tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71832581037128876372024-03-09T18:46:25.364-08:00Jammu Kashmir Stark RealitiesNegation of rights to religious minorities & bulldozing by violence prone Kashmiri Sunni majority. Violence in all the 3 regions. Dark Days Started for the Religious Minorities (Hindus/Sikhs/Buddhists/Christians/Shias) in J&K in 1947. Kashmir valley is Smaller than Goa (valley alone without Jammu & Ladakh) Precisely 75 KM in Length and 25 KM in width..YES....a tiny itsy bitsy piece of land.and this tiny 75*25 KM Land. And India is stuck in this blackhole! 0.345M PViews Anil KumarUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1401125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-79007750995982793792015-06-21T23:07:00.002-07:002015-06-21T23:07:37.680-07:00The Delhi Agreement, 1952<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: red;">The Delhi Agreement, 1952</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>source: <a href="http://jammukashmir.nic.in/">http://jammukashmir.nic.in</a></b></span></b></div>
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<b>After the Constituent Assembly of the State had taken important decisions referred to immediately above, it was deemed necessary to receive the concurrence of the Indian Government. Accordingly, the representatives of Kashmir Government conferred with the representatives of Indian Government and arrived at an agreement. This arrangement was later on known as the "Delhi Agreement, 1952". </b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">The main features of this agreeme</span>nt were: </b></div>
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<b>in view of the uniform and consistent stand taken up by the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly that sovereignty in all matters other than those specified in the Instrument of Accession continues to reside in the State, the Government of India agreed that, while the residuary powers of legislature vested in the Centre in respect of all states other than Jammu and Kashmir, in the case of the latter they vested in the State itself; </b></div>
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<li><b>it was agreed between the two Governments that in accordance with Article 5 of the Indian Constitution, persons who have their domicile in Jammu and Kashmir shall be regarded as citizens of India, but the State legislature was given power to make laws for conferring special rights and privileges on the ‘state subjects’ in view of the ‘State Subject Notifications of 1927 and 1932: the State legislature was also empowered to make laws for the ‘State Subjects’ who had gone to Pakistan on account of the communal disturbances of 1947, in the event of their return to Kashmir; </b></li>
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<b>as the President of India commands the same respect in the State as he does in other Units of India, Articles 52 to 62 of the Constitution relating to him should be applicable to the State. It was further agreed that the power to grant reprieves, pardons and remission of sentences etc; would also vest in the President of India' </b><b>the Union Government agreed that the State should have its own flag in addition to the Union flag, but it was agreed by the State Government that the State flag would not be a rival of the Union flag; it was also recognised that the Union flag should have the same status and position in Jammu and Kashmir as in the rest of India, but for historical reasons connected with the freedom struggle in the State, the need for continuance of the State flag was recognised </b><b>there was complete agreement with regard to the position of the Sadar-i-Riyasat; though the Sadar-i-Riyasat was to be elected by the State Legislature, he had to be recognised by the President of India before his installation as such; in other Indian States the Head of the State was appointed by the President and was as such his nominee but the person to be appointed as the Head, had to be a person acceptable to the Government of that State; no person who is not acceptable to the State Government can be thrust on the State as the Head. The difference in the case of Kashmir lies only in the fact that Sadar-i-Riyasat will in the first place be elected by the State legislature itself instead of being a nominee of the Government and the President of India. With regard to the powers and functions of the Sadar-i-Riyasat the following argument was mutually agreed upon</b></div>
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<li><b>the Head of the State shall be a person recognised by the President of the Union on the recommendations of the Legislature of the State;</b></li>
<li><b>he shall hold office during the pleasure of the President; </b></li>
<li><b>h</b><b>e may, by writing under his hand addressed to the President, resign his office; </b></li>
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<b>subject to the foregoing provisions, the Head of the State shall hold office for a term of five years from the date he enters upon his office; </b><br />
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<b>provided that he shall, notwithstanding the expiration of his term, continue to hold the office until his successor enters upon his office"</b></div>
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<b>with regard to the fundamental rights, some basic principles agreed between the parties were enunciated; it was accepted that the people of the State were to have fundamental rights. But in the view of the peculiar position in which the State was placed, the whole chapter relating to ‘Fundamental Rights’ of the Indian Constitution could not be made applicable to the State, the question which remained to be determined was whether the chapter on fundamental rights should form a part of the State Constitution of the Constitution of India as applicable to the State; </b></div>
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<b>with regard to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India, it was accepted that for the time being, owing to the existence of the Board of Judicial Advisers in the State, which was the highest judicial authority in the State, the Supreme Court should have only appellate jurisdiction; </b></div>
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<b>.there was a great deal of discussion with regard to the "Emergency Powers"; the Government of India insisted on the application of Article 352, empowering the President to proclaim a general emergency in the State; the State Government argued that in the exercise of its powers over defence (Item 1 on the Union List), in the event of war or external aggression, the Government of India would have full authority to take steps and proclaim emergency but the State delegation was, however, averse to the President exercising the power to proclaim a general emergency on account of internal disturbance.</b></div>
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<b>In order to meet the viewpoint of the State’s delegation, the Government of India agreed to the modification of Article 352 in its application to Kashmir by the addition of the following words: </b></div>
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<b>"but in regard to internal disturbance at the request or with the concurrence of the Government of the State."</b></div>
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<b>Both the parties agreed that the application of Article 356, dealing with suspension of the State Constitution and 360, dealing with financial emergency, was not necessary.</b></div>
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<b>The facts analysed above make it clear that the State of Jammu and Kashmir enjoys a special position in the Union of India, and this position of the State has been permitted by Article 2 of the Constitution itself. " In arriving at this arrangement", declared Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, "the main consideration before our Government was to secure a position for the State which would be consistent with the requirements of maximum autonomy for the local organs of the State power which are the ultimate source of authority in the State while discharging obligations as a Unit of the federation". </b></div>
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<b>The Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly discussed this arrangement and finally adopted a motion of approach on August 21, 1952. </b></div>
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<b>The agreement was discussed in the Union Parliament on August 7, 1952 and accepted. </b></div>
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<b>But inspite of all these discussions and decisions in the Kashmir Constituent Assembly, the implementation of the agreement was not forthcoming. This aroused suspicion in the minds of the public about the intentions of the leaders of the Government. In the working committee of the National Conference there was sharp criticism of the Government’s policy. There was a serious rift in the Cabinet itself. The difference of opinion reached a peak when Sheikh Abdullah, instead of implementing the agreement, started advocating secession, which would make Kashmir an ‘independent State’. The people of the State were quick to perceive the danger of such a course for they had seen that the tribal attack in 1947 which had caused much devastation was a direct consequence of Kashmir’s isolated position. There were ‘inflammatory rumours that United States was backing the Kashmir’s independence". Sheikh Abdullah was accused both by his colleagues in the Cabinet and by the public outside of trying to create a State for himself. In fact, three members of the Cabinet submitted a memorandum to Sheikh Abdullah accusing him of various charges. It soon became obvious that the capacity of the Administration to function efficiently was doubtful. The whole matter was spotlighted</b></div>
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<b>when the Sadar-i-Riyasat, who, taking cognisance of the situation, on August 8, 1953, dismissed Sheikh Abdullah from the post of Prime Minister of Kashmir and dissolved the Cabinet.</b></div>
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<b>Wrote Sadar-i Riyasat, to Sheikh Abdullah: </b></div>
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<b>"This conflict within the Cabinet has for a considerable time been causing great confusion and apprehension in the minds of the people of the State.... . I have been forced to the conclusion that the present Cabinet cannot continue in office any longer and hence I regret to inform you that I have dissolved the Council of Ministers headed by you."</b></div>
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<b>The relevant portion of the order of dismissal read: </b></div>
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<b>"I, Karan Singh, Sadar-i-Riyasat, functioning in the interests of the people of the State, who have reposed the responsibility and authority of the Headship of the State in me, do here dismiss Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, from the Prime Ministership of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and consequently the council of Ministers headed by him is dissolved forthwith."</b></div>
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<b>On the same day in order to "avoid a political and administrative vacuum", the Sadar-i-Riyasat invited Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, the erstwhile Deputy Prime Minister, to form the new Cabinet. </b></div>
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<b>On 9th August, 1953, Sheikh Abdullah was arrested at "Gulmarg", a health resort about twenty-eight miles from Srinagar valley, under the State Preventive Detention Act. He was released four years later in 1958 but was shortly re-arrested on a charge of "Conspiracy to overthrow the Government". His followers and well wishers including the then Revenue Minister were arrested with him. A case against him and a few others was tried in the Court of Special Magistrate in Jammu. </b></div>
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<b>A lot of confusion arose on account of Sheikh Abdullah’s dismissal, since there had not been any ‘No Confidence’ motion in the Kashmir Assembly. It is true that a Chief Minister is not generally dismissed, if he enjoys the confidence of the House, but it has also to be accepted that the head of the State is obliged to ensure the continuance of a stable government and if he has reasonable grounds to believe that the Chief Minister has lost the confidence of the people, or if he is engaged intreasonable activities he must replace him. </b></div>
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<b>At the time when Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed and arrested, the Assembly was not in session, so a ‘No Confidence’ motion could not have been discussed. But it was important that the new ministry should have a vote of confidence from the Assembly in the first session. Accordingly, the Sadar-i-Riyasat wrote to Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad when inviting him to form the new Cabinet, "the continuance in office of the new Cabinet will depend upon its securing a vote of confidence from the Legislative Assembly during its coming session." The State legislature met on October 5,1953, and passed a unanimous vote of confidence in the new Cabinet.</b></div>
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<b>The National Confernece had earlier approved the change of Government. A Convention of about 400 delegates from the National Conference throughout the State met in Srinagar from September 13-15, 1953 and approved the change of Government as ‘inevitable in the interest of the country and the national movement,’ and expressed complete confidence in the new government, promising their fullest co-operation. </b></div>
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<b>In spite of this some friends of Sheikh Abdullah kept on criticising the new Government. Miss Sarabhai criticised the Government of India for its indifference to the events in Kashmir. The present writer submits that since the internal autonomy of the State had been recognised, therefore, the Government of India could not interfere. Moreover, since the Article 256 of the Indian Constitution, which empowers the Union Government to issue directions to the State Government for the running of the administration in the State was not applicable to Kashmir, the Government of India could not intervene in the matter. "This was an internal matter and we did not wish to interfere" replied Mr. Nehru to a question in the Lok Sabha. </b></div>
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<b>In Pakistan, however, the events in Kashmir provoked a wave of indignation. There were accusations against India of having overthrown Sheikh Abdullah, "until then a quisling in the opinion of the Pakistanis but who, now, through a twist of history not without its" comical aspects had become a martyr in the struggle of Kashmiris. But this propaganda in Pakistan was met with sharp criticism in Kashmir. In the September Convention of the National Conference the members opposed association with the ‘ruling clique of Pakistan’ and regretted their behaviour. </b></div>
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<b>Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad immediately upon taking the oath of office, went before the microphone to make a policy statement. <i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: orange;">In his statement he bitterly deplored the idea of an ‘independent Kashmir’ under the patronage of the United States of America, which he said "would be a threat to the freedom and independence of Indian and Pakistani people. He praised India with which Kashmir had entered into "indissoluble links". </span></span></i></b></div>
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<b>With his coming into power, the formulation of Constitutional relations between Kashmir and India entered a new phase. The work of the Constituent Assembly started afresh with renewed phase. The work of the Constituent Assembly started afresh with renewed vigour. ‘Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights and Citizenship’ and "Basic Principles Committee" were set up on 20th October, 1953. </b></div>
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<b>The Assembly met on February 6th, 1954, and adopted the reports of the "Basic Principles Committee on Fundamental Rights," thereby fulfilling one of the major tasks with which it had been charged. </b></div>
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<b>The ‘Drafting Committee’ presented its report on February 12th, 1954, and the report was adopted on February 15th, 1954. The adoption of this report embodied the ratification of the State’s Accession to India.</b></div>
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<b>source: <a href="http://jammukashmir.nic.in/">http://jammukashmir.nic.in</a></b></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-36779607101807097042013-07-09T22:12:00.001-07:002013-07-09T22:12:20.161-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-84163172401334075162013-07-09T22:00:00.001-07:002013-07-09T22:00:39.423-07:00Kiran's Thoughts.. As Is: Jammu and Kashmir: Injustices and Myths<a href="http://kiranasis.blogspot.com/2012/01/jammu-and-kashmir-injustices-and-myths.html?spref=bl">Kiran's Thoughts.. As Is: Jammu and Kashmir: Injustices and Myths</a>: The first image that comes to most minds when they hear the 'K' word for Kashmir, is the lack of peace. Depending upon which side of...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-48801436044342409072013-01-14T10:06:00.000-08:002013-01-14T10:06:03.745-08:00Nehru, Abdullah betrayed Maharaja Hari Singh By Sandhya Jain <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.niticentral.com/2013/01/nehru-abdullah-betrayed-raja-hari-singh.html">http://www.niticentral.com/2013/01/nehru-abdullah-betrayed-raja-hari-singh.html</a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Nehru, Abdullah betrayed Maharaja Hari Singh</span></div>
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By Sandhya Jain on January 13, 2013</div>
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Tags: Jammu and Kashmir, Jawaharlal Nehru, indian history, louis mountbatten</div>
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The duplicitous games played with the only monarch who embraced Indian nationalism long before freedom could be seen on the horizon, whose accession retained India’s civilisational and geographical link with the land of sage Kashyap, is best gauged from his anguished letter to President Rajendra Prasad on 16-17 August 1952, three days before the monarch was abruptly abolished.</div>
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The 9000-odd word missive details the treachery of the Delhi durbar, choreographed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah; Louis Mountbatten had moved on after initiating the State’s ruination. That such an important historical document is untraceable in the collected works of Indian statesmen is a telling commentary on how State-funded historians have fiddled with the history and memory of the Indian people. The integrity of such collections can be restored only by making every letter public, so that the nation can assess the heroes, villains and knaves for itself.</div>
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Writing from exile in Poona, Hari Singh informed the President that since his accession to the throne in 1925, the British had strengthened their hold on the State due to its great strategic importance. Hari Singh incurred their wrath as he tried to curtail their domination.</div>
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They instigated a religious rebellion in 1931 with slogans like ‘Down with Hindu Raj’ and ‘Islam in danger’; its key leaders like Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas and Maulvi Yusuf Shah received official posts in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. Within the kingdom, the leaders gained Congress cooperation by calling themselves ‘National Conference’. In 1947, Mountbatten hinted that the Maharaja join Pakistan, while the Government of India’s attitude was desultory.</div>
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In September 1947, Hari Singh was asked to appoint Mehr Chand Mahajan as Prime Minister; the latter was briefed by Sardar Patel and promised full cooperation. But on October 21, 1947, Patel wrote to MC Mahajan saying that Sheikh Abdullah (released from prison) was anxious to help the State deal with the troubles and wanted his hands strengthened. Nehru penned a similar letter to Mahajan, urging formation of a provincial government headed by Abdullah, the “most popular person in Kashmir”. Nehru urged withholding accession to India till such Interim Government was installed in the State. (Accession finally happened on October 26-27 in well-known circumstances).</div>
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Nehru again pressed Hari Singh for Abdullah’s elevation on November 13, 1947. On December 9, 1947, Minister without Portfolio, N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, urged immediate changes in the State’s constitutional and administrative set up, and sent a draft Proclamation approved by Abdullah, for Hari Singh to issue. Gopalaswami insisted on the matter on March 1, 1948, claiming Sheikh was vital to India’s case in the Security Council. Nudged by Nehru, Abdullah made some polite noises and on March 5, 1948, the Maharaja issued the Proclamation referred to in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.</div>
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Between March 1948 and April 1949 when he was forced to quit the State, Hari Singh complained that Sheikh Abdullah and his party assumed total control, ignoring the king and directly securing the consent of the Government of India for whatever they wished. Sheikh objected when the Maharaja and his wife began touring the State to interact with the people and got Delhi to make the Maharaja quit the State ‘for a few months’.</div>
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The Yuvraj was appointed Regent, but reduced to a figurehead. The Proclamation of March 1948 stipulated appointment of a Dewan and reserved subjects, yet Abdullah subverted this repeatedly with Nehru’s backing. Hari Singh’s record of this constitutional sabotage makes painful reading even today as the nation reels in shock at the brutal mutilation of its brave jawans defending its difficult borders.</div>
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After the king’s eviction, Sheikh Abdullah aspired for absolute control. In a frontal attack on the Maharaja, he began interfering with his private properties, including administration of the Dharmarth Trust created by the dynasty of which Hari Singh was sole Trustee. Charities and institutions maintained from Trust revenues were starved of funds, costs of Puja in temples and Devasthans denied, and the Jammu branch of the Imperial Bank of India ordered to deny the Trustee the amounts of the fixed deposits of the Trust and to transfer the deposits to its Bombay Office! This single episode is the best instance of how Nehruvian secularism would unravel in independent India. Even now, there should be an inquiry into whose orders made the bank act in this manner.</div>
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By far the worst was Sheikh Abdullah’s slander – repeated by Nehru in an exceedingly rude letter to the Maharaja – that Hari Singh ran away to Jammu when the invasion began, when the truth is that he left on October 25 at the urging of VP Menon and in the larger interests of the State as the raiders were already at Baramulla. It was Sheikh Abdullah who fled from Srinagar for Delhi (and Nehru’s home) and did not return till Indian troops started landing in Srinagar.</div>
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In November 1950, Vishnu Sahay urged the Maharaja to set up a Constituent Assembly for the State, as foreshadowed in the March 1948 Proclamation, and now demanded by the National Conference. A draft Proclamation was sent for the Maharaja’s comments.</div>
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Hari Singh objected to this manner of setting up the Constituent Assembly as he was the properly constituted authority in law to promulgate the Proclamation, and not the Regent (Yuvraj). He felt the powers and functions of the Constituent Assembly should be express, well-defined and accurately worded and exclude from its purview matters not expressly entrusted to it. It should report to the authority that constitutes it, i.e. the ruler who shall seek the advice of the Parliament of India in the matter. But ultimately, the Maharaja was forced to permit the Yuvraj to set up the Constituent Assembly.</div>
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Warning the President of the dangers ahead, the Maharaja said the Indian Government had failed to appreciate the legal position; Nehru was taking it for granted that the relevant Articles, particularly Article 370, of the Indian Constitution can be altered and/or amended to suit Sheikh Abdullah. But Article 370 refers specifically to the Maharaja’s Proclamation of March 5, 1948. That is the law which governs the State of Jammu and Kashmir until a new Constitution is framed, approved and adopted not only by the Constituent Assembly of the State but also approved by the King and then by the President of India. But Nehru asked the Yuvraj (who is acting only as Regent) to become the elected Head of State with immediate effort, even before the State Constitution was framed, let alone approved and adopted. He thus deposed the king and the dynasty.</div>
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How, the aggrieved king asked the President, could the Government of India take all these steps over the head of the person on whose authority they entered the State and are continuing there and who was the Chief Author of the Proclamation on which is based the future construction of political set up in the country? Despite acting in good faith on the advice of the Indian Government, Mountbatten, Nehru, Patel and Gopalaswami, and despite Abdullah’s promises and assurances, he was eliminated by a process which was neither fair nor honourable. “Only history and posterity will be able to do justice to our respective points of view,” Hari Singh concluded. Perhaps the time for this has arrived.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-16387228878330077422012-05-25T05:38:00.001-07:002012-05-25T05:38:22.687-07:00M Yusuf Buch, a Pakistani expert involved in the Kashmir dispute right from the start has dubbed his country's stand as "unsound" stressing that these resolutions have "no importance at all."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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M Yusuf Buch, a Pakistani expert involved in the Kashmir dispute right from the start has dubbed his country's stand as "unsound" stressing that these resolutions have "no importance at all."<br />
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3 June 2000<br />
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<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/in/jalnews/03061.html">http://www.angelfire.com/in/jalnews/03061.html</a>
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From Jal Khambata<br />
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NEW DELHI: In a stunning blow to Pakistan always relying on the two UN Security Council resolutions on plebiscite in Kashmir as the bedrock of its case, a Pakistani expert involved in the Kashmir dispute right from the start has dubbed his country's stand as "unsound" stressing that these resolutions have "no importance at all."<br />
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The expert is 74-year old M Yusuf Buch, whose opinion gains an immediate relevance in the context of Pakistan angrily reacting to External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh's assertion in a CNN interview on May 31 that the UN resolutions required Pakistan to withdraw all its troops from Jammu and Kashmir for other "necessary actions" to follow.<br />
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The News, an independent English daily of Pakistan, says: "For those who may not know or may have forgotten, there is no greater authority on Kashmir than M Yusuf Buch who has been involved in it from the very start. Since 1953, barring the five years that he was in Pakistan as Zulfiqar Ali Bhotto's special assistant, he has been at the UN. Every major speech made on Kashmir from the '50s through the '70s (from Pakistan side) has had an input by Buch, if not entirely his work. His knowledge of Kashmir at the UN is encyclopaedic and his insights original. It is, therefore, important to know what his thoughts on Kashmir today are. Buch is just 24 years older than the Kashmir dispute."<br />
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Buch was asked where do the Security Council resolutions on Kashmir stand today? His reply:<br />
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"The UN Security Council resolutions have no importance at all. To date, the counsil has accepted 1,100 resolutions, out of which only two are important, both passed under Chapter 7, while Kashmir and the rest of the 1,100 were passed under Chapter 6 which does not oblige the council to take action."<br />
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When reminded that Pakistan's entire stand consists of the Security Council resolutions being implemented, Buch remarked: "This demand is unsound. When we make this demand, we are told that the Security Council has passed 1,100 resolutions. What is so special about those involving Kashmir. ...As for the resolutions, they are no more than non-binding recommendations."<br />
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Buch was referring to the two Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, resulting in the UN's intervention in case of the liberation of the island of East Timor from Indonesia and in another dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy settled in favour of Italy through a referendum.<br />
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He went on to explain: "The real thing is not these (Kashmir) resolutions but the international agreement which formed the basis of these resolutions. Not all Security Council resolutions were passed with the consent of the contending parties. The resolutions on Kashmir were passed with the consent of India and Pakistan and thus they are in the nature of an international agreement."<br />
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Pakistan's Foreign Office has dug out a report submitted to the UN Security Council by Sir Owen Dixon, the UN representative for India and Pakistan on September 15, 1950 to assert that it were India and not Pakistan that had derailed the UN resolutions for solution to the Kashmir dispute.<br />
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The Dixon report had concluded: "In the end, I became convinced that India's agreement would never be obtained to demilitarization in any form or to provisions governing the period of plebiscite of any such character as would, in my opinion, permit the plebiscite being conducted in conditions sufficiently guarding against intimidation and other forms of influence and abuse by which the freedom and fairness of the plebiscite might be imperilled."<br />
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While Pakistan's Foreign Office asserts that the Security Council resolution adopted on December 23, 1952 did not call for complete demilitarisation as it provided for "between 3,000-6,000 armed forces remaining on the Pakistani side and 12,000-18,000 remaining on the Indian side of the ceasefire line," Buch points out that the plebiscite was derailed by Pakistan itself by objecting to India being allowed to station more troops than Pakistan and did not agree to the suggestion of Graham, who was to conduct the exercise as the UN administrator, that this question could be taken up after all arrangements for a plebiscite were in place."<br />
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Moreover, Pakistan lost its case for plebiscite soon thereafter by joining the US security pacts and then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was quick in asserting that these alignments had changed the situation. Buch says: "Nehru found a lot of world support for this stand, in the same way as Nawaz Sharif found it for his agreement with Vajpayee. Pakistan's Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra called Nehru his elder brother and Nehru took advantage of this and Kashmir was consigned to the cold storage."<br />
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Buch also points out how Pakistan blundered again in 1965. "If we had taken advantage of the Chinese ultimatum and continued the war for some time, perhaps in six months a plebiscite in Kashmir could have taken place."<br />
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His particular stress on treating the two toothless UN Security Council resolutions of 1949 and 1952 as "international agreements" shows how they got superseded once India and Pakistan signed fresh agreements. He is particularly critical of the Tashkent accord which he is convinced should not have been signed because while the 1965 war was in progress, France initiated a move in the Security Council that after cessation of hostilities, an effort should get underway to settle all disputes between India and Pakistan. "Tashkent overtook that initiative which remained stillborn," says Buch.<br />
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Going by his argument, the latest agreement that superseded all previous agreements is the Simla agreement signed between Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi and if Pakistan wants to modify its position, it should enter into negotiations with India, the other party. So far, both India and Pakistan vow to abide by the Simla agreement which prohibits any third party intervention and as such Pakistan has been only breaching this agreement by words and deeds by repeatedly harping on the UN resolutions which are now deadwood and calling for the third party intervention to resolve the Kashmir dispute.<br />
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Buch also blames Pakistan for sabotaging the "freedom movement" of Kashmiris. He blames Ziaul Haq for having placed the Jamaat Islami at the head of the Kashmir resistance movement, whereas it was the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front which had really fought for freedom. Buch's regret is that "the Jamaat liquidated leading JKLF figures, men who were legends in Kashmir."<br />
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While India has allowed the ban on JKLF to lapse early this year, the JKLF's supreme commander Amanulla Khan was lying under detention in a Pakistan prison since last year after he advocated an end to militancy by transfer of both Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to the UN trusteeship for 15 years and India and Pakistan jointly taking care of the region with regards to defence, currency and external affairs for these many years before conducting a plebiscite to decide the fate of Kashmiris.<br />
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Amanullah Khan, who is out of the Pakistan jail after long detention, continues to criticise Pakistan for sabotaging what he describes as Kashmiris' "liberation movement." He was quoted by The News stating that "Pakistan-based militant organisations are a big threat to the identity of Kashmir and have damaged the ongoing liberation movement." Regretting that the presence of foreign militants in Kashmir has projected the Kashmir movement as a terrorist movement, he said only Kashmiris can resolve the present crisis in the valley.<br />
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In a related article in another Pakistani daily, Nation, Brig. (retd) A R Siddiqui has quoted from an out-of-print book "Danger in Kashmir" written by Josef Korbel, the then Chairman of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP). Korbel, an ethnic Czech who had immigrated to the United States in the late '50s, is father of the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The book shows how Korbel got frustrated in his efforts to the extent that he had even ruled out the possibility of the plebiscite ever. In his book, Korbel writes: "...the Commission reluctantly not only abandoned the prospect of any immediate ceasefire arrangement, but alas and even more discouraging, began to doubt the possibility of ever being able to arrange an impartial plebiscite." END<br />
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http://www.angelfire.com/in/jalnews/03061.html<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-69749522191699518552012-05-24T10:10:00.000-07:002012-05-24T10:10:11.831-07:00National Panthers Party reject the report of the Union Home Minister released today in the name of Interlocutors.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
National Panthers Party<br />
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New Delhi, 24th May, 2012<br />
Press Release<br />
Prof. Bhim Singh, Chairman-NPP and Member-NIC described the report of three-Musketeers (the so-called Interlocutors) as another fraud by the Home Minister of India with the nationalist, secular and oppressed people in J&K. This report has been made public to divert the attention of the people and the press from the rising anger of the people against the Price Hike of Petrol.<br />
Three-Musketeers were sent to Kashmir in a conspiracy to sterilize the ground situation in Kashmir to save Omar Abdullah from the wrath of school going stone pelters who were fed up with his computers fiddling. It is shocking that over 50 crores of rupees were wasted for the pleasures of three-musketeers only to develop eyewash blinding powder which they failed to do.<br />
NPP Chief said that the report submitted by the Interlocutors has insulted and disgraced the souls of Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah, Afzal Beg and another who signed the final documents with the Govt. of Ms. Indira Gandhi which dumped the autonomy demand into the graveyard and Sheikh Abdullah gladly reconciled to be the Chief Minister. That was the end of the so-called autonomy jargon. The Interlocutors attempt to please Chidambaram and Abdullahs in demanding to constitute a special Constituent Committee to consider all the post 1953 laws promulgated in J&K is a challenge to the integrity of J&K as part of the Union.<br />
The so-called report is loaded with anti-Jammu and anti-Ladakh bias and full of discrimination against the people of Jammu Pradesh and Ladakh. In other words the report is anti-Jammu Pradesh, anti-Ladakh, anti-Pakistani refugees, anti-POK refugees, anti-refugees of 1965 from Chhamb and that of 1971. It is anti-Jammu migrants from Poonch, Rajouri, Doda, Reasi, Kathua who have been languishing in the stinking and starving camps in spite of the judgments of the Supreme Court to provide them adequate relief. NPP Chief said the report is coloured in communal bias prompted by NC as it willfully chose word, ‘pluralism’ instead of ‘secularism’. This is for the knowledge of the national leaders that word’ ‘secularism’ has been omitted deliberately in the J&K Constitution.<br />
The NPP Chief described the recommendation of three-musketeers to set-up regional councils in Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu Pradesh as another gimmick with the people. NPP Chief regretted that the Interlocutors had completely ignored the most popular and acceptable demand for Reorganisation of J&K.<br />
The Interlocutors had deliberately avoided the word, ‘occupation’ vis-a-is POK and described occupied J&K as Pak-administered areas. This was done to please the ISI, the Union Home Minister and Abdullahs.<br />
In a video conference with the NPP legislators, M/s. Harsh Dev Singh, Balwant Singh Mankotia, Yashpaul Kundal and Syed Mohd. Rafiq Shah and other members of the secretariat Prof. Bhim Singh, the Chairman appreciated unanimous stand taken by JKNPP to reject the report of the Union Home Minister released today in the name of Interlocutors.<br />
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Sudesh Dogra, Political Secretary<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-71334720325088233612012-04-16T10:48:00.000-07:002012-04-16T10:48:03.874-07:00What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of ‘azadi’</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/2010/08/06210254/What-ails-Kashmir-The-Sunni-i.html?h=B">http://www.livemint.com/2010/08/06210254/What-ails-Kashmir-The-Sunni-i.html?h=B</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We know what Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn’t an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yes, but Hurriyat rejects elections. Why? Because ballots have no azadi option.But why can’t the azadi demand be made by democratically elected leaders? Because elections are rigged through the Indian Army. Why is the Indian Army out in Srinagar and not in Surat? Because Kashmiris want azadi.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Let’s try that again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">What do Kashmiris want freedom from? India’s Constitution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">What is offensive about India’s Constitution? It is not Islamic. This is the issue, let us be clear.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The violence in Srinagar isn’t for democratic self-rule because Kashmiris have that. The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hurriyat deceives the world by using a universal word, azadi, to push a narrow, religious demand. Kashmiris have no confusion about what azadi means: It means Shariah. Friday holidays, amputating thieves’ hands, abolishing interest, prohibiting alcohol (and kite-flying), stoning adulterers, lynching apostates and all the rest of it that comprises the ideal Sunni state.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not one Shia gang terrorizes India; terrorism on the subcontinent is a Sunni monopoly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is a token Shia among the Hurriyat’s bearded warriors, but it is essentially a Sunni group pursuing Sunni Shariah. Its most important figure is Umar Farooq. He’s called mirwaiz, meaning head of preachers (waiz), but he inherited his title at 17 and actually is no Islamic scholar. He is English-educated, but his base is Srinagar’s sullen neighbourhood of Maisuma, at the front of the stone-pelting. His following is conservative and, since he has little scholarship, he is unable to bend his constituents to his view.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hurriyat’s modernists are led by Sopore’s 80-year-old Ali Geelani of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat was founded in 1941 by a brilliant man from Maharashtra called Maududi, who invented the structure of the modern Islamic state along the lines of a Communist one. Maududi opposed Jinnah’s tribal raid in Kashmir, which led to the Line of Control, saying jihad could only be prosecuted formally by a Muslim state, and not informally by militias. This wisdom was discarded later, and Hizb al-Mujahideen, starring Syed Salahuddin of cap and beard fame, is a Jamaat unit. Maududi was ecumenical, meaning that he unified the four Sunni groups of thought. He always excluded Shias, as heretics.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Kashmiri separatist movement is actually inseparable from Sunni fundamentalism. Those on the Hurriyat’s fringes who say they are Gandhians, like Yasin Malik, are carried along by the others in the group so long as the immediate task of resisting India is in common. But the Hurriyat and its aims are ultimately poisonous, even for Muslims.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Hurriyat Conference’s idea of freedom unfolds from a religious instinct, not a secular sentiment. This instinct is sectarian, and all the pro-azadi groups are Shia-killers. In promoting their hatred, the groups plead for the support of other Muslims by leaning on the name of the Prophet Muhammad.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hafiz is a title and means memorizer of the Quran. Mohammed Saeed’s Lashkar Tayyaba means army of Tyeb (“the good”), one of the Prophet’s names. This is incorrectly spelled and pronounced by our journalists as “Taiba” or “Toiba”, but Muslims can place the name. Lashkar rejects all law from sources other than the recorded sayings and actions of Muhammad. This is called being Wahhabi, and Wahhabis detest the Shia.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jaish Muhammad (Muhammad’s army) was founded in a Karachi mosque, and it is linked to the Shia-killing Sipah Sahaba (Army of Muhammad’s First Followers) in Pakistan’s Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab. The group follows a narrow, anti-Shia doctrine developed in Deoband.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Decades of non-interference by the Pakistani state in the business of Kashmiri separatism has led to a loss of internal sovereignty in Pakistan. The state is no longer able to convince its citizens that it should act against these groups. Though their own Shia are regularly butchered, a poll shows that a quarter of Pakistanis think Lashkar Tayyaba does good work. We think Indian Muslims are different from Pakistanis and less susceptible to fanaticism. It is interesting that within Pakistan, the only group openly and violently opposed to Taliban and terrorism are UP and Bihar migrants who form Karachi’s secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So what do the separatist groups want? It is wrong to see them as being only terrorist groups. They operate in an intellectual framework, and there is a higher idea that drives the violence. This is a perfect state with an executive who is pious, male and Sunni. Such a state, where all is done according to the book, will get God to shower his blessings on the citizens, who will all be Sunnis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are three types of Sunnis in Kashmir. Unionists, separatists, and neutrals. Unionists, like Omar Abdullah, are secular and likely to be repelled by separatism because they have seen the damage caused by political Islam in Pakistan. They might not be in love with Indians, but they see the beauty of the Indian Constitution. Neutrals, like Mehbooba Mufti, are pragmatic and will accept the Indian Constitution when in power, though they show defiance when out of it. This is fine, because they respond to a Muslim constituency that is uncertain, but isn’t totally alienated. The longer these two groups participate in democracy in Kashmir, the weaker the separatists become. The current violence is a result of this. Given their boycott of politics, the Hurriyat must rally its base by urging them to violence and most of it happens in Maisuma and Sopore. The violence should also clarify the problem in the minds of neutrals: If Kashmiri rule does not solve the azadi problem, what will?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">India’s liberals are defensive when debating Kashmir because of our unfulfilled promise on plebiscite. But they shouldn’t be. There is really no option to secular democracy, whether one chooses it through a plebiscite or whether it is imposed. It is a universal idea and there is no second form of government in any culture or religion that works. The Islamic state is utopian and it never arrives. Since it is driven by belief, however, the search becomes quite desperate.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">India has a constitution; Pakistan has editions. These are the various Pakistani constitutions: 1935 (secular), 1956 (federal), 1962 (dictatorial), 1973 (parliamentary), 1979 (Islamic), 1999 (presidential), 2008 (parliamentary). Why do they keep changing and searching? Muslims keep trying to hammer in Islamic bits into a set of laws that is actually quite complete. This is the Government of India Act of 1935, gifted to us by the British.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kashmiris have it, and perhaps at some point they will learn to appreciate its beauty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Aakar Patel will take a break from his column to write a book. He will return early next year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-32564454457119162142012-04-14T18:37:00.001-07:002012-04-14T18:38:39.180-07:00कश्मीर और जम्मू-कश्मीर के इस अन्तर को हमेशा छुपाया क्यों गया है<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBXZwHQTWDxBqjDt1I0O1FZqps0zsrekhKOTLgGjvrv8su5wonTQ4ffjPlBSmvH5LD7GN-GHb58YYnHoOvPYhTNgtFAPmA4YVbicTZgO_uoq0h-9mK-9tc7Gy06fDmTsBABBWzDvvqYq-9/s1600/523700_10151497315490224_10150118710290224_23986676_801969193_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBXZwHQTWDxBqjDt1I0O1FZqps0zsrekhKOTLgGjvrv8su5wonTQ4ffjPlBSmvH5LD7GN-GHb58YYnHoOvPYhTNgtFAPmA4YVbicTZgO_uoq0h-9mK-9tc7Gy06fDmTsBABBWzDvvqYq-9/s1600/523700_10151497315490224_10150118710290224_23986676_801969193_n.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>कश्मीर बहुत छोटा है आज़ादी के लिए भूटान के दसवें हिस्से जितने क्षेत्रफल वाले लैंड लाक्ड आजाद देश से न भारत का भला होगा न कश्मीरी मुसलमानों का. कश्मीरियों की यह आम शिकायत रहती है कि शेष भारत वाले कश्मीर और कश्मीरियों को सही से समझते नहीं। किसी हद तक यह सही भी है। कश्मीर के विषय में कई मिथकों में से एक मिथक यह तोड़ने की आवश्यकता है कि कश्मीर भारत का एक उत्तरी राज्य है। जी नहीं, कश्मीर एक राज्य नहीं बल्कि जम्मू कश्मीर राज्य का एक छोटा सा हिस्सा है – 6.98 प्रतिशत हिस्सा। यहाँ तक कि यह कहना भी ग़लत है कि “कश्मीर से कन्या कुमारी तक भारत एक है”, क्योंकि कश्मीर तो भारत का सब से उत्तरी भाग है ही नहीं। वह श्रेय लद्दाख सूबे को जाता है। और यदि भारत का आधिकारिक मानचित्र देखा जाए तो गिलगित और अक्साइ-चिन उससे भी उत्तर में हैं। न लद्दाख, न गिलगित, न अक्साइ चिन कश्मीर का हिस्सा हैं। जिस क्षेत्र को पाकिस्तान आज़ाद कश्मीर कहता है, और हम पाक-अधिकृत कश्मीर, वह क्षेत्र भी दरअसल कश्मीर नहीं है। यह लेख प्रयास है यह बतलाने कि इन अंतरों को समझना क्यों ज़रूरी है, विशेषकर जब कश्मीर घाटी में इतना हंगामा हो रहा है। </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">राजनीतिक शतरंज के खिलाड़ियों ने कश्मीर की भौगौलिक स्थिति और सीमाओं को लेकर हमेशा एक भ्रामक स्थिति बनाए रखी। आम तौर पर जब लोगों से पूछा जाता है कि कश्मीर कहाँ है, तो वे कहते हैं, “यह रहा” और भारत के मानचित्र के “सिर” की ओर इशारा करते हैं, जैसा कि ऊपर दिये मानचित्र में काले बाणचिह्न से दिखाया गया है। पर वास्तव में वे सचाई से कोसों दूर हैं। इसी नक्शे में लाल बाणचिह्नों के द्वारा लेखक ने कश्मीर की सही स्थिति और सीमा दिखाई है। ऊपर दिए नक्शे में भारत की सरकारी रूप से मान्य सीमाएँ दिखाई गई हैं, और कश्मीर क्षेत्र को लाल रेखाओं द्वारा रेखांकित किया गया है। यदि आप एक “बाहर वाले” के नज़रिए से देखना चाहें तो विकिपीडिया का दाएँ दिया नक्शा देखें — इसे क्लिक कर बड़े आकार में देखा जा सकता है। कश्मीर घाटी की सीमाएँ इस नक्शे में भी लाल रेखाओं द्वारा दिखाई गई हैं।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">आप पूछेंगे कि कश्मीर और जम्मू-कश्मीर राज्य में भला क्या अन्तर है? यूँ समझें कि सारा झगड़ा कश्मीर का है जम्मू-कश्मीर का नहीं। कश्मीर सुन्नी-मुस्लिम बहुल है, राज्य के अन्य भाग नहीं। कश्मीर में “गो इंडिया गो” का नारा लग रहा है, जबकि राज्य के अन्य भाग भारतीय होने में खुश हैं। कश्मीर जम्मू-कश्मीर का एक छोटा सा हिस्सा है। पर कश्मीर की परिभाषा क्या है? अच्छा हो कि कश्मीरियों से ही पूछा जाए। कश्मीरी भाषा में घाटी से बाहर के क्षेत्र को “न्यबर” कहा जाता है, यानी बाहर या परदेस। कश्मीर उस जम्मू-कश्मीर राज्य का एक छोटा सा हिस्सा है, जो जम्मू, लद्दाख और कश्मीर को मिला कर बना है। राज्य के तीन सूबे हैं जिनमें कश्मीर सूबा सब से छोटा है। और इस छोटू ने ही सब की नाक में दम कर रखा है। इस क्षेत्र में केवल तीन जिले थे — अनन्तनाग, बारामुल्ला और श्रीनगर, जिन्हें अब दस छोटे जिलों में बाँट दिया गया है।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">इसी छोटे से क्षेत्र ने पिछले 63 वर्षों में इस इलाके की राजनीति पर अपना बोलबाला कायम किया है। कश्मीर और जम्मू-कश्मीर के इस अन्तर को हमेशा छुपाया क्यों गया है, और इस अन्तर को उजागर करना क्यों आवश्यक है? दरअसल राज्य का यही छोटा हिस्सा भारत के लिए दर्दे-सर बना हुआ है, क्योंकि इस मुस्लिम बहुल क्षेत्र ने पूरे राज्य को और पूरे क्षेत्र को अपहृत कर रखा है। राज्य का यह भाग जो राज्य का केवल 7% है, स्वयं को एक गैर मुस्लिम देश का भाग मानने में आनाकानी करता है।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">राज्य के दक्षिण में जम्मू है, जो हिन्दू-बहुल है, जहाँ के लोग पंजाब-हिमाचल जैसे हैं, और उत्तर में लद्दाख है जहाँ बौद्ध और शिया मुस्लिम रहते हैं, कुछ कुछ तिब्बत से मिलता जुलता। दोनों क्षेत्रों को भारत का भाग होने में कोई दिक्कत नहीं है। केवल कश्मीर है, जहाँ गैर-मुस्लिमों के पलायन के बाद अब 97% आबादी मुसलमानों की है। यही वह हिस्सा है जो आग का गोला बना हुआ है। वह खूबसूरत वादी, जिसे कभी जन्नत कहा जाता था, और जिसे अलगाववाद ने जहन्नुम में तब्दील कर दिया गया है। इसी क्षेत्र के अधिकांश वासी इस छोटे से क्षेत्र के लिए आज़ादी की माँग कर रहे हैं। इस राज्य की विविधता, भारत की विविधता में तो घुलमिल जाएगी, पर हरे-झंडे ले लेकर पत्थर बरसाते अलगाववादियों के कश्मीर में कैसे चलेगी?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> पाक अधिकृत “कश्मीर” में न कश्मीरी रहते हैं, न वहाँ कश्मीरी बोली जाती है। वहाँ बोली जाने वाली भाषाओं में से एक भी भाषा कश्मीरी से नहीं मिलती जुलती। जाहिर है कि नियन्त्रण रेखा ने किसी परिवार को विभाजित नहीं किया। इस खेल के हर खिलाड़ी के लिए महाराजा हरिसिंह की इस रियासत के ईंट-रोड़े को इकट्ठा रखना एक राजनैतिक मजबूरी रही है — चाहे वह कहीं की ईंट हो कहीं का रोड़ा। जम्मू, कश्मीर और लद्दाख में कुछ भी एक सा नहीं है, सिवाय इसके कि यह तीनों सूबे एक ही राजा के अन्तर्गत थे। हर क्षेत्र की अपनी वांशिकता है, अपना मज़हब, अपनी भौगोलिक स्थिति और प्रवृति, अपनी जलवायु, अपनी संस्कृति और अपनी भाषा। देश में किसी भी राज्य में इतनी विविधता नहीं है।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">यहाँ तक कि 1950 के दशक में देश का भाषाई पुनर्गठन तो हुआ पर इस राज्य को नहीं छुआ गया, क्योंकि इसे विशेष स्टेटस हासिल था। भारत शायद इस राज्य को इसलिए इकट्ठा रखना चाहता है कि जम्मू और लद्दाख कश्मीर और शेष भारत के बीच गोंद का काम करें। भारत को लगता है कि राज्य का विभाजन किया तो देश का विभाजन दूर नहीं होगा। पाकिस्तान भी जम्मू-कश्मीर का नाम एक साथ लेता है ताकि वह पूरे राज्य पर अपना दावा ठोक सके और नौबत पड़ने पर शायद हिन्दू क्षेत्रों की सौदेबाजी कर सके।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">शायद इसी कारण वे अपने हथियाए हुए इलाके को AJK (आज़ाद जम्मू कश्मीर) कहते हैं, जो न आज़ाद है, न जम्मू है, न कश्मीर है। पाक अधिकृत “कश्मीर” में न कश्मीरी रहते हैं, न वहाँ कश्मीरी बोली जाती है। वहाँ बोली जाने वाली भाषाएँ हैं – पहाड़ी, मीरपुरी, गुज्जरी, हिन्दको, पंजाबी और पश्तो (विकिपीडिया के अनुसार)। इन में से एक भी भाषा कश्मीरी से नहीं मिलती जुलती। इस का अर्थ यह भी है कि नियन्त्रण रेखा ने किसी परिवार को विभाजित नहीं किया है। पर कश्मीरी अलगाववादियों की क्या मजबूरी है कि वे जम्मू-कश्मीर राज्य की बात कर रहे हैं, जबकि उन्हें केवल कश्मीर क्षेत्र से ही सरोकार है?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> जब कश्मीरी मुसलमान भारत का हिस्सा होने के विरुद्ध तर्क देते हैं तो कहते हैं कि वे भारतीयों से वांशिक रूप से अलग हैं, उनका धर्म अलग है। उन में से अधिकांश स्वयं को भारतीय नहीं मानते। कश्मीर के मुसलमान डोगरा राजा हरिसिंह के खिलाफ तो 1947 से भी पहले लड़ रहे थे। तो अब वे जम्मू-कश्मीर की बात कैसे कर रहे हैं? वे महाराजा के जीते अन्य क्षेत्रों पर कैसे दावा ठोक सकते हैं, जब वह महाराजा ही उनके लिए पराया था? लद्दाख, बल्तिस्तान और गिलगित तो उस समय रियासत का हिस्सा भी नहीं थे, जब डोगरा राजाओं ने जम्मू कश्मीर को अंग्रेज़ों से खरीदा। </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">लेखक के विचार में कश्मीरियों के इस रवैये के दो कारण हैं — पहला तो यह कि इस तरह वे कह सकेंगे कि हमें इस्लामी पाकिस्तान नहीं चाहिए बल्कि एक धर्मनिरपेक्ष जम्मू-कश्मीर चाहिए, इससे उन्हें विश्व में सुनवाई मिलेगी — क्योंकि पाकिस्तान और इस्लामी आतंकवाद दुनिया भर में बदनाम हो चुके हैं। दूसरा, इससे उन्हें सौदेबाजी भी करने के लिए जगह मिल जाती है। कश्मीर का जम्मू-कश्मीर का एक छोटा सा अंश होना एक ऐसा तथ्य है जिस के और भी कई अर्थ निकलते हैं। अब चूँकि जम्मू और लद्दाख भारत के साथ खुश हैं, उनके ऊपर तो तथाकथित “आज़ादी” नहीं थोपी जा सकती। बाकी रहा कश्मीर का 6000 वर्ग मील का क्षेत्रफल। यदि इसे एक अलग देश बनाया जाता है, तो यह विश्व के सब से छोटे “लैंड लाक्ड” (ऐसे देश जिनकी कोई सीमा समुद्र से नहीं मिलती) देशों में से होगा – वैकिटन सिटी, लक्समबर्ग और एकाध ही देश इससे छोटे होंगे।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">अब आप ही सोचिये कि भारत, पाकिस्तान और चीन के बीच फंसे इस देश की “आज़ादी” कितने दिन चलेगी? भारत से छुटकारा पाएँगे तो पाकिस्तान निगल जाएगा। दरअसल कश्मीर के कुछ नेता और बेशक पाकिस्तान भी तो मूलतः यही चाहते हैं, पर क्या कश्मीर की आम जनता इसी अंजाम के लिए लड़ रही है? क्या पाकिस्तान उन्हें धारा 370 जैसे विशेषाधिकार देगा? क्या वहाँ भी तालिबानी हुकूमत न चलने लगेगी?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">इतने छोटे से भूमि क्षेत्र में क्या इतने प्राकृतिक संसाधन हैं कि यह एक देश बना रहे? जाड़े के महीनों में कश्मीर बर्फ से घिरा रहता है। समुद्र की बात छोड़ें, सड़क से भी वहाँ पहुँचना दूभर हो जाता है। जम्मू श्रीनगर राजमार्ग बन्द हो जाता है तो कश्मीर में खाने के लाले पड़ जाते हैं। बीबीसी का यह पृष्ठ देखें जिस में बताया गया है कि वादिए-कश्मीर आज़ाद की गई तो केवल 1800 वर्ग मील होगी, यानी भूटान का दसवाँ हिस्सा। यह क्षेत्रफल विकिपीडिया पर दिए क्षेत्रफल से काफी कम है, पर जो भी है इस छोटे से क्षेत्र के देश बनने की कल्पना, वह भी ऐसे माहौल में, किसी का भी भला नहीं करेगा। लोकतन्त्र में बहुमत की चलती है, तो राज्य के 7-15% क्षेत्रफल में बसी जनसंख्या पूरे राज्य की बाबत फैसला क्यों करे? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">कठुआ के किसी डोगरी भाषी या लेह के किसी बौद्ध को तो निज़ामे-मुस्तफा की चाहत नहीं है। कश्मीर का जम्मू-कश्मीर का एक छोटा सा अंश होना इस बात को भी झुठलाता है कि लोकतन्त्र होने के नाते बहुमत की बात मानी जानी चाहिए। बिल्कुल सही है, लोकतन्त्र में बहुमत की ही चलती है, पर राज्य के 7-15% क्षेत्रफल में बसी जनसंख्या क्या पूरे राज्य की बाबत फैसला करेगी? क्या यह लोकतन्त्र के खिलाफ नहीं होगा? कठुआ में रह रहे एक डोगरी भाषी या लेह में रह रहे किसी बौद्ध को तो निज़ामे-मुस्तफा (इस्लामी शासन) की चाहत नहीं है। कश्मीर तीन ओर से उन क्षेत्रों से घिरा है जो बेशक भारतवादी हैं, और चौथा यानी पश्चिमी सिरा पाकिस्तान ने हथिया रखा है। </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">एक संप्रभु लोकतांत्रिक देश के लिए कोई इलाका कितना बड़ा होना चाहिए जिस के आधार पर इसके निवासियों को आत्मनिर्णय का अधिकार दिया जाए? लोकतन्त्र के नाते, क्या अब इसके बाद हैदराबाद या मेरठ के किसी मुस्लिम बहुल क्षेत्र में रायशुमारी करनी पड़ेगी? कश्मीरी हिन्दुओं की माँग है कि यदि कश्मीरी मुसलमानों उन्हें अपने साथ नहीं रहने देते तो उन्हें “पनुन कश्मीर” (अपना कश्मीर) के नाम से कश्मीर के एक हिस्से में बसाया जाए जो भारत का अभिन्न अंग हो। </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">यदि इस बात को बल दिया जाता है तो कश्मीरी अलगाववादियों के पास “देश” के नाम पर और भी कम क्षेत्र बचता है। यदि इतिहास की घड़ी को पीछे धकेला जा सकता तो शायद यह सही रहता कि महाराजा हरिसिंह ने कश्मीर घाटी को अलग कर पाकिस्तान को सौंप दिया होता। पर राज्य की घुलमुल संरचना के कारण ऐसा नहीं हो सका। राज्य के विभिन्न क्षेत्रों की विभिन्न आकांक्षाएँ थीं, सो उन्होंने राज्य को भारत पाकिस्तान दोनों से अलग रखा। उसके बाद पाकिस्तानी कबाइलियों ने जो किया वह सर्वज्ञात है।</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> पर हाँ उस समय यदि वादी पाकिस्तान के हवाले कर दी जाती तो शायद सब के लिए बेहतर होता। कश्मीरी हिन्दू तभी भारत का हिस्सा बन गये हो, पाकिस्तान से आसे अन्य हिन्दूओं की तरह। कश्मीरी मुसलमान खुश होते या नहीं, यह अंदाज लगाना मुश्किल है। पर बेशक कोई “आज़ादी की लड़ाई” तो नहीं चल रही होती। अलगाववादियों को धर्मनिरपेक्षता, आज़ादी और जम्मू-लद्दाख की चिन्ता का ढ़ोंग तो छोड़ देना चाहिये। कश्मीर घाटी का मर्ज़ एक कैंसर का रूप धारण कर चुका है। </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">घातक मर्ज़ के लिए दवा भी घातक चाहिए। कोई भी चरम उपाय होगा तो पूरे शरीर को तकलीफ तो होगी ही। या तो बीमारी का उपचार किया जाय या विष ग्रसित अंग को ही शरीर से पृथक कर दिया जाय। दर्दनाक बात है पर वाकई कश्मीर का आकार इतना छोटा है कि इसके ना होने पर भारत के मानचित्र में कोई बहुत ज़्यादा अन्तर नहीं पड़ेगा। घाटी को या तो देश में पूरी तरह समाहित करना चाहिये (दफा 370 हटाकर) या फिर पूरी तौर से दफा। किसी भी देशभक्त भारतीय की तरह लेखक को भी कश्मीर में लोगों की तकलीफें, और कत्लो-गारत देख कर तकलीफ होती है। पर वहाँ लोग क्यों मारे जा रहे हैं? वहाँ जो अलगाववादी हिंसा हो रही है, उसके कारण वहाँ सेना है, या सेना होने के कारण अलगाववादी हिंसा है? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">1989 से पहले तो सब ठीक था। आप ही बतायें, यदि यह जिहाद आज ही समाप्त हो जाए, तो क्या कुछ ही समय में वहाँ से सेना नहीं हटे जायेगी? कश्मीरी अलगाववादियों को इस प्रश्न का उत्तर मालूम है। उन्हें और उनके नेताओं को यह पता है कि वे जिस दिन चाहेंगे उस दिन निर्दोष लोगों की मौतों को रोक सकते हैं। पर अलगाववादियों की सोच यही है कि जब तक असहाय लोग कुरबान नहीं होंगे तब तक निज़ामे-मुस्तफा नहीं मिलेगा। इतिहास कहता है कि टालमटोल राजनीतिक शक्ति के रहते यह नामुमकिन है कि “आर या पार” जैसा कोई रवैया भारत सरकार अख्तियार करे। शायद इसलिए कश्मीरी मुसलमानों के हित में यही है कि वे यथापूर्व स्थिति को प्राप्त करने का प्रयत्न करें — लड़ाई झगड़ा छोड़ें, भारत के विरुद्ध छिड़ा जेहाद समाप्त करें, स्कूलों, दफ्तरों, सिनेमाओं, खेलगाहों, यहाँ तक कि मैखानों में जाना शुरू करें। जो हिन्दू घाटी छोड़ कर जा चुके हैं, वे तो संभवतः लौटेंगे नहीं। 1989 से पहले जो था, उसे हासिल करें। पर शुरुवात पत्थर-बाज़ी बंद होने से ही हो सकती है। – मूल अंग्रेज़ी लेख से लेखक द्वारा स्वयं अनूदित।</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-10372440876933538122012-03-19T04:50:00.000-07:002012-03-19T04:50:53.718-07:00Reorganization of States including J&K inevitable!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">19th March, 2012</div><div style="text-align: justify;">New Delhi</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Press Release</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Reorganization of States including J&K inevitable!</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Prof. Bhim Singh, Chairman, NPP & Member, National Integration Council while addressing several groups from Telangana, Gorkhaland and some other states at Jantar Mantar today demanded urgent attention of the Union Govt. for the Reorganization of several states with a clear agenda to strengthen the bonds of National Integration, security and democratic institutions to strengthen federalism in India.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> He strongly advocated for the protection, promotion and preservation of cultural identity of the people in each region, may it be Gorkhaland in West Bengal, Jammu Pradesh and Ladakh in J&K, Telangana in Andhra Pradesh. He said that the situation in J&K is critical as the present coalition government of NC and Congress have become security risk and the state terrorism has became the rule of law which, he said, was obvious from the draconian act of the State Govt. to block the entry of Panthers Party Legislators to enter border Districts of Rajouri and Poonch which amounts to deep threat to the security of the state. He accused the Central Govt. for keeping quiet on the open loot of the State Exchequer and state terrorism. He said the Reorganization of J&K by allowing separate Assemblies for all the three regions; Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu is the only solution to end terrorism sponsored from across the borders and patronized by the State Govt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Several members of Parliament belonging to Congress, Telugu Desam Party and Left Group addressed the meeting.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sd/-Sudesh Dogra</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Political Secretary</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-253799495209666262012-02-13T03:00:00.000-08:002012-02-13T03:00:18.313-08:00What is India’s case in Kashmir? by Aakar Patel Feb 5, 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">What is India’s case in Kashmir?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">by Aakar Patel Feb 5, 2012</span></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Does India have a case in Kashmir?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">If so, what is it?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Pakistan case is straight: Let Kashmiris decide whether they want to live as Indians or as Pakistanis. This is supported by the United Nations Security Council resolutions beginning with No 38 in 1948 and going on to No 123 in 1957. The resolutions seek a direct vote, what is called a plebiscite, among people in Jammu & Kashmir on their future. The UN said it would administer this vote, and called for India and Pakistan to demilitarize the state.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kashmiris shout slogans during a protest in Srinagar February 3, 2012.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Kashmiri case is slightly less straight. Some of them want accession to Pakistan (Jamaat-e-Islami’s Ali Shah Geelani of Sopore and Muslim Conference’s Mirwaiz Umar Farooq of Srinagar are its champions) through a plebiscite. Some of them (for instance Yasin Malik’s JKLF) want a vote that adds independence as a third option. Some of them (all Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, most Shias and some Sunnis, including the ruling National Conference and the opposition PDP) are fine with India.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Though Nehru agreed to the plebiscite plan at first, he later backed off. India’s case on the plebiscite is defensive, and rests on technicalities. One is the Security Council resolutions’ sequencing of troop withdrawal. Pakistan was asked to withdraw its troops first. Secondly, India points to the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly’s acceptance of the accession to India in 1954. This is meant to be a substitute for the plebiscite (though the UN specifically said it could not be).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">A third, unofficial, reason is that much time has passed and the resolutions have somehow become irrelevant. Kofi Annan said the same thing when as secretary general he was pressed on this matter. After the resolutions of 1957, the UN lost interest. Then the wars of 1965 and 1971 eclipsed the Kashmir issue. The world was more concerned that the subcontinent be at peace than it was about resolving the original problem.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Most Indians may not be aware that the Kashmir issue went to the United Nations because Nehru took it there. Till that time, there were two parties to the dispute, India and Pakistan. The Security Council’s resolution added a third party, the people of Jammu & Kashmir. Nehru went there because he believed India was the aggrieved party. He believed that Hari Singh’s accession was legal and that the only matter for discussion was how to get Pakistan to vacate the raiders Jinnah had sent in. The other thing some people might not know is that the Jamaat e Islami’s founder Maulana Maududi thought the jihad in Kashmir was un-Islamic. This was because it was launched with freelancers and not by the state officially, as Maududi thought was prescribed in Islam. In a letter to Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, Maududi said that the April 1948 ceasefire signed between India and Pakistan was binding on all citizens, regardless of the merits.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">In prescribing the plebiscite, United Nations took a broader, more humanitarian view of the problem than merely as some property dispute, and India was in trouble. After that, Nehru shifted focus from trying to get the bits Pakistan had won militarily, to trying to secure the acquiescence of the population of Jammu & Kashmir.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">In time, even this did not work out. The state’s prime minister Sheikh Abdullah sensed the unease of some if not most Muslims in staying with India. His politics began to reflect this, and an alarmed Nehru dismissed Abdullah and jailed him.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">This began a sequence of Indian meddling in the state’s politics. The Kashmiri complaint was that Delhi did mischief and kept upending its leadership. This was true.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">This resulted in the Kashmiri revolt that began under Benazir Bhutto’s first term. A parallel development was the forming of the jihadi groups in Pakistan. One group, the Hizbul Mujahideen, was supported by the Jamaat e Islami under its third Amir, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who broke with Maududi’s wisdom. The Deobandi Harkat ul Ansar (later renamed Harkat ul Mujahideen after an American ban, and still later renamed Jaish e Muhammad) and the Salafi Lashkar e Taiba rose to lead the jihad. The violence continued till India sent troops to the border after Jaish attacked its parliament. Under pressure, president Pervez Musharraf backed down, and banned the groups in 2002. The jihad in Kashmir ended almost immediately and today the violence is almost totally gone. The theatre of these groups has now become Pakistan.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Next week we shall again pick up the thread of what, if any, case India has on Kashmir.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">freedune Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that some people want a separate state on the basis of their religion. There is no great cultural separation that Kashmiris have that sets them apart with the rest of India as compared to many other cultural groups.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that Pakistan decided it wanted to be the sexy cowboy of the Islamic world, and to assume political leadership by 'showing the kaffirs' their place. Most of the trouble in the world today emanates from this land, although they may take inspiration from Saudi Arabia philosophically. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that the British played a very dangerous game when they left India. They should have merged Kashmir into either India, as the ruler was Hindu, or Pakistan, as Muslims were a majority. There would have been a one-time bloodshed as along the rest of the borders, but the case would have been closed there.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that Nehru was a megalomaniac who wanted to emerge as a world statesman, and his delusions failed us magnificently as evident in the Kashmir problem he gifted us and the defeat to China we had to suffer.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that the Indian government has been ruled by a bunch of impotent cowardly criminals, who could not take a hard stand and kept on yielding to Islamist pressures. The worst part of the saga is that they did not do anything to claim our land back from Pakistan even after its defeats in the 1965 and the 1971 wars. Till today, we do not have the truth about what killed Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that subsequent Congress regimes have looted Kashmir and then crushed opposition, thus fomenting further rebellion and hatred against India amongst its population, which made them vulnerable to the lure of Jihad.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The clearest case is that India's people keep on voting the bastards back into power through commission or omission, due to their petty corrupt jingoistic mindsets, and there seems to be no miracle cure in sight to change this permanently.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Krishna Gupta and 12 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">NPegasus 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ok. So what do we do now?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">R. Chaudhry 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">We need to do the following:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">First and foremost, we need to stop being defensive about the issue. It is shameful how easily we are cowed and how poor our PR is. Instead of this being an issue we are 'sensitive' about, it needs to be an issue we are all very clear about.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Every time we put pre-conditions on discussing the issue [and we do it all the time], we lead the world to believe that we have something to hide, something to be ashamed about. Every time Pakistan says 'Kashmir', we go 'first you do this, this and that'. Imo, this needs to change to 'Of course, we'll talk about Kashmir. We have *always* talked about Kashmir. It is Pakistan who has a history of direct violent action on the issue.'</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Talking is easy, so talk till the sky falls down. Just don't concede any points.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Second, on the UN front, again we need to be perceived as being the good intentioned, willing ones. So the next time the UN resolutions are raised, and we can depend on Pakistan to raise them, we need to say that it is pointless harping on them until the preconditions are met. That we are a nation that is willing to consider the matter carefully but only once the pre-conditions are met. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The resolutions talk about Kashmir as it appeared on Cyril Radcliffe's map. Today, Pakistan has roughly 1/3rd of that area, China has another 1/3rd. For the preconditions to be met, China and Pakistan would have to withdraw. :) Can you see China ever conceding *anything*? :)</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">So let those two allies decide who will shoulder the blame for being the intransigent block to resolution - there is no need for us to shoulder the blame simply because so far we have let ourselves be outmaneuvered. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Third, and most important, we need to clean up our act in Kashmir. The state has been in a state of lawlessness for 3 decades. This is the moment when good governance really counts. One more generation gone to this madness, and we might see a situation like Afghanistan develop - a people so used to incessant warfare that they cannot conceive of peace. Do not know how it works.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">This will be the toughest part but it is doable. Explaining how will take too long for this comment.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">There are, obviously, other implications and necessities pertaining to the issue, but the three points mentioned above, and undertaken simultaneously, do seem to be the crux of any strategy aiming at normalization of the issue.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">And it is time to sort it out - we have spent too long and too much in blood and money on this issue. Simply because we have been acting like idiots.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">freedune liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">S.Lal 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Indian</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Independence Act 1947 (10 & 11 Geo 6 c. 30) was as an Act</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">of the Parliament of the United Kingdom</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">that partitioned British</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">India into the two new independent dominions of India</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">and Pakistan. The Act received the royal</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">assent on 18 July 1947, and the two new countries came into being on 15 August.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Act's most important</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">provisions were:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">· </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">division of British India into the two new and fully sovereign dominions of India</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">and Pakistan, with effect from 15 August 1947;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">· </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">partition of the provinces of Bengal and Punjab between the two new</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">countries;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">· </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">establishment of the office of Governor-General</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">in each of the two new countries, as representative of the Crown;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">· </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">conferral of complete legislative authority upon the respective Constituent Assemblies of the two new</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">countries;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">· </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">termination of British suzerainty over the princely</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">states, with effect from 15 August 1947, and recognized the right of states</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">to accede to either dominion[4]</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">· </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">dropping of the use of the title "Emperor</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">of India" by the British monarch (this was subsequently done by King George VI by royal proclamation on 22 June 1948).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Act also made provision for</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the division of joint property, etc. between the two new countries, including</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">in particular the division of the armed forces.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Riyasat of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India according to provisions of the Act, under</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the Act by which Pakistan</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">was created. If J&K’s accession to India</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">is not considered valid and legal, then, creation of Pakistan is also invalid and illegal.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Except the area forcibly occupied and under its control now, Pakistan has no locus standi in J&K. UN</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">resolution, a result of international chess game, has repeatedly been violated</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">by Pakistan: {1} By not vacating area occupied stealthily in 1948. (This was</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the first step to be taken by Pakistan</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">according to UN) {2} By invasion of</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">1965.(Which rendered UN resolution obsolete) {3} By handing over J&K areas</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">to China. {4} By Kargil invasion. {5} By sending Pak army/ISI trained personels</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">as Jehadi Terrorists who further ethnically cleansed K.Valley which again makes</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">any sort of ‘will of Kashmiris’ invalid. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">AND above all, accession to india by Maharaja of J&K was</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">approved by State Assembly. So Pakistan</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">has no locus standi. Pakistan</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">is playing a religious card which India</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">being a secular democracy can not highlight due to which India remains</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">on the defensive. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">MUSLIM-MUSLM-ONE-NATION is obviously no principle on which Pakistan’s</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">claim or for that matters Kashmiris will or wish can be accepted. Had it been</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">so, there would not have been 57 MUSLIM countries, Iran,</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Iraq would have not faught</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">war for 10 years, Bangladesh</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">would not have separated from Pakistan.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">From any angle, Pakistan</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">has no claim over J&K except ‘Seenazori’ which had been supported by</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">western nations till now.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">13 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Soumen Sengupta Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Gift of Gandhi family:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Nehru: Kashmir</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Indira: Emergency</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Rahul: Bofors</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Sonia: 2G</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">the story goes on...................</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">12 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kamal 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">All that is written is part of history now. As the things stand today, Pakistan does not have a case in Kashmir, as besides few of its paid stooges, nobody really wants to side with Pakistan. India should and could have instead granted autonomy to Kashmir but the geopolitical situation does not permit. Such a step will be suicidal for India and most probably for Kashimiri population also. The movement the Indian troops withdraw, the jehadis will penetrate Kashmir and would start dictating Kashmiri population and would be source of constant security threats to India. Their agenda is also not secular and they view India as a Hindu nation. Therefore the matter is likely to remain hanging for another quite a few years until the situation changes there drastically. Except for security considerations, India does not seem to have any advantage of keeping Kashmir with it. The whole exercise is proving a drain on the economic resources of India.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Dee Dee and 11 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Terra Nova 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">how do you know if India is secular. Totally agree that the constitution is secular and a fine one, but the attitude of some people is not really secular. I am not sure how the big that section is.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">1 person liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">bbc_abc Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">@ Terra Nova:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Indian constitution is secular? Please go read it first!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">5 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ramchi Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">No it is NOT secular! For a seculars there will be only one rule of law!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ghoda and 2 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">bbc_abc Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">@mv : I'm going to ask you too to read the constitution, especially, the part where it talks about religious minorities.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Flag</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">mv 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Isn 't it? I thought this was the Preamble to the Indian Constitution....</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Constitution declares India to be a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, assuring its citizens of justice, equality, and liberty, and endeavours to promote fraternity among them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Meeta2000 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">If we have to go back to the concept of India then Afghanistan and Pakistan and Bangladesh must also be considered part of it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Let's see how Afghanistan is faring. It was a progressive country that was gifted with war of others be it USSR or somebody else. Result - Taliban that destroyed the world view of that people who were 'more advanced' than India. Now the lands have been taken out of their control and they remain a warring population labeled savages with no say on what goes in their own country.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Bangladesh - late in formation but economically a mess. Their population infiltrates into India and even the Nobel prize could not solve it's crisis. Their industries are the most unwanted in the world like stitching clothes and breaking ships. If this is what their children can aspire for then there is no more discussion necessary.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Pakistan - a combinationnof the fates of Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Add terrorism tag. With the label of the only country founded on the basis of Islam and you have an impoverished Israel with the might of bangladesh.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kashmiris must introspect and see what their future holds for them? It looks more like... show more</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">11 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Labrinto L 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">India has progressed immensely, it does not even consider North East as a part of the nation, the people of North East are discriminated based on their race, yet we defend ourselves and do not term this as a racist act. Go to Delhi and find yourselves how girls from NE are an easy target for eve teasers. We also have progressed with the nature of scams, we have multi billion dollar scams instead of multi million dollar scams. The Kashmiri's should vote to join EU :) not India Pakistan or Bangladesh.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Ghoda and 3 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ghoda 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ya; THE HISTORIC AGGRESSORS & LOOTERS ! MODERN DAY BEGGARS !</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">2 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">rg594 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ya- I'd love to see a broke EU try and defend the worlds most difficult terrain that exists between three nuclear powers and Afghanistan.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">1 person liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">ComicProject 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">There can be no option of surrendering Kashmir. The Kashmiris have two options either accept India or go to PoK, at least they will not get to feel what it feels like to be driven from their homes like the lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits living as refugees in their own country.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Too much of Indian blood,effort and money has gone into Kashmir to surrender it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Dee Dee and 9 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">chanakya_the_cynic 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Read about the concept of sunk cost and abandon that line of reasoning. There are other, better reasons to maintain that Kashmir should remain part of India</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">1 person liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kunal 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Will the Kashmiri HIndus get to vote if there is a plebiscite ? In that case Kashmir itself would have to be divided into two parts, the Hindu part which will go to India and let's guess that the Muslim part goes to Pakistan or stays independent. Would that be acceptable ? Would that end the conflict ?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">I dont think there is any question of where Jammu and Ladakh goes....now would that be ok ? Or they want that as well in their territory ?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Plebiscite won't work. J&K is part of India...Pakistan or free Kashmir is not going to happen..either accept that or suffer.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">9 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ramchi Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Any plebiscite to happen in Kashmir where the problem started in the year of 1947 during partition must have the same population ration ratio (where Hindus was substantially larger closer to Muslim population), now. So Government of India & Kashmir must ensure this happens first before they (those who seek Plebiscite) can make any attempt of giving separate land to anyone not withstanding the fact that India will become disintegrated after that.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">India must accept the vote on that precondition alone.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">If this is seen as a Hindu-Muslim conflict then we must trade all Muslims for Kashmir where the phase II of Indo-Pak partition will be completed.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Anything other than this India need not even think of wasting time.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">There is a third-option where they can fight through war (more specific, through Jihad); they have to kill every single Hindu in India before claiming Kashmir.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">8 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">bharat 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Only in India do you find bleeding hearts and artists who want to renounce the spoils of statecraft. You guys need to toughen up and learn to sleep well after winning your wars, despite the collateral damage you inflicted. Kashmir belongs to India - if America can be a great power after genocide of the Native Americans, and enslavement of the Africans, and Britain can rule from sunrise to sunset by cheating and trickery, Alexander and Genghis can conquer by pillage and plunder, and they all can still be respected and admired, India and Indians need to discover the Ashoka in them - Channd Ashoka was the greatest Indian king - and he killed more than most. All rulers and great powers need to do that - Rome was not built with garlands and love. So toughen up, and fight to first absorb Kashmir permanently, then other lands (in due course, with intelligence, and patience, when the time is right) to rebuild the great India that once dominated its hemisphere. We have a seventh of humanity to feed, we need more lands, and food, and wealth. It should hurt each of you much more to see a hungry, ashamed Indian... show more</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">freedune and 6 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">R. Chaudhry 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">I'd be interested in your citations re: Nehru's reasons for referring Kashmir to the UN. To the best of my knowledge, Nehru had referred the issue to the UN, disregarding the vehement opposition of Sardar Patel to the same, because he wanted to be perceived as a man wedded to justice, democracy and to the legal process. This action, alongwith the declaration of plebiscite, had been taken at the recommendation of Governor General Mountbatten. The latter stroked Nehru's ego and perception of self until Nehru was no longer willing to see the valid objections of Patel.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Incidentally, it was the partisanship of the British [busy still with the Great Game] that queered the pitch in UN as well.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Dee Dee and 7 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">ghatothgacha 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">This only proves the irreparable damage the Nehru dynasty has done to this country and continues to do so under the name of "gandhi".</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">8 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Lakx_s 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">We are discussing something which happened in 1940s-50s the time when India was partitioned into Pakistan and India. The reason it was partitioned was the hindu population in areas dominated by muslims. It is the same with Kashmir, it still has lot of non-muslims despite many hindus being killed and driven out of Kashmir. So the only solution for Kashmir is a partition. plebiscite will work only in places where the whole population is same not in kashmir where we have different religious and linguist groups. When we have such minorities this plebiscite will wipe out the minorities, so not a solution for every one. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Its like 3 sons are fighting for the ancestral property and if 2 of them are togather the solution will still have to be a 3 way partition where each son gets a part, if we have a plebiscite kind of vote then 2 of them will get all the property and the 3rd a minority will be left with nothing when all of them have equal rights. In Kashmirs case the minority has more rights over the land then the majority who are mostly invaders while the land is hindus ancestral property. So the... show more</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Manoj Kumar and 6 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kunal 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">FP is becoming a junk blog day by day. Sensationalist articles like these or utter bullshit from Akshaya Mishra seem to be their strategy to attract visitors.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">6 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Ajay 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Incidentally, the contents of the post, including historical references on UN, are accurate! The interpretation may just not be convenient to most.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">vicharappa 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Are Pakistanis Free? Do they have freedom? </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">And so much hullboo about Nations on the basis of Religion take a look </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">at Islamic Nations ... Please have a look in Syria, Egypt, Lybia, Iraq </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">& of course Afghanisthan. Do they even so much as come an inch close</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">to India in the meaning of Freedom, Development & Growth ?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Or even for that matter does one really believe that the OIL RICH Islamic countries Free?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">ON the other hand take a look at Non-Religion based countries - USA, Europe, Japan are their People Lot more Free? More financially independent?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">In an atmosphere as vitiated as in Pakistan which is in neighbourhood It</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">is the motherly umbrella of India because of which Kashmiri Muslims are so much more comfortable.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Demilitarisation by India will only lead to Pakistan increasing infiltration big way with Taliban guys. Will the Kashmir Muslims then feel free? And don't forget Saeed Naqvi, he will immideately have training camps there. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Finally, what about the Kashmiri Pandits ? Do they have a "CASE" in Kashmir ?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">freedune and 5 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">freedune Conversation Starter 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The people of the North East are culturally further removed from the Hindi heartland or the western regions than the people of Kashmir are different from the Himachalis or the Uttarakhandis. Should we yield to the demands of the Bodos for independence? What about the Tamils?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Krishna Gupta and 3 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Theideaofindia 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Precisely, the idea called India is in a precarious state with all the corruption prevalent. Any entity seeking independence on the basis of religion at the cost of others beliefs cannot be allowed. What an open discussion allows if conducted in a logical and cold manner, is to allow each litigant to place the cards on the table. There is no guarantee of an apodictic breakthrough but at least it is better to move forward. At this juncture India is vulnerable and precarious and the decisions taken now will have ramifications many many years later.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Maskin Chopest 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Technically, Kashmir's status is unknown. The ruler during those turbulent years after the partition wanted his kingdom to remain independent but as Pakistan invaded Kashmir and the Hindu king accepted India's help to thwart the invaders on the condition that it later be merged with India.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Hindu King preferred Kashmir to be Independent and later was forced to join India but he never liked the idea of Kashmir merging with Pakistan.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">India should have implemented the UN vote in 1948 and that would have solved the problem forever but Nehru's fear that Kashmiris would choose to go in Paksisthan's way lead him to ignore the vote.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">But no one can deny the fact that the Indian military committed atrocities in Kashmir and the Pakistani Government supported Jihadist organizations to wreck havoc in Kashmir. India could've acted smarter from the beginning and Pakistan should have stressed the need for a democratic and political way to solve the crisis rather than supporting terrorist organizations.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">In any case whether India wins in the end or Pakistan rejoices, the sheer losers in the unfolding will be the Kashmiris... as they have always been!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">6 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">S.Lal 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">For details, please, read my comments in this column. Kashmiri muslims are no loosers, they are receiving extra billions of rupees as grants from Govt. of India. They are also helpers of Pakistani Jehadi terrorists who are perpetrators of atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits(Hindus) and have ethnically cleansed the K.Valley. There can be no crime more heinous against humanity in present times. Mr.Maskin, clear the cobwebs of your mind.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Flag</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Keepgoingakarpatel 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">One of the problems for any dialogue and meeting of minds has been cashmere getting caught in geo-strategic calculations of the external powers, the mess created by the hasty partition, jihad of the amire momeen[you still hear it loudly in youtube] for which there had to be an equal response from the Indian Army and the suffering of the ordinary people. If one thinks coldly whatever perspective or belief that one adheres to which conjectures ones definition of truth, time has come for not open up the floor for discussion with clear rules of dialogue and surely there could be solution that is comes mid-way to all parties the impediment being the deep state and its supporters and mixing up religion with what is patently a political question. Being a topic that is bound to rouse tempers, it has to be very very well researched deductively argued to build a cumulative set of claims based upon cold facts and not the crap that was turned out a while back by a first post journo with the azadi songs written for a particular audience, In India the absence of a strong leader like Sardar Vallabahai Patel and corruption undermines any effort... show more</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Everyoneisaloser 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The losers are all Maskin, oridinary Indians who have invested enormous amount of emotional capital in defending the idea of India, the kashmiri families caught in the cross fire, the jannat tourist, the ordinary land of the pure trader[not the jet set mohatraramma, in India the peacenicks, activists, concerned citizens and grasshopper listeners who need the zulm azadi cauldron to boil in order to concoct the magic realism piece] the ordinary jawan who endures difficult conditions from his way from Karur to cashmere and the tax payer, You are not special.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">1 person liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Keepgoingakarpatel 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">This dialogue should be done in a civilized manner with clear rules of debate towards a way forward not circumnavigating on the past.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Indian 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">The Freedom of India Act envisaged only two countries- India and Pakistan. There was/ is no scope for amending it now. A number of people have fought the battle for independence and anything different will amount to disrespect for them. As such the question of Kashmir being an independent nation does not arise. The fault, if any rests with Nehru, and there's no reason why I should pay for his faults. However, the next generation Nehrus, whose only claim to fame, is their hereditary line, and not intelligence and statesmanship, can't obviously call Nehru's mistake a mistake. India's line should be very clear. There's no question of independence of Kashmir since that's illegal demand. If any of the Kashmiris want freedom, they are free to go anywhere including their beloved Pakistan. The gates are open from our side. As long as they are in India, they should respect the Constitution of India, which mst be amended to repeal special status for Kashmir.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">5 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">TruthSpeaker 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">thats the whole genesis of the problem, you want the land, but not the people living on the land.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">2 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Nativerooster1 6 days ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Yes we don't want Kashmiris as slaves ! That is culture of other societies and countries and not of Indians. We are a free society. You do all anti-social and anti-national activities, still you have rights to proov innocence and at times to the astonishment of whole nation a criminal manages to go Scot free ! People who pour scorn on such humane system are welcome to leave this country and try their antics elsewhere which are now becoming rarer and dearer ! "Aatey-dhal ka bhaw maloom pad jayega" ?! Remeber "Guantmo Bay" !</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">nitin 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">A discussion over whether Kashmir is India's case or Pakistan case is totally irrelevant . Kashmir being geographically and strategically located is too important for India . </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Grievousness of the indigenous people of kashmir are best saved with india only , look the work of china in tibet or paksitan in POK what they have left for the indigenous people ,nothing .</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">5 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Krishna Gupta 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">We could debate the Indian case in Kashmir endlessly (and indeed, we will with your next post :) ), but the reality is that this discussion is irrelevant. India has made (and continues to make) a number of mistakes in the region, but the issue of Kashmir is today important to India's territorial and ideological integrity. The resolution should be a pragmatic one for all parties involved at the time. A porous LOC that is defined as the national border and semi-autonomy on both sides would be the way to go in my opinion. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Today's independence is an economic one - Gujarat is more independent than a Bhutan is. Perhaps Kashmiris would be better off focusing on keeping their Kashmiriyat intact, on removing the parasites within their own community, and on giving their own entrepreneurs the resources to build economic independence. In the meantime, we can only hope the Centre becomes wiser and gives Kashmiris a reason feel as integral to the notion of India as they should.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">5 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Rameez Farooq 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kashmiri's need freedom from india completely. wonder u r analysis does not feautre killings, rape ,mass graves..no nation will agree to economic development if such brutalities have been done.. tats why u never understand y there is a issue on 1st hand</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">4 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">NPegasus 1 week ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Kashmiris need freedom from their own insanity, victimhood and self-inflicted wounds - real and imaginary. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">No entity comes out clean is clean in Kashmir. Everyone has blood on thier hands. The Indian state looks better, despite its follies, than others. The killings, rape and brutalities have also happened at the hands of militants and seperatists which no Kashmiri dare talk about. Nor any Kashmiri care about the miniorites who have been systematically removed.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Flag</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-11021083838915594382012-02-13T02:50:00.000-08:002012-02-13T02:50:59.760-08:00Conversions in Kashmir: But where are the liberals now? by R Jagannathan Jan 23, 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Conversions in Kashmir: But where are the liberals now?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">by R Jagannathan Jan 23, 2012</span></div><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><a href="http://www.firstpost.com/india/conversions-in-kashmir-but-where-are-the-liberals-now-190671.html">http://www.firstpost.com/india/conversions-in-kashmir-but-where-are-the-liberals-now-190671.html</a> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Thanks to a curious alignment of the stars and circumstances, India’s so-called secular-liberal establishment suddenly found its voice and spine over the Rushdie affair. This does not usually happen, since this group gets vocal only when it comes to bashing the Sangh Parivar for its pet foibles.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">So it is a fair bet that the current discovery of bravado during the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) is likely to be a one-off. The state and the political establishment, as expected, caved in. Rushdie didn’t come, and is busy tweeting impotently. And the authors who decided to read from The Satanic Verses were quietly bundled off and now talk only from other shores. Apologies are also pouring in. Hear Hari Kunzru, one of the JLF tigers on Rushdie, on this.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">A better test case for secular-liberals is coming up in Kashmir. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. The target of their ire is one CM Khanna, a Protestant pastor who has been converting and baptising a few Kashmiri Muslims.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Even though the conversions are nowhere on the scale that Hindus have faced elsewhere, the Muslim clergy have been raising a storm and one shariat court has already held him guilty and told him to leave the state. The pastor was arrested and released on bail by the state authorities.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">However, the persecution of Christians – who are said to number not more than a few hundred in the Kashmir valley – continues and The Times of India reports that almost every Christian in the state is now the object of scrutiny. The most ridiculous case is that of Juan Marcos Troia, an Argentinian football coach who has tried to promote football in the valley. He, too, is looked on with suspicion and his house was recently vandalised.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">A nun prays in a Srinagar church. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. Reuters</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Even supposedly moderate Kashmiri leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have become active in crying wolf over the conversions of a few Muslims by launching a website for the faithful. According to the newspaper, a Council for Protection of Faith has been set up to “thwart (the) nefarious designs of pervasive forces and the deep-rooted conspiracy of making youth apostate and defectors by giving them concessions and benefits secretly.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Quite apart from the fact that his fear-mongering sounds suspiciously similar to the alarms often raised by the Sangh Parivar over much larger Hindu conversions, the difference is that there is almost no voice – barring that of the Christian Council of India and a few writers like Shuddabrata Sengupta in Left-wing sites like Kafila.org – talking of this more serious threat to secular-liberal attitudes in Kashmir.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">The truth is our alleged liberals like to pretend that Kashmir’s azaadi cry is really about freedom, when it is tinged with lots of bigotry. While the leader of the separatist movement, Syed Geelani, wants to impose sharia in Kashmir if it ever gets independence, on the matter of conversions, every Kashmiri seems united. Both the Muslim clergy, and the state government they are allegedly fighting, appear to have closed ranks to battle this religious subversion.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Sengupta, writing in Kafila, raises the question this writer raised some months ago on the azaadi Kashmiris are fighting for: “I want to ask a serious question about the nature of the ‘azaadi’ that the self-proclaimed leaders of the Kashmiri people are demanding. I do not mean to demean or cheapen this demand, which I consider to be just and morally correct. I only want to know whether or not, many of those who voice this demand in Kashmir, do so after due consideration to what ‘freedom’ actually entails, or whether they are just automatically mouthing a demand whose depth they have no intention of plumbing. If the latter is the case, then the ‘azaadi’ they will bring to bear on Kashmir will not be substantially different from the ‘barbadi’ (devastation) that is currently taking place there under the auspices of the Indian state.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">But Sengupta, despite backing the flawed cause of Kashmiri separatism, at least raises this moral objection to what the Muslim conservatives are doing in Kashmir.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">The rest of the liberals are busy fighting phantom battles over The Satanic Verses. There’s not one yip on this issue, which has been brewing over the last few months. They have kept quiet, just as they did when half a million Pandits were thrown out of the Valley in one of the world’s worst acts of ethnic cleansing.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">If our liberals are truly liberals, they need to find their voice again. They can’t all be struck with laryngitis. Or are they only fair-weather liberals?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Jaadu 2 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">The so-called "liberals" and "secularists only harp when they have to shout against Hindus. They dare not speak against Muslims or Christians.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">meDilbert and 28 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">JustThinking 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Why people who only speak anti Hindu are considered Liberals while the other Blasphemous</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Kunal and 27 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Vivekbasu87 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">This is the secularism Congress is promoting in India. Problem is that so called Indian Librals are shameless creatures who has scant respect for Hindus and will split venom on RSS etc at slightest provocation but will keep quite for any non hindu atrocities. In my opinion Indian Librals are anti national elements.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">11 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">meenav 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Depends entirely on perspective...a Hindu fundamentalist calls the liberal 'pseudosecular' and a Muslim fundamentalist calls the liberal 'blasphemous'...if one is a liberal be prepared to get stoned from all sides. :)</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">shiningpath and 2 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Snt 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Correct. No one can be truly 100% liberal. "Liberalism" is a pure LIE.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">5 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">JustThinking 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Though I totally agree with your point.....but if I recall events of past 1-2 years....it really confuses me who is actually a liberal.........becoz i see people who were speaking very passionately when late M.F Hussain Fiasco was going on...but i couldn't hear a single word from them when it came to Salmam Rushdie......wonder if liberalism also comes from convenience...</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">3 people liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">shiningpath Conversation Starter 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">..</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;"> Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Shailendrasingh16785 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Why does the goverment dont release data which tells the percentage increase in population of other communities except Hindus after 1947 , you will get all answers ..</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Krsna2010 and 26 more liked this Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Me 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">I think it does....</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">1 person liked this. Like</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">DR GN Seetharam 3 weeks ago</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">The silence of the liberals in deafening but to be expected. The liberal left treats muslims as children who can do anything but bear no responsibility. They do not treat them as adults at all. This is in fact a form of racism. Covertly, the left shares the views about muslims which the so called communalists have i.e. that muslims as a community have no capacity or intelligence to debate in a calm or reasoned manner and the only thing that muslims understand in political terms in "death to ..." and " death to ..." and such other madcap fatwas. The liberal left which was supporting the conversion of hindus to christianity as progressive since christianity is supposedly a "humane" religion (one reading of the old testament is enough to dispel any notion of "humaness" in christianity) is now silent about the conversion of muslims to christianity. This is to be expected since the liberal left is cowardly and racist towards muslims. They infantalise muslims and treat them as less than human by denying to them any notion of responsibility for actions committed. I am aware that modern neuro science to a great extent has narrowed the notion of human responsibility of one's actions but surely if all of us deny any responsibility for any action committed civilised life becomes impossible.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: cyan;">Flag</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-71790252625304323422012-02-13T02:46:00.000-08:002012-02-13T02:46:32.164-08:00Jammu and Kashmir: What India chooses to ignore by Aakar Patel Feb 12, 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">Jammu and Kashmir: What India chooses to ignore</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">by Aakar Patel Feb 12, 2012</span></div><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://www.firstpost.com/politics/jammu-and-kashmir-what-india-chooses-to-ignore-210590.html">http://www.firstpost.com/politics/jammu-and-kashmir-what-india-chooses-to-ignore-210590.html</a> </span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">In 1960, Pakistan under Ayub Khan and India under Nehru signed the Indus Waters Treaty.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">This cemented the division of Jammu & Kashmir. After this the United Nations lost interest in pursuing the matter of plebiscite. The wars in 1965, when Pakistan meddled in India, and in 1971, when India meddled in Pakistan, focussed the world on keeping the neighbours apart. The Simla Accord of 1972 signed by Indira and Bhutto stressed a bilateral solution. India believed that this again reduced the parties in the dispute to two, ejecting the people of Jammu & Kashmir, and eclipsing the Security Council’s resolutions. Indira rehabilitated Sheikh Abdullah two years later and believed that the issue was now behind India.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">Indian policemen look at members of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) holding placards with pictures of Maqbool Bhat as they try to march to the office of the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), in Srinagar February 10, 2012. Reuters</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">This strategy did not work because the fundamental problem remained unresolved. The larger part of Jammu & Kashmir’s Muslim population, and perhaps a majority as a whole, did not want to live under the Indian constitution.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">This resentment had been checked by New Delhi, from the time of Nehru’s jailing of Sheikh Abdullah by fixing elections in the state. In Benazir Bhutto’s first term the state exploded with its demand for freedom. India was taken aback by the ferocity and persistence of the call in Srinagar. Private television came to India in the same period and the visuals alarmed Indians who had been led to believe something else by state propaganda. The stern and insistently Islamic nature of the Kashmir movement disturbed a nation whose textbooks had consistently stressed secularism. (Our history books blame partition entirely on one man, Jinnah). Pakistan brought the sword to the Kashmiris’ call with the introduction of the mujahideen, who were motivated and well trained. Naturally, they were Islamic and their names – Harkat al Mujahideen, Harkat al Ansar, Hizb al Mujahideen, Lashkar e Taiba, Jaish e Muhammad – reflected this. With the exception of a couple of groups, like Amanullah Khan/Yasin Malik’s JKLF, even the political resistance was coloured in religion. Kashmiri Muslims responded, and packed off their Hindu neighbours, who have not yet gone back to the state.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">The introduction of foreigners gave India the justification to send the army into Srinagar, and the occupation began. The jihad burned through the 1990s. It ended immediately after Musharraf blocked Lashkar and Jaish, the two dominant groups, from cross border activity. Today there is little violence in Jammu & Kashmir. The new threat and the state’s attention is on the uprisings in the tribal areas of central India. This demonstrated to Indians that the problem in Kashmir was entirely the product of Pakistan. However, the army has remained in Srinagar.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">The question is why.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">The answer is that India had two problems. The military problem was the mujahideen, who had been sent back home by Musharraf. The second problem is unresolved. Many if not most Kashmiri Sunnis and some Shia want independence or accession to Pakistan. Without resolving this unease, India cannot settle the question of Jammu & Kashmir, no matter what the outside world accepts. India’s response to this was to stop meddling in the state’s politics. Through the last 12 years, the population has been allowed to elect whoever it wanted. The army did not need to force people to vote any longer, and the numbers of those who voted rose. As part of this change, India began talking to the group that was pushing the plebiscite. This was the Hurriyat Conference, a body of mostly Sunni groups like the modernist Jamaat e Islami under Ali Shah Geelani and the traditionalists under Omar Farooq. It has been trying to get these groups to participate in the elections as they had in the past. New Delhi has been assuring them that they will let them come to power if they should win. It has not had success in this in any great measure. However, some people have begun contesting like Abdul Ghani Lone’s son Sajjad. Perhaps in time, some of the others will also.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">The Security Council has today little if not zero interest in pursuing its resolutions. The tolerance of the world today to cross border mischief is low, and in that sense Pakistan’s options are now limited.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: orange;">The only problem for India appears to be to convince Jammu & Kashmir’s Muslims to fully accept the Indian constitution. Next week, we’ll look at why that has been difficult to do</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-86713137660618804912012-01-07T11:09:00.000-08:002012-01-07T11:10:28.157-08:00Press Release- Omar Abdullah completes three years bringing disaster, anarchy & ruins in J&K---Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="color: magenta;"><br />
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<div align="justify" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The Govt. of J&K has committed one more herakri by misutilizing crores of rupees from the State Exchequer displaying huge adds entitled, ‘Courage…Vision…Dynamism…’ with half size hands-waving photographs of the Prime Minister and UPA Chairperson. It looks disgusting that Chief Minister’s father’s face stands shut behind the hand of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi as if Dr. Farooq Abdullah has been defaced deliberately. This is the message of courage, vision and dynamism of the youngest Chief Minister of J&K who has completed three years as Chief Minister walking on the crutches of the Congress Party.</span></div><span style="color: magenta;"><br />
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<dir style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><dir><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">1. True, Omar Abdullah has shown courage in declaring that J&K was not integral part of the Union of India.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">2. He had courage to debunk his own father behind Congress President’s arm.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">3. He certainly has courage to massacre through his police about 120 mostly school-going kids last year. This was highly courageous act on the part of the Chief Minister.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">4. The Chief Minister demonstrated courage and vision to sort out corruption scandal of Rs.1.18 crores involving himself, his father and the complainants, all affiliated with his political party.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">5. He certainly has shown courage by dismissing the registration of an FIR even on the mysterious death of his party’s senior functionary in custody who was detained on his orders though he had no competence to do so.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">6. The Chief Minister has demonstrated courage by denouncing AFSPA and declaring that he would remove the Central Law.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">7. He certainly has shown courage to reduce 50% of the salary of the fresh recruits in the government jobs.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">8. He had demonstrated courage in Islamabad in 2007 by expressing unconditional apology to Pakistani President on behalf of his late grandfather for having supported the Accession of the State with the Union of India.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">9. He has demonstrated his vision by befriending the young prince in the Indian National Congress as his permanent ally to support him in all his deeds and misdeeds.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">10. His dynamism can be witnessed from the fact that he can take the state aircraft and the helicopter along with his family members and even pets to Shimla, Delhi and Mumbai the same day at the cost of the State Exchequer.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">11. His vision and dynamism can be judged from his studies of the tale of the two cities though he has not understood the spirit and commitment of the people of France who brought revolution there.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">12. It is his vision and dynamism that he has reduced the Congress (his crutches) to ashes in J&K in three years. If he continues for another six months there will be no trace of the Congress left out in the state. This was the mission of his grandfather who had described State Congress leaders as ‘worms in the gutter’. Omar Abdullah has proved it.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">13. Omar Abdullah has shown his vision and dynamism in manipulating Delhi Darbar and the Home Ministry to shunt the Kashmiri Migrants (mostly Pundits) permanently from the Valley by building gutters for them in the areas inhabited with the snakes and scorpions. Besides, he has demolished the very identity of Jammu Migrants by demonstrating courage to refuse to implement Supreme Court orders relating to Talwara Migrants.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">14. Omar Abdullah has shown courage, vision and dynamism by befooling the entire Central leadership including Congress, BJP and the left by rejecting the voice of the people of J&K to hold Delimitation of the Assembly Constituencies.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">15. The Chief Minister’s courage, vision and dynamism cannot be ignored when he declared in the Legislative Assembly to ensure return and rehabilitation of thousands of militants who went to Pakistan for a military training. The entire national leadership kept mum.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">16. What a vision Omar Abdullah had demonstrated by managing to work as a minister in the BJP government in the Centre having share the broth with RSS for years. What a great dynamism that he shares his broth with Congress Prince and other Congress leaders today?</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">17. What a courage the CM has by proclaiming that he shall complete six years as Chief Minister of J&K even though he has not one-third majority in the Assembly. He certainly has determination to demolish the very identity of the Congress in J&K and join hands with Jamat-e-Islami to accomplish 60 years old agenda of the pro-Pak forces in J&K. Of course, with the support and cooperation of the Central leaders.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">18. Of course, Omar Abdullah has accomplished his supremacy in the country over all odds. He is Chief Minister of J&K with support of the Congress and BJP when several Members Parliament and leaders in Delhi has been sent to jail for ‘cash for vote’ whereas in J&K Mr. Omar Abdullah purchased 7 BJP MLAs to purchase their votes in the Rajya Sabha and Council elections. BJP instead of taking action against Omar Abdullah, shunted out their own 7 MLAs. Thakur Amar Singh, MP can go to jail for the same offence which Mr. Omar Abdullah has committed. Omar is Chief Minister and Amar Singh in jail.</span></div></dir></dir><br />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Prof. Bhim Singh has issued this rejoinder to those who have yet to understand the hidden agenda of the Abdullahs in J&K.</span></div><div align="right" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Sd/-Sudesh Dogra, Political Secretary</span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-88044417157347453292011-10-14T03:59:00.000-07:002011-10-14T03:59:57.567-07:00MOHAMMAD Ali Jinnah visualised the state of Pakistan as “a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent”. by Irfan Husain<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Irfan Husain</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.thepersecution.org/news/11/dawn1008.html">http://www.thepersecution.org/news/11/dawn1008.html</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>MOHAMMAD Ali Jinnah visualised the state of Pakistan as “a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent”. by Irfan Husain</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sadly, he did not specify precisely which sect of Muslims he had in mind. Although a Shia himself, he did not have a sectarian bone in his body.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, he was secular to the core, and this was the philosophy he bequeathed to the state he had created virtually single-handedly. This was a bequest we tore up even before he was laid to rest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So as we witness the ongoing massacre of Hazara Shias in Balochistan, we need to take a hard look at the monsters Pakistan has spawned over the years. Management gurus teach us that before we can solve a problem, we must first analyse it to gain a full understanding of the underlying causes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But given the deep state of denial we prefer to stay in, we shy away from making the logical connection between cause and effect. When elaborating on his ‘two-nation theory’, Mr Jinnah was of the view that Muslims could not live side by side with Hindus in a united India as we were a different nation in terms of values and cultural norms.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This notion led to the partition of India in 1947, and even though millions of Muslims did not — or could not — make their way to the new state, Pakistan was born in a cataclysm of blood and fire. Almost immediately, the hard-line vision of Islam, espoused by Maulana Maududi and his Jamaat-i-Islami, became the ideology of large numbers of right-wing intellectuals and clerics.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, it wasn’t until Zia seized power in 1977 that this literal strand of Islam became the official ideology of the state.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some of the hard-line Sunni groups like the Sipah-i-Sahaba came into being in Zia’s period, declaring Shias to be ‘wajib-ul qatal’, or deserving of death. Needless to say, these killers were permitted to thrive by Zia.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Step by step, the notion of separateness at the heart of Partition has fostered a feeling of ‘us against them’. Taken to its illogical extreme by hard-line ideologues and their brainwashed followers, this translates into the belief that those not following their particular school of Islamic thought become ‘wajib-ul qatal’.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Massacres and individual murders resulting from rabid intolerance bearing the spurious stamp of religious orthodoxy are too numerous to cite here. But the recent episodes of the cold-blooded slaughter of Hazara Shias in Balochistan should open the eyes of those wishing to negotiate with the terrorists responsible for these acts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another hard-line, anti-Shia group, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, was quick to claim responsibility for these murders, and yet the state has done nothing to bring this organisation to book.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to a Human Rights Watch press release, “In Balochistan, some Sunni extremist groups are widely viewed as allies of the Pakistani military, its intelligence agencies and the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which are responsible for security there.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Instead of perpetrating abuses in Balochistan against its political opponents, the military should be safeguarding the lives of members of vulnerable communities under attack from extremist groups”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it’s not just in Pakistan that Hazara Shias have been targeted: in Afghanistan, thousands have been killed by the Taliban.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Being a visible ethnic group, they are especially vulnerable to an increasingly vicious and violent Sunni majority. In a blog on this newspaper’s website, Murtaza Haider has cited a revealing doctoral thesis by Syed Ejaz Hussain. According to his research, 90 per cent of all those arrested for committing terrorist attacks in Pakistan between 1990 and 2009 were Sunni Deobandis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And it’s not just Shias who are being targeted, or Christians, Hindus and Ahmedis: as we have seen time and again, suicide attacks against mosques and Sufi shrines have killed thousands of Sunnis as well. While there are a growing number of extremist groups, they are all united in their intolerance, and their contempt for democratic values and common decency.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the evil these killers represent, there are growing voices in Pakistan demanding that the government negotiate with them. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban was quoted recently as saying his group would talk to the government provided it broke off its relationship with the United States and imposed Sharia law in the country.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">For a criminal gang to make such demands is preposterous; but for sane, educated Pakistanis to advocate talks with such people is even worse. Instead of insisting that we lock up these terrorists and try them, we are being asked to treat them as a political entity with valid demands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">If we are to ever defeat the hydra-headed monster we have created, our defence establishment will have to acknowledge its huge error in thinking that it could use these killers to further its agenda in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This has provided them with legitimacy, support and impunity. Unless the Pakistani state repudiates all links with extremism in all its forms, outfits like the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi will continue to murder at will within Pakistan, while the Lashkar-e-Taiba creates mayhem in our neighbourhood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Quite apart from the collapse of the writ of the state caused by the depredations of these groups, and the innocent lives sacrificed at the altar of misplaced expediency, Pakistan has become a pariah in the international community. Increasingly, the use of terrorism as an instrument of policy is making us a scary country with a powerful death wish.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But while we struggle to cope with the rising tide of extremism, we need to step back and examine how and why we arrived at this abyss.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Clearly, it did not happen overnight. Looking back, we can see that the demand for separate electorates for Muslims in British India over 100 years ago was a major historical fork in the road. By conceding to this demand from a group of Muslim aristocrats as part of their divide-and-rule policy, the British tried to ensure that the two major religious communities would not unite against them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, we do not have the luxury of blaming our predicament on past imperial policies. The British are long gone, and the barbarians are poised to capture the state. We still have a choice, but if we don’t act quickly, we risk joining the ranks of failed states like Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">irfan.husain@gmail.com</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-71361065792263584892011-10-14T03:55:00.000-07:002011-10-14T03:55:06.617-07:00Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque creed desecrated, community threatened by police<a href="http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/eye-on-persecution-ahmadiyya-mosque.html#.TpgU8tdr_Ho.blogger">Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque creed desecrated, community threatened by police</a><div><div><br /></div><div>THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque creed desecrated, community threatened by police</div><div>The demand to erase the Kalima (Islamic creed) from the Ahmadiyya mosque was issued by the Islamist extremist clerics of the area and the local police personal answered the call to “avoid a law and order situation,”</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk</div><div>Source/Credit: AMC Persecution report</div><div>By Imran Jattala | October 13, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>An “unfriendly visit of a government official” was paid to the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community on the outskirts of Vehari, a city in the Punjab, Pakistan.</div><div><br /></div><div>The conditions for the members of the Ahmadiyya community have further deteriorated in the area where police personal are now in cahutes with the local Islamist extremists, Ahmadiyya Times has learned.</div><div><br /></div><div>According to a report issued by the public affairs office of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Pakistan, the police personal took it upon themselves to deface an Ahmadiyya mosque in Chak 245/EB, a few weeks ago.</div><div><br /></div><div>The demand to erase the Kalima (Islamic creed) from the Ahmadiyya mosque was issued by the Islamist extremist clerics of the area and the local police personal answered the call to “avoid a law and order situation,” it was claimed.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>“These mullas are now planning the same for some other Ahmadiyya mosques in the district,” the Ahmadiyya community has learned.</div><div><br /></div><div>According to the report, an ASI (Assistant Sub-Inspector) Police from the Special Branch visited Chak 363/EB recently.</div><div><br /></div><div>The police official’s visit was a cause of intimidation and concern for the members of the Ahmadiyya community.</div><div><br /></div><div>“He inquired as to when the Kalima and the verse were written in the mosque,” it was reported.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ahmadis told the ASI that the contents were written long ago, when the mosque was first constructed.</div><div><br /></div><div>The police officer warned Ahmadis that local clerics were holding meetings about the Kalima in their mosque and there is a fear of public uproar.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is often the practice of the law enforcement agencies in the Punjab that instead of assuring protection and safety, the police official would warn the community to be ready for ‘anything’ as a result.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> -- Eye on persecution: Ahmadiyya mosque desecrated, community threatened by police</div><div> -- By Imran Jattala</div><div> -- By Imran Jattala. Follow on Twitter: @IJattala</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-83854642388302991452011-10-14T03:53:00.000-07:002011-10-14T03:53:39.086-07:00Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum<a href="http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/pakistan-intolerance-in-curriculum.html#.TpgUplSLaO0.blogger">Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum</a><div><br /></div><div><div>WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum</div><div>Just a few days ago, 10 Ahmadi children, seven of them girls, were expelled from a school in the Hafizabad area, simply on the basis of their religious identity. The incident took place soon after preachers promoting anti-Ahmadism had visited the town and lashed out with familiar vitriol against a religious group that has been thrust out of the mainstream and then subjected to years of vicious discrimination.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk</div><div>Source/Credit: The News | Pakistan</div><div>By Kamila Hyat | October 13, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>There have been several shocking incidents over the past week or so that go only to highlight the kind of intolerance we are facing in our society and the manner in which this is spreading. Worst of all the spirit of hatred has also seeped into classrooms, and is being used to poison the minds of children.</div><div><br /></div><div>This process will of course lead to the emergence, even before our watching eyes, of yet another generation persuaded that it is acceptable to discriminate on the basis of beliefs or other factors, or that minority groups are inherently inferior to the majority – deserving no place in mainstream society.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just a few days ago, 10 Ahmadi children, seven of them girls, were expelled from a school in the Hafizabad area, simply on the basis of their religious identity. The incident took place soon after preachers promoting anti-Ahmadism had visited the town and lashed out with familiar vitriol against a religious group that has been thrust out of the mainstream and then subjected to years of vicious discrimination.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The feeble plea by the principal of the private school, that he did not wish to turn away the children from the school doors but had no choice in the face of threats made by villagers, just goes to show how weak we have become.</div><div><br /></div><div>No one has answered the question of the distraught father of three of the girls driven away from school who asks how his daughters will now receive an education. Beyond the representatives of the Ahmadi community in Rabwah and some human rights groups, no one has spoken out in their support.</div><div><br /></div><div>The issue has not been discussed by furious media anchors, even though the Constitution of our land lays down in unequivocal terms that every citizen has a right to education and cannot be denied this under any circumstances.</div><div><br /></div><div>Such silence is perhaps the most dangerous element of all. The streets and other public places have been left to bigots, such as those who have been on the streets demanding the immediate release of Mumtaz Qadri, the man sentenced to death for the murder of Salmaan Taseer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Precisely the same silence prevailed after yet another horrendous incident at a school a few weeks ago when an eighth-grade Christian girl was turned out of a POF-run school in the town of Havelian after making a minor spelling mistake in an Urdu paper.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her teacher interpreted the mistake as an act of blasphemy, publicised the matter – which essentially revolved around one dot in a paragraph about a ‘naat’ – and as clerics staged protests the powerful POF management chose not only to expel the girl, but also to transfer her mother, a nurse at a hospital.</div><div><br /></div><div>Such incidents have occurred elsewhere too. Ahmadi children have been punished in schools, their faith ridiculed and admission denied simply on the basis of their religious beliefs. Amidst all this, we talk of ‘the silent majority’. But do we really know what people believe and think?</div><div><br /></div><div>It is true that many, indeed most, do not agree with the rabid views of the extremists. We would like to believe this is true. But popular thinking has been warped over the years by all kinds of factors that began essentially with the deliberate and evil distortions initiated in the early 1980s when our society first began its most serious transformation into an uglier, nastier place.</div><div><br /></div><div>Discrimination is not based on religious beliefs alone. At an elite Lahore private school, a child from a different ethnic background was mocked and subjected to continuous ridicule for his appearance. It seems that the school management didn’t do very much to check this behaviour or persuade the majority of students who had resorted to uncivilised conduct towards the student to correct their ways.</div><div><br /></div><div>Racism and bigotry of course need to be stopped using some degree of force within an environment in which the two have spread quite far and grown deep roots. African students based in colleges in Lahore and other cities will no doubt testify to the kind of treatment they face, solely on the basis of their skin colour.</div><div><br /></div><div>One question that we all need to ask is why the government sits by as a silent spectator while all this happens. It needs to play a far more proactive role. We stand where we are today as a result of carefully thought out behaviours and policies put in place in the past. They succeeded in twisting minds and creating an atmosphere in which hatred, distrust and intolerence could blossom.</div><div><br /></div><div>The need now is to begin an immediate reversal of this process. In the first place, the relevant authorities need to take notice of the instances of expulsion from schools on the basis of open and undisguised discrimination; this would put in place a good example of what should be done and where right separates from wrong, like oil from water.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is no time to lose. It is quite obvious that things are growing worse and worse virtually by the day. Our only hope for the future lies in nurturing a generation that is able to think more openly and adopt an approach which is different to the destructive one that has become a normal part of our society today.</div><div><br /></div><div>The provision that all citizens are equal needs to be turned into reality and not just a clause in a document that fewer and fewer people seem to be very bothered about.</div><div><br /></div><div>How do we begin this? Schools are a good place to start. Government schools are perhaps the best, given the number of children attending them and the control the administration should have over them. Through curriculums and training for teachers, both children and those entrusted with the delicate task of educating them need to learn to think differently.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not an easy task of course. But it has been done elsewhere; Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics were deeply divided in the north for so many years, is one example where attempts towards greater harmony through schools have met with some success.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are other examples in the world. We need to emulate them and move towards building a place where people are ready to speak out for what is right and refuse to allow extremist elements – who attempt to validate their intolerant ways by citing a distorted version of religion – to dictate how we live and what we do.</div><div><br /></div><div>The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Read original post here: Pakistan: Intolerance in the curriculum</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-57695976299906891792011-10-14T03:47:00.000-07:002011-10-14T03:47:39.991-07:00An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice<a href="http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/ahmadi-muslims-plea-be-my-voice.html#.TpgTQrugp34.blogger">An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice</a><div><br /></div><div><div>THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice</div><div>Unlike the general blasphemy laws, however, the specific anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws of Pakistan have not found even this much of luck. They have been conveniently forced out of the discussion and few are aware of the existence and continuous abuse of these draconian laws.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk</div><div>Source/Credit: The Huffington Post</div><div>By Kashif N. Chaudhry | October 10, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>Religious freedom (or the lack thereof) in Pakistan cannot be emphasized enough. Due to the preposterous demeanor of Pakistan's self-righteous right-wing, many in the world today are aware of Pakistan's notorious blasphemy problem. Much frustration has been expressed on liberal Pakistani blogs and through international media outlets -- especially after the heartless murders of Governor Salmaan Taseer and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti -- on the abuse of these laws. Even though nothing is expected to change anytime soon, at least the first vital step toward that goal is being taken: raising awareness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unlike the general blasphemy laws, however, the specific anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws of Pakistan have not found even this much of luck. They have been conveniently forced out of the discussion and few are aware of the existence and continuous abuse of these draconian laws. The silence of the liberal Pakistani blogosphere and the international media in this regard is baffling.</div><div><br /></div><div>So who are the Ahmadi Muslims and what are these laws?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), who claimed to be the long-awaited messiah. Ahmad single-handedly waged a struggle to bring about a renaissance of Islam. He declared that in this age the doctrine of violent jihad was against the teachings of Islam, a declaration met with edicts of heresy. Ahmad urged Muslims to emulate Prophet Muhammad's example. Accordingly, Ahmadi Muslims champion a complete separation of mosque and state, promote universal human rights and interfaith dialogue and practice nonviolence and non-retaliation amid brutal persecution in parts of the world. There are more than 600,000 Ahmadi Muslims living in Pakistan with tens of millions in 200 countries.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA -- the oldest Islamic-American organization -- has helped foster the Islamic ideals of peace and loyalty to nation through its Muslims for Peace and Muslims for Loyalty campaigns, respectively. It recently launched the nationwide Muslims for Life blood drive campaign to commemorate 9/11 and demonstrate Islam's emphasis on sanctity of life. The Community's charity organization, Humanity First, has been at the forefront of disaster relief both nationally and worldwide. Help, for instance, continues to be dispensed to the victims of Hurricane Katrina to date. Ahmadi Muslims have a central leadership, the Khalifa.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is not surprising, therefore, that Muslim clerics perceived the rapid spread of the Community in its early days as a threat. Having failed to defeat them through reason and discourse, they took to sticks and stones -- literally.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the formation of Pakistan, anti-Ahmadi Muslim groups organized to conspire and instigate massive nationwide riots. Friday sermons became an opportunity to spew venom against the Ahmadi Muslims. They were declared "apostates" and "worthy of being killed." Extremist right-wing influence ushered in violent street protests. The State succumbed to their pressure tactics and declared the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to be non-Muslim in 1974. In April of 1984, Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq issued Ordinance XX. Zia was a military dictator who had taken over the country after a coup d'état in 1977. To legitimize his autocracy, he assumed de facto leadership of Pakistan's extremist cause. Because the hatred and violence had failed to halt the progress of the Ahmadi Muslims, he decided to use force.</div><div><br /></div><div>Under the new laws, Ahmadi Muslims were arrested for using Islamic terminology. For example, saying the Salaam (greeting of peace) meant imprisonment. Thousands of Ahmadi Muslims filled jails across the country. On one side of prison sat rapists and murderers and on the other sat those who invoked peace on a passerby. The right-wing went on to demand the death penalty. Zia conceded and introduced the death penalty for propagation of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and distribution of Ahmadi Muslim literature.</div><div><br /></div><div>These barbaric anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws exist to date. Hundreds of Ahmadi Muslims remain behind bars in Pakistan -- and hundreds have been killed.</div><div><br /></div><div>These vicious laws are a threat to international religious freedom. They continue to embolden religious extremists in other countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia where similar demands to outlaw the peaceful Ahmadi Muslims have been put before the governments. In the case of the latter, these demands have been accepted in part, setting in a fresh wave of violence (caution: graphic). Because the hatred against the Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan was promoted and not checked by the State, it continues to be exported as far out as the U.K.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pakistani and International media make no mention of this dangerous state-sanctioned violation of religious freedom and basic human rights. Despite the fact that Pakistan's anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws are a blatant breach of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there has been no outcry from the United Nations either.</div><div><br /></div><div>United States' foreign policy recognizes religious freedom worldwide as one of its goals. While the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims gained momentum under Zia, the United States -- a close ally -- was busy funding his government and supporting the Afghan revolution. The plight of the Ahmadi Muslims went unnoticed. Three decades later, it is very encouraging that the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2010 on Pakistan takes serious exception to Pakistan's anti-Ahmadi Muslim laws. Much, however, needs to be done to effect a change on ground. I am hopeful that as a primary supporter of international religious freedom, the U.S. will continue to play a positive role to this end.</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, please join me in doing the least we can do: take that first step toward change: raise awareness.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Follow Kashif N. Chaudhry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KashifMD</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Read original post here: An Ahmadi Muslim's Plea: Be My Voice</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-54300092685181822112011-10-14T03:45:00.000-07:002011-10-14T03:45:54.602-07:00http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/pakistan-state-supported-anti-ahmadiyya.html<a href="http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/pakistan-state-supported-anti-ahmadiyya.html">http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/10/pakistan-state-supported-anti-ahmadiyya.html</a><div><br /></div><div><div>WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div>Pakistan: State-supported anti-Ahmadiyya agitation in Azad Jammu and Kashmir</div><div>Choudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of AJ&K, recently visited a religious madrasa at Faizpur and made uncalled for remarks against the Ahmadiyya community, it was reported in the media.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk</div><div>Source/Credit: AMC Persecution report</div><div>Edited by Imran Jattala | October 12, 2011</div><div><br /></div><div> AJ&K: Although a new government has taken over after the general elections, the sectarian and extremist elements have not only maintained their agitation against the Ahmadiyya community but also have raised its level to a threatening point.</div><div><br /></div><div>The anti-Ahmadiyya agitations take place with the collusion of ruling politicians.</div><div><br /></div><div>Choudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of AJ&K, recently visited a religious madrasa at Faizpur and made inappropriate remarks against the Ahmadiyya community, the media reported.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Qadianis’ activities will be watched in Azad Kashmir – Ch. Abdul Majeed," the headline read in the daily Nawa-i-Waqt, Rawalpindi, on September 9, 2011.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>“Muslim children should never be taught by Qadiani teachers (in public schools)," said Mulla Atiq-ur-Rehman, a member of the legislative assembly (MLA), who runs the Islamic madrasa, it was reported on the same occasion..</div><div><br /></div><div>"Qadianis can exist here only as a non Muslim minority. … They are not allowed to practice Islam. (etc),” Mulla Atiq-ur-Rehman further said according to the newspaper report.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Director of Public Affairs in the Ahmadiyya head office at Rabwah, Mr. Saleem-ud Din, strongly condemed the incident and sent letters of complaint to the President of Pakistan and to the President of Azad Kashmir.</div><div><br /></div><div>"For some time now there has been increase in organized anti-Ahmadiyya activities in Azad Kashmir," the complant letter stated.</div><div><br /></div><div>"...these elements have been patronized by the government of Azad Kashmir," Mr. Mr. Saleem-ud Din said.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ch. Abdul Majeed the prime minister of AJ&K and Pir Atiq ur Rehman, member of the AJ&K Assembly and President of Jamiat Ulama Jammu and Kashmir are in the lead of such activities in public rallies," the complaint included.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most Muslim clerics feel free in Pakistan to issue edicts declaring anyone Wajib-ul-Qatl (must be put to death). </div><div><br /></div><div>There are no laws against such declarations and hate incitements and many Wajib-ul-Qatl edicts are often followed up by target killings.</div><div><br /></div><div>While Ahmadis are the usual victims of this violent indiscretion, non-Ahmadis also are targeted.</div><div><br /></div><div>Governor Salman Taseer was was one such victom in recent past.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> -- Ahmadiyya Times</div><div> -- By Imran Jattala. Follow on twitter @IJattala</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-2837254877765200852011-08-19T03:56:00.000-07:002011-08-19T03:56:46.460-07:00Mohammed Yusuf Saraf, Kashmir’s Fight for Freedom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"> "Kashmir's Fight for Freedom" by Mohammed Yusuf Saraf, who rose to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of "Azad" Jammu Kashmir (AJK).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“A large number of tribals, without wasting any time, arraigned themselves against the people of Baramulla and within a few hours many buildings were gutted. Houses built of pucca bricks were forcibly entered into and plundered, the inhabitants being held in thrall at the pain of death. Scores of houses on the left bank of Jhelum were burnt to ashes.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The Mother Superior of St. Joseph Hospital, three nuns and a British couple staying there were slain. Three of my Hindu neighbours – Shambhu Nath, Ved Lal and Arjan Nath – schoolteachers all, were murdered. As far as looting and arson went, no distinction was made between Hindus and Muslims.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“For instance, when a tribal started to forcibly snatch away a blanket from a poor weaver called Ghani – the father of four daughters – he asked him, “Is it for this purpose that you have come to Kashmir?” Ghani was shot dead on the spot. The local cinema hall was turned into a veritable brothel. Exercising abundant caution, a well to do family sent all its women out of town. Due to some reason, one daughter-in-law of the house was unfortunately left behind. When a tribal spotted her, he ordered her to the camp. Displaying presence of mind, the girl sought permission to don new clothes and to carry her jewellery. The permission was granted. The girl entered a large room where fodder for horses was stored. She set the fodder on fire and herself jumped in. Not only the girl and her house, two hundred other houses of the mohalla were reduced to ashes.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“A city dweller named Rasul, who owned an oil press, invited two hundred tribals for dinner. After having eaten, the ‘guests’ demanded women. Fortunately all women had been sent out earlier and there was just an old granny in the house. The tribal went away in thorough disgust.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The Kashmiri Pandit women wear a particular piece of jewellery in their ears which is never taken off during the lifetime of their husbands. The tribals, without giving them the opportunity to remove these themselves, tore at them mercilessly, leaving the ears of the women spouting blood.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“While plundering houses, they did not stop only at cash and jewellery. Samovars and brass utensils were also looted, thinking them to be made of gold. Some tribals were seen wearing ferans that are the particular apparel of women.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(Mohammed Yusuf Saraf, Kashmir’s Fight for Freedom, p.906-908) </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Baramullah's population of 14,000 before the invasion of October 22 1947 was reduced to 1,000 by the time the Indian Army freed it in the first week of November. The men had been killed. Something like 4,000-5,000 women of all communities had been transported back in lorries to be sold in markets in Peshawar, Rawalpindi etc. I have said this on the basis of my readings of the newspapers of the time etc but would much appreciate any further references.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-60171974260747468172011-08-19T03:52:00.000-07:002011-08-19T04:00:13.801-07:00Akbar Khan's *Raiders in Kashmir*- The Hurriyat's denial of it is therefore their central falsehood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Former President of Muslim League, Sardar Shoukat Hayat Khan, gave major details about the tribal invasion in an interview with Daily Jung, London in April 1995. Later his book ‘The Nation that Lost Its Soul’ and its Urdu translation ‘Gum Gashta Qaum’ were published and appeared in the market. Sample some excerpts from the book of Sardar Shoukat Hayat Khan:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I was appointed supervisor of the Kashmir Operation. I requisitioned the services of Brigadier Sher Khan and Brigadier Akbar Khan. Both were from 6/13 Frontier Force (Puffers). We also requested that we be supplied with the guns of local make like the ones that were in the Lahore Fort. Apart from this we also included former INA general Kayani, Colonel Dara and Taj Khanzada in this expedition.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(Gum Gashta Qaum, p.278)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“ Taj Khanzada was appointed Commander of Baramulla and General Kayani was entrusted with the job of breaching Kathua road, so that Akhnoor be taken over and the land link between India and Kashmir snapped.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“At this time Ghulam Mohammed, the Finance Minister of Pakistan, recommended the inclusion of a relative of his in the High Command. This was Major Khurshid Anwar, a reserve officer of the Railway Battalion who had – during the time of the referendum in NorthWest Frontier Province – played truant as the Commander of Muslim League National Guard. His sole qualification was that he and Ghulam Mohammed were cousins. I rejected this recommendation on the grounds that I could not entrust military command to a non-military person. But Ghulam Mohammed (Finance Minister) and Liaqat Ali Khan insisted that his inclusion be accepted to make the National Guard happy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(ibid, p.218)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We selected the tribes near the Black Mountains of Swat to occupy the frontier mountain ranges of Kashmir. We also decided to keep tribes of other areas out of this war to maintain the element of a surprise, sudden attack and the secrecy required for the same.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We had decided upon a date in September as the D-Day. It came to be known that Khurshid Anwar had gone missing. He had married a Muslim League woman worker in Peshawar and disappeared for his honeymoon.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I reached the Muzaffarabad border, beyond which I did no have permission to go lest a Pakistani Minister be arrested in Kashmir. This war had to be seen as a popular uprising.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“At Baramulla, the tribals refused to take orders from Khurshid Anwar. The tribals started treating the three lakh rupees from the treasury as their own ….. during this time they started looting the locals. The lockets and collars of the nuns of Baramulla Convent were snatched. The tribals went on a looting spree in the market. Thus, precious time was lost.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We lost Kashmir due to our own follies.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(ibid, p.280)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sardar Shoukat Hayat Khan makes a surprising revelation in his book. Lord Mountbatten had come to Lahore for a meeting with Liaqat Ali Khan. After dinner Mountbatten told Liaqat Ali Khan that he was carrying the message from the Iron Man of India, Sardar Patel, that Pakistan should get out of Hyderabad and Junagarh since both were Hindu majority states and had no overland link with Pakistan. In return India would withdraw its forces from Kashmir which could then accede to Pakistan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Shoukat Hayat says that after conveying this message, Mountbatten retired for the night to the Government House, while two or three of us colleagues stayed back. We went up to Liaqat Ali Khan and said to him that we may consider Patel’s proposal regarding the exchange of Hyderabad in lieu of Kashmir, since we did not have a just claim on Hyderabad in any case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Turning to me, Liaqat Ali Khan replied: Sardar Sahib, do you think I have lost my mind to accept the proposal and give up Hyderabad, which is bigger than Punjab province, for a few mountains of Kashmir?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(ibid, p. 280, 281)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stating the reasons for the tribal incursion into Kashmir, Sardar Shoukat Hayat Khan writes:</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“India accepted the Security Council resolution as per which the decision about Kashmir had to be arrived at through a referendum. It kept on putting off this referendum on one or the other pretext. Even after assuring the United Nations on oath, it reneged on its decision to hold a plebiscite. We saw through the deceit of India and the Maharaja and decided to enter Kashmir.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(ibid, p.278)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Subroto Roy Mr Kaul, thank you *very much* for this addition. Akbar Khan's *Raiders in Kashmir* needs to be uploaded onto the Internet for all too. The attack changed everything in Kashmir; it was because of the attack that Hari Singh and Sh Abdullah came together and allied themselves with one another and with India; it is because of the attack that the history and present of Kashmir has been what it is. The Hurriyat's denial of it is therefore their central falsehood, since that is the basis for India and Pakistan carving up by military contest the ownerless anarchic territory that Dogra J&K had become.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-90077194934264504192011-08-16T08:21:00.000-07:002011-08-16T08:21:35.440-07:00US senator McCain arrives in Kashmir - Hindustan Times<a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/US-senator-McCain-arrives-in-Kashmir/Article1-733964.aspx#.TkqK04GYtL0.blogger">US senator McCain arrives in Kashmir - Hindustan Times</a><div>
<br /></div><div><div>US senator John McCain arrived in Kashmir on Tuesday just two days after visiting Pakistan and meeting its top political leadership, including Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. McCain, who was a presidential candidate in the previous US polls, arrived in Srinagar in a special US plan </div><div>
<br /></div><div> </div><div>on Tuesday. The US senator's visit has come as a shot in the arm of the chief minister Omar Abdullah-led J-K government as the republican leader avoided meeting any separatist leaders, including moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.</div><div>The Mirwaiz, who seeks the US intervention in the Kashmir problem, has been for years now harping on "use of US good offices to push India into a dialogue to resolve the problem". The Mirwaiz was unavailable for his comments.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>McCain, at present a member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee and ardent opponent of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, met governor NN Vohra earlier in the day.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>"During the wide ranging discussions lasting for about two hours, McCain and the state governor exchanged views on various important issues of mutual interest," said a Raj Bhawan spokesman without divulging details of the contents of the discussion.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Significantly, the meeting was attended by top army official, including Northern Army Commander Lt General K. T. Parnaik and Corps Commander, XV Corps Lt. General SA Hasnain.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>The Republican leader, who went for sightseeing on the banks of Dal Lake, also met Abdullah in the afternoon at his residence. Both engaged in a discussion about the prevailing ground situation in Kashmir and the security scenario.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Hardline Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani downplayed the US senator's decision not meet separatists. "India is trying to use its influence over the US. The senator visiting Kashmir and not meeting freedom fighters is not bothering. Our struggle is just and for the basic right to self-determination, which has been snatched and suppressed at the gun point by India," said Geelani.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Geelani said "it's moral responsibility upon the US to support genuine people's movement and the majority sentiment of the people of Kashmir if it claims to be a democracy". "Whether the US support us or not, we will continue our struggle for justice and for right to self determination," said Geelani.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>McCain is scheduled to visit a temple tomorrow in Srinagar and will leave thereafter.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-22142319425078433542011-07-06T05:07:00.000-07:002011-07-06T05:07:25.279-07:00How fair Is PDP a “mainstream party” posing to compete with NC’s Greater Autonomy in the name of Self Rule ? By *Daya Sagar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">A Look Through the Mist</div><div style="text-align: justify;">No one appears to be serious for immediate settlement of J&K turmoil</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">How fair Is PDP a “mainstream party” posing to compete with NC’s Greater Autonomy in the name of Self Rule ? By *Daya Sagar</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Jammu and Kashmir Mufti Mohd Sayeed has the first rival in National Conference. No</div><div style="text-align: justify;">doubt so far NC has held firm to 1947 accession of J&K with India. No doubt NC has been expressing</div><div style="text-align: justify;">reservations regarding the Center State relations. Mirza Afzal Baig had lead the Plebiscite Front that was</div><div style="text-align: justify;">later disbanded after 1975 Indira Sheikh Accord. Confusions and anti India concepts did nurish more</div><div style="text-align: justify;">further since even after 1990 no sincere efforts were made by New Delhi and local political cadres in</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kashmir valley to check the separatist ideologists. Governments have not been able to reverse the</div><div style="text-align: justify;">1989/ 90 mass migration from Kashmir valley Due to this the local information bank of the people</div><div style="text-align: justify;">left back in Kashmir valley has surely moved some distance from oneness with India. Rather it could</div><div style="text-align: justify;">also be inferred that some so called mainstream elements too advocate separatist view points /</div><div style="text-align: justify;">demands. National Conference had already passed a “Greater Autonomy Resolution in 1994’ . Later NC</div><div style="text-align: justify;">lead government had got a resolution on similar lines passed by J&K Assembly in 2000. In simple words</div><div style="text-align: justify;">the June 2000 Autonomy Resolution of JK Legislative Assembly is more understood by common man as</div><div style="text-align: justify;">moving to pre 1953 constitutional position. Under the circumstances the separatists/ those who talked of</div><div style="text-align: justify;">referendum or plebiscite did not have much opposition to face.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So Mufti Mohd Sayeed too found it saleable for coming up with “Self Rule promise”. Some people</div><div style="text-align: justify;">named PDP Self Rule as replica of the formulae that Pak President Parvez Musharraf is said to have</div><div style="text-align: justify;">suggested . Mufti Mohd Sayeed has not so far out rightly rejected such allegations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Congress lead Government at New Delhi too did not distance from PDP and kept on sharing power</div><div style="text-align: justify;">in JK with PDP till 200 8. It was here that PDP got encouraged and to out beat National Conference it</div><div style="text-align: justify;">suggested that (i) the currencies of both India and Pakistan should be used in J&K and PAK ( POK) (ii)</div><div style="text-align: justify;">there should be common control of Indian and Pakistan on certain subjects as would pertain to J&K and</div><div style="text-align: justify;">PAK (POK). PDP even used the term Pakistan Administered Kashmir in place of Pakistan Occupied</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kashmir and New Delhi still “recognizes “ PDP as main stream political party. May be now need has</div><div style="text-align: justify;">arisen to even rework the definition of a main stream political party.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Kashmir Valley PDP did succeed in sentimentally exploiting the innocent Kashmiri masses in particular</div><div style="text-align: justify;">and in 2008 assembly elections proved tough on Congress & NC. PDP did not dare to adopt openly</div><div style="text-align: justify;">anti accession approach like JKLF / Hurriyat since that way it would lose chances of power rides. PDP did</div><div style="text-align: justify;">not refute accession in plain words but it asked some thing like joint control of India & Pakistan</div><div style="text-align: justify;">over J&K well knowing that it was not possible without out undoing 1947 accession with India.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">After having established some roots in Kashmir, PDP leaders understood that to remain in the political</div><div style="text-align: justify;">power race ( local) PDP has to make its stand on the 1947 Accession clear so that even the “blunt”</div><div style="text-align: justify;">sword of New Delhi does not fall on its head. So it was after more than 5 years that Mehbooba Mufti</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Create PDF with PDF4U. If you wish to remove this line, please click here to purchase the full version</div><div style="text-align: justify;">tried to introduce PDP Self Rule with in the scope of 1947 Instrument of Accession and the</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Constitution of India. But still to people of J&K ( Kashmir Valley in particular ) PDP has introduced</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Self Rule more a personal rule of Kashmiries than the Greater autonomy of National Conference.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">PDP has very cleverly taken to with 1947 Accession talk track after having sufficiently exploited the</div><div style="text-align: justify;">sentiments / emotions of innocent Kashmiri around Pakistan/ Two Nation theory. PDP has even succeeded</div><div style="text-align: justify;">in setting some working roots in Jammu region. Under the circumstances to compete with Mehbooba</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mufti politically now Omar Abdullah too is playing soft on the separatists and separatist</div><div style="text-align: justify;">ideologies .</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Mehbooba Mufti and Mufti Mohd Sayeed have been wisely changing tracks to retain the</div><div style="text-align: justify;">goodwill of the common Kashmiri masses as well as those at New Delhi. PDP leadership also wants</div><div style="text-align: justify;">to remain at the international scene not much behind the separatists and hence occasionally also</div><div style="text-align: justify;">advocates early settlement of Kashmir issue (dispute ).</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was on 9th July2009 that Peoples Democratic Party in a special meeting where Party Patron Mufti</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mohammad Sayeed, Party presidentMehbooba Mufti and Muzaffar Hussain Baig were present</div><div style="text-align: justify;">expressed that PDP Self Rule flows through Article 370 and Instrument of Accession.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Introducing the Self Rule Muzaffar Hussain Baig said</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> (i) “Self rule was provided to the State in Instrument of Accession but later on it was snatched and taken back from Jammu Kashmir by the Government of India, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">(ii) PDP now wants it to be back ,</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> (iii) even the sovereignty of the State was maintained in Delhi agreement made</div><div style="text-align: justify;">between Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and GOI (Jawahar Lal Nehru ) and</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> (iv) it was agreed by GOI that</div><div style="text-align: justify;">the controversial Article 356 of Indian Constitution won’t be applicable to JK by which New Delhi has the</div><div style="text-align: justify;">powers to dismiss an elected State government”. As regards some constitutional roll backs demanded by</div><div style="text-align: justify;">PDP ( Article 356, application of Article 357 by which New Delhi has powers to make legislation in place of State legislature, Article 249 of Indian Constitution (by which New-Delhi can legislate on JK, Constitutional Order 101 was promulgated by the President under Article 370 adding Clause 4 in Article 368 prohibiting JK from changing the powers or privileges of Governor , Article 312 dealing with ‘All India Services’ , deletion of words ‘temporary’ from Article 370, and like ) a legitimate debate could be allowed with out</div><div style="text-align: justify;">any questions on the Accession 1947 and Nationality of Kashmiri being India. But the style of references</div><div style="text-align: justify;">made to 1947 Accession , Pakistan Occupied Kashmir as Pak Administered Kashmir , use of both Indo Pak</div><div style="text-align: justify;">currencies in only J&K and dual Indo Pak control on some local matters pertaining to J&K and Pak held</div><div style="text-align: justify;">part of J&K no where qualify to be within the scope of 1947 Accession and article 370 of constitution of</div><div style="text-align: justify;">India . Such demands and explanations for Self Rule surely push PDP out of the scope to qualify as</div><div style="text-align: justify;">a mainstream political party of India ( While talking to newsmen M. H Baig had said “Self Rule addresses the problem of JK in four different dimensions, which includes New Delhi-State relations; relations between the two divided parts of JK, resource sharing including trade, transport and other issues; relations between Pakistan and PaK and Inter-regional and sub-regional issues” ) .</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">( PDP claims that in 1947 it was envisioned that the final decision regarding accession has to be reached by the State Constituent Assembly and later on Constituent Assembly ratified Instrument of Accession, so now there is no need to have the word ‘temporary’ along with Article 370 ).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">.No doubt National Conference did ask for Greater Autonomy but never went for a mass agitation</div><div style="text-align: justify;">movement. So , Kashmir today is disturbed not for implementation of autonomy resolution2000. Neither</div><div style="text-align: justify;">NC did much of work to carry the message of greater autonomy to ground level masses , particularly in</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jammu and Ladakh Regions. The same has been the case with the Self Rule of PDP. Kashmiries are not</div><div style="text-align: justify;">agitating and protesting demanding PDP Self Rule . PDP well knows that t its Self Rule Road map</div><div style="text-align: justify;">for peace would not fit in the frame 1947 accession and Indian constitution. But surely with such</div><div style="text-align: justify;">approach PDP has created some extra pressures on NC in Kashmir valley.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now PDP has started comparing its Self Rule with Greater Autonomy of NC.. People in Kashmir valley</div><div style="text-align: justify;">are too simple to understand the technicalities and rhetoric.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The separatist ideologies are being carried ( though mildly) by PDP vociferously indirectly taking</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Create PDF with PDF4U. If you wish to remove this line, please click here to purchase the full version</div><div style="text-align: justify;">support from slogans of Kashmiriat / erosion of autonomy, 1952 Delhi Agreement, 1975 Indira Sheikh</div><div style="text-align: justify;">accord and 1987 Rajiv Farooq Accord. Kashmiries have also seen Farooq (Abdullah) &. ( 0mar ) Farooq accord.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Experiences have shown that some Kashmiri leaders will do their best to keep New Delhi under pressure</div><div style="text-align: justify;">for money and power. Separatists too need some social survival and the pro separatist actions of</div><div style="text-align: justify;">some ‘main stream” parties would surely allow them to defer violent protests/ approach. In case</div><div style="text-align: justify;">PDP is so loyal to the cause of the people of J&K ( Kashmiries ) why does not it work for an “alloy” of</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Greater Autonomy and Self Rule with in the provisions of only Indian Constitution? Any how Kashmiri</div><div style="text-align: justify;">leaders will keep on saying that India and Pakistan should settle the Kashmir ( J&K) affairs with due</div><div style="text-align: justify;">participation of Kashmiries including separatists. In principle they keep their priority only on Kashmir Valley centric requirements . No doubt they do pose looking for some solution for governance taking the people of all the regions of J&K in confidence. So ,on the face of it they do not appear to be serious for any immediate solution since to majority of Kashmiri leaders more benefit appears in continuing confusions / uncertainty and not in settlement of any doubts /</div><div style="text-align: justify;">confusions. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">*( Daya Sagar is social activist and leading scribe on Kashmir affairs)</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-29366345912935629562011-06-09T07:03:00.000-07:002011-06-09T07:03:21.058-07:00Giving away Kashmir – Part 3 BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Giving away Kashmir – Part 3 BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">BY CT – MARCH 1, 2010</div><div style="text-align: justify;">POSTED IN: POLITICS</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is the last post of a three-part series on how successive recent Indian governments have plotted to give away Kashmir. It is written by Dr. Ajay Chrungoo, Chairman of the Panun Kashmir, a frontline organization of Kashmiri Pandits. Dr. Chrungoo is a guest writer with Canary Trap.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">http://canarytrap.in/2010/03/01/giving-away-kashmir-part-3/</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Working Group on Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) never discussed anti-terrorism measures as an important confidence building measure for the return of normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir. It did not at all debate the relevance of anti-terrorism laws in the state in the light of the ongoing terrorist campaign. It did not even cursorily address the human rights violation in the state due to terrorism. The Working Group focused primarily on the state specific aspects of human rights violations just as Amnesty International and Asia Watch used to do in 1990’s.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The mindset employed can be understood by the written admission of the Working Group on CBMs while dealing with the question of internally displaced Kashmiri Hindus, “the Working Group concerns itself with the rehabilitation and improvement of conditions of the militancy victims and did not go deeper into the causes or the genesis of the militancy in the state.” The Working Groups followed a clear cut direction to ignore all issues which would bring into focus the issues of ideologically motivated violence in the state and bring the ugly side of armed Muslim separatism in the state to light. Their recommendations were meticulously in line with the separatist demands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Working Group on CBMs recommended abrogation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), relief not only to the victims of terrorism but the families of the killed terrorists, create conditions for the return of persons to Jammu and Kashmir who had gone to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Pakistan for training and organizing support for armed separatism etc. Only lip service was rendered to all other issues, including the problems faced by refugees, who had come from West Pakistan, while the PoK refugees of 1947 were not even mentioned in the report. The political motivation at work from behind can also be clearly understood by reading some recommendations of the same Working Group. The recommendations state, “To start unconditional dialogue process with militant groups for finding sustainable solutions to the problems of militancy….To examine the role of media in generating an image of the people of the state so as to lessen the indignity and suspicion that the people face outside the state”. The group on strengthening Relations across LoC never even considered the issue of illegal economy in the state and impact on it by cross LoC trade. It never discussed the issue of Middle East based business mafia seeking to suck up Jammu and Kashmir into its lap even when the leaders of the business committee in Kashmir have been openly canvassing with their fraternity that cross LoC trade would integrate Kashmir Valley with the economy of Middle East, not Pakistan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Using the separatists</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Working Group recommendations strengthened the processes already unleashed to bring about economic and political integration of the Muslim majority areas of Jammu with the overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir valley. Construction of Mughal Road (connecting Poonch-Rajouri with Kashmir through Shopian-Pulwama), and Sinthan Top Road (connecting mountainous Kishtwar district with Anantnag) were given further impetus. The handing over of the national power projects to J&K government assumed new stridency during the RTCs and WG meetings and the subsequent recommendations have already created an agenda for developing the infrastructure (economic, legal and political) for the Greater Muslim Kashmir.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">During the deliberations of the third RTC, the Muslim representatives from Kargil vehemently opposed the concept of demilitarization and brought to light the humane role played by Indian security establishment for the people living in Kargil, Drass and other remote areas. The entire exposition eventually was ignored and never allowed to be known in the rest of the country primarily because GoI had already embarked upon the process of demilitarization. In the same RTC, the then MLA from Bandipore addressed the PM and said, “Sir, why was the All Party Hurriyat Conference Chief Syed Ali Shah Gilani released from jail before this conference. What was the assessment of Govt of India? If he was released why was he allowed to address a public rally at the airport itself? What was the assessment of GoI about this? Do you know Sir that Lashkar-e-Taiba flags were flaunted in this rally? Do you know Sir what were the slogans raised in the rally? Sir, they raised the slogans – Lashkar Aayi, Lashkar Aayi, Manmohan ki Maut Aayi, Azad ki maut Aayi.” The release of the radical pro-Pakistan Hurriyat leader retrospectively seems to have a purpose. Gilani was perhaps released to raise the din of radical demands outside so that the proposals of Self Rule, Greater Autonomy raised by Peoples Democratic Party and National Conference within RTC appear to be moderate options and could be endorsed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The attitude of Government of India to Jamaat, Ali Shah Gilani and Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) appears to have a purpose when we see that it is the GoI which is investing in pushing through the Kathwari/Dixon plan as a solution. While all other separatist leaders have lost their credibility and potential to mobilize public, it is only Syed Ali Shah Gilani, DeM and Jamaat-e-Islami which can keep the pot boiling in the public and provide the required pressure and momentum to the Indian government for giving concessions. It is well known that whenever the government acted firmly on the ground, the Intifada never took off. And it assumed the proportions of an uprising when the Indian government publicly declared retraction of its authority from the ground. Omar Abdullah asked the Prime Minister in one of the RTCs as to why has been Government of India always befriending and encouraging such elements in J&K who have a manifest anti-India stand on Kashmir.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Giving away of Kashmir is basically a process of recasting the concepts of sovereignty of Indian Nation, its frontiers and its secular vision. The Self Rule document of PDP, which many believe has been prepared by Government of India, openly talks about redefining the concepts of nation, sovereignty, ethnicity, regions etc. When the Indian government talks about porous borders, rendering borders irrelevant, settlement between stakeholders, it is talking about a fundamental ideological shift in the nation building vision. To qualify them as tactical interventions or strategic imperatives, right or wrong, will be a gross misjudgment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bogey of US pressure</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">To those who pose serious questions about the gradual process of capitulation in Jammu and Kashmir conducted and calibrated by sections of the State, the argument put forward to silence them in the back channels is the intense international pressure brought about by USA and China on India. It is not incidental that one of the first public expressions of a ‘Two Front’ situation for India has been given by none other than Brijesh Mishra, the National Security Advisor to Vajpayee Government and one of the brains which set the peace process with Pakistan rolling. Prodded and patronized by the State, a voluntary censorship seems to be in vogue not to discuss the content and quality of this pressure. It is true that even after 9/11 the United States has not given any indication that it has changed its policy on Kashmir or Pakistan vis-a-vis India. But it is also true that at a time when it is being parroted from within India that GoI has been forced to enter into a dialogue with Pakistan under US pressure, American government has publicly released the information about terrorists arrested in the US which link the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai directly to serving officers in Pakistani Army. The statement of Robert Gates that India may loose its reserves of restrain in case of one more terrorist attack on Indian soil was less a prodding in favour of a dialogue and concession to separatists and more a warning to Pakistan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is not to say that the US is not seeking such cooperation from India which addresses its concern more than Indian concerns. The fact is that the US has a lesser leverage to exert pressures on India than it had before 9/11. Before the terror attacks on twin towers in New York, US government had its relations intact with Pakistan and rest of the radical Muslim countries around the Middle East. It had not entered Iraq and was exploring a relationship with Taliban. Now the situation is different. The US, by the admission of its own experts, is over stretched and needs India more in an atmosphere of global recession than any time in history. Why is Government of India more than willing to accommodate American view now than it has been ever before? Not only that, why are propaganda campaigns like the suspension of aid to Jammu and Kashmir by World Bank (because it has suddenly woken up to recognize Jammu and Kashmir as a dispute) left uncontested? That too when the representative of the bank has clarified that they are continuing to finance many projects in India including Jammu and Kashmir.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The bogey of increasing international pressure is being crafted from within to target Indian public opinion at a time when dialogue with separatists is going on and Pakistan is unraveling from within. A section from within the government and the political establishment wants to present a compromise in Jammu and Kashmir as a deliverance to the nation from a perpetual confrontation, even if it means abandoning its frontiers, its people in the state, its civilisational responsibility, central features of its eco-heritage, secularism and everything which India stands for.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I participated in the first SAFMA conference in New Delhi immediately after a group of Pakistani Journalists had for the first time visited Jammu and Kashmir. During the lunch session of the conference I overheard a conversation between the visiting Pakistani journalist and an official of the Pakistani embassy in India. The journalist was telling the official in Urdu that Indians, while talking about settlement of Kashmir issue, always say that they cannot allow second Partition of India. The Pakistani official retorted back that Gandhi and Nehru also used to say like this before the partition. (Concluded)</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-21836572418261753822011-06-09T07:00:00.001-07:002011-06-09T07:00:27.741-07:00Giving away Kashmir – Part 2 BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Giving away Kashmir – Part 2 BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO</span></b></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">BY CT – FEBRUARY 28, 2010</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">POSTED IN: POLITICS</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">This is the second post of a three-part series on how successive recent Indian governments have plotted to give away Kashmir. It is written by Dr. Ajay Chrungoo, Chairman of the Panun Kashmir, a frontline organization of Kashmiri Pandits. Dr. Chrungoo is a guest writer with Canary Trap.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">http://canarytrap.in/2010/02/28/giving-away-kashmir-part-2/</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">When Kathwari was invited to India along with his proposals ‘Kashmir: A Way Forward’, it marked a major change in the strategic perspectives of Indian State. Kathwari’s plan was a rechristened Dixon Formula. It envisaged a quasi-independent or eventually independent Greater Muslim Kashmir. To Dixon, doing this was completing the ‘unfinished agenda’ of Partition of India.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Nehru from the inception was opposed to an Independent Kashmir. He had outrightly communicated to Muslim leaders of Kashmir that, “he would prefer to hand over the State to Pakistan on a platter rather than support its independence and allow it to be turned into a centre of international intrigue and danger to both India and Pakistan.” It is not to say that Nehru and his successors till Vajpayee considered independence or quasi-independence for Jammu and Kashmir as a political blasphemy. There is a lot of evidence available to suggest that Nehru and his successors in Congress flirted with these options but predominantly from a tactical perspective. For strategic planners in India, counterpoising independence or autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir to counter pro-Pak sentiment in the State has always been a very attractive option. They always believed that keeping these options alive, and also nourishing them would provide India leverage to wrong foot Pakistan. Bereft of the profound understanding of the issues involved and oblivious of the implications they flaunted this maneuver more often than less as a strategic necessity. By accepting independence or quasi-independence options as possible concepts for clinching a deal with Pakistan, India has virtually checkmated itself. Pakistanis now publicly claim that they are actually agreeing to India’s position and so there should be no delay in a final settlement.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The formulation that two-nation theory can be countered only by a three-nation theory is turning out to be a fatal self goal. Both theories are ideologically one and the same. Cutting the two-nation politics into regional or ethnic denominators does not resolve its basic incompatibility with a state based on recognition of plural diversity on the principle of equality. Breaking away of Bangladesh from Pakistan only solved the problem of power sharing within the frame work of the bigger Pakistan. It did not resolve the conflict with an inclusive secular nation because it defined its separation from India on the same principle of two-nation theory.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The symbiotic relation which Pakistan evolved between pro-Pak and pro-independence/autonomy politics in Jammu and Kashmir could not be properly comprehended within the framework of the strategic perspective of India. This perspective visualized harnessing of Muslim identity politics and constitutionally fortifying Muslim sub-nationalism in the State as not only an antidote to Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir but also an effective device to mobilize Muslim vote bank in rest of India. It considered Muslim communalism in India as merely a reaction to the tyranny of Hindu majority. The entire approach over the years has become not only a device to circumvent the issue of Muslim communalism in India but to protect and nourish it.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Despite all this, till Kathwari’s visit, Indian State had not totally closed its eyes to the incompatibility of an autonomous sphere of Muslim interests in Jammu and Kashmir with the secular nation building. That explains why over the years the process of erosion of article 370 remained alive. Extension of jurisdiction of Supreme Court of India, CAG, fundamental rights and many other central laws was an expression to dissolve this incompatibility. A dominant section of Indian State and the political establishment never agreed to elevate Article 370 from a transitory provision to a permanent feature of Indian constitution. The strategic paradigm of fortifying Muslim identity politics in Jammu and Kashmir and rest of India to negate the appeal of two-nation theory has lead to the creation of broadly two sections within Indian State and the political establishment.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">One such section has been that always had a subversive motivation and visualized recognition to Muslim Sub-nationalism in Jammu and Kashmir as a space to build a Greater Muslim Kashmir and use this to impair the indivisible unity of Indian Republic from within. This section always wanted Muslim identity politics in Jammu and Kashmir to be alive and kicking to use it as a cardinal insult to balkanize India along its sub-national diversity.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The second segment constitutes of those who gave more credence to the tactical value of harnessing Muslim sub-nationalism, but only to weaken the appeal of Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. While keeping the affront to Muslim identity politics to the minimum this section however did try to neutralize the disruptive potential of special status of Jammu and Kashmir to the unity of India. This group nourished a misplaced wish that eventually Indian democracy will prove to be a stronger force and Muslim identity politics in the state will loose its relevance. This group has premised their approach on the line that Muslim communalism has not to be contested; it has to be given minimum affront and the best choice is to circumvent it.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Over the years there has been a ping pong battle between these two mindsets; one seeking to delegitimise the religious identity politics, the other doing everything to consolidate Greater Muslim Kashmir. When Muslim majority Doda was carved out of the Hindu majority Jammu province in 1948, followed by carving out of Shia Muslim majority Kargil out of Buddhist majority Ladakh, we were witnessing the counter responses to the process of fuller integration of Jammu and Kashmir unleashed not from Pakistan but from within. Nehruvian strategic paradigm kept this internal conflict in the nation building process alive.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The promotion of Kathwari plan by Vajpayee government marked the demise of this strategic perspective. The new paradigm recognizes the three nation proposals of independence or semi-independence of Kashmir as a solution to Indo-Pak conflict rather than a tactical antidote to the two-nation vision. Recognizing Pakistan as a partner in settling the future of the only Muslim majority state of India has not only made the settlement on Jammu and Kashmir as the unfinished agenda of partition but opened afresh the Muslim question in India. The support extended by eminent Muslims like AG Noorani or Shabana Azmi or Wajahat Habibullah to the separatist cause in Kashmir have the sinister forebodings of the new confidence of a section of Indian Muslim elite to question the very unity of the nation. Vajpayee’s strategic vision underlined that the frontline Muslim state of Pakistan can live in harmony with a secular and Hindu majority India. This shift in India’s strategic perspective is of the nature of a mutation. From visualizing the creation of an Independent Greater Muslim Kashmir as more dangerous than its secession to Pakistan and a potential hot bed of international intrigue, the new perspective seems to view the creation of the same as a bridge of peace between Pakistan (a confessional ideological State) and India (a secular state).</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Giving away Kashmir</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Manmohan Singh’s tenure has carried the strategic shift further away from the Nehru-Gandhi era. The peace with Pakistan at any price seems to be getting internalized in a way that it has become more than a strategic necessity — an ideological imperative. The subversive entrenchment within, emboldened by its increasing reach and sway, is gradually succeeding in harnessing the might and wherewithal of the State itself to mount a concerted attack on the Nation.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The three Round Table Conferences and the meetings of the various Working Groups and the conclusions thereof are manifest examples of how Indian State is made to invest in creating a Greater Muslim Kashmir.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A section of pro-India participants, invited to the first Round Table Conference (RTC), did debate the wisdom of participating in it. They had legitimate apprehensions that the conduct of such a conference was in fact an exercise to accord democratic legitimacy to certain concessions that Government of India was ready to make to Pakistan and the separatists in the Valley. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had already had series of very high profile meetings with a section of separatist leadership. These meetings, lasting for hours, along with the top most officers of Government of India had catapulted the separatist leadership into the national and international limelight once again at a time when their credibility on the ground was at the lowest. The Chenab Solution, which had prominently come to the public realm after Vajpayee invited Kathwari and sent his special emissary Sh. R K Mishra to start a dialogue process with Pakistan, had attained the stature of a possible solution considered more by the Government of India than by Pakistan. Was the participation of pro-India leadership in Jammu and Kashmir in the Round Table Conference along with the separatist leadership sought to give an impression of involving everyone so that the compromise already worked out could be presented as a fate accompli to the wider national opinion? Retrospectively, this apprehension seems to have been well founded. At that time however the opinion that Round Table Conference accorded legitimacy to the diversity of political opinion in the State and presented an opportunity to show the separatists their position in over all political environment of the state clinched the argument against dissociating from the RTC.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Through the three RTC’s and the Working Groups, GOI pushed through all such proposals, which have critically strengthened the processes for the creation of Greater Muslim Kashmir. A process of reconciliation with separatism on their terms has by now been firmly grounded through a series of administrative, quasi-legal and political maneuvers. These measures are such that they do not need a legislative sanction of the Indian Parliament and as such are not dependent upon the political consensus.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The deliberations in RTC’s and Working Groups amply reflect a deliberation in implementing an agenda which had already been unleashed. The very architecture of the RTC’s was developed in a way were Government of India was placed as a neutral arbitrator between pro-India opinion and those who wanted to change the status quo of the relation between Jammu and Kashmir and the Union of India. Many times Government of India seemed to facilitate the separatist agenda by maintaining stoic silence even when the Muslim leadership of the valley put forward misplaced constitutional arguments or historically unfounded and false propositions undermining the very accession of the state with India and attacking its sovereignty. When none other than Omar Abdullah said in the very first RTC that, “we have signed only instrument of accession and not instrument of merger,” the statement had profound implications needing a proper response from the highest in the Government of India. In the same meeting the leader of PDP and then Cabinet Minister in the state government, Sh Muzaffar Beigh said, “Article 370 had a treaty status”. He opined that this treaty had developed after an understanding between Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir and Constituent Assembly of India, both of which as per him were sovereign bodies. This blatant falsehood and sinister twist was never contested by Government of India.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A section of Indian State and political establishment seem to be allowing blatant falsehoods aimed at wrecking the sovereignty of the nation in Jammu and Kashmir in such a way so that public at large, not only in J&K but in rest of India as well as internationally, is convinced that India has no case in J&K. The deliberations in the Working Groups were also conducted in a manner to undermine all legitimate imperatives of national interests. Government of India is mirroring the attitudes which the British Government adopted in the build up to the partition of India.</div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183258103712887637.post-75201616289373381322011-06-09T06:55:00.000-07:002011-06-09T06:56:08.639-07:00Giving away Kashmir – Part 1 BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Giving away Kashmir – Part 1 BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">BY CT – FEBRUARY 27, 2010</div><div style="text-align: justify;">POSTED IN: POLITICS<br />
<a href="http://canarytrap.in/2010/02/27/giving-away-kashmir-part-1/">http://canarytrap.in/2010/02/27/giving-away-kashmir-part-1/</a><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is a three-part series on how successive recent Indian governments have plotted to give away Kashmir. It is written by Dr. Ajay Chrungoo, Chairman of the Panun Kashmir, a frontline organization of Kashmiri Pandits. Dr. Chrungoo is a guest writer with Canary Trap.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">BY DR. AJAY CHRUNGOO</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">For so many years we have concerned ourselves primarily with how Pakistan seeks to take away Jammu and Kashmir. We are perhaps getting too late to intensely involve ourselves with how a section of Indian State and the political class have been, over the years, crafting the giving away of Jammu and Kashmir. The unilateral submission of the report of the Working Group on Centre-State Relations by its Chairman Justice Sagir Ahmad to the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir is only a reflection on the relentless campaign to keep the Muslim Question in India alive and transform the vision of secularism into an albatross around the neck of Indian nation, fixing its limbs into inaction, so that the Muslim Power continues to inch eastwards through successive partitions of India.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A sinister course correction</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The report, submitted by Justice Sagir in the name of Working Group on Centre-State Relations, was done without completing the agenda of the Working Group; without taking most of the members of the Working Group into confidence; without seeking the opinion of the members on the draft of the report; and last but not the least, without formally winding up the proceedings of the Working Group. It seems that the entire exercise is aimed at some sort of a course correction crafted by those who have prefixed the direction and the outcome of the internal dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir. There are pertinent reasons to think so.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The delay in submission of the report by Justice Sagir was certainly causing worry which found expression once in a while in the public sphere. On March 10, 2008 a prominent local daily in Jammu and Kashmir reported National Conference (NC) patron Dr Farooq Abdullah blaming New Delhi for not being serious towards the resolution of the Kashmir dispute and quoted him making direct and almost indicatory references about the Working Group on Centre-State Relations. He said, “appointment of a Muslim Judge to give report on the contentious issue of centre state relations reflects their whimsical approach…. The report could have catastrophic consequences for Justice Sagir.” As per the report of Kashmir Times, Dr Abdullah maintained that reluctance of Justice Sagir in convening another round of meeting of the Working Group reflects his understanding of “how the contents of the report could impact his career prospects.” The newspaper further quotes Dr Abdullah as having said, “…in a country where the minorities are under suspicion all the time, expecting Justice Sagir to give a report which could maintain his image of being a nationalist would be a little irrational.” In his expressions, Dr Abdullah referred to the population dynamics in the country, “If the centre would have been serious, Justice Sachar would have been the best choice”. He openly confessed about his resentment on the appointment of Justice Sagir at the time when the heads of the working groups were being chosen and frankly said, “I resisted his name, since I knew the repercussions of (his) heading this crucial Working Group on centre-state relationships…”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The statement clearly brings out that a person of the stature of Dr Farooq Abdullah had a clear-cut expectation from the Working Group on Centre-State Relations and an apprehension whether the person like Justice Sagir would be able to deliver the same.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is relevant to quote what Prof Amitabh Mattoo was saying months before Justice Sagir submitted his report given the fact that he has been one of the more visible backchannel actors in the engagement between Pakistan, India, separatists and the so called moderates in Kashmir. He wrote in early October: “An important working group of the Prime Minister on J&K dealt with centre state relations but it was unable to arrive at a breakthrough. This doesn’t mean that we have a cul-de-sac. There are many proposals on the table including those on autonomy, self rule, self governance and achievable nationhood….These internal discussions must flow into the backchannel which can then attempt to work out a non-territorial India-Pakistan settlement on J&K based on providing a similar political architecture on both sides of the line of control working towards converting the LoC into Line of Peace, that allows free movement of people, goods, services and ideas.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The way Justice Sagir submitted his report has some resonance in the way National Conference submitted the Greater and Regional Autonomy Reports. Like the constitution of Working Group on Centre and State Relations the Dr Abdullah government constituted the Committees on Greater Autonomy and Regional Autonomy after coming to power in 1996; giving an impression of adopting a non-partisan and inclusive process. He made Dr Karan Singh the Chairman of the Greater Autonomy Committee and made another non-Muslim — Balraj Puri — to function as Working Chairman of the Regional Autonomy Committee. Sooner than later Dr Karan Singh resigned and Balraj Puri was forced out. The reports of the State Autonomy Committee was suddenly finalized, submitted to the government and then pushed into the State assembly for adoption.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Regional Autonomy report of NC envisaged the division of the state along the same lines as former Pakistan President Pervez Musharaff did later on. It put the division of Jammu province into Muslim and Hindu majority domains firmly on the agenda for the settlement of the Kashmir issue. Balraj Puri later wrote about the proposed breaking of the existing regions in the State: “Though re-demarcation or creation of a region or a district was not included in the terms of reference of the committee, I still sought a clarification from the chief minister who categorically ruled out consideration of any such demand….. I sent my report to all members and the chief minister in all humility for favour of their kind consideration, scrutiny and comments. Despite a reminder, I did not receive any comment……. I received a letter from the Chief Secretary on 21 January 1999 that my term had expired on 31 December 1998. Through another order dated 4 March1999, the term of the Committee minus me was extended in a similar retrospective way w.e.f 31 December 1998 till 31 March….It seems an alternate 28 page report was hastily got drafted and signed by three out of six original members which was tabled in the legislative assembly when it was about to adjourn sine die on 16 April.” What made the then Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah to suddenly abandon the pretensions of accommodation and legitimate consultation, and like Justice Sagir did recently, push through the reports having a bearing on the future of the state?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pre-fixed destination</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The entire peace engagement, internal as well as external, has a pre-fixed objective for a well entrenched lobby and every process employed by the Government of India is being judged on the yardstick of this objective. When PDP released its Self Rule document, not in front of the Working Group on Centre-State relations, but in Pakistan, NC President Omar Abdullah openly blamed the Indian High Commission in Pakistan of having facilitated the entire process. The Indian foreign ministry chose not to contradict the allegation. There are many Kashmiri analysts who privately believe that the Self Rule document is the creation of some section of PMO. In the recent past, we have many instances where the Indian government acted almost in tandem with the Muslim leadership of the Kashmir Valley (mainstream and the separatist).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">During former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s regime, a USA based Kashmiri secessionist leader, lobbyist and fund-raiser, Farooq Kathwari, arrived in India. He came with the full knowledge of the Indian government in March 1999, carrying a series of proposals for the creation of an independent Kashmiri State. At that time, both USA and the Indian government underplayed his jihadi connections. His son had died in Chechnya while fighting the Russians. He met very important persons belonging to Indian intelligence service and the ruling BJP. On March 8, Kathwari had a closed door meeting with Dr Farooq Abdullah and a group of his top Cabinet colleagues on the premises of Secretariat in Jammu. This meeting induced the urgency into the Dr Abdullah Government to come out with its reports on greater and regional autonomy in the state. During his visit, Kathwari seemed ‘encouraged enough to push ahead with a new version of his blue print for the solution of Kashmir’. The blue print — Kashmir: A Way Forward — later became commonly known as Kathwari Proposals. The National Conference reports had ‘striking similarities’ with Kathwari proposals as the later had with Dixon’s proposals. Noted columnist Praveen Swami, while commenting about this convergence wrote, “As significant, Abdullah’s maximalist demands for autonomy dovetail with the KSG’s (Kashmir Study Group) formulations of a quasi Sovereign State.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was not a coincidence that almost simultaneously the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers would meet in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo in March 1999 and reach an agreement envisaging ‘plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir on regional/district basis’, ‘maximum possible autonomy to Kashmir and its adjoining areas’, division of Jammu province along the Chenab River and so on. Significantly, the BJP-lead NDA was in power at that time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Regional Autonomy report of NC advocated dividing the State into its Muslim and non-Muslim domains, exactly the same way Kathwari envisaged. Pushing Balraj Puri, the Working Chairman of the regional Autonomy Committee, out of the decision-making loop was a course correction applied to see the endorsement of the Greater Muslim Kashmir to which he probably would not have agreed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is highly improbable to conceive that Dr Farooq Abdullah, who was also the Chief Minister, was not adequately briefed by Government of India about the purpose of Kathwari’s visit to India. Even if he was not, it is more improbable to think that Americans didn’t educate him. Kathwari’s closeness to the US State Department and his presence in India with his “way forward’ proposals on Jammu and Kashmir was more than a hint for NC to move fast enough to finalize the reports of his government on greater and regional autonomy and push it through the state assembly where NC had a two third majority.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">To be fair to Justice Sagir, he refused to take into consideration definite signals from the interested quarters in the Government of India to fall in line and took his time. He in fact took undue time, in the view of those, who are in a haste to strike a deal with the separatists and Pakistan. In the very first meeting of the Working Group, to the clarification of a query posed by this author as to whether decisions will be taken in the Working Group by a majority vote or total consensus, Justice Sagir had assured that report of the WG will be finalized only if there was a total consensus. During the deliberations of the Working Group, this author, while making his expositions on the Greater Autonomy report of NC attracted the intense attention of the Chairman while making the following comment, “Sir, While coming to participate in this Working Group I was acutely conscious of the fact that I have the responsibility of the very survival of my community on my shoulders, during the deliberations which have taken place here I have come to realize that I have the responsibility of the minorities of the State on my shoulders. After listening to the expositions of NC, PDP and even Congress I feel I have the responsibility of the minorities of the entire country on my shoulders. Sir I am sure that you will agree with me that you also have the responsibility of the minorities of this nation on your shoulders while conducting this Working Group.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Justice Sagir could not have submitted the report, which he eventually did, if he would have followed the due process of first completing the remaining agenda of the Working Group, then submitting the draft report for acceptance by the members, seeking a total consensus on it as he had promised and then duly winding up the proceedings of the Working Group. When he changed midway the agenda for the fourth meeting of the Working Group and incorporated the presentation of Wajahat Habibullah, he left no one in doubt about his helplessness by offering no answers when the members asked him the reasons for doing so. He looked with embarrassment towards his secretary in the Group, Sh. Ajit Kumar, perhaps telling us that someone else had taken this decision. Justice Sagir could not have submitted the report if he would have listened to his conscience, which he did for sometime. He eventually neither disappointed Dr Farooq Abdullah nor that section in Government of India for whom the unfinished work of the Working Group was becoming a major hurdle. Submission of a report, which at least will not come in the way of the pre-fixed objectives of the so called search for peace with Pakistan, had perhaps become an imperative necessity.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0