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...

Kashmiri Pandits protest outside UN office at New York

Friday September 26, 2008 was a great day for the Global KP community. KPs from NY State, Connecticut and New Jersey , under the banner of IAKF(Indo American Kashmir Forum), participated in a rally outside the United Nations. We exceeded our quota of 20 to 25 people that the police had restricted us to and ended up having 30 people. The group was a diverse one and represented spouses whose husbands were working, CEOs, Representatives from Wall Street, Faculty members, Doctors, Managers, 2 Movie producers, attorneys and other members of the elite KP intelligentsia. The Protestors braved the rain and shouted slogans denouncing Islamic Terrorism.They submitted a memorandum to the UN Gen.Secretary Ban ki Moon.

This is a wake up call to those murders who thought they had driven us out and hence finished the opposition against the Talibanization of Kashmir.They must remember that each displaced child is letting the world know how Islamists ruined Kashmir,killed and raped,desecrated and destroyed.

It is a shame that the Government of India is still not standing up to the Islamic terrorists.They are letting them loose in Kashmir.Otherwise what explains Syed Ali Shah Geelani,Yasin Malik,Mirwaiz or even Mehbooba roaming free and spreading more venom.

For more pictures please click here

And they showed there true colours.

The land transfer to the SASB washed off the façade of goodness that the Kashmiri Muslims had worn on themselves over the years.It just showed that nothing has changed in the valley.They are what they were,bloodthirsty and communal zealots.Even after they had forced half a million Pandits out of the valley they could not even accept that 40 acres of land will be taken out for a pilgrimage.They suck.As they bullied the impotent Ghulam Nabi into having the land order revoked,it showed that the only colour that they knew of was green.Yes Green of Islam,of Pakistan and of Jealously.
The alibi of demographic change and environmental pollution got immersed in the roars of “Hum Kya Chahte-Aazaadee” and “Nara-e-Taqbeer-Allah-o-Akbar”.It only dawned on us later that these slogans were Greenpeace slogans emanating out of the Green Syed Ali Shah Geelani.So much of greenery and someone cried pollution.
The government as usual bowed in total submission to the Green.Poor Azad was a Ghulam to the mercurial Mehbooba(Mehbooba…Meh-booba).She pulled the rug and Ghulam Nabi fell.Even in abject disgrace he did not forget that he was a Ghulam.True to his masters,Meh-booba,Mufti,Syed et.al he revoked the order that they wanted revoked.What else do we expect of a Ghulam.Sajjad Lone and Mirwaiz, whose fathers have been killed by the same terrorists who they support today, celebrated and called it a victory.True,a victory it is.A victory of those who killed your fathers. A victory of those who both of you are so scared of that you cannot even say that they killed your father. A Victory Indeed.
Now as Ghulam Nabi counts his losses and faces heat in Jammu,the Kashmiri Muslims can celebrate because the only Sikh who does not deserve to have a Singh in his name is the Prime Minister.A Prime Minister who is a Ghulam in his own way to a Catholic.The Catholic who runs the nation through this Mohan has a clear design. Denigrate Hinduism and let Abrahmic religions rule the roost. The less we talk about the Home Minister the better it is.
And did we hear the Mirwaiz and his other stooges say,”Let the Pandits handle the Yatra”
It is ironic that in this hour of mayhem Mirwaiz remembers Pandits.It is communal powers like him and his ilk who forced minority Pandits to flee the valley by issuing threats from the very mosques that his father controlled at that time.Isn’t he even ashamed of saying “Give the Yatra to the Pandits to handle”.Where are the Pandits.The last count was 4000 Pandits in the valley.It was them who issued threats from blaring loudspeakers of the mosques asking Pandit Kafirs to leave.How come do they expect to even believe them? What political opportunism is this Mirwaiz ?
Why did he not say that the temple bill be passed and Pandits be given the powers to handle their temples and Shrines.Why did he not to the streets with his furious followers then?Why did he not raise the ante when hundreds of Pandit Shrines and temples were desecrated, destroyed and razed to ground.Did he remember us then? He alongside Syed Ali Shah Geelani has proved to be a rabble rouser and is responsible for the Islamisation of the Kashmir Valley. They are responsible for the loss of innocent lives by blowing up a trivial issue.The very premise of environmental degradation and demographic change fall flat in the face of a reasoned argument. What credibility can such a person’s statement have except to be trashed?
He has already paid a price for siding with the extremists? He should remember that the very Al-Umar Mujahideen he is believed to control maybe his nemesis. We wonder if he wants Pandits to control the Yatra just because he knows that they can be driven away anytime.Let him put his proposal in a hookah and smoke it out .
The Media especially the liberal,moderate,english media has played its part.They portrayed the rabble rousing Kashmiri Muslims as Greenpeace activists who were fighting for a just cause,while the Dogras and Pandits as rabble rousers.Of late they have simply blocked the news emanating out of Jammu.Hard as they may try the movement will not stop.
The Congress will pay a huge price for displeasing the Hindus.No more are Kashmiri Pandits sitting back in the quiet confines of their homes.With their Dogra brothers they are braving the curfew,the lathis and even the bullets.As the Ghulam tries his best to break the movement either by cutting off electricity in the night or by jamming mobiles,he should know that the Hindus have arisen.We will give him and his cronies a bloody nose and till the time the land is not given back to the SASB,the fight will go on.