter) or even any random stone-pelter talk and you will find yourself being asked to believe that even 5-6 year olds in Kashmir (who also pelt stones) have this frustration pounding in their veins. Never mind the phone tappings and video confessions of some of the same stone-pelters that explain, in nitty-gritty detail, just how these bloody protests come about.

So, coming back to July 13, 1931. The story has it that serendipitously, at a major Muslim political gathering of Kashmir on the preceding June 21^st, the ‘true problems, demands and aspirations’ of the Muslims of Kashmir got expression in the speech of a totally “unknown, robust Pathan” named Abdul Qadeer Khan. This one speech, like others in the subsequent politics of Kashmir, drove the normal peace-loving people of Kashmir to a frenzy, as it talked about how the holy Quran and the teachings of Islam had been violated by the Hindu rulers of Kashmir and asked the people to fight this autocratic force. So it was at the arrest of this one person on July 13 that Kashmiris felt necessary to protest outside the Srinagar Central Jail. A few ‘notable’ people have wondered aloud just what would have happened to the struggle for Kashmir independence had not that priceless man, Abdul Qadeer Khan arrived on stage that fated day – never mind the probable theory that this ‘accidental speech’ had been meticulously planned by the British to destabilize the reign of Maharaja Hari Singh as a little punishment for his patriotic demand for Independence of India from the British in the Round Table Conference.

It is also interesting how these people have tried to have it both ways - on the one hand they vociferously shouted out Allah-o-Akbar along with their demands of justice from the Maharaja and on the other they totally denied that the subsequent protests that took place in Srinagar, Vicharnag, Ananatnag and Shopian were in any way communal in colour. The Khatri traders of Maharajgunj were looted by crores; Hindu shops from Bohrikadal to Alikadal were raided and burnt, the Tribune reports Hindu boys returning from school being hurled into the river Jhelum, and there was general loot, murder and rape (yes murder and rape too) of the Kashmiri Pandits almost simultaneously in Srinagar and Vicharnag – but no, this was not communal. This was, as Yasin Malik will explain to you any day, a purely social problem caused solely by the economic disparity between the majority (poor illiterate Muslims) and the minority (rich educated Hindus). Kashmiris can just not be communal, get it? At any given time they are either secular or in one of the various colours of Kashmiriyat - which can come into the picture whenever you give food (and not attack) an Amarnath pilgrim or quote Lal Ded.

Hopefully now you understand why you don’t get Kashmiri Pandits when you search the web for Kashmir and July 13, 1931. 60 years hence you will probably find that January 19, 1990 was also just another day of turmoil in Kashmir – nothing too notable about it. Another day when Kashmiris found the oppression of just being in India too much to bear and hence resorted to release their pent up energies in whatever ways they could. Nothing else.

- Radhika Koul. The author is an undergraduate student of Yale University.

Hurriyat Lie Nailed - Confession of Mobster Shabir Ahmed Wani

2010-07-13T00:27:00.000+05:30

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT

My name is Shabir Ahmed Wani S/o Ali Aziz Wani r/o of Narbal. This Hurriyat takes out these processions through these small children and give them money which results in stone pelting. In this context I called Wasim Allahpuri on Wednesday whose actual names is Ghulam mohammed dar and is the district president of Tehrek-e-Hurriyat led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. I told him that there is a procession going on here and where he was. He complimented me and said that in this at least 10 to 15 people should get martyred so that the pot (demonstration) keeps boiling..as in the disruptions continue. This is basically tehrek-e-Hurriyat which gives money and brainwash also some of the kids as they want that the situation should not improve at all in this place.

Who is this Ghulam Mohammed Dar?

He is the district president of Tehrek-e-Hurriyat and before this he was a militant of Hizbul Mujahideen and was known as Wasim Allahpuri.

Is he the man who incites mobs?

Yes he is the person who is responsible for taking out processions through small children which results in stone pelting and subsequent tears gas shelling from the other side resulting in killing of innocents.

Campaign to send books to stonepelters, Geelani in Kashmir‎

2010-07-10T04:38:00.000+05:30

Press Trust Of India
New Delhi, July 09, 2010

Amid tension in violence-hit Kashmir, a group of activists have launched an online campaign asking people to send books to stonepelters and their instigators in the valley. The 'Peacebook Campaign' was launched on social networking site 'facebook' by 'Roots in Kashmir', a group of Kashmiri pandits who had migrated from the valley after outbreak of militancy.

The group is asking people across the globe to send books to hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who, they alleged, was instigating people to target security personnel and disturb law and order.

"Our campaign is not about people who are throwing stones but for the ones who are instigated them to indulge in stone pelting. Hurriyat leader Geelani is one among them. That is why we are asking people to directly send books at his residence," said Rashneek Kher, founder member of the group.

A total of 1,000 net users from different countries have registered themselves for the campaign, he said.

"We have collected about 300 books here which will be sent to Geelani once curfew is relaxed in Srinagar," he said.

Kher said schools children have been forced to throw stones. "Most of the stone pelters are school boys, who do not know why they are throwing stones. They should attend classes but they are instigated by people for their vested interest and forced to indulge in such anti-national activities," the activist said.

"We will continue with our campaign till violence in Kashmir Valley ends," Kher added.

Mr Geelani, were you served biriyani for the day? - by Dr Sanjay Parva

2010-07-10T03:19:00.000+05:30

Dr Sanjay Parva was 'born and brought up in Kashmir in a sleepy village called Malmoh, that is on the connecting road between Magam (district Budgam) - Pattan (district Baramulla).' (quoted from Sanjay). He left the valley with his parents as everybody else did in what he calls 'one flourishing spring.' Sanjay says "I am still not able to forget home and feel life would have been different there had this turmoil not happened."

Instigated violence....

2010-07-08T20:43:00.000+05:30

We had never had any doubts about where it all came from but here is the proof from one of the channels which is arguably pro-separatist. Listen to how Geelani's hounds want more "martyrs".

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/kashmir-intercept-10-15-people-more-must-be-martyred-36362

Living in Denial

2010-07-08T14:54:00.000+05:30

A pastor named Martin Niemoller lived in Germany during the Nazi period left us with these moving lines:

They came first for the communists
and I didnt speak up because I wasnt a communist

Then they came for the Trade Unionists
and I didnt speak up because I wasnt a Trade Unionist

Then they came for for the Jews
and I didnt speak up because I wasnt a Jew

Then they came for
and then no one was left to speak up

If there ever has been a blog post that I am writing with such a heavy heart as this one, it indeed is this one. There is an overwhelming gloom of the unnecessary violence in our home mixed with feelings of helplessness. Just when one thought things were finally looking better in the valley we are probably back to where it all began. It never occurred to me that the incentive for mischief in Kashmir would be such that it would lead us to a point that a handful of mobsters could hold the whole state to ransom.

J is a very good friend of mine,he is someone who has stood by me through thick and thin.We have known each other for 14 years now and never ever has an unkind word been exchanged between us. Our families are good friends too. The reader must be wondering why I am bringing the nice soul into what many call a "rabble rousing blog". The reason is that for two days now my friend has a couple of lines alongside his name in the facebook.

This is how they read:

"Sometimes I wonder why people are so apathetic towards the killing in the valley.It is time'that voice of sanity' needs to speak up.It is time that the anger and resentment of Kashmiri public is acknowledged and addressed to.It is time we stop living in denial"

The answer probably lies in the lines of the Pastor. You see "the voices of sanity" in Kashmir were mute conspirators when leaders of Kashmiri Muslims were shouting from the mosque tops and asking Pandits to leave or be prepared for the worst. The voices of sanity kept shut or simply absented themselves when the mobs were shouting, We want Kashmir without Kashmiri Pandit men but their women. The voices of sanity were unmoved when our age old temples were being reduced to ruins.The voices of sanity did not say a word when people celebrated the release of the butcher of the Pandits - Bitta Karate. The voices of sanity said nothing when the separatist leaders killed small voiceless Pandit children or raped their women.The voices of the sanity did not speak up because they were simply weren't Pandits as in the case of the Pastor's lines.It makes me terribly sad to say this but it is simply a case of bad Karma catching up.When you had time to speak for someone you didn't and now except for a few usual suspects there aren't many who would speak for you.

Knowing J, I hope when he talks of resentment and anger of Kashmiris he doesn't simply mention Kashmiri Muslims but Pandits too. Unfortunately the term Kashmiris is so loosely used today that most people tend to think that the only Kashmiris that are there are the Kashmiri Muslims but that's not J's fault.There obviously is a lot of anger among Pandits but then they don't take a stone every time they find the food unpalatable or the camps in which they are forced to live as unlivable.

The whole issue of denial is at the root of the problem that Kashmiri Muslims are dealing with today.For every issue that confronts them they find an imaginary ghost sometimes in India,sometimes in IB, sometimes in the cunning Pandits, sometimes even in Parveen Togadia or Jim Morrison but never do they look inwards to see if the fault could be there's too. Since they have driven the Pandits out they have ended up as a society which has a singular strain of obscurantist Islam and where dissent is crushed by death as we have seen in case of Maulvi Farooq, Abdul Ghani Lone and Sattar Ranjoor.

The young have been coaxed into believing that the road to Nirvana lies through a way paved with stones and bricks and people any other than them are pagans of stone and snake worshiping types.

I feel terribly sorry for poor Omar when I see the young forcibly anointed Mirwaiz - yes the one more helpless than me, shouting on television that India is killing Kashmiri Muslims. It leaves me wondering as to when he will have the courage to say the same about those people who killed his father. How strange is it that he and the Lone brothers are so scared that they have been forced to make friends with the very terrorists who killed their fathers. A strange society indeed... and they ask us to speak out...

STONED

2010-07-01T09:29:00.000+05:30

The Amarnath Yatra began yesterday with some 3000 brave hearts being flagged off from Jammu. This was despite the fact the Kashmir has seen one more planned "summer of discontent". One should not be surprised at all with the timing of the "spontaneous outpouring of the anger of urban -jeans,chic t-shirts, Nike shoes and Reebok caps youth". The master mobster Syed Ali Shah Geelani had warned the government of large scale protests if the period of the Yatra was not reduced to 15 days. True to his word Geelani showed that he meant business. With covert and overt support from Pakistan (to where he bows when in prayer) he unleashed the power of what he is known best for-the Islamic mobs.

It is not Geelani that baffles us here but all those parents who send their children to riot, to lynch, to kill,to throw petrol bombs and to pump out all their adrenalin on the streets of Kashmir. I didn't know this was a way of channelisng pent up sexual energies in the new radicalized Islamic Kashmir .What kind a parent would send his son to indulge in riot I often wonder. But then there is a history to it.

Kashmiri Muslims are adept in the art of Stone throwing. The last I heard was that some Malik is writing a book on Zen and the art of stone throwing. Throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties when there was no "occupation force" the Kashmiri Muslims would indulge in this "sport" by throwing stones at each other. The Sher-Bakre (supporters of NC and supporters of Mirwaiz) would almost indulge in this Kane-Jung(stone wars) almost religiously and come what may every Friday post the Nimaz this would be a permanent fixture and would delay my return from the school because the Alikadal bridge would be hostage to this stone war. So to believe that they are throwing stones because they are mourning or protesting would be out-rightly comical if it wasn't terribly tragic.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind why all this is happening now. The answer is simple that the separatists no matter what they say see the Amarnath Shrine as an extension or a connect of India with Kashmir. They do not see the same in case of let us a Kheer Bhavani Shrine because even today it is not frequented so much by non-kashmiri hindus.

They feel that all the gains of cleansing that they clinically achieved so far are seemingly frittered because lacs of pilgrims from the mainland are visiting Kashmir and thus the connect lives on. It frustrates them to no end but at the same time they cannot openly oppose the Yatra because they do not want to be seen as foot-soldiers of the ideology of Islamic Hate that their mentors like Syed Sallaudhin, Hafiz Saeed and others stand for.

At the same time Pakistan and other donors ask for some performance for the money that they are giving the separatists so here we are.

The other reason for stone throwing is that Pakistan and its cronies in Kashmir have realized that is simply impossible to beat India by force of Kalaishnikovs. So this route of Intifada (the Palestinian model) looks more real. In all this Kashmiri Muslims do not understand the damage they are doing to themselves. Imagine a young man in teens or even younger who is made to believe that a solution to a problem lies in throwing petrol bombs and stones. What kind a society are we creating. We have already seen effects of violence in Kashmir when one Kashmiri Muslim boy killed another simply because he thought that his friend was wooing his girlfriend. It is this belief that violence is answer or a solution that is dangerous and fraught with problems.

As a fellow Kashmiri I would request with folded hands to all Kashmiri Muslims not to give their children a stone or a petrol bomb but a book. Don't let them get used by mobsters like Geelani. Ask him where are his children and grand children. Are they throwing stones too?

It is time Kashmiri Muslims realize the enemy within. It is time the people like Shabnam Hashmi do not just lecture the state on being humane but also tells these Islamic mobs not to lynch security personnel, not to burn temples, not to encroach on properties of Kafirs and not to think of a stone as a solution.

PS: I will today re-read Wazoo-i-khoon of Mansur bin hallaj who too was stoned to death at the directions of someone who was a Geelani of those days. The Stone throwers live on......

Separatist Paid Goons target Security forces in Kashmir

2010-06-30T00:22:00.000+05:30

Security personnel run for cover as armed riot mob targets them.

Also Read...

The New Stone Age

The Other side of the story in Kashmir: Blame it on Police

A J&K Police Constable is mercilessly beaten by a street goon.

A paid good targets J&K Police vehicle with stones.

A gang of paid goons attacks a lone J&K Police constable.

36 Shops of Kashmiri Pandits demolished by Delhi Government

2010-06-27T18:07:00.000+05:30

It is a tense night for at least 36 Kashmiri Pandit families in Delhi. Yesterday (June 26th, 2010) morning bulldozers of MCD demolished their shops secretly with heavy Police deployment. They were not even warned to remove their belongings, not even the power supply was cut; which also resulted into a minor fire in few shops which was later doused by fellow shopkeepers and the as usual late fire brigade. Apparently for a road to be broadened for the upcomingCommonwealth Games.

The deserted look of Taploo Market just adjacent to the famous INA Market and right opposite Dilli Haat is terrible. It might not matter to us, demolition might be a daily routine in Delhi - most of which consists of illegal colonies and other such constructions. Sadly the government doesn't dare touch such illegal constructions because of obvious money laundering and mafia rule.

This tragedy is a grim reminder of the exodus of 1990 to these 36 families. In this hour of pain, we as a community need to support and stand hand in hand with our brothers in need.

The shop owners have all legal documents to prove their right over their ownership of these 6 by 7 area shops. Intrestingly, the honorable Courts have almost always favoured these shop owners and even called them Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), instead of the usual tag of 'Migrants' by the Government agencies.

No relocation plan or compensation has been promised for the victims who lie helpless on the pavements

Two people stand around demolished shops.

Shop owners sitting near the broken structure of their shops.

Some parts of the rubble.

Shop owners find space to sit around in between broken rubble.

A man looks through the rubble of the demolished shops.

A broken shop display board on the road among the rubble reads 'Kaul Sons'.

A victim shop owner sitting besides the rubble of his shop in a praying gesture.

Kashmiri Pandits living in exile stage protest, demand IDP status

2010-06-20T23:13:00.000+05:30

Govt Ignored us, Kashmiri Pandits allege

Protest on World Refugees Day

Ruchika Rai - The Times of India

New Delhi: On the occasion of World Refugees Day, members of Roots in Kashmir — a worldwide youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits — came together at Jantar Mantar to protest against the indifference of the Indian government to their plight. It has been over two decades since the Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their land, following the atrocities of Islamist terrorists. However, both the government and political parties have ‘‘ignored our cause because we are scattered and less in number, thus not fit to be an important votebank,’’ said Rashneek Kher, founder member of Roots in Kashmir.

The protesters demanded the status of Internally Displaced Persons. ‘‘This will get us international access and aid. The government has turned a blind eye to the exodus of over five lakh Kashmiri Pandits. At least international agencies should be allowed to look into the matter and save our identity. A committee should be constituted to probe into the matter and bring out the true story,’’ said Kher.

The agitators also urged the media to take up the issue with more vigour. ‘‘The media is full of stories about refugees from all over the world. Only we are ignored. This is a case of ethnic cleansing and the attack on Kashmiri Pandits was indeed an attack on the presence of India in Kashmir,’’ said an angry Lalit Ambardar, who has been pursuing the cause for many years.

Payal, a banker by profession, was there to support her husband. ‘‘I am a Rajasthani but I can relate to my husband’s struggle to go back to his homeland. Even as a parent I want to make sure that my children have a sense of belonging to Kashmir. After all, that’s where they belong.’’

And the issue is not only about those who were ousted from the place of their birth. People who were educated enough were able to find jobs in the cities and are living a near-normal life, but almost 50,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who did not have the resources, are still living a miserable life in the valley. ‘‘There is just one toilet for every 100 persons and the death to birth ratio is as high as 14:3. We need an answer to all this,’’ said Kher.

A Kashmiri Hindu or Pandit attends a rally to mark the "World Refugee Day" in New Delhi June 20, 2010. Two decades after they were forced to flee Kashmir, thousands of Hindu Pandits seek to return to their ancestral homeland, their hopes lifted by a fall in Islamist rebel attacks against New Delhi's rule.

Photograph by Reuters

Displaced Kashmiri Pandits seek special status

IANS

Over 150 Kashmiri Pandits, along with members of civil society, held a silent protest at the Jantar Mantar here Sunday and demanded that the government recognise them as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The protesters, including children, students and professionals, were dressed in their traditional firhan attire and wore headbands. The children wore dresses with 'Born in exile' written on them.

'We wore white firhans which signified the death of this (Kashmiri Pandit) community and headbands on which was written 'Ignored'. This is how we feel, ignored and left out,' said Rashneek Kher, one of the organisers from Roots in Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits.

The group demanded that they be recognised not as migrants but as IDP's citing the fact that they were forced to leave their homes and did not come to Delhi or other cities willingly.

'The IDP recognition will help us get international attention and our rehabilitation and relief work will then be taken care by the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and not the government of India, which has not done much for us since the last 21 years of our forced exile,' added Kher.

'We want to be identified,' was written on many placards amongst others held by the protesters.

Amal Magazine, a protester, said that by terming them migrants, the Indian government was robbing them of their identity.

'We are refugees not migrants. Give us that identity. If the prime minister can ask the Sri Lankan government to give the Tamils in the island country IDP status, then why not us? We were thrown out of our own homes just because we called ourselves Indians,' Magazine told IANS.

'I am very worried about the new generation. Using guns to do the talking is not a part of our culture. The impression that the young get now is that our silent protests is of no use. When there is violence, people wake up. If the government doesn't pay attention to us, there may be serious repercussions,' said Veerji Wangoo, another protester.

There are around 100,000 Kashmiri Pandits in the Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).

'According to government figures, there were approximately 4.5 lakh who were displaced during the exodus in the early 1990s from the Valley. Some were not registered, so I asume there are more,' said Kher.

The protesters also demanded setting up of a commission to probe the exodus, its reasons and the exact number of 'refugees'.

Kashmiri pandits stage protest demanding IDP status

PTI
New Delhi, Jun 20 (PTI) Kashmiri Pandits today staged a demonstration here to demand status of Internally Displaced People (IDP) claiming that they were forced to flee the Kashmir Valley in 1990s in the aftermath of insurgency.
Clad in white firhans and sporting head bands, over 100 Kashmiri Pandits staged a protest march here against the"treatment meted out"to them by the Government."Today being the World Refugees Day, a lot of attention will be paid to plight of refugees in the country. Our main aim is to bring to public focus the circumstances Kashmiri Pandits live in today,"said Rashneek Kher, the founder member of Roots In Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, that spear-headed the protest march.

He said that among other things, his team sought to push the government to grant IDP status. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley in the 1990s when insurgency was at its peak."In 1989, about 14,000 Pandits were in government job in the state and today their number is only 1500. These figures reflect the sad state of the community,"said Rashneek.

The protesters expressed their disappointment over the Government's"apathy"to their cause."We are still classified as migrants by the Government which is a gross violation of the UN Charter for Refugees,"alleged Amal Magazine, a Pandit residing in Faridabad.

"A migrant is someone who has willingly come out of a place but the truth is that we have been pushed out of the state. The administration should show a little more consideration,"he added.

Many of the protestors also pointed to"disparity in the differential treatment"by the Government to the refugees in the country."Sri Lankan Tamils were given refugee status within six months, while we are being ignored for the last two decades. It was the Government's duty to protect the Pandits in Kashmir. Since they failed to do that, the least they can do is grant us the refugee status,"said Sincad Kachroo, a member of Roots In Kashmir.

Plight of the Pandits; Silence of the Pundits by Chidanand Rajghatta(TOI)

2010-06-20T07:17:00.000+05:30

The World Refugees Day is coming up again on June 20 and Lalit Koul is
making the rounds of Washington DC wonks and writers, lawmakers and
legislative aides, just as he did before World Human Rights Day on December
10 and the Kashmiri Pandits’ Exodus Day on January 19. In a city where every
cause has a proponent, every émigré and exile has an advocate, “we are
nobody’s children,” he complains. He can’t even rustle up a decent
demonstration on the Hill or in front of the White House. The best he can do
is drum up an occasional letter of support from a Congressman or schedule
the screening of a documentary to highlight his community’s plight. It has
an eloquent title: “...And the world remained silent.”

Some two decades after nearly half a million Kashmiri Pandits were
expelled from what were their homes for millennia, Koul and a small band of
his activist colleagues are fighting to keep world attention alive to their
cause. It’s hard; seemingly hopeless. In a city where Palestinians, Kurds,
Tibetans, Armenians, Burmese and dozens of other ethnic nationalities and
sub-nationalities are fighting for attention, the Pandit cause is just
another blip on the human rights radar. “We don’t have the backing of
Pakistan nor the funding of petrodollars,” says Koul, an info-tech
professional who heads the Indian-American Kashmir Forum, referring
obliquely to the support Kashmiri Muslims get from Islamabad and elsewhere,
“We are just falling through the cracks.”

Indeed, for the 1,500-strong Pandit community scattered across the
United States, it’s not so galling that they have no traction in America as
much as the neglect they say they suffer in India. When India itself is not
moved by half a million Pandits expelled from their homes and turns its back
on 50,000 lodged in refugee camps in the capital, why blame America — or
expats here, they say. It’s like Bhopal: when the people of

India, and their political and judicial representatives, sold them cheap,
why blame others? They rage against Indian civil society, which they say is
all a-bleeding about Kashmiri Muslims, but is unmoved by the plight of the
Pandits. And they note with more than a hint of bitterness that the
government of the day is pressing for rehabilitation of Tamil refugees in
Sri Lanka while concern for Pandits fades.

Their one hope is that like Palestine and Bhopal, the issue will
re-ignite somehow, catch world attention, and activists will pick up their
cause with renewed energy. The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits happened before
the internet age or instant 24/7 television. There were no TV cameras when
the judges and academics were murdered by Islamic militants with the stark
message — get out of Kashmir. There was no Facebook and Twitter and no viral
messaging.

Now technologies and techniques are available, but they lack benefactors
and big name support. The 1,500 Pandits in the US came mostly as students
and professionals, not as political refugees, and so lacked the voice and
the drama that asylum seekers bring. Most of them are too busy making a
career and home to spare time and bandwidth for their homeland.

In fact, some years back there was a poignant situation when a certain
Vikram Pandit became the top honcho of Citibank. Initial joy that finally
one of their own had risen to top of the corporate ladder and might be the
benefactor (in terms of face and voice if not with finance) they were
looking for was followed by dismay when they discovered that he was not from
Kashmir, but from Nagpur; “a Pandit by name, not by blood.”

Indeed, there is a sense of irony that even as the Pandit issue is
fading from the world’s conscience, the term Pandit is more in use than ever
before in the US — where it is spelt “Pundit”. If Koul and his fellow
activists could collect a dollar for every time the term was bandied about,
they would be lolling in lolly. TV talking heads and op-ed columnists are
now routinely referred to as Pundits, and there is a whole new media
subculture of Punditocracy, a term used to describe a group of powerful and
influential political commentators. From a book titled Sound and Fury: The
Making of Punditocracy to the website punditicracywatch.com, it is a much
overused term. Not a day passes without the tribe pontificating on issues
ranging from Obama and the BP oil spill to the Gores’ divorce to World Cup
soccer. Everything, except the plight of the people who gave them the word.
•
chidanand.rajgha...@timesgroup.com

June 20- World Refugee Day

2010-06-17T14:14:00.000+05:30

It is ironical that when the Srilankan President came to India recently everyone right from the Prime Minister to the local Tamil politicians stressed on him to ensure rehabiliation of seventy odd thousand Tamil refugees who had to flee Jafna when Srilankan army annihilated the LTTE.Yet when it comes to its own refugess who are numerically much higher than those of Tamils and have been living as refugees now for more than two decades the same milk of human kindness seems to have dried completely.
We the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley are now in the 21st year of our being refugees in our nation.Pity we dont even get the lip service that the Tamils of a different nation get from our Prime Minister and our politicians.
20th June marks the World Refugee Day and brings to focus the plight of refugees across the globe.On that day newspapers in our country would be full of heart rending stories of people who are refugees from Waziristan,Serbia,Iraq and even Albanians but alas there will be no mention of us.

The silence that marks our being refugees actually is an iconvenient truth that our politicians our media and our secular polity are unable to come to terms with hence they push it under the carpet.
Let us all on this day register our being refugees in our own land,the forgotten refugees,the inconvienent truth and the shame of our nation.

Roots in Kashmir requests you to be there at Jantar Mantar on 20th June,2010,Sunday at 4 PM.

Be there...let this nation know we exist.

-
Sinead Kachroo- 9717058747
Sanjay Peshin - 9910394999

‘Amnesty International’ a Jihadi Collaborator: Kashmiri Pandits

2010-05-25T16:17:00.001+05:30

May 25^th 2010

New Delhi: Roots in Kashmir, a frontline initiative of Kashmiri Pandits in exile came down heavily upon the Government of India today to allow a tainted organization and a known Jihadi collaborator for ignoring the plight of half a million Kashmiri Pandits living in forced exile due to their human rights violation at the hands of the very people who Amnesty International met on their six-day visit to Kashmir.

The recent visit of a two member team of Amnesty International to "assess human rights situation" in Kashmir comes in the wake of its already maligned image of having collaborating with the Jihadis. As if Gita Seghal's revelations were not enough proof already of what Amnesty stands for its meetings with killers and mobsters like Yasin Malik and Syed Ali Shah Geelani left nothing to imagination.

While there is definitely a need to assess human rights situation in Kashmir one must ask is Amnesty the right organization to do so? Could Jihadi collaborators be human right assessors too? “We at Roots in Kashmir strongly condemn the Government of India which allowed a tainted organization to send its members to "assess human rights situation" in Kashmir. We ask what could these people whose motives are already known, assess but collect data to make reports that are pre-conceived and biased.” said Mr. Sanjay Peshin-the coordinator of the group.

“And if they really did want to know about human rights of Kashmiris why did they not meet Kashmiri Pandit leadership or for that matter visit camps of Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu. Does Amnesty not believe that a forced exodus of a million people is a reason enough to "assess human rights situation"? Does it not believe that the ethnic cleansing of Pandits too deserves its attention?” asked Mr. Amal Magazine, an activist of the group.

“Such attitude where only Pak backed Muslim separatist leadership is attended to simply goes on to show which side of Amnesty International's bread is buttered” said an angry Mr. Piyush Kaul of the group. To escape persecution, more than 500,000 Kashmiri Pandits had to leave their home and hearths back in the Valley of which more than 50,000 refugees are still languishing in uninhabitable refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi.

It simply doesn’t matter what report they give because as an organization its credibility is already eroded but the very fact that government allows such kite flying missions makes light of what is a very important matter.

Praznath Launch: A Review

2010-03-22T17:43:00.001+05:30

Praznath: a discourse on Kashmiri identity and culture , an effort at dispelling the myths prevalent about Kashmir and its history in a form of quarterly cultural magazine was formally launched on March 18^th 2010 at Gulmohar hall, IHC. A dire need to challenge and question the hegemonic discourse regarding Kashmir provided the necessary impetus for starting this magazine. The launch was marked by a panel discussion on the topic ‘Identifying Identity in Kashmir’ which broadly looked into the grave issues of identity politics.

The tempo for the event was set by a photo exhibition by Veer Munshi’s latest photographs of Kashmiri Pandit houses in Kashmir. The blown up and sensitively photographed shots were displayed strategically juxtaposing the majestic and grand mansions with vacated, burnt down ruins of what once were imposing houses and institutions. The powerful visuals narrated a sad story of oppression and loss. One could see people reacting to certain images, identifying certain houses and not without a gloomy look in their eyes.

The curtain raiser too was a video shot by Munshi in 2009 in Kashmir. The screen here was divided into two frames. On the left hand side one could see a KP house in flames and on the right hand side the artist walking towards an unknown destination, crushing chinar leaves under his feet and leaving the random foot prints on snow. The endless walk again a metaphor used for the deep longing to go back was harshly interrupted by the shrill bullet shots and screams one could hear from the burning house.

On this melancholy note started the program. Mr.Sushil Pandit, a senior member of Praznath welcomed the audience and gave a brief introduction to Praznath which was followed by a key note address by Radhika Kaul, the youngest member of the team. In her short and effective address Radhika hinted upon extremely important points on identity especially from a point of view of someone who was born after exodus. She ended on an optimistic note that our silence has found appropriate voice in Praznath, a view that all of us at Praznath share. With this she recited the fiery and powerful poem by Dr. Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani ‘Phelega Phelega hamara maun’ which drew huge applause from the audience.

After the panelists were duly felicitated, Dr Toshkhani ,the editor of the magazine gave a broader insight into Praznath and the objectives it aims to achieve. He focussed on the issue of deliberate misrepresentation of historical facts and in particular talked about the efforts being made to see Kashmir as an integral part of Central Asian cultural belt with no ties with

India

. He stressed on the fact the pre 14^th CE Kashmiri society was an open and liberated one and we need to give a proper glimpse of that era to our people. The lopsided ,distorted and many a times purely fabricated view of Kashmir history and culture slowly trying to erase an important part of our indigenous culture and identity was strongly emphasized and so was emphasized a need for thinkers, researchers, artists and sensitive and coherent individuals from the community to come together and fight this intellectual injustice.

The discussion continued with Sir Mark Tully, an eminent journalist, drawing attention on the need to preserve the culture for a community in Diaspora. The necessity to understand and highlight the links that Kashmir had with

India

was stressed upon. Agreeing with Dr. Toshkhani he also stressed on the need to counter the misrepresentations of Kashmir. However he also stressed on the fact that any debate on Kashmiri identity cannot neglect Kashmiri Muslims(KM) as they are now an integral part of Kashmir. He went on to categorize Islam in Kashmir as purely Sufi as opposed to Wahabi Islam.What one could gather from the brief talk was that he deliberated on the idea of a utopian culture where KP’s and KM’s would live happily and peacefully , the notion that did not go well with the audience, and the resentment could be felt in the next speaker Dr. Kshama Kaul’s emotionally charged speech.

Dr.Kaul’s invocation of ‘Pratibigya Darshan’and a need to realize ones hidden powers had immense depth and actually was more than enough to illustrate her point. The emotional outpourings accompanying the talk though somewhere diluted the strength of her statements drew a great round of applause from audience. Her personal first hand experience, honesty and point blankness came across very vividly in her talk. She out rightly rejected the notion of KM’s and KP’s living together in peace and harmony stressing on a fact that a culture that takes refuge in violence has nothing to do with Kashmir.

The next speaker Dr.Swapan Dasgupta,right in the outset talked about the counter productiveness of an emotional approach and advised KP’s to be purely strategic in their approach. Moreover he stressed on ‘memory’ as an important aspect of retaining a culture. He raised an important point by suggesting that a culture or a community can easily slip away from people’s memory and hence there should a constant effort to keep the memory of the culture alive. He also talked about how issues of KP’s had become an embarrassment to be shoved under the carpet for the Govt.. He boldly used the term’ Ethnic Cleansing’ with respect to the exodus of 1990 and implored the KP’s to fight for their identity with passion and a strategy at hand.

With this came the panel discussion to an end and the session was closed by a mellifluous recital of vakhs of Rupa Bhavani, a 17^th century saint poetess from Kashmir by Mr.Dalip Langoo.Dalip left the audiences mesmerized with his recital and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that his voice reverberated in our subconscious much like the eternal meaning of Rupa Bhavani’s vakhs.

The vote of thanks was given by Mr. Pandit.Gradually the over filled hall started to vacate with people forming groups and discussing the events.Once outside you could see a decent queue at subscription counter and people going through their copies of Praznath.

The writer is faculty in the Delhi College of Art. She can be reached at gkawkher@gmail.com

Launch of Praznath-A quarterly literary-cultural magazine

2010-03-10T11:15:00.000+05:30

Roots in Kashmir invites all our readers to the launch of the first literary-cultural magazine on Kashmir.

Praznath is the idiom of the discourse, a reflection of the self in the mirror of conscious.Together we shall write, rewrite, delve, learn, unlearn, work, enrich ourselves and the world around us with our focus on Art, Culture and Thought of and from Kashmir and Kashmiris. This shall be "the forum" for interactions and one day shall be the reference archive for anyone wanting to know Kashmir

We request your presence at the launch of the quarterly - PRAZNATH at India Habitat Centre. Praznath will document Kashmiri art, culture, literature, tradition and history.

A panel discussion on - IDENTIFYING IDENTITY IN KASHMIR - will mark the occasion. The PANELISTS are:

Dr. Kapila Vatsayan (Eminent Scholar)
MP, Rajya Sabha & Member, Amarnath Shrine Board

Sir Mark Tully (Eminent Journalist)
Padma Bhushan, formerly BBC Correspondent in India

Dr. Swapan Dasgupta (Eminent Columnist)

Mr. Francois Gautier (Founder, FACT India)
Editor-in-Chief, La Revue de l’Inde

Dr. Khema Kaul (Eminent Writer)
Awarded ‘Hindi Writers Award’ by the President of India, 1997.
Her published works include Samay ke Baad, Baadalon Mein Aag (poetry) and Dardpur (novel).

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi

The Exiles Dreaming of a return to Kashmir-Andrew Buncombe(in THE INDEPENDENT-UK)

2010-02-22T09:49:00.000+05:30

The exiles dreaming of a return to Kashmir

The 400,000 Hindus driven out by Muslim extremists 20 years ago hope talks beginning this week will bring them a step closer to going home. But does it suit the Indian government to prolong their misery?

By Andrew Buncombe

Like all the others, Mharaj Kak remembers the date and he remembers the threat that changed their lives forever. He had been living with his extended family in Srinagar, their city-centre home, a five-storey wooden house in the centre of the city built by his great-grandfather.

"It was the night of 19 January 1990 when the mullahs told us all to leave the valley," he said. "We had to leave everything. There was a mass exodus. From all the mosques, there was this message sent throughout the valley that the Kashmiri Pandits had to leave immediately, or we would be killed."

So the Hindus of Kashmir, better known as the Kashmiri Pandits, were forced to flee the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountains in which their families had lived for centuries, driven out by Muslim extremists, and sometimes the Muslim neighbours they had lived alongside for generations. In just three months, more than 400,000 Hindus were scattered across India and beyond. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed, and only about 60,000 stayed behind.

Two decades later, the government of India says it is determined to help those who want to return to the homes they were forced to leave. But the Pandits say the government does little but talk. It has provided no security, no homes, no livelihoods and put in place none of the confidence-building measures vital for them to feel able to make the journey back to Kashmir, they say. Even now, many are still enduring lives of quiet misery in inadequate refugee camps.

They believe that while the plight of the Muslim population of Kashmir, living in one of the most heavily militarised places on earth, continues to garner international attention, they have become the forgotten, overlooked people of history. Some even believe the Indian government has deliberately kept them impoverished to allow it to claim it is not just Muslims who have suffered in the struggle over Kashmir.

Ramesh Kumarana hung on until October 1990. By then, the threats and violence by militant groups such as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen came almost daily. One of his brothers was killed. He and his family had no alternative but to flee south. Today, the college-trained pharmacist who once ran his own business in Srinagar is among the Pandits who run tiny clothes-shops at a scruffy market in the centre of Delhi. To supplement his income, he sells bags of Kashmiri walnuts. He shrugs helplessly as he points to the way in which he is now forced to support his wife and two children.

"I am ready to go back to Kashmir, my heart is there," he said, standing next to his shop with his smiling 12-year-old son, Mohit. "It is my birthplace and I want to go back there. But my son was born in Delhi, it's my responsibility to take care of him. I visited Kashmir in 2003. They said, 'You can come but you are a tourist and you must then go back to India'. They called us 'Indian dogs'."

More than 60 years after Partition, the issue of Kashmir still burns like spilt acid, an enduring irritant to peace inside India and beyond. In 1947, Kashmir's Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, surprised most observers when he decided that his Muslim-majority state should join the Hindu-majority India rather than the new state of Pakistan. And still the competing claims on the region continue to pull at the geopolitical fabric of South Asia. When Indian and Pakistani officials meet this week for resumption of talks halted after the Mumbai attacks of 2008, Kashmir will be among the first subjects raised.

Yet the issue that has largely dominated talk of Kashmir for the past two decades, since the Indian government responded to the militancy with one of the largest counter-insurgency operations in history, has been what sort of autonomy the valley could be afforded. During two decades of violence that has claimed at least 70,000 lives and created a population that suffers from record levels of anxiety and mental health problems, little thought appears to have been given to how the Pandits might fit in. Even now, much of the energy of the authorities appears to be taken up by an amnesty plan to allow militants who have crossed the de facto border, the Line of Control (LoC), into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, to return to their families.

The Indian authorities, which pay grants of about £50 a month to those forced to leave, insist they are working to help the Pandits. A spokesman for the federal Home Minister, P Chidambaram, said he was too busy to speak on the issue, but last November, while visiting new flats built for Pandit refugees in Jammu, he vowed: "Kashmiri Pandit migrants will be consulted on every issue regarding their return to the valley."

The attitude of the state government, headed by an energetic Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, may be more forward-leaning. In an interview, he outlined several steps already taken to help Pandits return; 3,000 government jobs had been set aside and temporary accommodation built at two locations in the valley.

"I don't think my administration sees this issue any differently than the rest of the right-thinking people in the valley," he said. "We think the valley is incomplete without the Hindu Kashmiris. It has been the endeavour of governments since 1996 to create the circumstances to bring them back."

Asked whether the security existed for them to return, he added: "The proof of the pie is in the eating. There are still Kashmiri Pandits who never migrated and who have lived alongside the majority population."

Indeed, the antagonism between the Hindu and Muslim population that forced the Pandits to flee did not always exist, and few could have imagined the nature of the violence that erupted after the summer of 1989. Certainly, the two communities did not inter-marry, but they shared customs and traditions and were largely tolerant of each other.

The British writer, Justine Hardy, notes in her recent memoir on Kashmir's descent into violence, In the Valley of Mist: "The poetry of the valley's past is that it was heaven on earth, a place of such gentleness that those who lived there did so in harmony, most particularly the Muslims and Hindus, the doors of their homes open to each other, their festivals shared, some of their saints interchangeable."

Today, if it ever thus existed, such a relationship has been destroyed. But there are positive signs: in recent months, several long-closed Hindu temples have been restored and reopened, with the help of the Muslim community, and a key Hindu festival was celebrated in Srinagar for the first time 20 years. A Pandit organisation in the city hopes to reopen 60 more temples in the valley this year. Muslim leaders admit more needs to be done, both in providing homes and jobs and in building sufficient trust to persuade Hindus to return.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, leader of a coalition of separatist organisations, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said: "The issue of the return of the Pandits is very important. We cannot deny that they had to leave the valley in very difficult circumstances at a time when there was a lot of chaos."

Yet Mr Farooq rejected the idea made by some Pandits that a specially designated area for Hindus ought to be created. "[This is not] a religious issue," he said. "It's not Hindu India versus Muslim Kashmir. And their return to the valley should not be linked to the resolution of the broader issue of Kashmir's future."

Yet for the Pandits, a return to the valley is inextricably linked to the future of Kashmir. Why, they ask, would they return if they felt the future of Kashmir was not safe? SK Dudha, a leading member of the Pandit community in Delhi, said: "The changes have to be made. How else will people go back. There has to be the political will on the part of the government."

In the apparent stalemate, the Pandits feel lost, dreaming of the Kashmir they left and juggling with the challenges of the new lives they have made elsewhere. One of the toughest, they say, is to maintain their culture and language. Their children may be encouraged to speak Kashmiri in the home, but elsewhere they are bombarded with other tongues, other dialects. Already the diaspora has had to forgo its tradition of marrying only within the Pandit caste, such was the concern about the threat to the future of the community.

Occasions at which the community comes together include the religious festivals it has traditionally marked. On a recent afternoon in the Lajpat Nagar neighbourhood of Delhi, scores of Kashmiri Hindus gathered to celebrate perhaps the most important, Shivatri, or the "long night of Shiva". In the centre of the temple, a fire had been built and prayers were said as people placed offerings of rice, barley, walnuts and butter into the flames. Amid the heat and the smoke was Mharaj Kak, the businessman who had pushed his family into a taxi and fled from Kashmir 20 years earlier.

In all that time, he had never returned to Kashmir, to the home his great-grandfather had built which had been taken from him. "What I miss the most," he said, "is that old house and all the memories associated with it".

A valley divided

*For hundreds of years the Kashmiri Pandits lived peacefully as a minority in the Kashmir valley alongside the Muslim majority. Often well-educated, they were regarded as the elite of the region – the name "Pandit" means learned person and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, was one of them.

*However, in 1989 Muslim extremists intensified their armed struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir and violence broke out against the Hindu Pandits. As a result the vast majority of the Pandit population in the area were forced to flee, with hundreds killed in the conflict. In a space of three months, 400,000 were displaced and many ended up in refugee camps around Jammu.

*Only about 60,000 Kashmiri Pandits stayed behind in the region, and many of them have been the victims of violence. In 1998, 23 were massacred by militants in the village of Wanhama, north of Srinagar, and 24 Pandits were killed in their village in 2006 by gunmen disguised as members of the Indian army.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-exiles-dreaming-of-a-return-to-kashmir-1906503.html

Aman Ki Asha - Do we need a reality check ?

2010-02-04T16:45:00.000+05:30

Talks will serve little purpose

G Parthasarathy

New Delhi’s India International Centre has a reputation of being a location for quiet dialogue and discussions. Yet, in a widely publicised conference on India-Pakistan relations at the IIC from January 10 to 12, raw emotions got the better of reasoned dialogue. The police had to be called in as people who had been forced to flee their homes in the Kashmir Valley by terrorist organisations, which were allegedly led by some of those participating in the programme, gave vent to their emotions and disrupted proceedings. Sentimentalism in sections of our media about ‘Aman ki Asha’, disregards prevailing realities about public anguish and anger at Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

India’s Chief of Army Staff General Deepak Kapoor recently revealed that some 700 militants from Pakistan were waiting to infiltrate across the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir. General Kapoor added: “The terror infrastructure across the LoC is very much intact and all-out efforts are being made to push inside as many infiltrators as possible.” On January 12, India’s otherwise soft spoken Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, told an audience of American and Indian academics in Delhi: “We have to face hostile forces across our borders with Pakistan.” She added that groups which directed attacks against India, continued to receive the “patronage of powerful forces and institutions in Pakistan.” She asserted, “It is vital this support must stop at once. Any viable process of dialogue with Pakistan is essentially dependent on this requirement, since it is unrealistic to think otherwise.”

While the Foreign Secretary was spelling out the prerequisites for a “viable dialogue process”, talks have continued between the two countries at the highest levels. Over the past two years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari twice, at New York and Yekaterinburg, and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani on three occasions. The Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan met in Islamabad, New Delhi and New York. While India has continued to engage and talk to Pakistan, a resumption of the composite dialogue process will be counter-productive. Pakistan has used the composite dialogue process to divert attention from its promotion of terrorism within India, by expressing dissatisfaction with India’s approach to issues ranging from Jammu & Kashmir to Siachen, and differences over demarcation of the international boundary in the Sir Creek area.

The composite dialogue process resumed in January 2004, only after then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf assured then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that territory under Pakistan’s control would not be allowed to be used for terrorism against India. Despite this clear linkage between an end to terrorism and the resumption of the composite dialogue process, Pakistan was emboldened to promote terror activities against India by the ill-advised statement of Prime Minister Singh that the composite dialogue process was “irreversible” and would not be affected by acts of terrorism sponsored by Pakistan. At the Havana Non-Aligned Summit in 2006, some others even acted as apologists for Pakistan by suggesting that cross-border terrorism was really the work of ‘non-state actors’.

While our policies should seek to build constituencies for peace within Pakistan, the reality is that policies on India are decided in Pakistan not by the democratically elected rulers in Islamabad but by the military establishment led by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Rawalpindi. The longest meeting that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had in Pakistan during her latest visit to that country was with General Kayani and ISI Chief Shuja Pasha and not with the country’s elected leaders. General Kayani has long-standing links with terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba from his days as the Commander of the 12th Infantry Division in Murree over a decade ago. He is recorded to have described Afghan Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, who masterminded two terrorist attacks on our Embassy in Kabul, as a “strategic asset”.

Thus, little purpose will be served by talking to Pakistan’s civilian leadership on issues of cross-border terrorism, over which they have no control. What is needed is unpublicised backchannel dialogue with Pakistan’s real rulers — its military establishment including the ISI — who should be left in doubt about the consequences of continuing on the path they have chosen.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram is scheduled to visit Pakistan for a SAARC conference. His visit comes just after an astonishing statement by Mr Gilani, a long time protégé of and apologist for his country’s military establishment, that his Government cannot guarantee that there will not be further terrorist attacks on India, emanating from Pakistani territory. As this would be a violation of the assurances given by General Musharraf on January 6, 2004, which led to the resumption of the composite dialogue process, Mr Chidambaram could remind his hosts of the assurances which constituted the basis for talks.

India has also demanded that Pakistan would have to dismantle its infrastructure of terrorism before the dialogue process can be resumed. What precisely we should tell Pakistan is the minimum we expect Pakistan to do — establish its sincerity. The first step would be for Pakistan to stop living in denial and agree to extradite Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai bombings. As American author Gretchen Peters has noted, Ibrahim has the dubious distinction of being the only person Washington has designated both as a ‘Global Terrorist Supporter’ and a ‘Foreign Narcotics Kingpin’.

Second, Pakistan’s former Railways Minister and former Director-General of ISI, Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, stated in Pakistan’s Senate on March 10, 2004: “We must not be afraid of admitting that the Jaish-e-Mohammed was involved in the deaths of thousands of Kashmiris, the bombing of the Indian Parliament, in Daniel Pearl’s murder and in attempts on President Pervez Musharraf’s life.” In these circumstances, one can surely demand that Pakistan extradite Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar, or try him for abetment of murder and terrorism.

Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LeT chief, publicly acknowledged in January 2001 that he had organised the attack on the Red Fort in New Delhi. Articles in journals published by him give details of LeT members who have been ‘martyred’ in encounters in Jammu & Kashmir. If, as Pakistan claims, it does not have evidence to nail Hafiz Saeed for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he could surely be incarcerated and tried for all that he has admitted publicly over the past decade.

A message for Manish Tiwari

2010-01-29T16:34:00.001+05:30

Although there were hundreds of angry messages for Manish Tiwari after his insensitive remark about the Pandit exodus but none better than Rahul Pandita's message published in the OPEN magazine.
We are posting it here for all our readers.

Care for a History Tutorial, Mr Tewari?

Spokespersons of political parties in India are not quite known for their sagacity. But if ever a foot-in-the-mouth award was instituted for the fraternity, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari would emerge as the winner.

Ever since he was given the responsibility of tomtomming his party’s achievements and point of view, Tewari has started putting up that I-know-it-all demeanour in TV studios. During a recent TV discussion on constitutional reforms, which veered towards Article 370 and ultimately towards the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, Tewari, in keeping with his self image as the most crafty spin doctor after Alistair Campbell, opined that J&K’s Pandits were driven out due to the fear psychosis of the then Governor, Jagmohan.

Obviously, Kashmiri Pandit groups are not amused. To add insult to injury, Tewari spoke rudely to an elderly Pandit the next day, who called him to register his protest. Tewari reportedly told him to “fuck off” before banging down the phone.

On social networking sites, Kashmiri Pandits are venting their anger. Calling Tewari’s statement sickening, actor Sanjay Suri, whose father was killed by militants in the early 1990s, wrote that Tewari ‘surely needs to get some history lessons’. One group has called for a protest outside the Congress office.
This is obviously no Tharoor-like situation for Tewari, who is still in 10 Janpath’s good books. But for someone whose father was killed by Khalistani terrorists, Tewari surely must update himself on terrorism. That is one thing that spokespersons like him will have to deal with for a long time to come. With or without constitutional reforms.

RAHUL PANDITA
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/india-this-week-19

For Peace keep killers and Rapists away

2010-01-12T10:32:00.000+05:30

Mid Day

At the outset I would like to clarify that we are all for peace and would naturally support any peace initiative. We are fully aware of the fact that unless there is peace between India and Pakistan there is no way that peace can return to Kashmir.

But then who can bring peace is a question that needs to be asked and answered. Do we buy peace at any cost ie by bringing on stage the killers of yesteryears and doing “piece-deals” with them. Needless to say that such steps are a sure recipe for more violence. Here we have a man who has 23 criminal cases including rape, murder and kidnapping pending against him. He has accepted on tape killing 4 unarmed IAF officers calling them “agents of the enemy”. He appears for summons in Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping cases even today. Apart from that he is involved in killing of Lassa Kaul,Mushir-ul-Haq,Dooraiswamy and others.I haven’t even mentioned the gruesome raping and killing of Sarla Bhat.And thankfully for him the CBI hasnt even filed a chargesheet in 19 years.In case any newspaper or any TV channel needs proof I have it all.

We disagree with the policy of separatists which is essentially one of Pan-Islamic expansion. Having said that has anyone ever seen us protesting against a Sajjad Lone,a Mirwaiz , a Ghani Butt or even Syed Ali Shah Geelani? Everyone has a right to speak but are we to be lectured by killers and rapists on peace? Wouldn’t it all be a big farce?

Hindustan Times

Indian Express

The Times of India

I ask the organisers of such peace events as to why they cannot anybody else in Kashmir to speak on Peace. If peace is to endure then members of civil society have to be stake holders. What is wrong with inviting a Rehman Rahee, a Rafik Raaz, Mohd Shafi Khan, Shafi Shauq or a Hassan. Haven’t heard of them? I presumed so. They are leading poets and sculptors of Kashmir. Incase you have aversion to them also please invite anyone but people like Yasin Malik,Bitta Karate or a Javed Nalqa. Sorry but our catholicity still hasn’t reached that of Jesus. We cannot forget how they selectively killed our community members and had us leave our homes.

It is for the organisers read the Indian Civil Society to ensure that there is a line that needs to be drawn as to who should represent Kashmiris. Should it be a man who has blood on his hands or a man who really means peace?

While the press has said what we did no one reported that the “Peace Activists” pushed us and abused us. They tore our material and threw it on our faces but then what else do you expect from people who host Yasin Malik.

Jansatta

To cut a long story short, the world needs to take notice of our ethnic cleansing. The media which normally shows a lot of urgency in cases “where gross violation of justice” has been done needs to take up the issue that not even one person has been convicted for killing of Kashmiri Pandits.Not even one.I feel like shouting my lungs off that the media barons could hear me. NOT EVEN ONE.

Daily Hamara Samaj (Urdu)

20 years hence my house lies burnt, my deities defaced, my community displaced and disparaged and I am to hear Yasin Malik. Tell me Arnab Goswami if my method is wrong what is the right method. Help me get peace and I will follow your method. Bring me back my home and my childhood that I lost waiting in a queue outside a toilet in a refugee camp because the Government could provide only one for 100 Pandits.

PS: Thanks nonetheless for carrying the news, Arnab.

Times Now Video Link - http://www.timesnow.tv/India/Separatist-leader-Yasin-Malik-heckled/videoshow/4336085.cms

Punjab Kesri

Times have Changed, Issues are Different by Tavleen Singh(in Sentinel Assam)

2009-11-30T15:49:00.000+05:30

There was a time when it seemed as if a solution in Kashmir could bring peace with Pakistan. That time has gone. The Taliban now have a grander plan for the subcontinent
ON THE SPOT
Link - http://www.sentinelassam.com/editorial/story.php?sec=3&subsec=0&id=26854&dtP=2009-11-16&ppr=1

T he average Indian is so bored with Kashmir these days that I always hesitate to raise the subject in a column. If I do this week it is because a meeting took place in Delhi that has to go down as one of the most extraordinary in recent times. It was organized by social activist Madhu Kishwar under the auspices of the Centre for the Studies of Developing Societies, on November 7, and I went along because she invited a glittering array of politicians from Kashmir. I have not been to Srinagar in more than five years and thought the meeting could be a good way to revive my interest in a subject I once wrote a book on.
Among those who came to the meeting in the library of the Nehru Memorial were Mehbooba Mufti, Muzzafar Baig who was Deputy Chief Minister in the last government, Mohammad Sufi Uri from the National Conference, Professor Abdul Ghani Butt from the Hurriyat and Yasin Malik from the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). The meeting was chaired by Ram Jethmalani and attended by journalists, academics, Kashmir activists and sundry others. It was a full house.

Madhu, an eager beaver peacenik as ever was, began the day’s discussions by emphasizing loudly and often that we were gathered together to find solutions. Despite this, things got off to an interminably dull start because Mr Uri from the National Conference made a long, boring speech that was full of historical grievances that everyone present was more than familiar with. Muzaffar Baig took over from him and was more interesting because he offered a solution. He said that Kashmir’s borders needed to be made irrelevant as Dr Manmohan Singh has himself often promised. Instead of redrawing maps there should be a softening of the borders so that Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians could come and go freely and there should be ‘‘dual currency’’. In view of what is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this suggestion seemed so naively oblivious of geo-political realities that I went up to him when he finished speaking and asked if he had heard of the Taliban. Was he aware that this group of Islamist jihadis was close to threatening the existence of Pakistan and Afghanistan? How long would it take the Taliban to conquer Kashmir if Indian troops were withdrawn? He laughed sheepishly.

In any case the meeting carried on peacefully and in a dull sort of way until the late afternoon when it came to Yasin Malik’s turn to speak. I had not seen him in many years and was impressed to see him look dapper and elegant in a black, velvet jacket and a black and white polka-dotted shirt instead of the drab, Kashmiri clothes he usually wears. He looked more like an urbane Srinagar businessman than the terrorist he once was, but he was not allowed to forget his past. No sooner did he rise to speak than the meeting deteriorated into chaos. The hall was filled with insults hurled at him by a group of young Kashmir Pandits who till then had sat silent and unnoticed.

‘‘We will not allow this monster to speak,’’ they yelled, ‘‘ask him who raped and killed Sarla Bhatt? Ask him how many Hindus he has killed? He is a terrorist. He has no right to be here.’’ They said other things as well, angry, ugly things, and they made so much noise as they stood up and shouted their abuse that the meeting was totally disrupted for several minutes. Yasin Malik was infuriated and ready to leave. It was only after many entreaties from Madhu and Mr Jethmalani that he agreed to speak. But then Mr Jethmalani put his foot into it by saying that he himself loved Pakistan more than Pakistanis loved Pakistan and that all Indians should develop a similar love for Pakistan. Then he added there would have been no militancy in Kashmir at all if the 1987 elections had not been rigged to coincide unfortunately with a large number of mujahideen in Afghanistan suddenly becoming ‘‘unemployed’’ because the Soviet Union withdrew its troops.

Yasin Malik decided to pick this up as the starting point of his speech. He said, ‘‘I was shocked to hear Jethmalani Sahib say what he did. I was the one who started the armed struggle in Kashmir and I was neither Afghan nor unemployed. I picked up the gun because it seemed there was nothing else to do. We had tried peaceful means to achieve azaadi and failed.’’

He then gave details of how the JKLF was among the groups that had set up the Muslim United Front to contest the Assembly elections in 1987. ‘‘We contested the elections because we thought that if we won we would declare Kashmir independent through a resolution in the Assembly but they were not prepared to give us our basic democratic rights. So we had no recourse but to pick up the gun.’’ He added that he had given up violence because he was persuaded by the ‘‘Indian civil society’’ that solutions could come peacefully. He felt betrayed, he said, because he now knew that all the Indian civil society could do was talk.

The Kashmiri Pundits were not going to take that lying down even if the panelists were, and they started yelling that the armed struggle had never ended. What about the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen? Who were they? And who were the other militant groups that continued to kill innocent people in Kashmir?

In the end there was more rancour and rage than debate, and the solution to our Kashmir problem remained as elusive as ever. Sitting next to me at one point was General Lakhvinder Singh, a hero of the Kargil war, and I asked him if he thought that there was any chance of reducing the deployment of Indian troops in Kashmir. He said, ‘‘We’ve tried it. And wherever we have reduced deployment we have seen an immediate increase in militant activities. It is not as easy as these politicians make it sound.’’

It is not easy at all because it is clear to many of us who have followed the Kashmir story carefully for many, many years that the problem has changed. There was a time when it seemed as if a solution in Kashmir could bring peace with Pakistan. That time has gone. Kashmir’s struggle for so-called azaadi has been subsumed by the worldwide jihad. The Taliban have a grander plan for the Indian subcontinent. They want to conquer Islamabad, and when that is done they want the flag of Islam to fly over India.

Tavleen Singh

An Open Letter to Yasin Malik-by Madhu Kishwar(published in Outlook)

2009-11-18T14:39:00.000+05:30

Dear Yasin,

The Dialogue on the Future of Jammu & Kashmir organized by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies gained enormously by your presence on November 7, 2009. We recognize that the overlap in timing meant you had to rush to Delhi after registering your attendance at a TADA court hearing in Jammu. I also appreciate the fact that despite provocative slogans against you by a group of Kashmiri Pandits opposed to your presence in the Dialogue, you sat through the meeting to the end and not only explained your politics but also made a public commitment to consider some of the solutions proposed at the meeting as a starting point for a wide spectrum dialogue for the resolution of the Kashmir problem.

However, your outbursts of anger, disappointment and your cynical comments directed at the civil society organizations of India seem to me so misplaced and misleading that they demand a public response; a lot of them were directed at Manushi and at me. Since they have been widely reported in the Kashmiri and Pakistani newspapers, hence my response is also through the media.

For those who do not know the background, let me summarize your grievances as stated in your presentation at the Dialogue. You said that you had given up the gun at the urging of civil society organizations in India, that you took to "Gandhian methods of struggle" due to our persuasion. However, despite your move to non-violent means of struggle, you feel "betrayed" by the human rights community in India for ostensibly failing to help you achieve your political ends. You also claimed that subsequent events and your failure in achieving "azadi" have convinced you that Gandhian methods do not work in today’s India. In your view, they worked only while the British ruled India because the British provided a supportive environment for non- violent struggles.

What proof do you offer for that conclusion? That Gandhi was not subjected to third degree torture by the British, nor was Gandhi killed in an encounter with the police! No responsible leader would provide this form of naive praise of the British. You cannot dismiss the brutalities of the British colonial regime so easily. You don’t have to go too far—just read the life story of Badshah Khan—Gandhi’s most valued colleague and the most inspiring satyagrahi of that period. The brutalities inflicted on the army of satyagrahis mobilized by Badshah Khan—popularly known as the Frontier Gandhi— would put to shame even the apartheid regime of South Africa. Lakhs and lakhs of non violent satyagrahis were tortured in British jails. Many innocents were murdered in cold blood. The manner in which unarmed women and children were massacred in Jallianwala Bagh by General Dyer was not an isolated example of British brutality. Hundreds of thousands of satyagrahis took deadly beatings without raising their hand even in self-defence during the Salt Satyagraha. The cruel treatment routinely meted out to the Indian peasantry in extracting unprecedented high revenue and confiscating their lands arbitrarily for failure to pay ruinous usurious revenue, not sparing them even during crop failures, led to millions dying in unprecedented man made famines and left many more millions destitute, malnourished and terrorized.

You claim to have taken to Gandhian methods and claim that the movement for "azadi" in Kashmir is non violent —all on the grounds that some years ago you gave up the gun. Dear friend Yasin, you gave up the gun after you were arrested and jailed, not while you were on the outside, fighting. You never gave up supporting and defending those who continued using the gun. In the November 7 meeting, you declared openly that you are proud of having been the first one to take up the gun for the cause of Kashmir. When a young Kashmiri Pandit commented: "You may have given up the gun but that does not mean Kashmiri Muslims gave up the gun. The Hizbul Mujahiddin is also comprised of Kashmiri youth." Your response was: Since the Indian government did not hand over "azadi" to the "non-violent" JKLF, and since human rights organizations in India failed to persuade the Indian government to do so, Hizbul Mujahaddin are justified in taking up the gun. Yasin bhai, a true commitment to non-violence should not be so conditional and fragile. Gandhi did not say: "Give India independence or else I will unleash terrorist brigades on you." That was Jinnah’s method, not Gandhi’s.
As one of many people committed to strengthening democracy and human rights in India, one of my mandates is to ensure that even those who take to terrorist means, are given fair treatment, due process, and a fair trial, and that innocents are not targeted by security forces while combating terrorism. Our primary task, however, is to try to prevail upon the Indian government that draconian laws should not be used to crush democratic dissent. I don’t think I have failed in being consistent about those issues. I have often done my best to intervene with the government of India to defend the Constitutional rights of you and your colleagues, even when I have strong differences with your political goals and means you make use of to achieve them.

For example, when you asked me to intervene on behalf of some of your colleagues held in detention centres who you claimed and seemed to me to be innocent, I did so without hesitation. I even succeeded on some occasions in helping get them released—your verbal assurance that they were not involved in any terrorist crimes was an important consideration in my efforts. Do you think you could get such relief for your colleagues if they had been arrested on account of suspected terrorist links in England—a nation you so ardently admire— or in the US—the country you had put most faith in to help you gain "Azadi"?

In the November 7 meeting, you expressed your annoyance over the fact that representatives from Ladakh, Jammu, Poonch, and Rajouri had been invited. You dismissed their presence with open contempt saying: " Is this a mohalla meeting that we have gathered all these people to discuss local affairs?" This attitude of assuming that it is only Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley— and that too of a certain political persuasion— who ought to have the right to determine the future of the entire state of J&K has created huge fault lines and murderously hostile camps in the State.
No one organization has the right to be the sole spokesperson of the Kashmiri people. The strong voices opposing your politics in Jammu, Ladakh and even within Kashmir have to be given their due importance.

While you expected human rights organizations in India to help you secure "Azadi"—you have allowed the concept to remain so fuzzy that I have not yet understood what concretely you mean by it. I have spent hours trying to persuade you to work out the concrete modalities of your plank of "Azadi" and explain to us how your Azadi will be any different from the bloody 1947 Partition of India. What will be the fate of minorities in your 'Azad' Kashmir? What happens to the rights of those in Kashmir, Jammu, Rajouri, Poonch, Leh and Kargil and those in the Valley who do not wish to secede from India and do not want to live in your mythical Azad Kashmir? I never got anything resembling an answer. It also makes me very uneasy that the JKLF does not even have a constitution, leave alone any democratic machinery for managing its affairs.

Why on earth would human rights organizations help you partition Jammu & Kashmir in as senseless a manner as Jinnah did the entire subcontinent? Even for the November 7 Dialogue, I repeatedly requested you to give a concrete statement in writing on the form and content of Azadi. You said you don’t believe in putting things down in writing. Instead you preferred to talk about your personal trials and tribulations, how 600 of your JKLF cadres have been killed in encounters by security forces. Much as I mourn the loss of those lives, much as I deplore how our security forces sometimes lawlessly eliminate or brutalize those suspected of terrorism, Yasin bhai, you have to recognize that, unfair as it seems to you, those who live by the gun have to be prepared to be hunted down by the gun.
You say you are still proud of the fact that you took up the gun because without that the Kashmir issue would not have gained due attention. This is not how morally committed non-violent satyagrahis reason. That is not how those who draw inspiration from Gandhi should earn world attention. One does not become a satyagrahi by merely laying down arms, that too without ever expressing remorse for having unleashed a reign of terror and violence. A satyagrahi does not romanticize the power of the gun, especially when it has already caused havoc for millions.
To qualify being a satyagrahi also means:

Being an unconditional soldier of peace by actively opposing all forces of violence. Unfortunately, your love affair with the gun is not yet over, or else you would not claim to be proud of having been the first one to take up the gun as a means of furthering your politics; Even today, you do not condemn terrorist killings without reservations. Being committed to the path of Truth ( Satya) as a permanent seeker rather than as a self declared authority on Truth. A satyagrahi cannot be selective in choosing facts to suit his political arguments, which you often do. Being able to face unpalatable facts about one's own movement and an ability to take diverse view points and perspectives into account is vital for adhering to the path of Truth. A truth seeker does not indulge in mere partisan politics nor does he/she overstate his /her case, as you often do
Being able to keep one's anger under check and control so that it does not distort one's vision. A Satyagrahi does not demonize his/her opponents, nor does he/she hold malice and ill will towards others whose politics and vision are at variance from that of the satyagrahi. You seem to be in a permanent state of upset with people who do not agree with your politics.
It was a very revealing moment, Yasin, when you told me after one of your visits to Pakistan which I quote from memory:

"I have now realized the great difference between the human rights activists in India and Pakistan. The Indian activists mostly come from ordinary middle class families so they are small minded. The Pakistani human rights activists are mostly from aristocratic families—daughters of generals and wealthy land owning aristocrats. Therefore, they are large hearted and have a broader vision."

You have been understandably impressed by their pampering and hospitality extended to you. But you would do well to remember, many of them pamper you because you are a thorn in the flesh of the Indian establishment. They do not pamper their home grown secessionists--the Baluchis, the Pakhtoons and Sindhis, who wish to break away from Pakistan, as they do you.

You would also do well to remember that the aristocratic elite of Pakistan has done a poor job of defending their own democracy. They have also done a poor job of resisting the growing influence of the Taliban over their polity and civil society. Pakistan Administered Kashmir has a much poorer track record of democracy than the Kashmir you inhabit. The diverse ethnic groups and regions in Pakistan have far fewer rights than minority communities and regions have in India. No matter how well they treat you personally, the aristocratic elite of Pakistan are unlikely to deliver the "azadi" you are seeking.

Kashmiri society is being torn asunder by the conflicting ambitions of its leaders. As you well know, the mutual hostilities and suspicions of various Kashmiri leaders have even taken murderous forms. That is why it is vital to bridge these divides and important that diverse leaders come together to thrash out differences and explore common ground. Many of those who attended the November 7 meeting considered it an auspicious start of a new process whereby secessionist leaders who had never sat together on a common platform with mainstream political parties not only came together to seek out a consensually acceptable peaceful solution but also agreed to carry forward the debate around the concrete and innovative new Self Rule formula presented by the PDP.

Instead of expecting the human rights community in India to become your followers, instead of expecting them to fight your battles for you, it would be far better if you worked out a political platform that was more in consonance with their perspective. For all their limitations and humbler origins, the Indian middle classes which dominate democratic rights organizations in India have succeeded far better in keeping the authoritarian tendencies of their rulers under a measure of check and control. J& K has too many gun toting self appointed spokespersons of Kashmiri people. What it lacks is a vibrant community of people committed to strengthening human rights and democratic freedoms. Such voices have been marginalized or crushed by the gun in J&K. Reviving that tradition needs much greater courage and conviction than required for taking up the gun. I hope to see you occupy that space in the coming years.

With good wishes,

Madhu Kishwar,
Founder Editor, Manushi
Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
November 14, 2009

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262922

"We will burn you like we burnt your temples"

2009-11-17T10:15:00.000+05:30

There are only 3000 Kashmiri Pandits living in Kashmir now.The title of the post is the message that they were given by "peace loving Muslims of Kashmir".
Here is the press release of KPSS for everyone to see the brutal colours of Kashmiriyat.I can bet that no media house will ever take this story up because it would be hurt their "secular" credentials and neither will the "intellectuals" because then it would go against their creed.Shame India once again.

KASHMIRI PANDIT SANGARSH SAMITI
Sathu Barbar Shah, Srinagar Kashmir
Dated: 16.11.2009

1. Hon’ble the Prime Minister

Union of India

New Delhi

2. Hon’ble the Chief Minister

State of Jammu and Kashmir

Jammu / Srinagar.

3. Chairman,

All Party Hurriyat Conference (G)

Hyderpora, Srinagar

4. Chairman,

All Party Hurriyat Conference (M)

Raj Bagh, Srinagar.

Open Letter / Press Release

(It is not right time of return of Migrant Kashmiri Pandits

But it is ripe time for the left out Kashmiri Pandits living in the Valley

to choose migration with dignity)

Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS) is working for the last more than 3 years to create a space for reconciliation between Majority Community and Minorities in the Valley and initiated the celebration of religious functions in public to play a role to bring back the co-existence environment in the Valley.

From the last 2 years KPSS is also taking steps for the preservation of the religious places of the minorities and bring back them to their glory. And to make it a mark of success organized its maiden Seminar – cum – Temple Photo Exhibition on 31st March, 2009.

On 15th of November, 2009 two of our members went to Bhairav Ghat, Chattabal, Srinagar to take some pictures of the temple ruins so that its fate could be settled with the concerned authorities. But the members of the Majority Community who had encroached the temple land abstained them from taking pictures and used un-parliamentary language against the Kashmiri Pandits and the religious places. The started the slogans like “Jis tarah humne tumhare mandiroon ko Jalaya hai vaise hi tum logon ko jalayenge, aur kisi ko pata bi nahi chalega” The way we have burnt your temples in the same way we will burn you and no one will know about you. “Yehan sirf Islam Chalega” Only Islam will prevail here. “India ko lagta hai kit tum logon ko vapas layega, jo bi aaye ga mara jayega, hum log phir se gun uthayenge” India thinks that they can bring Kashmiri Pandits back to Valley, who so ever will come will die, we will again raise arms against you. The mob there even man handled the members of KPSS and they had to leave the place. Even they could not file an FIR against the mob due to the life threat given by these hooligans belonging to a particular community.

KPSS strongly condemn the act and appeal to the Separatist leadership to look into the matter and reply back within a stipulated time that when at one hand they recommend the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley then why on the other hand their men are thirsty for KP blood.

KPSS requests the State and Central Administration to re-think about their proposal to bring back the Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley instead they should be prepared to register the fresh lot of migrants who will leave the Valley in the coming days if the situation is not taken care of in due course of time.

KPSS also appeals to the International Community to take the matter seriously and ensure that all necessary steps are taken to safe guard the Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.

(Sanjay K. Tickoo)

President

+91-9906564741

CSDS Seminar on “Multi-Party dialogue on Political Future of Jammu & Kashmir”

2009-11-08T17:49:00.000+05:30

I have a Maths test on Wednesday but I just can’t study. My mind refuses to concentrate. Two years ago, when Rashneek bhaiya made me write a speech for World Refugee Day, he said that Kashmiri Pandits were viewed as ‘collateral damage’ of the Kashmir issue by ‘intellectuals’. I understood what he meant but never really faced this harsh reality head on. Yesterday, as I listened to leader after leader talk, I understood how insignificant we actually were to the ‘main issue’.

(Click to enlarge - Report in Punjab Kesri)

Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat from Moderate Hurriyat Conference looking towards Yasin Malik.

I came to Teen Murti in time only for the post-lunch session. I can only give you a brief summary of the first session (garnered from various sources). Abdul Ghani Bhat talked the usual about dialogue between India, Pakistan and Kashmir for peace and reconciliation. Muzzafar Baig accepted that Kashmiri leaders had time and again sold their conscience to India and Pakistan to remain in power. On the subject of Kashmiri Pandits, he said that all Kashmiri leaders wanted the safe return of KPs to Kashmir. He also said that his mother still cried, on remembering their KP friends and neighbors. Shafi Uri of NC talked about the NC’s willingness to negotiate with PDP and other parties on the autonomy document presented by NC in July 2000. Balbir Punj and Tarun Vijay demanded the removal of Article 370.

CSDS fellow and seminar organiser Madhu Kishwar seen here defending Yasin Malik.

The post-lunch session started with Madhu Kishwar of CSDS calling everybody for a group photo with Yasin Malik; Ramesh Manwati of Panun Kashmir was the only person who refused to be part of the photo. Kishwar then announced that Ram Jethmalani had to attend a press conference at his residence and so would absent himself for some time. Jethmalani started the parting message by holding Yasin Malik’s hand (YM had come straight from the Jammu TADA court, where his presence was needed in the Rubbaiya Sayeed kidnapping case, and was seated beside him) and welcoming his ‘dear friend and honored guest’. Importantly, he mentioned that the problem in Kashmir started due to the coincidence of two events happening together. First, the Russians left Afghanistan and the terrorists in Kabul became ‘unemployed’, and second, India started rigging elections in Kashmir. He also said that it was the highest virtue of an Indian to love Pakistan, and that the entire discussion should be in the spirit of ‘love and affection’. After he left, Ellora Puri from Jammu talked of how it had always been ignored that the state was actually made of three geographically and culturally distinct regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. She proposed a federal system within the state, with the three regions having three separate ‘councils’.

JKLF Terrorist and Rapist Yasin Malik at the seminar.

Protesting Civil Society members in the seminar.

Panun Kashmir's Ramesh Manwati at the seminar.

Ram Jethmalani at the seminar.

After her, Sanjay Tickoo of Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (representing KPs who were still living in Kashmir for these 20 years) spoke. He first wanted to discount the notion that KPs fled because the then Governor Jagmohan told them to do so, quoting that in 1998, there were 19,000 KPs in Kashmir, whereas in 2008, there were only about 3000. This proved that conditions in Kashmir were far from being conducive to their return. He also demanded a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to be set up by the Indian Parliament where the different stake-holders could voice their grievances and demands. Ramesh Manwati of Panun Kashmir showed a report published in a national daily in which the government had placed “Relief and Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits” under the topic of Animal Husbandry. That aside, he talked a little about the concept of Panun Kashmir. He also talked about how 150 temples that had been desecrated and demolished in 1990 and blamed the media, civil society and HR groups for turning a blind eye to the plight of KPs. I personally thought that both speakers could not manage to convey either the past or the future in the right perspective, but it is pertinent to note that Madhu Kishwar interrupted both their speeches about 2-3 times, chiding them like recalcitrant children whenever they even mentioned 1990. We were expected to forget everything and start afresh. There really wasn’t any time for telling reality to the world. We were asked to make “tall demands” of the future. I know that rationally we should do that, and to an extent, we did do that too. What infuriated me was that only we were admonished for speaking about the old truth. Mehbooba Mufti went on and on about Kashmir being a “chota Iran” and how Accession to India had isolated Kashmir from the rest of Central Asia and West Asia. (The main point of her talk was more like propagating PDP’s agenda – she kept asking if India was ready to trust Kashmiris and uniting the 'two Kashmirs' - PoK and IK). There was a Mr. Tahir Khurshid Raina (Mr. Three-In-One – Rajouri and Poonch representative cum PDP member cum Yasin Malik supporter) who talked about how war had ravaged Rajouri and Poonch and how all these years they had few basic facilities. Yasin Malik went on to give the entire history (read: justification) behind his proud taking up of arms (reiterating that it was not an unemployment issue at all). But no, Madhu Kishwar did not have the guts or the rather the inclination to stop them and ask them to talk about the future. Only we were supposed to listen and digest.

I know we haven’t been the only sufferers – far from it. But I believe that if you remove KPs from the context of the Kashmir problem – it becomes a clear case for YM’s ‘freedom struggle’. I don’t pretend to know much about the workings of Kashmiri politics but to an outsider, ignorant of the ethnic cleansing in 1989-90, there would be little wrong in YM’s story (which he skillfully recited yesterday) of 3rd degree torture from Indian authorities, leading to ‘armed struggle’, leading to jail and finally “Gandhian enlightenment”. He was ‘forced’ to pick up arms and then by the strength of his character and the overwhelming sentiment of ‘azadi’ in Kashmir, he chose to become non-violent (despite seeing ‘600’ of his ‘friends and followers’ dead after coming out from jail). The intellectuals present yesterday knew both of our displacement and the ‘armed struggle’ but chose, peacefully, to keep them separate. They didn’t, of course, have any explanation for the former. It just happened. And now Kashmiri Pandits needed to go back to Kashmir to reverse history and show that everything was normal. As simple as that. As moral, just and enlightened citizens they needed to support the Kashmiris’ right to independence, even if it meant listening to YM saying that he had defeated India militarily, mentally, culturally and spiritually. When Madhu Kishwar showed some sense by asking YM how practical his notion of azadi was, Ram Jethmalani cut her short and said that he found no problem whatsoever with YM’s proposal.

When YM was announced as a speaker, I had thought that we would pounce on him during or after his speech with questions. Then Sushilji got up to protest his presence, as a murderer and a rapist. Once it started, we didn’t back off. The astounding part was how everybody in the room thought that we were irrational liars. They welcomed and pleaded him to continue while admonishing us for not listening to him. He talked about how the problem between KPs and KMs was essentially a “power struggle”, not a communal one. The educated Pandits got insecure of the increasing power with the poor, uneducated Muslims and hence the trouble. He said that he had visited refugee camps in Jammu, and commiserated with the old ladies there; he had the guts to quote a “sher” from Lal Ded. Better still, he said that in KPs, India had found a “weeping boy” for Geneva. Madhu Kishwar and Ram Jethmalani said nothing at all on this and instead scolded the PK representative who raised an objection. I asked YM to shut up on this topic at least; he didn’t have the right to talk about Kashmiri Pandits from his bloody mouth. When Sushilji asked for permission to ask a question, Jethmalani said that he could ask only if he promised to speak in the spirit of “love and affection”. Love and affection to your killers! Of the two questions Sushilji asked, only one was permitted – that of how YM could say that all KMs had left arms when Let and Hizbul Mujahideen continued to operate. The second and more important one, about just how YM could compare himself with Gandhi when he and JKLF had killed so many unarmed, innocent women and children was promptly and completely ignored. We were largely seen as deranged communalists shouting at a hero for no good reason.

When Mehbooba Mufti and Yasin Malik were speaking I really felt like we were banging our heads against stone walls who would never listen. It was suffocating. They had thrown us out of Kashmir and consequently we were left with no say in the ‘current problem’ of Kashmir. We were an ugly face of history that nobody wanted to recall, because we just didn’t fit in. Today, as I scoured newspapers, both online and paper, to see if anybody had reported us, I was shown the raw truth. The news people had got their quotes from YM, Abdul Ghani Bhat, Baig, Mehbooba Mufti and Jethmalani. We had given pamphlets to people explaining why we were protesting against YM but still we were only mentioned in one-liners as disrupters of YM’s speech. Nothing else. Regardless of the cries of rehabilitation and relief – succor for the past in the future – there was after all nothing in the present. Nobody wanted to talk about collateral damage. In the end, Muzaffar Baig, the man who ignited the Amarnath agitation by talking of “demographic” changes in Kashmir due to settlements for Amarnath pilgrims, showed why he was a successful politician. He talked about things I thought only we could understand – he talked about Kashmiri Pandits as a unique unit of civilization; he talked about how individual successes aside, the loss of homeland would always be irreparable.

The program ended there. Baig had said the right things; Madhu Kishwar volunteered to hold a signature campaign for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and also arrange for a private conference between Baig and KPs.

Words…

I only hope that we ‘heckled’ YM enough for the time being.

- Radhika Koul

One More Farce

2009-10-05T08:45:00.000+05:30

In the past two weeks there seems to frentic activity over "the return of Pandits".The Government of Jammu and Kashmir has constituted an Apex Committee to oversee the 1600 crore PM's package as also to pave the way for smooth return of Kashmiri Pandits.
Ordinrily it would be a reason for rejoice that finally the Government has started addressing the Kashmiri Pandit Issue.But alas,thats not to be.The government constituted apex committee immediately evokes skepticism if not outright suspicion because of the names of some of the "Pandit leaders" in it.Now could anyone tell me what makes Vijay Bakaya(the ex-chief Secy to J&K govt) a leader of the Pandits.But he is not the only one.There are many like him who could tilt the scales in case the heads are counted at a crucial stage.Then there are leaders who have lost their security deposits in the last assembly elections.Who exactly does the Government believe is our leader?
Be that as it may,let us now look at the deliverables of the committee and the scope of its activities.While it talks about the much maligned semamtic of dignified return of Pandits to their homes and hearths, there is absolutely no mention of what led to their exodus neither does one encounter a word about justice for those who lost their lives to the grand Pan-Islamic terrorism.I havent even talked about reversal of ethnic cleansing yet.I am conciously choosing not to use words like Holocaust and Genocide for they may "irk" the sickulars and their apologists.
Now let us run the committee.Panun Kashmir the only Political ideology based group of Kashmiri Pandits refused to join the committee.I am told it was political naivette that they stood out.What was the harm in them joining and making a point.After all you have to be a part of the sysytem to change the system.Point well made.

With their experience at the Round Table Conference which is chaired by no less than the PM himself,one would be surprised that none of the points raised by either Agnishekhar or Ajay Chrungoo was ever included in the final declarations.Not even one of their recommendations has ever been documented leave alone accepted.With this kind of experience at their hands why should they join another farce.

And as far as the argument of being in the system goes,werent Kashmiri Pandits always a part of the sysytem of independent India.Did we change anything at all?
Could Manmohan Singh as a sikh himself bring to book his own Congressmen responsible for the 1984 anti Sikh Pogrom sponsored by the SECULAR Congress.Isnt he at the top of the system?

For all those Pandit organisations or individuals who attended the Apex Committe meeting may I ask,Are you prepared Sirs to have a house next to Bitta Karate's,Are you ready to see your relative's killer having tea when you go out to buy vegetables,Are you ready to go back to the same village where your own neighbours burnt your house, Are you ready to say Sallam to the very man who you know has pissed on the deity that you worshipped everyday.Sorry Sir,I may be a coward but I am not prepared to do so neither do I know of many unless they have already bargained a good price for their soul,mind and else.

This message from the youth of the community should be read in its letter and spirit that while we want to go home we do not want to sit with the government who trivialises the issue of our return.It isnt as if we had merrily left one day only to return now because they will pay us 7.5 lac rupees.Make no mistake about it.Let the government first show some resolve.Let them fast track cases related to killing of Kashmiri Pandits.Let there atleast be one conviction.Let them de-encroach the land of our shrines.

We cannot have the horse before the cart.We know our brothers back in Jammu need jobs.Give them jobs.That is their due but to link it return is sending us back into subjugation.Give them Jobs anywhere on this side of the tunnel.Show some resolve.And my elders please do not fall in to the trap of a farce.

Kashmiri Pandits ‘in exile’ tonsure heads to mark 20th Martyrs Day

2009-09-15T17:20:00.000+05:30

Gulf Times

New Delhi: A group of Kashmiri Pandits living in Delhi tonsured their heads yesterday to mark the day 20 years ago when a member of their community was shot dead by militants in Jammu and Kashmir triggering their exodus from the valley.

“On September 14, 1989, militants killed a Kashmiri Pandit in the heart of Srinagar. This sowed the seeds of our eviction from our homeland. This is a symbolic protest against injustice towards our community,” said Kamal Hak, a Kashmiri Pandit living in Delhi.

“Twenty of our community members tonsured their head to mark 20 years of our Martyr’s Day,” said Hak, who along with his wife had left their home in the Kashmir in 1990.

Around 200 people of the community gathered near Yamuna river to protest. There was prayer meeting after which “people tonsured their heads”.

Hak said around 80,000 Kashmir Pandits are “living in exile in Delhi and its suburbs and all of them have expressed solidarity with the initiative”.

Tikalal Taploo, a lawyer, was the first Kashmiri Pandit victim to terrorism. “He was killed by terrorists right outside his house. After his death, hundreds of Pandits were killed by terrorists within the next four years. Post-1993, the number of killings has fallen as the majority of us have left the valley for other cities,” Hak added.

Aditya Raj Kaul, who was just a year old when his parents left the valley in fear, said: “Neither the administration, nor human rights organisations have ever highlighted our plight. The media too has overlooked us. September 14 is our Martyr’s Day and all Kashmiri Pandits observe it with a prayer for justice.”

Hak said that at least six of their community would meet National Security Advisor M K Narayanan to demand justice for “hundreds of those killed by militants”. - IANS

Valley of no return

2009-08-25T13:20:00.000+05:30

SPECIAL REPORT

KASHMIRI PANDITS

Anil Pandey - The Sunday Indian Magazine

Reduced to refugee status in their own land, uprooted Kashmiri Pandits live in the fond hope of a better tomorrow

The pain of deracination is writ large on 67-year-old Manohar Nath Raina’s face. Memories, two decades old, come rushing back. His eyes turn moist. And his voice chokes. But as he regains control of his nerves, he opens up, “My body lives here but I have left my soul on the chinar trees in my village in Kashmir”.

Raina, retired principal, wants to return to Kashmir, but the situation in his home state is still too precarious. He owns a mansion and stretches of land in Kanihama village, 19 km from Srinagar. But he now lives in a dingy one-room janta flat in Dwarka, a Delhi suburb. “I want to see my village once before I die,” says Raina.

Raina’s wish is shared by many other migrant Kashmiris who abandoned their land in fear and haste. It started in the late 1980s when local militants, fresh from training camps from across the border, targetted Kashmiri Pandits. Many died. Those that survived decided to flee. Shanties and decrepit tenements in Jammu became their new abode.

Though safe, Jammu offered little hope. Within years, a second exodus took place. Many left for other cities in north India. And so did Raina. Two of his sons, along with their families, came to Delhi and settled in the refugee camp at Balbir Nagar. Four years ago, the Delhi government allotted him a one room flat in Dwarka.

Bharat Bhushan, head of Kashmiri Sabha, a group of displaced Kashmiris, says, “Pandits are a learned lot. But we have no jobs. Our houses were snatched long ago, and now, without jobs, our youth are in despair. If the government wants to help us, it must provide jobs to economically backward youth.”

The jobless Bhushan had a flourishing business in the valley. The company he initially worked with in Delhi shut down. After a long struggle, he joined another firm. Then the recession struck. He was the first to be retrenched. His immediate concern is not how to return to Kashmir. His son’s school fees are his first priority.

This is a common story in every refugee camp you visit. Because of their education levels and acumen, they once dominated the government job scene in Kashmir, but no more. When the exodus started, there were more than 15,000 Pandits in government jobs. The corresponding figure after two decades is merely 3,000. If we accept the figures provided by Panun Kashmir, an organisation working for the rehabilitation of Pandits, only 400 Pandits have been offered state government jobs.

Of the four lakh Pandits who left Kashmir, two and a half lakhs reside in refugee camps and rented homes in Jammu. One lakh reside in Delhi and other north Indian towns. Many of them want to return to their land and Panun Kashmir has a plan in place. It has submitted the detailed plan to the government. It suggests declaring a portion of the state a Union Territory where Pandits can be settled. “Most of the plans regarding resettlement and reinstating Pandits are gathering dust in government offices. The government always goes back on its promise. It talks about returning our land and houses and yet protects terrorists,” says Utpal Kaul, vice president of Panun Kashmir.

Link to The Sunday Indian Magazine - http://www.thesundayindian.com/30082009/storyd.asp?sid=7599&pageno=1

Return Jobs

2009-08-11T10:49:00.000+05:30

Abdul Rahim Rather, just in case you don’t know who he is, The Finance Minister of Jammu and Kashmir announced (during his budget speech) a job package of 15000 jobs for Kashmiri Pandits to enable them back to Kashmir.One would be tempted to believe that Mr.Rather is rather catholic and philanthropic only if one wouldn’t know the ground reality of Private Sector in Kashmir,the state of its PSU’s,the unemployment figures and last but not the least the fate of myriad packages that subsequent State and Central Governments have announced for the displaced Pandits. To give the reader an idea of what happened to the much hyped Rs 1600 crore package announced by the Hon’ble Prime Minister here it is.So far only 1.6 crore of that money has been sanctioned to be spent of various welfare schemes for Pandits.

You may have made the right noises and played to the national media by projecting yourself as a man with secular credentials but Sir please don’t fool yourself into believing that there are 15000 jobs in entire Jammu and Kashmir leave alone Kashmir valley.Even today there aren’t 15000 people hired by the private organised sector in all of Kashmir.

Be that as it may, can anyone please tell the minister that it isn’t jobs that will lure us back to Kashmir because it weren’t jobs that “lured” us to the plains? The minister is either too blind to facts or so naïve that he doesn’t even understand this. This isn’t the first time that a minister has offered such a simple solution to such a complex problem. We have seen in the past how various politicians across the Political hue have offered such silly solutions like giving us money to “rebuild” our houses or offering us “jobs” in far flung areas of Kashmir. Understandably there have been no takers for such offers. This should have made the government understand that such offers will remain just offers unless basic issues of reversal of ethnic cleansing, instituting a commission of enquiry to probe murders of Kashmiri Pandits, destruction of their property and religious shrines.

I am tired of repeating this but not even one person has been punished for killings of Pandits and the Hon’ble minister if giving us lure of jobs. Imagine how Sarla Bhat’s relatives would feel every time they see her rapist Yasin Malik roaming as a leader. Imagine how Satish Tiku’s father would feel every time he sees Bitta Karate. There are thousands of such people who may want jobs but then wouldn’t feel like returning unless they see killers and rapists of their relatives punished. Imagine how I would feel when I go back to my village knowing very well that amongst them are the people who looted my house before they burnt it.

Mr.Minster please get it right. We need jobs, we want to return to our homes but before that we demand a life of dignity, we demand the right to practice our religion, we demand a right to justice.

I am told that Allama Iqbal is a huge favourite for invocation in Kashmir these days. So here for you Mr.Minister,Allama Iqbal’s answer to your job offer

Ah Tahir-e-lahauti us rizik se maut ache
Jis rizik se aatee ho parwaaz main kohtai

they killed 3 year old Arif.....

2009-07-24T09:18:00.000+05:30

Maybe this is Nizam-e-Mustafa

On July 23,militants entered the house of Mohd.Aslam Awan and killed him and his three year old son point blank.Mohd Aslam is incidentally a resident of the same Shopian which had errupted upon the rape and murder of two women.Strange as it may seem the same Shopian is muted today because it is the terrorists who have killed.

Earlier in April terrorists had killed Mohd Aslam's mother when he survived a similar attack.At that time also no hartals were called for,no stone pelting took place,no Majlis Mushuwarat was formed,no SIT was ordered,No Jaan Commsiion was established.The separtists much like the other Kashmiri Muslims looked the other way.
What kind of a civil society is it that looks the other way when "its boys" kill a three year old kid.Does Islam allow this too?

One can only shame such a hypocritical society and wish that instead of Islam humanity dawns on them.One also wonders what kind of Islam is this and what kind of Nizam-e-Mustafa is this a three year old is killed and there isnt even a murmur.
Yet we have many Indians supposedly who call themselves liberals who support such sickness and some even make movies to eulogise such deviant and perverse behaviour and do they call it Tehreek-i-Azadi.Aazadi to kill three year olds and fifty five year olds!

The ubiqutios and ever shouting immorally incorrect Kashmir Bar Council too is silent.Does the Bar think it is OK to kill three year olds?

But then it isnt just about Kashmiri Muslims.It is about the Indian Media too.It is about those newspapers,Indian Express in particular who took every single bit of information about Shopian rapes to the front page yet this was on the 4th page today in India Express and no other newspaper including the HT even reported it.It took a Times Now to shame the separtists while the others shamed themselves.One must ask the Indian Media why is it so enamoured by the separtists or should I say so biased in favour of them that they dont report terrorists killing a three year old boy.

We at Roots in Kashmir are with the family who has lost three of its members including a three year old kid.We may not know them.We may be faar away in exile but in this hour we resolve that we will leave no stone unturned to get justice for them.Such was our stand on Nilofer and Asiya rapes and such is our stand now.If the Govt of J&K does not take action we will move the Supreme Court.

Challenge of Fundamentalist Intifada-Dr.Ajay Chrungoo

2009-07-23T09:09:00.000+05:30

Courtesy-Vijayvani

Separatists go for the Overkill

The headlines of local newspapers in the Kashmir Valley have been blaring with relentless intensity… July 09 - Woman’s rape, murder rocks Kupwara; July 08 - Asrar’s killing sparks massive protests in Srinagar. July 07 - Bomb hurled at Baramulla police station, 3 grenade explosions in 2 days; July 06 - explosions rock Srinagar, Sopore; July 05 - Army had abducted Basharat: Family; July 04 - Larkipora teenager released, Protests in Islamabad; July 02 - Protests in curfewed Varmul; youth succumbs, Varmul toll 4; July 01 - Police fire smoke shells at mourners, thousand attend funeral of 19 year old Amir.

Public mobilization campaigns and demonstrations reflecting seditious and secessionist intensity more than anti-government sentiment have been going on in Kashmir Valley since the police recovered the bodies of two ladies, Niloufer and Aisya, at Shopian in Pulwama district, on 30 May. The separatist mobilizations have reflected strange eagerness which needs to be understood and placed in a proper perspective.

The spate of hartals and orchestrated violence on the streets left a large section of people bewildered, contrary to propaganda by the local media. This bewilderment of the general public with the methodology adopted by the separatist leadership and the response of the government is not a fiction as many Kashmir experts sitting in Delhi would like us to believe. It involves a significant section of population in the Valley, and occasionally their voices find expression in the columns of an otherwise partisan local media.

Syed Rafiuddin Bukhari, columnist, Rising Kashmir, provides a glimpse: “Is Kashmir really fragile or has it been made to behave like that? Does this question boggle the mind of those who cover, analyze and interpret the political perceptions! This week’s incidents in Baramulla have shown that no one controls Kashmir, but only those who want to keep the pot boiling… in Baramulla where the police was handling a simple case of kidnapping of a 15 year old girl from Binner. The accused in the case was identified and one of the accomplices was rounded up. His wife went to the police station to seek his release but was not obliged. She came out and alleged that the police passed indecent remarks at her. This worked like jungle fire and the whole town was up in flames… it needs an explanation as to why the young Kashmiris should fall prey to such a situation in which four young boys give their blood for something which is not part of the struggle.” The culprit and this lady had known links with a local political party.

The over-eagerness of separatist formations to go for overkill was manifest from the day of the recovery of the dead bodies of Niloufer and Asiya in Shopian and the initial bungling of government response. In Shopian, local discourse reflected that people never believed the role of CRPF or Army in the killings. People asked why the bodies of the ladies were left just outside the CRPF camp if CRPF personnel had committed the crime. People suspected the moral integrity of the husband of Niloufer. Her own relatives were less enthusiastic about the public exposure of the affair. Justice Jan Commission brought this facet into the open. The report has undermined separatist mobilization more than anything else in Shopian, because it has found resonance with the common perception of the people.

The Justice Jan Commission recorded the rift between the two families from Tukru and Bongam in Shopian district. In April-May 2007, Niloufer eloped with Shakeel Ahmad Ahangar against the wishes of her family. The Commission noted, “It will be in place to mention here that Niloufer Jan belongs to a “Peer” family which is treated in the society with the degree of respect and honour for their upper class status, where as Shakeel Ahmad Ahangar belongs to “Khaar” family which is included in the other backward classes of the society. This marriage had given birth to a serious hatred of Peer family towards Ahangar family. It is reliably learnt that Zeerak Shah (brother of Niloufer), along with his friends, had even threatened the Ahangar family of dire consequences if Niloufer is not handed over to her family.”

The Commission recorded that after the burial of Niloufer and Asiya, Zeerak Shah pitched a tent at Tukroo and gathered his friends, relatives, and other villagers, blocked the road at Tukroo, smashed window panes of civil and government vehicles, and raised anti-India and pro-freedom slogans. The commission took note of the fact that Shakeel was known for his immoral activities and had amassed assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

“Shakeel Ahmad Ahangar was working with his brothers at welding workshop at Shopian. He eloped with Niloufer Jan in 2007 and went outside Shopian. After this return he started his own business by opening a shop of readymade furniture items near police station Shopian… in October 2008, Shakeel purchased an orchard (1 kanal 16 marla) in Nagbal-Dehgam for about 5.30 lakhs. He also owns a Maruti car and maintains a good living standard. Further it is learnt that he does not carry a good reputation among the society and is being known for his immoral activities.”

It can be safely presumed that these facts would have been known to separatists’ think tanks. They latched upon the twin murders to unleash frenzy, caring nothing for loss of face and credibility in case the facts about the gruesome incidents proved wrong. The cracking of Asrar’s murder case, which was nothing more than the outcome of jealousy in a love triangle, exposed separatist indulgence in matters which shamed one and all.

A strange hope seems to pervade the thinking of separatist echelons that if they build public pressure, something dramatic may happen. The Hurriyat leader and main force behind the public upsurge betrayed his feelings when he said, “People should make a difference between right and wrong and follow the right path. New dawn is awaiting us and it is the crucial juncture that demands patience and consistency.”

Another Hurriyat leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, described confusion among people as ‘anarchy’, ‘we should not look like a divided house, separatist organizations should not be in a rat race to issue strike calls… we need to think of creating alternative ways of protest. We have to carry on the movement and lives of the people as well.”

The roots of this hope lay in certain recent developments involving the region as well as the experience of last year’s agitation against land transfer to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board.

India Ragdo-II and the Catalysts

The agitation on Amarnath land exposed cleavages in Indian polity. A section of the high profile liberal elite in India came out brazenly supporting separation of Kashmir from India one way or other. The likes of Arundhati Roy, Shabana Azmi, Vir Sanghvi, Prem Shankar Jha, and AG Noorani, through spoken or written words created an impression amongst the separatist rank and file that ‘Azadi’ was round the corner. ‘Ek Dakka Aur Do’, (just one push more) was the common refrain of separatist campaigners then.

The public mobilization had less to do with the actual land row and more with wrecking Indian sovereignty over Kashmir. The campaign was not called India Ragda/Ragdo-I for only sloganeering. It reflected the underlying motivation. Carrying the experience forward this year’s campaigners unleashed, after the recovery of the dead bodies of two ladies in Shopian, India Ragda/Ragdo-II.

Dr Sheikh Showkat Hussain, Department of Law, Kashmir University, called the recent unrest in the Valley the ‘resistance beyond the armed struggle;’ and the spirit underlying India Ragdo-II as, “Indian state needs to realize that it is confronting a highly informed and educated young generation of Kashmiris, they know the direction in which right of self determination is evolving and has evolved. It has definitely evolved in a direction which is advantageous to Kashmir, not against it. East Timor and Eritrea availed it despite being non- colonial possessions. Montenegro enjoyed the right of self-determination in spite of having forty five percent opponents to independence.”

The separatist mind articulates its position vehemently. It describes expressions of separatism as the expression of a ‘Resistant Kashmir’, and demeans political engagement and democratic process in the state as ‘collaborating Kashmir’. The manifest disenchantment of the common man with the separatist leadership and his confusion is trivialized as ‘vacillating Kashmir’.

The India Ragdo-II intifada in Kashmir is being guided by such a mindset. This mindset would have taken note of the admission in early May, towards the fag end of parliamentary elections, by none other than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, “…I have always believed a strong peaceful moderate Pakistan in India’s interests. We worked very hard on that and in fact I and General Musharraf had reached nearly an agreement, a non territorial solution to all problems, but then General Musharraf got into many difficulties with the Chief Justice and other fronts and therefore the whole process came to a halt.”

Separatist think tanks in Kashmir have been relentlessly searching a way to circumvent the predicament in which Pakistan is caught up and chart out a course to bring a halt to the ‘halt’.

Columnist Syed Rafiuddin Bukhari, in Rising Kashmir, commented, “…Pakistan Government is grappling with the worst ever crisis, the Kashmiri leadership should stop looking towards Islamabad and think independently to charter their own course.”

India Ragdo-II is the course separatists have embarked upon. Their hope lies more on the support which they generate amongst a section of entrenched liberal elite, be it Arundhati Roy or Prem Shankar Jha, people who advocate a concession on sovereignty not to bail out India from international pressure but out of an ideological outlook which recognizes Muslim communalism as a progressive secular imperative for India to reconcile with.

Separatist rank and file see some space in the new American foreign policy. The new US ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, statement that Kashmir “has been an extremely sensitive hotspot for the world and for the region where we have almost experienced thermonuclear war on several occasions,” has been music to the separatist rank and file. So have previous statements by Assistant Secretary of State William Burns or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Separatists have not missed the success of the Pakistani government in toning down India’s assertions on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The release of Hafeez Syed is seen as a gradually stiffening stance of Pakistan on Kashmir. Keeping the pot boiling in Kashmir through a non-violent intifada serves Pakistan preserve its Kashmir Policy with reinforced moral legitimacy.

Last but not the least, the Indian Ragdo-II intifada as per separatist thinking delegitimises the democratic process in the state. Mr. Arjimand Hussain Talib brings out this aspect brazenly: “It should now be clear to India’s political and media establishment that high voter turnout in Assembly elections does not mean an end of Kashmiri Movement for self determination. Kashmir needs a real political settlement which goes beyond the pre-1989 military status quo”.

The Paradox

The Central government if it has any inclination to diffuse the situation on the ground has to resolve a paradox. The National Conference which leads the ruling alliance in J&K shares and identifies with the common minimum agenda of campaigners in the Valley streets. In a full page advertisement, the state government declared its three main and primary achievements since assuming power: i). Bold decision taken after 20 years to replace CRPF by locals police; ii) First CM to plead eloquently for withdrawal of AFSPA, Union Government flags the issue; iii) Presence of Magistrates with police/security forces made mandatory while dealing with law and order problems and iv) Bomai (Army) camp re-located within a month.

The main opposition PDP, both factions of Hurriyat and the local Bar Council all have revocation of AFPSA and demilitarization as their main demands. We have a piquant situation where the opposition, mainstream as well as separatist, and the state government are politically on the same side.

The situation becomes bizarre when a section of the Government of India identifies with this consensus. The incidental or accidental remarks of Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, while referring to the PM’s Working Group on Confidence Building Measures of which he was then Chairman, justified the key demand of separatists during the current unrest. The Vice President observed that implementation of its recommendations was considered by the Prime Minister as the key to retaining people’s confidence. In his own report then as chairman of the Working Group, ignoring the dissent within, Ansari recommended revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The entire report did not address anti- terrorism measures as a vital component of confidence building in the state.

Even though in all incidents which lead to protests in recent times, the suspected culprits were locals working in local police or territorial army or government officials, the foremost demand of everybody of consequence was removal of paramilitary forces and army from the state.

India Ragdo-Intifada has nothing to do with the incidents which caused public resentment. It essentially uses the incidents to lacerate symbols of Indian sovereignty. It seeks to project an extremely permissive, conniving and inactive state as a demonic police state. The Government, unwilling to defend its security establishment, takes a totally defensive position and allows public mobilizations by the most regressive and fundamentalist regimes operating on the ground. It declares lack of intention to act publicly by either withdrawing its security forces or ordering them not to intervene, whatever the provocation.

The ruling National Conference has an ideological resonance with the common minimum programme of agitationists to force demilitarization, but an existential need to preserve the military presence. The central government knows that any laxity in security operations in the state may lead to catastrophic results, given the situation in Pakistan. Yet it seeks to maintain the stance of a neutral player while its security forces are described and lampooned as an occupation force in the valley. Civilians in the valley know well that the very survival of civil society depends upon the security forces, yet they demonize them. The paradox is deep and powerful.

Inside The Present Turmoil

Most events which lead to public resentment invariably have a sexual angle. Separatists are instigating the public that organs of the Indian state are not only indulging in extra-constitutional violence, but are perpetuating moral debasement of Kashmir society. The mobilization by Dukhtaran-e-Millat had the same purpose, when sexual scandals involving government officials and politicians came to the fore. We are witnessing in the Valley glaring signs of social disorganization caused by militarization of the social milieu. Local papers have time and again highlighted the proliferation of sexual cartels and the flesh trade. Ahmad Ali Fayaz, special correspondent, Daily Excelsior, brought out the magnitude of increase in the number of brothels in Srinagar city a few years ago. A well known ideologue and lobbyist of separatists also referred to ‘prostitution cartels’ in the valley in his columns in the local media.

Most alarming is the penetration of flesh trade in the government and security establishment, rather than government promoting moral debasement in society. The concerns of a significant section of common Kashmiris are still unheard.

Jihadi militarization brought along with it the evil of temporary marriage – Mutah – which soon became a social sanction for debauchery. The dreaded terrorist Akbar Bhai is reported to have married 83 local girls. One Shakeela Bano was abducted from her houseboat by terrorists and subjected to mass rape before being burnt to death. Al Umar terrorists did this to Shakeela because she refused to marry a terrorist for two years of her captivity, during which she was raped regularly. After running away from her captors, she escaped to Jammu where an NGO looked after her. But when she ventured back home, she was again abducted and burnt to death.

Security forces then destroyed the prostitution cartels of the terrorists of Al Umar and rescued 150 women in captivity. Around the same time, security forces succeeded in freeing 10 women held captive by terrorists in Dacchan Marwa region of Kishtwar in Jammu.

Numerous such incidents can be quoted. The introduction of promiscuity by terrorists has taken a toll on society. Militarization of the social milieu in the Valley has played havoc with age old traditions and values. Government establishment and security forces are face to face with this menace, but are yet to devise a counter response to prevent penetration of the flesh trade in their rank and file.

The situation becomes alarming when we factor in reports that Kashmir tops the world in the list of opium abusers, as per research of ‘Community Drug Abuse Study Survey Kashmir,’ by well known psychiatrist Dr. Mushtaq Margoob. His evaluation has produced astounding statistics. 47.77 percent of population in Kashmir consumes some type of drug, including tobacco and its allied products.

There are 24.32 lakh substance abuses (including tobacco abuse) in Kashmir, which includes 2.11 lakh opioid, 1.37 lakhs cannabis and around 38,000 alcohol abuses. The number of female drug addicts is alarming. The NGO, Hindustan National Social Security (HNSS), conducted a de-addiction programme in 2008-2009 amongst females. The female drug addicts were literates in the age group of 18-33, from urban as well as village backgrounds.

Around the time the Shopian agitation was going, a national electronic channel showed how the army was involved in destroying poppy fields around Shopian. Police also reported recovering quintals of Bhukki - the locally produced poppy husk sold in north India.

Conclusion

Through the current Intifada, separatists seek moral legitimacy. They seek to accord respectability to a regressive anti-freedom movement. They are calibrating its interventions to remain relevant even if Pakistan continues to vacillate, or even collapses. The intifada is targeting the weakness of Indian policy to fight militarized pan-Islamic fundamentalism.

The moral of the story is to de-legitimise this Intifada by educating the public about the impact of militarization of society. Another imperative is to stop fiddling with dangerous ideas of self-rule or the Musharraf Plan. These plans undermine the ideological foundations of India. Government legitimacy to these plans keeps the pot boiling in Kashmir. We have to realize that ideological compromise eventually leads to crippling territorial consequences.

Dr. Ajay Chrungoo is chairman, Panun Kashmir

Asrar and the art of stone throwing

2009-07-15T10:06:00.000+05:30

Asrar Mushtaq - killed by his friends

Kashmiri Muslims have acquired a fetish for demonstrations, stone throwing, vandalising and asking for Azadi on every possible pretext. We have seen how whole Kashmir was on streets when the Shopian rape and murder came to light.

The latest case was the case of murder of a boy named Asrar Mushtaq.The boy apparently went missing and everyone took to streets.Apart from throwing stones which has now become the favourite pastime of Kashmiri Muslims, cars were burnt, Hindus at Purshayar were forced to join the protests and shout “hum kya chahtee”,Kashmir’s only Coffee bar was Café Arabica was vandalised because it belonged to a non-Muslim.One can understand the agony over the death of a young man but Kashmiri Muslims today have to shout,scream,stone,stall,strike and call for Azadi even if someone is constipated.

Now as it turns out the boy was murdered by his friends because a Kashmiri Muslim girl earlier used to sleep with his friend and now was apparently sleeping with him. This infuriated Asrar’s friend so much that he tortured his friend to teach him a lesson. He tortured him and killed him and who knows then he also got to shouting “Hum Kya Chahte”. Do you believe it? It is all happening in “brand new Islamicized Kashmir” and what is Asiya Andrabi shouting at?

This tendency of equating everything with Azadi and throwing stones, burning and vandalising is slowly destroying the Kashmiri Muslims. We have already seen that drug abuse and prostitution is at an all time high in “the Islamicized valley”. It isn’t for anyone but for themselves that Muslims learn to behave civil or else they are sowing the seeds of tomorrow’s Afghanistan today.

Read Greater Kashmir report at - Friends Turned Killers

Wanted-One more Liberhan

2009-07-07T14:55:00.000+05:30

Picture Courtesy-KPSS,Srinagar

Finally, finally the Liberhan commission has submitted its report. It took the commission a good 17 years to furnish a report which was to be submitted in 6 months. On Dec 6,1992 Karsewaks brought down the disputed structure called Babri Mosque which has supposedly built by the barbaric Mughal Emperor Babar after demolishing an ancient temple dedicated to Lord Ram. This was done under the watchful gaze of the Congress government headed by P V Narshima Rao.

The day the disputed structure was demolished the very next the Govt of India instituted an enquiry commission under Justice Liberhan to find what exactly happened, what led to the demolition of the structure, who were the people responsible for the demolition of the structure.

In the November of 1986 dozens of temples were destroyed by the supporters of what is now called PDP in the south Kashmir district of Anantnag.Pandit women were raped, houses burnt and many Pandits were killed in these so called riots.Among the temples destroyed were the ancient shrines of Lord Shiva and the mother Goddess.

No Liberhan Commission was appointed then.

A certain Mufti Sayeed was known to be behind what had been done to Pandits.The same Mufti Sayeed later became a Home Minister.The same Mufti Sayeed later got his daughter kidnapped and released 5 dreaded terrorists in exchange for his daughter. But, more of it later.

After 1989 hundreds of temples have been either partially or completely destroyed, most have been desecrated and on their places now we have buildings and shopping complexes today. It was all common knowledge yet no Liberhan Commission was appointed.

Most Kashmiri Muslims blame Jagmohan for the exodus of Pandits.But the moment you ask them who broke these temples and who encroached the land or who defecated on an idol they have no Jagmohan to blame.But today it is not them but the Government of India that we are asking to get a Liberhan from somewhere to see who broke my gods.
If one Babri Mosque deserves a Liberhan,are Hindu temples in Kashmir so inconsequential that they don’t need a commission at all or do we have to presume Omar Abdullah’s Oscar Winning Speech in the Parliament as gospel truth that the Kashmiri Muslims broke no temples.Maybe I invented all the pictures that I am pasting here.

Maybe for Hindus no Liberhan is needed,maybe Omar Abdullah is too busy with something else,maybe he was abroad when those temples were broken,maybe he has partial amnesia.

There are too many Maybe’s, Maybe someday our broken gods may call a Liberhan…till then Saugandh Ram ki khatay hain hum mandir vaheen banayege…

The Chicken have come home to Roost

2009-06-26T11:20:00.000+05:30

Two soldiers were killed and three wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Pakistani administered Kashmir on Friday, the military said, the first such bombing in Pakistan’s occupied Kashmir.

'The bomber blew himself up near a military vehicle. Two of our soldiers embraced martyrdom,’ a military spokesman told Reuters.

I remember initial days of terrorism in Kashmir and the same Pakistanis would say then"Do Hindustani Faujiyon ko jahnam raseed kar diya mujahidon ne" which means ,Two Indian Soliers have been sent to hell by The MujahideenThe official said three soldiers also were wounded in the attack.

Militants have carried out a series of bomb attacks across Pakistan in recent weeks in retaliation for a military offensive in the northwest but there have been no such attacks in Pakistani Occupied Kashmir.Benazir was proud of the very men who killed her.She would often say that they are sons of Ghazis-the slayers of Hindus.

I dont know whether to mourn the soldiers of Pakistan army or to feel happy that they have got a taste of their own medicine.Whatever the case may be the chicken have come home to roost.

Where are the protestors and the Press ?

2009-06-25T09:12:00.000+05:30

Kashmiri Muslims are a sick lot.They will need absolutely no reason to bring down temples,write garffitis on them and deface them.They will find a thousand to throw stones and protest even if a security guard looks at their sisters. Yet they will stay silent when their dear Mujahids kill their sisters.

The following two barbaric killings barely evoked any noise leave alone protest. While the first case was that of 17-year-old Nigeen Awan which took place barely few kilometres away from the place in Shopian of South Kashmir which is witnessing protests over the alleged rape and murder of two women, the second took place at Sopore where the 45-year-old lady Rashma Jan was shot dead because her daughter and son-in-law worked with police force.

It is not case of Kashmiri Muslims alone but a malaise associated with Muslims in general that they will kill hundreds and destroy property, hold the state to ransom if an Infidel kills, rapes or even casts a look at the Believers (who are none but Muslims because the Koran says) yet the same people will do nothing, quite on the contrary, they will applaud when a Mujahid kills a fellow Muslim and will even justify it by quoting some Surahs from the Kitab-e-Asmani.

It is not without reason that Pakistan is today suffering from militancy, it is not without a reason that there are two million Internally Displaced People in Pakistan today, it is not without reason that Kashmiri Muslims continue to reap the poison ivy that they sowed, it is not without reason that the Muslims who shouted “Aese gache Kasheer Batev baghaer ti batenaev saan”(We want Kashmir without Pandit men but with their women) have hundreds of their own raped, quite a lot by their own Mujahids.It is law of Karma. What comes around goes around.

But it isn’t just the Kashmiri Muslims who are sick. Isn’t the liberal Indian Media an accomplice in Crime? Why doesn’t Shekhar Gupta’s Indian Express carry this story on its front pages when it reports even the smallest protest that separatists carry out in Kashmir. Is he too scared of the Mujahids or is the Kashmir Bureau so independent that Shekhar Gupta just goes along. Apart from Times Now who carried a story called “Valley’s double Standards” no other TV channel reported the killing of these two women. And then call themselves impartial!

It still is time for the Kashmiri Muslims to wake up before they too have their women being beaten by Taliban in the centre of the city. If they have it in them then Kashmiri Muslims should speak in one voice against anyone who commits a crime, be it a so called Mujahid. May be I am asking for too much from a community who have become mere puppets in the hands of Pakistan and a handful of separatists. They are like sheep that are goaded to go along and anyone who dares to talk another route is cut and eaten. That is probably what happened to these two women.Maybe one simply said no to a Mujahid's overtures.Havent we heard women being forcibly married to Mujahids?

It is for the government that they institute a similar enquiry as they did for Shopian rape victims and gets to the killers.The Police have identified the killers of Rashme Jan as Bhasharat,Latif and Riyaz.The deaths were supposedly carried out by Hizbul-Mujahideen. Omar Abdullah should show that he is ready to act against militants and not just Policeman.

No protest over murder of women by Hizb men

2009-06-24T16:43:00.000+05:30

No Shopian-type protest over murder of women by Hizb militants

PTI
June 23, 2009

Srinagar In the uproar following the Shopian rape and murders, two separate brutal killings of women by militants in Jammu and Kashmir have almost gone unnoticed.

While the first case was that of 17-year-old Nigeen Awan which took place barely few kilometres away from the place in Shopian of South Kashmir which is witnessing protests over the alleged rape and murder of two women, the second took place at Sopore where the 45-year-old lady Rashma Jan was shot dead because her daughter and son-in-law worked with police force.

But these two deaths -- barbaric in their own way -- have gone little noticed. Police reasons that its because of the fear as these gruesome killings were undertaken by militants of prominent terror group Hizbul Mujahideen, armed wing of Jamaat-e-Islamia.

According to the police files, Awan was allegedly killed by Latif Theuuda along with Riaz of Hizbul Mujahideen at her residence on the intervening night of June two and three because she had spurned advances by the former.

Quoting eye-witnesses, the police alleged that Latif pumped over a dozen bullets into her at her residence in Dohnado in Shopian district and instructed that no one to take her to hospital.

The young girl died in front of her family members and villagers after struggling for 45 minutes.

Ironically, in the FIR 109/07 registered in police station Keller, police have quoted unnamed eye witnesses who refused to come on record because of the fear of gun except her father Sharief Ahmed Awan who told the police that he was "instructed" by the duo to bury the body and not to make any hue and cry.

While the Jamaat cadres in the Shopian district spread the word that Awan was working for police, senior officials brushed aside the charge saying that the victim had not even attained the age of 18 years which is mandatory for working as Special Police Officer .

Another killing by Hizbul Mujahideen militant was that of Rashma Jan on June 16 at Sopore in North Kashmir. This area is a Jamaat-e-Islamia stronghold and pro-Pakistan leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani also hails from here.

The 45-year-old Jan, work ing as an employee of UCO Bank, met her death when terrorists barged into her house at Sopore on June 16 and fired indiscriminately. She died on her way to hospital as she had received bullets in her head and chest.

She was allegedly killed by Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Basharat, who had nurtured a grudge against her because she had a fight with his mother over marriage of her daughter.

The daughter -- Shameema, a police constable – was married off to a Policeman and at present posted in Baramulla.

When approached, neither leaders of the ruling coalition of National Conference and Congress nor the opposition PDP are willing to comment about the two incidents and are even refraining from saying on record that culprits need to be brought to book.

..another report published in Hindustan Times.

Arjun Sharma, Hindustan Times
Srinagar, June 24, 2009

Amid protests over the Shopian rape-cum-murder case, two separate killings of women by militants in Jammu and Kashmir have almost gone unnoticed.

While the first case was that of 17-year-old Nigeen Awan, which took place barely few kilometres away from Shopian, the second took place in Sopore where the 45-year-old Rashma Jan was shot dead on a doubt that she was a police informer.

Superintend of Police, Baramullah, Viplav Kumar said: “The members Hizb-ul Mujahideen entered the house of Rashma Jan on the intervening night of June 2 and June 3 and gunned her down. The militants have been identified as Basharat, Latif and Riaz.”

But these two deaths have gone little noticed.

Police reason that it is because of the fear as these gruesome killings were undertaken by militants of Hizb-ul Mujahideen.

Married to Militants and Living in Hell-Kashmiri Girls

2009-06-16T09:49:00.000+05:30

by Binoo Joshi(IANS)

Not all marriages are made in heaven. Some are solemnised at the point of a gun - as many women and teenaged girls in Jammu and Kashmir will tell you.
Forced marriage to militants has wrecked their lives in the insurgency-wracked state. Fatima Bi , now 16, who belonged to Chatroo, a mountainous village in Kishtwar district, told IANS over telephone that she was just 12 when she was abducted by militants.
She was studying in Class 7 in a local government school when one day a group of four militants led by Sher Khan, then divisional commander of Harkat-ul-Jehad- e-Islami (HUJI), barged into their house and kidnapped her.
'I was studying at that time when they abducted me,' she said.
'They took me to their hideout in the nearby forest where they beat me and tortured me for eight days. They hit me with rods on my thighs and threatened to kill my family if I did not marry Hashim Ditta ,' she said.
She said Ditta was a close friend of Sher Khan and a helper of HUJI.
'She was forced to marry Ditta at gun point,' said a police officer in Kishtwar.
Fatima wanted to study and become a teacher. 'But my dreams were shattered after they abducted and forcibly married me to Ditta,' Fatima said. Ten months after her marriage she gave birth to a son and her 'childhood was snatched away when I delivered this baby'.
A 'happy moment' for Fatima came when Sher Khan along with his two associates surrendered before the security forces last year.
'Except for bearing Ditta's child I never took him as my husband and there never was any such feeling as it was a forced marriage that ruined me,' she said.
Sher Khan was sentenced to imprisonment for eight years. Fatima took this as an opportunity and fled Ditta's house along with her infant son.
Ditta's parents, however, lodged a missing person report with police. Fatima went to her relatives in an adjoining village and fell in love with a farmer.
Her second chance at life was however not so easy as the local clerics said even if it was a forced marriage, Fatima would have to live with Ditta until they got legally separated.
Similar is the story of 18-year-old Chana whose nightmare started in early 2007.
A Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA) militant called Farid fell for her when he saw her grazing cattle in the Chicha area of Kishtwar district. She too was forced to marry at gun point.
'I too had dreams of getting married to a well-to-do person with all the rituals,' said Chana. 'But in forced marriages like ours it is just a couple of militants and a maulvi who form the marriage gathering.'
A few months later, a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant, Khalid , operating in the area, wanted to marry Chana and asked Farid to divorce her. But when Farid declined, the LeT militant shot him dead and also shot Chana in the left leg.
She was forced to marry Khalid and now lives with him along with her and Farid's infant son.

--Courtesy: IANS Service

Obituary-Dr.Jagat Mohini Thusu-Florence Nightangle of Kashmir

2009-06-15T08:34:00.000+05:30

COURTESY:KP-NETWORK

Dr. Jagat Mohini Thussu, a true rattan of Rattan Rani hospital and Kashmir
by Dr. Navin Atal and Neera Goyal

We lost a great soldier of Kashmir valley, a woman who towered like a giant in the valley for the last seventy years of Kashmir history. The noble lady left us on the early morning of 14th June 2009 at the age of about eighty eight years, after bravely battling her ailments for more than a year. She sought the love of her fellow people till the very end, the fellow Kashmiri people, whom she once served with all her passion.
Dr. Jagat Mohini, who had her roots in Punjab , did her M.B.B.S from King Edward Medical College , Lahore . She came to Kashmir in 1945 as a young bride and a young lady doctor, in a culture different from hers. She settled down quickly and adopted the Kashmiri culture to become an integral part of it. Since then she dedicated her entire life to the service of the people of Kashmir valley. She and her husband, late Dr. Onkar Nath Thussu, a renowned Pathologist, started the Rattan Rani Hospital at Barbarshah, Srinagar , named in memory of Dr. Onkar Nath’s late first wife. It was the very first hospital of Kashmir based on modern treatment and is now a century old heritage site. Dr. Jagat Mohini’s battle for upliftment of the society was fought for the last seventy years or so from Rattan Rani Hospital with her field of operation being the Kashmir valley.
Dr. Jagat Mohini worked selflessly for people of Kashmir at a time when there were very few doctors and hardly any specialist. She treated all types of patients and battled all diseases deftly, but the most important contribution to the society has been the upliftment of women of Kashmir valley. She was a champion of fighting issues of women, like discrimination, violence, dowry, health issues of women etc. She was widely known for her generosity and charity.
She not only treated them medically, but also put a healing touch to their socioeconomic ailments also. She became a champion to the cause of women of the valley. She worked day and night her entire life, sleeping just four hours in a day, totally dedicated to her profession. She saved, treated and cured countless patients. As time passed, people looked up to her, as a mentor, guardian and a saviour. She earned the nickname, “Mummy” from her staff and all her patients. She was literally a mother to all as she brought endless many to this world as a gynecologist. She is truly the “Florence Nightingale” of Kashmir , or the “Mother Teresa” of the valley. The national newspaper “The Hindustan Times” wrote on its front page an article of her achievements and it was titled as “the supermom of Kashmir ”. Her work was also recognized and complimented by many other national papers.
She worked as a social reformer and a philanthropist, doing a lot of charity work without looking for any reward. She was a social worker who fought all evils of society and became a source of inspiration to many. She was instrumental in providing employment to many people, both directly in the hospital, as well as by opening vocational centres of training in occupations like stitching, sewing and knitting, including Pashmina shawls making. A multi-talented women, she used her knowledge of stitching, sewing, and knitting to open centers to train women from the weaker sections of society so that they could live a life of dignity. The vocational training camps and centers started and run by her provided a source of livelihood to countless women in Kashmir . She was successfully running a Nursing school which enrolled many students from many parts of the country and again provided a source of livelihood to women of the state and other parts of the country.
A bold upright woman, she stood for justice and never wavered inspite of all odds. Whenever and wherever a person needed help, she was there for them. She opened a school, “Viswa Bharati” which from a two room set up became a college, later having a branch in NOIDA near Delhi . She had the foresight to acquire land for the school at NOIDA and then converted it into a successful school. She organized and conducted health camps in and around the city for the benefit of poor and needy people of the state.
She was a brave and fearless soul, who never deserted the people of the valley in all times. She stood tall and courageously faced both the good and bad times of the valley. A simple and good human being, she never faltered to help a fellow Kashmiri.
Dr.Jagat Mohini has given her entire life to Kashmir . Now it is for the people of Kashmir to see how they can repay a small part of good she has done to the valley. It is time to repay her debt by carrying on her legacy for the betterment of the valley.
Mrs. Thussu was predeceased by her husband, Dr. Onkar Nath Thussu, daughter, Seema Thussu, and brothers Anand Kumar Atal and Dr. Pushkar Rattan Atal, brother in law Janki Nath Kaul, and nephew Vimal, brother in laws and sister in laws Hriday Nath and Prabha Thussu, Pushkar Nath and Kamla Thussu, Kameshwar Nath Thussu, Raj Dulari Thussu, Prithvi Nath Coraji, and Radhakishen and Uma Raina.
Her survivors include her son Ashok and daughter in law Promila, granddaughters Vidisha and Nisha and their families, sister Manmohini Kaul, brother Dr. Chand Kumar Atal and sister in law Saroj, brother Jagdish Ratna Atal and sister in law Sheila, and sister in laws Rekha Atal and Indira Atal, brother in laws Rajinder Nath Thussu and Janki Nath Chaku, and sister in laws Kaushalya Chaku and Lalita Thussu, and the extended families. She is also survived by the following nephews and nieces, and their families on the Atal side: Gitanjali, Urvashi, Manjula, Neelima, Neera, Navin, Anuradha, Ritu, Nidhi, and Subodh and the family of Vimal, and those on Dr. Onkar Nath Thussu’s side, with extended families: Sheela, Surender, Kuldeep, Priti, Iqbal, Usha, Kanwar, Kamlesh, Sudhir, Rita, Nancy, Satish, Shami, Bittie, Girija, Nirmala and Suresh.

Justice for Nilofer and Asiya

2009-06-12T15:23:00.000+05:30

Omar Abdullah-The Apathetic Idiot

Shopian looks like a ghost town today. There are no people on the streets. The shops are shut wide and the atmosphere of gloom looms large over an otherwise bustling suburb. The rape and murder of two young women has left the town full of bitterness, anger and hopelessness.

There obviously are no two ways about the fact that the ghastly murder and rape should invite severest possible criticism with a strong call for finding the perpetrators of this heinous crime and punishing them in a manner as to make an example of them. But here we are. The young prince dismissed their rape and killing as a simple case of drowning. As a Chief Minister of the State shouldn’t he have been a little more prudent than this clownish dad. He should have at-least bothered to know the depth of the water in Rembyaer Nallah in this season. As someone who has crossed this Nallah even without his knees getting wet I must say that the Chief Minister was at his apathetic and ignorant best. Little did he realise that a man as perverse as Yasin Malik or Bitta Karate is roaming free to commit more crimes.

The day the badly bruised bodies of Nilofer and Asiya were recovered, they bore marks of what seemed like molestation if not rape. Their clothes were torn and bodies disfigured. Yet the Police dismissed it as a case of drowning. Forensic reports now confirm the rape of a pregnant Nilofer and a studious and intelligent Asiya.

Two grown up women drowning in knee deep water!

This led to huge protests all over the valley. A simple word of acceptance of the crimecould have avoided all that happened later. The separatists were quick to latch on some food. After all the Young Prince had given them a stick to beat with which they could beat him, the army, the establishment and India. The beastly Mehbooba wasn’t the one to be left behind. Despite the fact that her party-men were beaten on way to Shopian, she looked at it as opportunity she was in no mood to let go off. The sexually frustrated Asiya Andrabi too took to streets with her band of Dark Scary Images. The calls for justice soon got lost in the din of cries for Azadi and removal for AFSPA.

This obviously is no time for politicking. Unequivocally we condemn the State governments handling of this entire episode. What was ideally a law an order problem has now spun into a huge controversy thanks to the kid who our National Media projects as the best thing to have happened to India after the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. Apart from firing the SP of Shopian(who obviously deserves to be fired) the Chief Minister should also have resigned for the way he led Kashmir to one more crisis.

Nilofer’s husband, Shakeel Ahmed has said time and again that he wants justice and not Azadi. Unfortunately what he gets is denials and more denials and now an enquiry commission. The State ought to show its concern for its people irrespective of their political alignments. But then that virtue is lost long time back.

In this hour of grief we are with the family of the victims. May God give them power to overcome this grief .We at Roots in Kashmir will do our best to ensure that the family gets justice. Although we are in exile,yet we mourn alongside the family of the victims.

The need of the hour is that the Chief Minister personally meets the family and apologises for his errant comments and asks the commission to submit a report in a time bound manner and then act fast to punish the culprits of this sick crime. It may not bring them their dear ones back but at-least it would restore the confidence of the people in the State.

Let us make Peace

2009-05-21T09:50:00.000+05:30

Last eveing I received an SMS from a very close friend. This is how it read "We are born in Kashmir and we stayed there till 15 to 16 years of ur age-How can I believe in PK concept.Now we should work towards harmony between KM's and KP's...there is only one Kashmir".

I was so disturbed by this sudden outburst that despite my not wanting to engage in a discussion I called my friend. I asked him if it was a forward or was it his idea and emphatically he said, It is my idea and promised me to call me back in 20 mins. I waited all night for the call that never came. Maybe he forgot about it but this pronouncement made me re-visit that time of my life when Pandits were under a siege, when our speaking would have meant death or worse, when watching Ramayan was considered "anti-movement", when notices were pasted for us to leave, when mosques called for our annihilation, when our women were meant to be in Islamic Harems, when we were (to use Jagmohan’s phrase) frightened pigeons in a nest with a big cat wanting to gulp us.

I have neither been a votary nor a detractor of the idea or concept of Panun Kashmir but truth be told I have always found it as a perfect counterweight to the secessionists policy of Azad Kashmir. It has been till date the only political concept that Kashmiri Pandits have. In storms we cling to the last shreds of grass that root themselves and in a storm are we. Kashmiri Muslims have this abomination towards the concept and that’s what makes it worth its weight in Gold. Whether it is a utopia or an el-dorado is not to be debated in a time when dreams are all that we have. It may have hundreds of short comings. The leaders may have betrayed themselves and us by falling apart but the idea lives beyond people. Even when there is none of the A’s the idea will live because the age of the idea is far greater than the age of a mortal. There is no Einstein today but the theory of relatively is even more powerful and pronounced today than Einstein himself.

Over the past few weeks the voices of the harmony wallahs have become shriller and louder. There are statements like”If we have to live in Kashmir we need the goodwill of the majority community”. Taken Sir! But will someone please tell these Johnies that it was their goodwill that forced us to flee, will someone please emaciate the cupid about the goodwill that made them defecate on our deities and write graffiti’s like “Gulzar Bhagwan ki Jai Ho” in Batyar Mandir, will someone please tell them they had a house with a fountain near Rambagh that they no longer own because someone’s goodwill forced them to abandon and later sell it, will someone please tell them that onus of goodwill is the one of the majority. It isn’t the prerogative 0r either the power of the meek (read it weak or minority if you may like) to make peace. Have you ever heard a rat going to a lion and saying let us make peace? May be I am an idiot but I haven’t. Wouldn’t it be laughable if not out rightly preposterous to even believe that we can make peace with a people who have Islamicized themselves so much over the last two decades that they call us people who worship snakes and stones (Please read my dear Kashmiriyat wallahs-the columns in Greater Kashmir and these aren’t written by ignorant and illiterate but the informed and educated but unfortunately grossly Islamicized majority).

India is a secular nation not because the Muslims want it that way but because the majority of us are Hindus and we want it that way. Now can the Harmony Harbingers please name three Muslim Majority nations which are secular?

I am no one to stop anyone from engaging in Nalmot(embrace)with whomsoever they wish to but I will fail I don’t bark.

Sirs, for your information and benefit let me explain to you the Polity of Kashmir today. It starts from right(Islamic right I mean) and keeps going to a point where it reaches obscurantist ideology of Al-Qaeda and the likes.Does your wife wear Jeans? Oh that isn’t Islamic.Do you wash your left leg first while you bathe? That isn’t Islamic either.Privately they may admit that all this is a heap of shit but the hypocrisy of the society has reached a level where collective righteousness has become a virtue with the new Islamic Kashmir.

The space for a rational and reasoned debate has shrunk so much that whatever has to be accomplished has to be under the purview of Fiqh(Islamic Jurisprudence).

Undoubtedly there is no one Kashmir Sirs, if you wish to know there is one on the other side too, the one they(KM’s) want to merge with. Why don’t you start a process of talking to them as well? Sardar Qayoom Khan is a free man these days. He will be glad to accept your invitation. May be it gives you a chance to go to Sharda, a chance none of us got for obvious reasons of goodwill and harmony?

There was one Kashmir till 1334,till the day the Islamic zealots hadn’t breached our borders, hadn’t touched the pious soil of our motherland, hadn’t burnt our libararies, hadn’t dug out the Martand sun temple, hadn’t reduced to ruins Parihaspora, hadn’t built a Khanqah on the Kali temple.

There my dear friend is no one Kashmir now. Sad as it may be…

Take a plunge. Try feeding milk to the snakes…I wish you luck…In your success I shall be happy to retain my burnt house in Kanipora.

(The above article is written by Rashneek Kher.The views expressed are his own.He can be reached at rashneek@gmail.com)

The furnished home of the homeless.

2009-05-12T13:55:00.000+05:30

Pooja Shali

The same number began to flash on my phone, as usual. A number that I answer to, every year. The caller is all prepared with the question and I have my rejection in place. It is an invitation I ought to refuse…

The sun has rolled itself into the earth with jarring precision this year. The heat has taken its toll and citizens of the capital are packing their bags to head to more serene landscapes. The traffic, the ghastly pollution and unbearable heat are only excuses to reach for the mountains. The options for a vacation are galore in this vast wide world. Like every year, I choose only one option from my list but that unfortunately remains only on paper. This time too I have decided to step into Kashmir to feel the soil of my sensitive roots. For the very first time.

My friends in the valley who are fortunate to have their homes in Kashmir (for whatever reasons) do not look for an option. They do not have to decide. They do not have to think twice before packing their bags. They do not have to convince their parents to let go of the fear of fanatics. They do not have to make bookings. I, even though from the same land, have to undertake all of this.

…my phone is still ringing…

Every year I am ‘invited’ to Kashmir. Invited to a home, half of which I believe is mine. Jawahar tunnel is the passage into my huge living room. My hall is painted in colours of sensual blue that appeal to the eyes instantly. Behind Dal Lake are the paintings of snow peaked hills on the wall serving as highlights of the dining hall. On the treacherous way to the bedroom is the Puja-ghar. The huge Shankracharya temple and Kheer Bhawani are bowed to and respected by all the family members. The bed room is my sanity haven. Next to a bridge, under the shade of a banyan tree is where I think I slept sometime ago. The green pasture is the quilt I am covered in, whenever sleep beckons me.

This is the home I am asked to come to. The invitation arrives with sugar coated pudding in words; others come as a colloquial reminder in conversations. Several are too emotional to be ignored while quite a few extremely derogatory.

The ‘invitation to come to my own home’ echoes sometimes through my friends, by tourist agencies, occasionally by separatists trying to project a secular outlook and often by the mother earth dying to take me into her lap. Till now I have ignored all the appeals. I had taken a pledge long back that I shall never take off my shoes on that gravel as a tourist.
As my Muslim friends reiterate that they are going home for vacations, I’d decided I shall never utter from my mouth that I am going to Kashmir for a retreat. It would be an insult to my whole identity if I did so. Like them I also wanted to exclaim ‘Hey, I am heading back to my home’.

As of now, happily into my early twenties that day has never come. Unable to again build a home in Sekidafar or Habbakadal, I am a restless soul. The home, of which I heard innumerable stories from my mother, also became lullabies to put me to sleep. Almost everyday, my mother refers to her Habbakadal home like a child who never forgot the one Barbie doll she owned. But any discussion of rebuilding that home would only show a trace of eternal fear on that forehead. This failure resultant of inherent pride made me take a resolution.

The pledge is losing its ground now. Forced to take my words back, I have decided to visit the valley and if the Ishta Devi wills I shall fulfil it this time. When will I again head back and whether that shall be as a tourist or not are some questions which remain unanswered as of now; but that will not deter me to keep enticing myself to go bare feet on that terrain.

Till now for me Kashmir has been like a fable. A land faraway from my current home, somewhere my parents once resided. The legends and stories not connected to mad rush of New Delhi. A land I am fighting for, believing it shall be of people it once belonged to. Till then I will have to visit the Chinar and come back and then visit it again.

The only difference from then and now will be the revelation that enlightened my soul about my home. The fact that it will always be mine. No hand can snatch it, and no eyes can make me a stranger to it- the shade under the Boueen(Chinar) tree, next to the bridge.

…before the caller disconnects the line, I better receive it and tell him I might be seen in Gulmarg this time around. But that is not accepting an invitation, that’s just a wish to come back.

If I do not gather the strength this time, for sure I never will. The fear lingers on in my parents’ heart, but I need to pack my bags and bring back for them the Prasad of Khir Bhawani. Only then may be, they will say once again’ “lets go home this summer”….

The writer Pooja Shali is studying Mass Communication at AJK MCRC, Jamia. She can be reached at poojashali@gmail.com

From the Moderator

2009-05-11T09:50:00.000+05:30

Dear Readers,

With a profound sense of dis-belief I have to inform you that the comments on the blog would from now on be moderated by me.At the time of initiating this blog we debated whether the blog should be moderated in any way or not.It was unanimously agreed that we must allow free speech because we believed that the reader is mature.I do not in any way or form wish to insult the intellect of the reader by moderating his/her comments.

We have in the past received abusive comments on the blog and me as the moderator has received a lot of hate mail from some of our readers.We always accomodated it and allowed it because it pertained to the subject in question.Not even from our most vocal opponents had we recieved any comments which were personal in nature or pertaining to our families.

Unfortunately some person has posted a comment wherein he has raised questions against the father of the writer.I find this sickness appalling and ask such commentators to find other avenues for venting out their frustations.Sorry this blog isnt for this.What such frustated souls do not understand is that even two brothers can have different political philosophies and orientations.

And incidentally Ranish's father's name is Ramesh Hanglu and not Ashok Hanglu but even if it was it is not the business of non RIK members.I would have appreciated had the commentator been brave to name himslef rather than hide behind anonymous aliases.Such people need a life and I would recommend them to Art of Living Classes.

I apologise to readers that because of this incident we have no other option but to moderate the comments atleast for sometime so that the viruses can be kept away.

Thanks for your understanding.

Rashneek Kher

Blog-Moderator

A DESIRE TO RELIVE

2009-05-09T13:20:00.000+05:30

Ranish Hangloo
Childhood Blues continue to haunt

January 1990, I had just started to crawl when communal forces broke legend long relations and compelled one of the oldest civilized communities to leave the saffron valley.

Along with my parents, I traveled 350 kilometers in a fiat car from south Kashmir to city of temples, Jammu. A deafening silence kept filling each passing kilometer. Moving towards south of Jawahar tunnel, nature started adjusting its color for an undesirable change. Slowly the chinars turned into pines and then finally eucalyptus. Mercury started expanding. As soon as we reached Hari palace, I woke up in my mothers lap saying “mummy tresh” (Mother I am thirsty, give me water).

Months passed on and my growing steps saw the lines stretch on my father’s forehead. Finances started bothering us on each day of the calendar. Everyone around was searching for any possible keyholes of survival. I remember, each morning some or the other fellow being used to come to the door shouting- ‘paksa relief commisionery’ (‘let’s go to Relief commissioner’s office’). No one realized that this relief commisionary would become a parliament for minority section of Kashmir.

As men tried their luck with such authorities, the women too fought their share of struggle. Forced to bargain for vegetables everyday, the female folk tried to adjust a home budget that had inadequate amount in the first place. Monj – Haakh (Knol Khol), a leafy vegetable was in maximum demand. What started with one rupee is today sold at Rs 30 at vendor price. Refusing to alter at least this cultural attachment, we as a community still purchase it with equal charm. Monj-haakh is served hot on our plates daily.

The climate has never been friendly to Jammu especially the summer season. But at times it became as good as spring to me. Every year my Delhi based aunt would get me toys during the vacations. Though summer in Jammu is synonymous to a hot tandoor (hand made oven) but that anticipation for toys, at least for a few moments overshadowed our natural calamity. Today as I reminisce of my childhood days, toys remind me of Sharma Ji- our landlord- who never allowed me to play in the house he owned. He often complained to my parents about me, considering me a noisy child. That b*****d never understood that kids play at this age and when they play they are supposed to make noise. Like my childhood rights snatched in Kashmir, Jammu too did not allow me to celebrate my innocence.

Spending such a shackled childhood left undesirable remarks in my mind. I started believing this is the best that a human being deserves. Perhaps this is the kind of life for all of us. Until, my mother started narrating me stories that I should have faced myself, but fate had other plans. She was, rather relieving her bolted memories upon me. She used to (she still does) start with ‘Kasheri aous ase…’ (In Kashmir we used to have…). Those real life happy incidents of valley were hard to vision in my mind. I deemed them as any other fairy tale I knew about. I still try and force myself to imagine my mother being served by 3 servants. Her references to the past are authentic, but today my mother is pushing herself, beyond her physical strength to serve all of us without any help.

When I entered into my teens, the financial troubles began to fade away to a certain extent, but those luxurious aspirations were only at an imagination stage. Due to my hard work and family’s support, I was selected in two of the best schools of Jammu; in fact I topped the entrance examinations. However I could not enroll myself in neither as a huge fee was not affordable.

As time rolled by, memories got sliced into the good and bad. The bad memories have now forced me into an unshapely adulthood, making me feel that neither did the past bring us anything healthy nor has the future anything good to hold.

A desire to relive those innocent days is increasing every day. I know that this is no possibility and I hope it’s not because of material treasures that now I have begun to acquire. I hope this article is not a sudden burst of emotions. I guess it is only an incomplete childhood….

Well, whatever it may be but “yem fir gindha beiti” (This time I want to play)

The writer Ranish Hangloo is studying journalism at the AJK MCRC, Jamia. He can be reached at ranishhangloo@gmail.com

Am I a Pappu ?

2009-05-07T12:10:00.000+05:30

Kamal Hak

Nowadays I am scared to indulge in my favourite pastime while driving. Mind you I drive around four hours every day. I am very hesitant to tune it to any FM station for some nerve soothing music. It is not that suddenly music doesn’t hold my interest anymore. It is the intermittent messages declaring the people who won’t vote as Pappu that is giving me a complex. I realize I have been a Pappu all my life. Strange as it may appear but the fact remains in half a century of my life I have never voted.

But, am I really a Pappu?

Like any youngster, I still remember the day when my name appeared in the electoral rolls for the first time. It gave a strange feeling and the confidence of being an adult. I thought it also developed a parental feeling in me as my younger siblings started appearing like children who needed to be taken care of. I also remember an hour long wait in a long queue before gaining entry to the room in the Govt. Girls Primary School near my home, where the polling officers gave you the ballot paper. I also remember the disappointment and the humiliation after all this being told my vote had already been cast. That day my faith in my Muslim neighbours received a serious dent. That day my belief in the might of Indian democratic institutions also diminished. Subsequently, I chose to be a Pappu than face the humiliation. After every election, my caring neighbours would dutifully inform me that the records will show I have cast my vote.

For last nineteen years I have been living in Delhi NCR. I am a registered voter in my local constituency. I also have a voter card. The electoral officer in my erstwhile Srinagar constituency must either be obliged to my family, most unlikely, or may have taken me as Kamaal Haq, more likely. My name still appears in the electoral rolls there. I have never felt inclined to vote here. Some how and I may be wrong, I have always felt my voting here will suit my tormentors in valley and take me further away from my homeland.

Don’t be a Pappu.
It is not only the media, NGO’s and the election commission that is urging me. I am amused some of my own community men also have joined the bandwagon of ‘don’t be a Pappu.’ They want me to strengthen the very process that threw me out of my homeland. Nevertheless, I thought may be they are right. I am now prepared to pin my hopes on the democratic process for bringing me succor.

Please guide and advise me.
There are more than twenty candidates for Srinagar constituency. Nearly all of them including Autar Krishan Pandita of BJP are there just for a symbolic presence. Khalida Shah, wife of Gul Shah and sister of Farooq Abdullah is also not seen as making any significant difference.. The contest is mainly between Farooq Abdullah and Moulvi Ifftikhar Ansari of PDP.
Shall I vote for Farooq Abdullah, a founder member of JKLF and the chief patron of uprising in Kashmir, who abdicated his moral, political and constitutional responsibility towards me in my hour of need? Or shall I vote for Ansari, a perennial turncoat who represents a political party that considers me as a pariah?

I don’t mind being a Pappu.
I don’t want the people of Kashmir, the governments of J & K and India to ever believe every thing is alright with me and I have forgiven them. Either way my vote will not make any significant difference to my plight or state of affairs in this country. But as a Pappu I will always have a satisfaction of being a mirror which reflects the nation’s failures.

I can now tune in to my music station.
-

The author Kamal Hak is a political analyst based in Noida, near New Delhi. Hak is the National Spokesperson of Panun Kashmir. He can be reached at kamalhak@yahoo.com

The Minorities also want their voices heard-Tanya Asharneea(Hindustan Times)

2009-05-06T10:04:00.000+05:30

Click on the image to enlarge
Text:
The minorities also want their voices heard

Aditya Raj Kaul (19), a Kashmiri Pandit, has lived in Delhi for 18 years. But when it comes to exercising his franchise, he wants to do so as a Kashmiri.
“My family fled Kashmir when I was one, but I am extremely attached to my homeland. In the elections, I would like to vote as a Kashmiri, rather than a Delhi resident,” said Kaul, who is also the founder of Roots in Kashmir, a youth group of Kashmiri Pandits.
“As we did not willingly leave Kashmir, we feel the election commission should take steps to ensure that our voices are heard in the state,” Kaul said.
The sentiment echoes amongst several young Kashmiris. Forced to flee their homeland twenty years ago, they feel disheartened by the electoral system and say the process of voting for a migrant Kashmiri is discouraging.
The election commission has set up four polling booths in Delhi and one in Udhampur for Kashmiri migrants to vote. However, a sizeable number of Kashmiri migrants also live in other cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. “It is unfair that while others get a day off to vote, we are expected to take leave and fly to Delhi or Jammu to vote,” said 22 year-old Pooja Shali. She said such a process could erase Kashmiri Pandits from the geographical horizon and voters’ lists of Kashmir.
Kashmiris in the city are also against the compulsory M-forms (migration form) that they have to fill while voting. “The M-form system should be deleted from the process to ease the lengthy enrollment and voting process,” Kaul said, adding that even the ‘migrant’ term pains them. “We were forced out at gunpoint, so we feel the term is derogatory,” he said.
Church puts in a word
The Federation of Catholic Associations of Delhi (FCAD) believes that Delhi’s Christians — 3.5 lakh in number — should play a more proactive role in the polls and has urged them to vote.
“The community has not always had an easy time in playing their political role. Over 70,000 domestic workers from Orissa and Jharkhand remain disenfranchised, without a ration card. Another segment of the floating population, working nurses and the working class, have no vote,” said John Dayal, Christian activist and secretary general of the All India Christian Council.
Jenis Francis, FCAD president, stressed the minority choose a party that shuns sectarian politicians and has a secular record. “We should choose a party that ensures that minorities and poor are not demonised,” he said.

Press Coverage of "Elections for you:Exile for Us"

2009-05-04T10:42:00.000+05:30

TRIBUNE

Kashmiri Pandits demand Voter ID Cards

New Delhi, May 3Covering their mouths with a black cloth, hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits today protested against the alleged discrimination faced by them at the hands of the government and the Election Commission. The Pandits were holding a dharna at Jantar Mantar.
The protesters demanded that the voting procedure for them should be simplified to ensure their full participation in the democratic process. They also asked for the issuance of voter ID cards for them.
An agitated protestor, Kulwinder Sharma said, “Despite the assurance of Chief Election Commissioner in this regard, nothing has been done so far. We have to fill in migrant forms—M-forms—in our own country. It is extremely painful. We are not migrants but refugees in our own country. We are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) under the United Nations guidelines,” Sharma added.
Another protestor said, “We fail to understand why this M-form system is there when photo identity cards could be made for the exiled Pandit voters. The M-form system should be removed.”
Raising his voice against the system, Aditya Kaul said, “It seems the state ensures that over a lakh Pandits living in towns other than Delhi and Jammu don’t get to vote. While others get a day off to vote, we are expected to take leave and fly to Delhi or Jammu to exercise our franchise.”
“At a time when registering as a voter is a mere mouse-click away, the Election Commission has made a very difficult procedure for us. We too are Indians so why we should face such discrimination?” said an angry Ranish Hangloo, a youth activist in the group.
Sanjay Peshin, chief coordinator of Roots in Kashmir said, “To escape persecution, more than 4,00,000 Kashmiri Pandits had to leave their homes in the valley. Even after 19 years of exodus, more than 50,000 of these refugees are living in ‘animal-like state’ in camps. We are denied of our basic rights.”

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090504/delhi.htm

THE HINDU

Kashmiri Pandits protest against “discrimination” in voting procedures

“It is an attempt to erase us so that we can no longer claim to be Kashmiris”
NEW DELHI: To protest against the “discrimination” faced by them at the hands of the government and the authorities in voting procedures, a global youth initiative of the Kashmiri Pandits called “Roots in Kashmir” organised a protest at Jantar Mantar here on Sunday.
Along with Roots in Kashmir, members of Panun Kashmir, All-India Kashmiri Samaj, Kashmiri Sewak Samaj and Internally Displaced Kashmiri Pandit Youth Front also participated in the protest wearing black bands across their face.
The protesters demanded that voting procedure for the migrants be simplified to ensure their 100 per cent participation in the democratic process.
According to Roots in Kashmir, the number of members of the Pandit community in the voter list of Jammu and Kashmir had dropped considerably in the past two decades. “While the year 1996 saw 1.47 lakh of them, in 2002 their number slipped to 1.17 lakh and further down to 0.71 lakh during the Assembly polls held in the State last year,” added Aditya Raj Kaul of Roots in Kashmir.
A youth activist in the protest group, Ranish Hangloo, said: “At a time when registering as a voter is a mere mouse click away, the Election Commission in connivance with the State is making the registration process more tedious for us to ensure that we are denied even a basic human right.”
Criticising the voting procedures for Kashmiri migrants, Chief Coordinator of Roots in Kashmir Sanjay Peshin said: “With polling facilities in only two cities in India, the State ensures that over a lakh Pandits living in cities other than Delhi and Jammu do not get to vote.”
“It is but a part of the larger process to erase us not just from geographical horizon of Kashmir but from mind-spaces, voter lists and ration cards so that one day we can no longer claim to be Kashmiris,” he added.

ASIAN AGE

THE STATESMAN
NAI DUNIYA(HINDI)

HINDUSTAN

Pandits demand ‘Right to Vote’, wear black bands in protest

2009-05-03T21:54:00.000+05:30

Migrant Kashmiri Pandit voter number halved in 12 years (IANS)

2009-05-02T20:00:00.000+05:30

http://www.sindhtoday.net/south-asia/93060.htm
New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) The number of voters among Kashmiri Pandit migrants has dropped “considerably”, from nearly 150,000 in 1996 to just 71,000 presently - a 52 percent dip.
In 1996 there were 147,000 voters among the migrants all over the country, in 2002 the number went down to 117,000 and during the assembly elections last year it was only 71,000, according to the Roots in Kashmir (RIK), a migrant Kashmiri Pandits’ organisation.
Kashmiri Hindus were forced to flee their homeland when Muslim militancy erupted two decades ago in Jammu and Kashmir.
Some 300,000 Pandits fled the Kashmir Valley from 1989 as Muslim militancy peaked, at times targeting members of the community.
Today, most of them live in Jammu, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Mumbai. Only about 3,000 still reside in the valley.
Angry over the “considerable drop” in the number of Pandit voters, the RIK accused the Election Commission of discriminating against them “in connivance with the Jammu and Kashmir government”.
“At a time when voter registration is just a click away, the Election Commission in connivance with the state (government) is making the processes tedious for us so as to ensure that we don’t get a basic human right,” said Ranish Hangloo, a young activist of the RIK.
He said polling facilities for the exiled Pandits were only available in two cities and the migrants living in towns other than Delhi and Jammu “don’t get to vote”.
The Election Commission “expects us to fly to Delhi or Jammu to vote” he said.
The RIK is organising a silent sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar in the capital Sunday against the “discrimination”.
“It is to erase us from geographical horizon of Kashmir, from mind-spaces, voter lists, ration cards so that one day we can no longer claim to be Kashmiris,” said an angry Sanjay Peshin, the chief coordinator of the RIK.
The RIK is demanding that voting procedure for the migrants be simplified to ensure their 100 percent participation in the democratic process.
The exiled Pandits are required to fill what is called an M-form (migration form) to be included in the voters’ list. “When photo identity cards could be made for the Pandit voters, the M-form system should be deleted to make the process simpler,” Peshin said.

Elections for India:Exile for us

2009-04-30T10:44:00.000+05:30

India Votes but the Pandits don’t get to.

1.47 lac voters in 1996; 1.17 lac in 2002 and 0.71 lac in 2008.

At a time when registering as a voter is a mere mouse click away, the Election Commission in connivance with the State is making the most tedious processes for Kashmiri Pandits so as to ensure that we don’t even get a basic human right.

While separatists get to election fray the Pandits are once again marginalised. With polling facilities in only two cities in India the State ensures that 50,000 Pandits living in towns other than Delhi and Jammu don’t get to vote. While others get a day off to vote, Pandits are expected to take an off and fly to Delhi or Jammu to vote.

It is but a part of the larger process to erase Kashmir's indigenous people not just from geographical horizon of Kashmir but from mind-spaces, voter lists, ration cards so that one day Pandits can no longer claim to be Kashmiris.

On Sunday, 3rd of May,09 we will all register our protest at Silent sit at Jantar Mantar, near Cannought Place, New Delhi at 3:30 pm.

The nation votes and we wonder about our Voter ID cards.

Elections for India, Exile for us!

For More Information please contact:

Amal Magazine:9873900479

Ashish Zutshi:09811600264

The Election Farce,Sajjad Lone etc

2009-04-27T10:53:00.000+05:30

Che Kamyu Kareneay taveez pan
Yaaro van bale yaaro van

Who hath cast thy spell on thou?
Speak up my friend, speak up

Wahab Khar the 18th Century poet probably had the power to see future. How else does one explain the above verse unless he knew that Sajjad Lone, the most vociferous of the separatists would one day take a U-turn (strategic not ideological-let us laugh over it) and join the election fray. Intrigue has always been a part of Kashmir’s history and Kashmir’s leaders have more often that not been treacherous and perfidious. Sajjad Lone can be no exception.

After all he is following in the footsteps of his illustrious father who was first a minister in the Govt.of Jammu and Kashmir and then when the tide of separatism engulfed the valley he too changed his colours and became a separatist. As they say in Kashmir, Once a turncoat always a turncoat. Abdul Ghani Lone was about to don his old colours when the rival separatist gangs got a whiff of it and killed him. Sajjad and Bilal had a chance to speak up then but then the fear of death at the hands of terrorists had the better of them. If you can’t beat them join them.

Bilal joined the Hurriyat Conference while Sajjad kept to his People’s Conference because the Hurriyat did not want him amongst them. They were wary of him for various reasons, the primary being his proximity to some sections of the Indian Establishment. Sajjad who spends more time outside the valley found support from the liberal media and some sections of chatterati and thus was propelled to the national television screens as a “a separatist leader”. It was of little consequence that he enjoyed little or no support at the ground. His English speaking abilities and his suave ways became his passport for leadership. It is another matter that he was a leader because of his connections with the Editors of English News Channels.

Then came his big moment! The Amarnath agitation divided the state of Jammu and Kashmir like never before.The Govt of Jammu and Kashmir cancelled the temporary allocation of land which led to protests in Jammu.Sajjad Lone scoffed Arnab Goswami,”Are you comparing the agitation in a few Mohallas in Jammu to that of a Pan-Kashmir Agitation”.When the agitation in Jammu further gained ground he told Rajdeep Sardesai”We should give one and half district to Jammu and live peacefully”. It all reached a crescendo when he shouted at Dr.Jitendra Singh in Barkha Dutt’s programme that the land row is settled, all that is to be settled is Azadi.He even wanted Jitender Singh’s mike to be muted.

He was arrogant and rude to say the least. He was so vocal about his being Kashmiri separatist that he forgot that he is human too. He rubbed many people the wrong way.

Soon the elections were around the corner. The separatists including him gave a boycott call but a determined Election Commission went ahead with the election schedule. He was once again the most vocal face of the boycotters. Even on the day when the first phase figures came out and when 64% electorate had polled in he told Arnab Goswami” One Swallow does not make a spring. Wait there still is six more phases”. Meanwhile his sister Shabnam Lone too stood for elections. He swore by the Holy Quran that he had nothing to do with her candidature. He said, he did not support the farce called elections. He renewed his calls for boycott and his sister lost.

The Election Results were announced. Sajjad Lone was forlorn and dejected. He seemed to have lost the guftaar (the art of conversation) though he still maintained that he did not regret his decision to boycott polls. He was suddenly seen biting dust. He called for introspection but then who would have thought that this would be introspection. His introspection will be to swear in the name of the Indian Constitution. Whether he represents Kashmir in India or India in Kashmir is mere semantics. Doesn’t Sharad Pawar represent Maharashtra in India and India in Maharashtra?

A word is due to our columnists who see this as some “paradigm shift” in the politics of Kashmir, those who believe that Lone is a “moderate voice” among the separatists and for those who believed that his “Achievable Freedom Document” was some Godsend solution to Kashmir. It is time for them to spend some more time in Kashmir and go beyond what they see from their Shikara’s. It is time for them to talk to normal Kashmiris and know what the Lone U-turn means. It is time that they stop bullshitting and telling us that in the last assembly elections the Kashmiris voted for Bijli,Sadak,Paani and not for India.Do they think we are so dumb as to believe that all these years Kashmiris did not need Bijli,sadak and Paani.Go drink some paani from Chasme Shahi in Kashmir.It is believed to have medicinal values that cures brain disorders.

One just hopes that the establishment lets the elections be free and fair and does not in any way or form aid the candidature of Sajjad Lone. It is only then that we would know how much of a leader Sajjad is outside the studios of TV Channels. Only time will tell whether he is elected or not or whether the Indian Establishment covertly gets him to the Parliament or not. What we know for sure is that he represents himself and himself alone in Kashmir as well as India. Seldom has a Kashmiri leader represented anyone but himself and Lone can not be alone in this.

The Missing Finger

2009-04-15T12:54:00.000+05:30

The State is a cruel figure. There is no doubt about that. And who would know it better than us, the Kashmiri Pandits, who have suffered brutally at the hands of state apathy and negligence. There obviously have been extra judicial killings in Kashmir both by terrorists and sometimes by Armed Forces too. There can be no denying the fact that many innocent people have lost their lives because of the gun that came to the valley and brought with itself what we all called the Gun-Culture.

So many young men disappeared overnight not to be seen ever again. Even their bodies were not found. Their parents with the help of separatist sympathisers and separatists themselves formed a body called ADDP or Association of Parents pf Disappeared People. The distressed parents immediately believed that their sons had been killed by the armed forces. That they could have crossed over to the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, somehow never occurred to them. These naïve Kashmiris must have been so distraught by the sudden disappearance of their loved ones that the moment someone lent them a helping hand they would have no reason not to believe him/her.

I too had believed for a long time that thousands have disappeared in Kashmir till I looked up the website of the ADDP. There are some 75 people (some without photographs) whose names are displayed in the list of the people who have disappeared. But that is the issue. Even if one person is disappeared and not been found, it is serious. The perception in the minds of the parents is that their son has been killed by the security forces. Most of the Indian Media too has lapped up this version without truly going into the details of the persons who have seemingly disappeared. We have therefore been fed by our liberal media that the Indian armed forces are killers at large who pick Kashmiri Muslims at random and then kill them and throw away their bodies. And it is not the usual limousine liberal’s point of view but the average Indian Journo’s story too.

On 27th of March 2009, the armed forces arrested 4 armed terrorists in Kashmir. All of them were indigenous Kashmiris who had disappeared some day keeping their parents in dark about their romantic pursuits across the border. As the Indian Army became more vigilant on the border the Pakistan Government issued them passports and put them on a PIA flight to Kathmandu. They then travelled via train to Jammu and finally were arrested with their new passports.

This news received wide circulation but not as much as the news of their disappearance would have. How hell would have broken loose had someone known that 4 Kashmiri Muslims had gone missing? How Arundhati Roy’s of this world would have written columns in Outlooks asking for government to come clean on the thousands of disappearances? Thousands would have been a synonym for four.

Not that there is no need for an independent enquiry into the disappearances of the Kashmiris but what is equally needed is to make the unfortunate parents of these boys aware of this dimension of the problem. The government must immediately inform the parents of these four men and tell them the true story of their boys so that they are not used by separatists and self serving activists to further their own goals. It will set other parents to think about their missing fingers too.

If the government fails to do so, the day may not be far away when names of dreaded terrorists like Syed Sallaudhin and Mushtaq Latram are also on the list of Disappeared.

In Jammu's relief camps,No Relief- Aditi Bhaduri in Kashmir Times

2009-04-06T08:33:00.000+05:30

Usha Pandita, 45, feels tired even after the smallest of chores. But that's not unusual for her. She suffers from Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID). For her, it all began with abdominal pain, which she initially disregarded as routine until it steadily increased. Usha then started to notice a heavy discharge and the feeling of being perpetually run down. That was when she visited the doctor. Tests confirmed she was suffering from PID - the inflammation of the organs in the pelvic region because of infection. It is during menstruation particularly that the uterus becomes more susceptible to this condition caused by unhygienic conditions.
Usha is one of the 10,000 residents of the Purkhoo migrant camp, one of the several camps set up on the outskirts of Jammu for the Kashmiri Pandit community forced to flee the Kashmir Valley when militancy gained ground in the 1990s. From Kupwara, Usha and her family made their way to Purkhoo, which they have called home since 1990. Years have gone by and even militancy is on the wane, yet time seems to have stood still for the inhabitants of the camps. Living in a one-room pigeon hole with a family of four can be trying in itself but the lack of sanitation has only added to the woes. For women, in particular, it is horrifying.
The Purkhoo camp has four phases and each phase has around 300 to 500 rooms. There are 10 toilets each for men and women. So there is one toilet per 150 men/women. The water supply lasts only an hour each day. Every time Usha, who lives in Phase I, goes to the toilet, she walks about 150 metres. What's more, she has to carry her wash water along. But there is only that much water she can carry. On numerous occasions the water is found insufficient to keep both herself and her surroundings clean.. It is because of these abysmal facilities that she ended up with PID.
Veena Pandita, 40, also lives in the same deplorable environs of Purkhoo. She too has acute PID. Dr Indu Kaul, a well-known Jammu-based gynaecologist treating these women, explains that the symptoms for PID include abdominal pain accompanied by heavy discharge and backache. She finds that in the case of women like Usha and Veena, PID continues for years. Usha, for instance, has been suffering from it for the last four years. The medicines don't really help, as the toilet she visits roughly four times a day continues to be poorly equipped.
Unfortunately, even the medication includes heavy doses of antibiotics, the intake of which has major side effects. When PID is deep rooted then surgery is usually the final recourse. Usha has been recommended surgery but her financial condition doesn't permit the procedure. "We still have four 'kanals' (one kanal equals 605 sq. yards) left in Kupwara. We had our own 'chashm' (well) there," she recalls wistfully. She adds, "I did not have to go to a toilet that was used by hundreds of others there." Purkhoo's water supply, too, is contaminated. Residents complain that they have to replace their utensils every few months as they get coated with a white sediment. The pipes leak at multiple locations and so germs and dirt merge with the water. Near the toilets at Phase I, there is a water hole from which people draw out water to flush. But not only is the water filthy, it is even difficult to draw it out, especially when there is a long line of people waiting for their turn to use the toilet. Although help has been hired to clean the facilities once every two days, because of insufficient water and the sheer number of users, it is impossible to maintain a basic level of hygience. Moreover, there is no electricity in the toilets, so going after dark is another hazard, especially for the women. That's why the maximum number of cases of PID in the city come from these camps. In fact, according to Dr Kaul, while the national average of PID is six to eight per cent, the cases reported from the camps can be 15 to 20 per cent, which is extremely high. The most affected age groups are the adolescents and those above 35 years. In adolescents, chronic PID can lead to a loss of fertility, so the increasing trend is cause for alarm.
Sarla Kaul, 28, who lives in the Mishriwalla camp, a kilometre from Purkhoo, suffers from Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). The sanitation situation at Mishriwalla is worse than at Purkhoo as toilets for both men and women are common here and no one comes to clean them. Many toilets are simply holes in the ground. Sarla has UTI, caused by poor hygiene and unsanitary conditions that make her vulnerable to other infections too. Lately, she has been suffering from menstrual dysfunction, with heavy blood loss and pain around her abdominal area.
Expectant women are particularly vulnerable to UTI, as pregnancy causes hormonal changes that lead to the relaxation of the urethra, which if exposed to poor sanitary conditions is quick to contract infection. UTI leads to anaemia, itching and swelling, which could eventually endanger the life of the child. It also often retards the growth of the foetus and results in stunted babies or those with low birth weight. That was the case of the baby Rajni Raina, who is in her mid-twenties and lives in Purkhoo Camp's Phase II, gave birth too. Not surprisingly, Rajni had chronic UTI during her pregnancy. Once again, Dr Kaul points out that while the national average of UTI is about 10 to 15 per cent, it is about 20 to 30 per cent in these camps.
Besides this there are other water-borne diseases prevalent here. Shetu Pandita, 17, of Purkhoo, has been ailing from a recurring hepatitis for the last five years. As has Puneet Bhatt, 16, of Mishriwalla - since he was 10, in fact. According to the World Health Organization, 80 per cent of such cases are caused by lack of safe water and sanitation. Five of the 10 top diseases of children are also related to water and sanitation. According to Dr K.L. Chowdhury, of Jammu, Hepatitis A and E are common in the camps. Again, in pregnant women, Hepatitis is particularly dangerous as it can put the lives of both the mother and child at risk.
The Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation held in New Delhi recently called for according priority to sanitation and reiterated that sanitation and safe drinking water are basic rights. Such declarations need to be translated into a reality if life is to improve for women like Usha and Veena, who are rendered without proper homes because of the politics of division and hate.

The Unsung Kashmiri Soldier

2009-04-01T11:32:00.000+05:30

The funeral of the Martyr

The martyrdom of Shabir Ahmed Malik, a paratrooper with the Indian Army has once again brought to fore the role of Kashmiris in fighting terrorism in their state. He was martyred fighting intruders in the border district of Kupwara in North Kashmir. The Sainik School educated had turned 22 the very day he attained martyrdom. His supreme sacrifice will be remembered for long. What will be remembered even longer was the fact that thousands took to the streets to bid an emotional farewell to this son of the soil. Thousands shouted Shabir Ahmed Zindabad and Azad Hindustan Zindabad.When his tricolour draped body was brought to his village Wakura, near Ganderbal thousands mourned and a pall of gloom engulfed the village and adjoining areas. Yet it was proud moment for most of the people as one of them sacrificed his life to save Kashmir and India.
“We are proud of what he has done but at the same time we are saddened by his loss,” Ghulam Mohammad Malik, Shabir’s brother, told reporters soon after laying him to rest at Dab-Wakura graveyard.

This isn’t the first time nor would it be the last when Kashmiris have taken terrorism head on. However the fact remains that the Kashmiris who have laid their lives or are fighting terrorism day in and day out are not given as much recognition as their counterparts in the rest of the nation.

When a Policeman or Para-military personnel is killed fighting terrorists in Delhi or Mumbai, the whole nation mourns. It is carried prominently by all newspapers and TV Channels. To this day we remember the sacrifice of the soldiers who were martyred fighting terrorists involved in the Parliament attack. This is not to belittle the role of security forces anywhere but how many of us remember the Policemen who are almost killed regularly in Kashmir.

It is important for all of us to recall the role of J&K Police in fighting terrorism. It is their rank and file who has the biggest network of informers which helps the state Police to thwart terrorist attacks. Their local knowledge and better understanding of the terrain has given them an upper hand in fighting insurgency in the State. It is the local Police who are targeted almost regularly because of their vulnerability of being locals and thus them and their families being almost sitting ducks for terrorists. Despite that the local Police have done a commendable and almost thankless job of eliminating terrorism or at-least bringing it down to a level where the elections could be held peacefully. While it is true that the army and Para-military forces have acted in tandem with the local Police but it is essentially the local Police who are the first ones to take on Fidayeen attacks wherever they happen in the State. It is them who eventually the broke the back of the terrorist groups like the Yasin Malik led JKLF or the Hizb.

At this point we must also make a mention of the Ikhwanis or the renegade terrorists who at the height of terrorism helped cleanse Kashmir of the Pakistan Sponsored terrorist gangs.

The Ikhwanis who were mainly ethnic Kashmiris took upon themselves the noble task of cleaning Kashmir of the Islamist virus that had people like Yasin Malik and his ilk had brought from Pakistan. It was to the credit of the Ikhwanis led by the charismatic Kuka Parrey that militancy declined in the mid-1990s.

Sudha Ramachandran writes in the Asia Times,”Parrey inspired many militants to switch sides and cooperate with the security forces. "The power that Parrey and his boys came to wield and the new-found legitimacy they got by strutting around with the Indian forces and flaunting their weapons in the open was undoubtedly a big attraction for several militants who were fed up with life underground and disillusioned with 'the cause'," a Kashmiri police officer pointed out. Consequently, hundreds of militants surrendered.”

The very fact that the once heavily terrorist infested areas like Shopian, Bandipora, Devsar, and Doda are today terror free is a testament to the dedicated Police Officers and their force in J&K.There are countless Kashmiri Muslim Officers who have told me,”Cleansing Kashmir of these terrorists is the true Jihad”They have steadfastly stuck to their tasks and persevered to get Kashmir to Peace without caring for their own safety or the safety of their family.

On this day, let us all remember the unsung and unwept Kashmiri soldier who has stood between chaos and India, between Pan-Islamism and secularism, between barbarianism and civic society, between mayhem and peace. The situation in J & K is still far from normal but whatever strains of normalcy have been achieved have been due to the consistent efforts of those Kashmiri soldiers to whom this jihad is a personal battle to kill the evil within Kashmir. It is to them that I stand and salute, it is to their efforts that I bow my head and to their sacred vow that annihilating these terrorists is the true Jihad that I revere.

One More Navreh...

2009-03-30T17:48:00.001+05:30

Different Navrehs bring with them different sets of emotions .Most of the time Navrehs in exile have been nostalgic. They bring back memories of my childhood. Of days, when the day begun with an obeisance to the mother goddess atop the Hari Parvat. As a kid, Sanskrit prayers would make no sense to me, yet there was this strange sense of achievement that I could recite them alongside my elders.
There are fond memories of collective recitations of various prayers but one prayer would stand apart. Whenever we sang “Maej Sharikay Kar Daya”(Oh Mother Sharika,be benign to us) it would move us all to tears: tears of communion with our higher selves; tears of joy, of being alive in a hostile Kashmir; Tears of her being our saviour and confidante.
Soon the action would move to the Devi Anagan where hundreds of revellers like us would lay their picnic paraphernalia. Over hot cups of Kahwa,the quintessential politician among us would uselessly discuss the situation in Iran,the diehard poet would bore us with one more of his Leelas’ but the day belonged to the children. The weather on most occasions would participate in the festival. Kids like butterflies were unstoppable. Festivity was in the air, in minds, in hearts and in souls of all those Brahmins who had been brutally murdered on this given day, many centuries before, by Islamic invaders. The Goddess would overlook it all.
The Badam Vaer’s (The Almond Orchard) bloom was divine to say the least. In Kashmiri folklore and poetry so much has been written about the bloom, yet so much is lost between what his eyes see and what his pen writes. The ephemeral nature of the Almond Bloom notwithstanding was a sight to behold and a divinity to be felt. Rides, toys, love, were abundant in the Vaer. Every child represented a free soul- fearless of present, unaware of the past and careless about the future. It was then that my grandfather would recite at the top of his voice-Abhinavgupt’s “Vyapt Charachar Bhav Vishesham”.
As I grow grey in Exile,Navrehs seem to carry different messages for me.Although I try to celebrate them with the same fervour as I would back home,I obviously cannot offer my daughter the luxury of a Badam Vaer or the Devi Angan.I rue the loss but am proud that I carry the legacy forward.A legacy of the people of the verge of extinction.Tomorrow as she sees the Thal(A ritual associated with the NavreH) she will in some way become the bearer of the ember of our existence that is fast turning to ashes.Will she be able to make fire(Reh) from it or will the embers turn to ashes is something we may not live to see.
Many years back in this Zaalim Vonth Ros Shaher(Cruel Endless City as my friend, a refugee from our land , Zahoor Zargar calls it) I was depressed on this day.I saw no hope,no fire,no refuge but my solitary words …..

Yi Kyuth Navreh,Kames chi reh
Na Che, ti ,na maey
Tale Kyuth Navreh

What Navreh is this
Inside whom do the embers glow
Not you,not me
Then What Navreh is this

It isn’t as if I have all these years been despondent and hopeless in exile but there have long periods when I saw no hope of return. But it wasn’t just about return. What depressed me more was our own hollowness or crumbling of our hope.

The message last year though was one of hope.
My solitary words did not fail me in the moment of hope and I sang…..

Ye chu nov Navreh,
vich prazlaan chay na chaney reh
chuy chane rahey,rang rotumut maey
chakh aash baneth vaen aamech chey,
kad valenje maenae,yus chuy vaeh
Aakash ti pataal sar kar aaz
chey prarran panchalech ,che divay
haeth pagahuk gaash,che aayak aaz
bar-e-chirninaev kin mae chaye divay
vanvas me mokelaav mahsoosas
aaz kaluk ravan karetan khay

Wonder what message this Navreh has for me….

Nonetheless Happy Navreh!

-By
Rashneek Kher