STONED

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......

The Missing Finger

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.