We’re a forgotten community: Kashmiri Pandits(The Hindu)

A group of Kashmiri Pandits gathered for a silent sit-in at Jantar Mantar here on Sunday to campaign against the community’s forceful eviction from the Kashmir Valley 24 years ago.

They demanded that their human rights be restored. Led by a youth group, Roots in Kashmir (RIK), protestors said they had faced discrimination over the years and were given step-motherly treatment. “We have been made a forgotten community. Our entire culture is fading,” they said.

The protesters said Kashmiri Hindus were forced to flee because they were a minority. “Minds were imbibed with fear and insecurity and they were made to forcefully flee their native land in the wake of a freedom movement. Not only were they living under the sustained threat of ethnic cleansing by the terrorists, over five lakh Kashmiri Hindus were forcefully evicted, defamed, killed and their wives raped brutally simply because they were Hindus.”

The youth group has also been associated with commemorating the ‘Kashmiri Pandit Exodus Day’ for the past six years. “This day marks the 24th anniversary of the forced exile on the fateful day of January 19, 1990, when hundreds of thousands of violent protestors, along with armed militants, occupied the streets of Kashmir, which led to the exodus,” said Amal Magazine , coordinator of RIK.

“That dreaded night was possibly the longest night of our lives. Mobs from all over the valley had occupied every single road in Kashmir. They shouted slogans against Pandits asking us to either join them, perish or leave the valley,” he added.

Demanding a concrete effort by the government to rehabilitate these people and restore their dignity, Amit Raina, a member of the group, said: “No single conviction has taken place against the people who have widely admitted that they were a part of the killings”.

He added: “Besides, these cases should be made to come out of the Kashmir region and brought to the forefront so that our community, which is on the verge of extinction, gets national attention and receives adequate justice.”

 

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/were-a-forgotten-community-kashmiri-pandits/article5595539.ece

 

That 19th January - Rashneek Kher

Posted on invadecafe.com

Invade Cafe - That 19th January

When my daughter turned eight last year, I asked her what present she would like for her 8^th birthday. She said let us visit the Shrine of Rajyna (popularly known as Kheer Bhavani) when it snows in Kashmir. For a child born in exile and having grown in an atmosphere that she doesn’t quite sync with it would only be natural for her toask her father to take her home. What however surprised me was her urge to visit the shrine of our Isht Devi when it snows in Kashmir. I left the conversation at that and hoped that she would soon forget all about it. As winter approached she reminded me of her birthday present. Her winter holidays were scheduled from 1^st to 20^th Jan. I asked her to sleep and promised her that we would go home during her vacations.

I knew I had made her a promise that would be difficult to keep. It isn’t that I have not been to Kashmir since we were forced to leave; it was just that these dates brought me terribly bad memories. I somehow wanted to avoid being in Kashmir during exactly the same period, the events of which led to our being uprooted from the land of our forefathers.

                                               

Bagat-i-Kanipora is now a bustling city skirt of Srinagar though it falls under District Budgam. Back then in 89-90 it used to be a small hamlet 13 kms from the stone which read Srinagar 0 kms. We lived on a connecting road which connected our village to another called Kralpora. Kralpora was a bus stop en route the holy shrine of the mystic poet Nund Reshi. The village lay scattered close to the road and presented a poignant picture of pastoral Kashmir. A Small Rivulet ran through the village.There were orchards the prominent being the Pomegranate Orchard near the Green Mosque,big Chinars, and willows of all kinds would co-exist with tall Poplars. Our home was a little outside what would constitute the main village. A small habitation of five-six houses had cobbled up around our home. All around this small habitation were fields that came alive in summer to the songs of men and women sowing and reaping paddy.

One October 89 evening, Mrs. Kaul a neighbor of ours, the only ones who owned a phone in our village, knocked a tour door to inform us that my father’s cousin living in the Fateh Kadal area of down town Srinagar had been shot .She possibly knew that Tathe of Aima’s had not just been shot but shot dead. A month later a MES man was shot at close range in Kralpora and left to die. Meanwhile JKLF cadres went around killing people,mostly Pandits, the convenient alibi was to brand them Mukhbirs or Informers of the State. This winter was very different from any other winter in my or even my father’s living memory. Every day we would hear stories of this or that boy going for training across the border. Yet no one ever thought that the events happening around were just a precursor to something more sinister.

Behind our home an empty piece of land was used as a playground by us. One day as we were going about our usual bat and ball, when our neighbor screamed at us for playing cricket when the “young of the nation” were organizing a Tehreek. From that day onwards our Muslim friends would not turn up to play. We stopped playing too. The winter was setting in.

                                       

 

Television sets were beaming out images of the Romanian revolution and the taking over of Bucharest by rioting crowds. Many in Kashmir were getting ideas and inspiration from this. Since theRomanian uprising lasted not more than a fortnight and had brought victory to the protestors a belief had taken home in the minds of the terrorists that a similar “mass uprising” if organized could bear propitious fruit for them a swell.

On 4^th Of Jan, 1990 Aftab published a Press Release of Hizbul Mujahideen asking all Hindus to leave.Another news paper Al-Safa published the same press release. Soon notices to leave were pasted on the doors of Pandits. A notice on our door read“Ralev,Galev ya Chalev”.Join,Die or Leave.Through all this there was “news” ofMujahideen having made hit-lists of all those who were “against” the Tehreek.The list , we were told, is compiled by “Mehman Mujahids” read foreign terrorists in consultation with local civil society. Thankfully no one in your family is recommended to a hit list yet a “concerned” neighbor told my uncle.

                                             

During one of these days my brotherhad gone to get some air into the wheel of his cycle when suddenly two young men carrying guns killed a man in the Kralpora Bazar. Both men lived close to our village and my brother was naïve to tell someone that he knows one of them.A well wisher visited us that evening and told us to send him out of Kashmir.This advice fell on us like a pack of bricks. My grandmother cursed my brother for being stupid and my mother started sobbing. It was too late to do anything.My brother thankfully knew how to ride a scooter. We had some petrol in the fuel tank of the scooter which would have been enough to take him to Lal Chowk.My father put some money into the pocket of his Pheran and told him, if there is a knock on the door just jump from the back window and don’t stop the scooter till you reach Tiku’s who lived near Central Telegraph Office in Lal Chowk. We kept awake all night hoping against hope that no one would come asking for Rinku, and no one did.

Strange diktats started appearing on walls. Some would tell us how to dress, others what not to drink but the most interesting were the ones asking us to time our watches with Pakistan StandardTime. Mohalla Committees were made to check vice. It was like a Taliban Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prohibition of Vice. What constituted vice included watching something as harmless as Doordarshan. Everything Indian was the new untouchable. During all this time the writ of the terrorists went unchallenged.The National Conference government had run away and abdicated all its responsibilities. There was no administration at all.

The timing was just right for the“mass uprising” to be engineered. From here on I write the account that my brother had written in his dairy many years after that fateful night.

“We were about to have dinner when the final call for prayers was heard. It was normal for us to hear the call to the faithful. A soulful Allah-u-Akbar rendering went up in the cold mist ofJanuary. As soon as we finished dinner the soulful voice of our pious localMuslim priest was replaced by someone who sounded not just hoarse but uncouth too. He didn’t sound like a Kashmiri .At first his words sounded like cacophony but it took us little time to realize that he was provoking the people of the village to come to the mosque and hit the streets. The nearest mosque was almost seven hundred meters from our home. People were possibly awaiting the call. A song blazed out of the loudspeaker and went something like this.

 

Jago Jago Subah Huyee;Rus ne Baazi Haari Hain,Hind par larzaan tarehain,Ab Kashmir ki baaree hain

 Wake Up,Russia has fallen and India eyes defeat,It is the turn of Kashmir to be freed.

We looked at each other in complete silence. No one even had the guts to move from his/her place. The song was played for a long duration, many times over and as soon as it ended it gave way to sloganeering of a different kind, the kind that did not just target the establishment of India but the one which targeted the Pandits directly.

The slogans that were now filling the air left us in no doubt that we were about to be defiled or killed.

Hum Kya Chahte Azadi…(We want freedom)

Azzadi Ka Matlab Kya,La Illah Il lallah(Freedom means La Illah Il Laalh)

Agar Kashmir Main Rehna Hoga,Allah-u-Akbar Kehna Hoga(If you want to live in Kashmir,you have to sayAllah-u-Akbar)

Ae Zalimo Ae Kafiro,Kashmir HamaraChod Do(Oh Cruel people,you the Kafirs,Leave our Kashmir)

Yahan kya Chalega Nizam-e-Mustafa,

The rule of the Prophet will reign here…was still resounding in our ears when we started hearing; We want Kashmir to become Pakistan without Pandit men but with their women. It is then that we realized that the Kaul’s were in real danger because they had two grown up daughters. It wasn’t as if we were not used to dirty limericks of Muslim men sounding out to our women. The one that was most common was…Batni batni wale gachav dal,ye karev tikarav bistaras tal …O Pandit woman let us go to Dal,whatever we will do  ill be under the quilt.

                                              

At one point my father almost opened the door to go to their house, but all of us prevented him for doing so. Never before and never after in my life did I feel so impotent and helpless as I felt at that moment. Since I had no sisters of my own the Kaul sisters had quietly filled in that space yet neither me nor anyone in our family could do anything for them. We were too scared for our lives to be able to do anything for the ones we truly loved.

Though we could hear the roar of the crowd now, they still seemed at some distance from where our home was. There were chants of Azaadi…Azzadi and they kept growing louder. We moved to the room from where we could see the road. My aunt peeped through the partly drawn curtain and shouted “Trath Haye Paye” Lightening has struck.. Thousands of people shouting slogans against India and Pandits in particular were approaching our home. My father locked all the doors and shut all the windows.We switched off all the lights of the house. All the women were moved to the kitchen, a canister of kerosene placed next to them just in case the crowd barged in, they were to immolate themselves.

It was past midnight but the frenzy refused to die down. One wave of screaming and shouting gave way to another asif a strange kind of adrenaline had been pumped into our village. The crowd was putting up a spectacle right outside our gate. A man climbed on top of another man’s shoulders and started shouting, Pakistanse Rishta Kya,La Illah Il-lah, and the crowd responded with the vigor thatI had never seen before. In sometime the crowd moved on and the voices died down a little.My father told us to recite Indrakshi Mantra. We were reciting the Mantra barely audible to each other, when the noises grew up again. The crowd from some other village seemed to have merged with the mob from our village. If it is the crowd of Machov,(a village 2.5 kms from ours) my father said, then the signs are ominous. There seemed to be no end to this night. At around 3.30 am in the morning my father opened the door of the kitchen to find all the women huddled together, wide awake, scared,still and almost soulless. The last surge before the first prayer of the next morning happened outside the house of Kaul’s. Many in the mob kicked their main gate and hurled abuses at them in such loud voices that even we could hear.”

Tarini prevailed upon me and I booked two tickets for a return trip to Kashmir. We have been here since 2^ndof Jan and shall go back to Delhi on 18^th Jan. Dressed in our traditional Kashmiri Pandit attire,a pheran with a ladh (a peculiar kind of stitch at the fall distinguishes a Pandit Pheran from a Muslim Pheran) we have walked together, the by lanes of downtown Srinagar and been to villages where lie the Mazars of the great masters of Kashmiri poetry.We drank water from the same spring where Nund Rishi was given his first bath,but not before the maulvi,who could not recite one verse of Nund Rishi telling us to do a Vuzoo(ritual cleaning) because our foreheads were marked by vermillion.We alsoheard a teacher in Srinagar museum showing the diversity of the state pointing out to a mannequin showing a Pandit women, telling his students,look that’s a Batni and she wears no yezzar(pyjamas).

Not to be deterred we went around and looked for signs of our past.The crumbling Habbakadal locality represented the city of Djins,as did the prosperous village of Haal in South Kashmir.The falling houses stand as a testament to who lived there once. Many temples on ceresplendent in their glory were dying for want of attention; the others had simply been erased from the land and the memories of the people. We drove pastmy village to Swoch Kral’s Mazar and then onwards to the sacred shrine of Rajnya Bhagwati in Badipora to find a beautiful Kashmiri art painting of the mother goddess at the site of what used to be beautiful idol. I enquired and was told that it was also broken to pieces by the iconoclasts.

Not everyone who we met in Kashmir was a fanatic, not everyone seemed happy at what happened to Pandits, not everyone said that it was right to destroy religious places of Hindus, not everyone liked the idea of encroaching the property of the Pandits, yet almost everyone who we met said that it was Jagmohan’s plan to drive Pandit’s out and almost none seemed not to have participated in that orgy that drove the Pandits to exile.

It is beginning to snow again……

 

Silent Sit-In Protest on occassion of Kashmiri Pandit Exodus Day

Roots in Kashmir, observe a silent sit in protest to commemorate the Kashmiri Pandit Exodus Day on 19^th Jan. The Kashmiri Pandits mark this day as a grim reminder of their 24th year in exile, as refugees in their own country.

 

In a silent sit in they will remember all those who were lost to the 1^st wave of fanaticism which was followed by targeted killings, rapes, arson, massacres and destruction of their religious places which forced Kashmiri Pandits to exile.

Venue: Jantar Mantar,New Delhi

Day & Date: Sunday, ,19^th Jan,2014

Time: 3.00 PM

 

For Further Information contact:

Amit Raina-98999972462

Amal Magazine-9873900479

Living in Denial

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

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......

Launch of Praznath-A quarterly literary-cultural magazine

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)

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

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

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)

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"

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

they killed 3 year old Arif.....

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

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

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

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…