Aussie student’s ‘paper text message’ provides vent to dejected subscribers
While mobile phone subscribers across the state continue to suffer from prepaid service ban, an Australian student has devised a novel communicative tool apparently to mock at the authorities and generate debate over the issue.
Alana Hunt, who is currently studying at the department of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi, has designed 4x4 inch ‘paper text message’ cards meant for Kashmiris to exchange written messages.
“Since the prepaid mobile phone connections in Kashmir have been banned, perhaps it is the right time now for us to use our imagination and generate different kinds of commutative tools ourselves,” the card reads.
The card offers space to people to write a “different kind of paper text message” to anyone, real or imagined, anywhere in the world about anything one would like to write in a text message.
Most of the cards appeal Union Home Minister, P Chidambaram to withdraw the ban. Some even dare him to try the decree in New Delhi and elsewhere in India.
Then there are SMSs to God evoking memories of much read chapter of school time English text book besides number of text cards addressed to U S president Barrack Obama and UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon hoping that the ban might be revoked.
Azhar, a student tries to play Kashmir’s Lincho—a famous character in the English text book chapter ‘Letter to God’. His text message to God reads, “When will Kashmir become free?”
Then there are many cards addressed to Chidambaram as well. One such message written by a corporate employee Jahanzaib reads, “I can’t thank you enough for the ban. I hear it is internet next. You are really on fire. While you are at it, please ban cars and buses as well so that I won’t have to go to work anymore.”
A German photojournalist Dominic couldn’t wish her girlfriend on her birthday. His card isn’t addressed to any political or social entity but his girlfriend written from a coffee shop here.
He scribbles, “Happy birthday Olivia…Sorry I couldn’t text you because SMSing has been banned in Kashmir where I am travelling these days.”
There are short paper messages written to UN, religious clerics, relatives, friends and even US president who many say has “promised change”.
“No doubt I live in the 21st century wherein globalization is the buzzword. But I am among the 4000000 mobile phone subscribers in Kashmir whose phones don’t work at all just because India is fighting 700 rebels in the Valley. I hope you act. I am living in a stone age. Sorry I couldn’t find a pigeon to send you this paper card,” a paper card addressed to US President reads.
Meanwhile, Alana wants to demonstrate these cards in an exhibition hoping to generate some discussion on the issue in New Delhi among different circles. And once filled the card could be dispatched on Paper Text Messages: 122/1 Yamuna Hostel, JNU, New Delhi, India 110067.
“These cards will be exhibited in New Delhi to create a debate around the reason for the recent emergence of paper text messaging,” the card reads.
A human rights group in Kashmir, International Peoples Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian administered Kashmir (IPTK), Wednesday urged authorities to start a probe into 2373 unmarked graves of people believed to have been killed after being subjected to custodial disappearance.
The independent Srinagar-based group, which calculates about 8000 people have gone missing in Kashmir since 1989, released a report entitled ‘Buried Evidence’ detailing the "unknown, unmarked, and mass graves" that contain at least 2943 bodies of men, women and children.
The report documents 2700 unknown, unmarked and mass graves spread across 55 villages of North Kashmir’s Bandipora, Baramulla and Kupwara districts.
Demanding independent and transparent investigation into these graves, IPTK issued a 32-point recommendation statement to the State government and the Government of India.
“We have sent this finding to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. We’re also sending a copy to New Delhi. I hope both governments take it seriously. I also appeal the international community not to ignore this finding under any consideration or interest,” IPTK Convener and Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies, Dr Angana Chatterji said at the release function of the report.
IPTK also asked National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) to follow up on the actions and investigations initiated by them or appeals for action submitted to them on the matter of these graves and the matter of disappearances.
“Both the commissions don’t have jurisdiction over the armed forces. So we urge relevant laws be amended to permit them such a jurisdiction,” it recommended.
According to the findings, of all 2700 graves, 2373 are unnamed while 154 contain two bodies and 23 graves contain more than two cadavers. It also reveals that the number of bodies ranges from 3 to 17 in almost 23 unnamed graves.
IPTK has sought from both the governments an immediate commission on inquiry into its findings by drawing upon “varied, credible and international expertise”.
Recommending protection of these graves, IPTK members said the photographs and first information reports (FIRs) pertaining to those buried in these graves across the State were reportedly kept in police custody but must be rendered into public domain so that claimants may pursue their claim.
The tribunal also contented remarks that it was not possible to identify each and every militant that dies in alleged “encounters”, saying investigation into every alleged “encounter” killing must take place.
“Civilian killings,” the tribunal conveners said, “are portrayed as encounter deaths to legitimize militarization, which in turn is used to enable civilian killings.”
Asking UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights to monitor and take action against the “war crimes perpetrated in Kashmir for past two decades”, IPTK also recommended for approving United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), stationed in both sides of divided Kashmir to inquire into, and make recommendations on the status of militarization in Kashmir.
The tribunal also sought inquiry of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on the issue of mass graves in Kashmir.
IPTK also asked European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the United States Congress to hold India accountable on the issue of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir.
The tribunal has examined 50 alleged “encounter” killings by troopers of which 49 were labelled as militants or foreign insurgents.
“But on investigation, 47 cases are of those who have been found killed in fake encounters while one case was identified as a local militant,” the tribunal member Dr Chatterji said.
She also said that among those killed in fake encounters, 39 were of Muslim descent, four were of Hindu descent and seven were not known.
Urging US President Barack Hussein Obama to help resolve Kashmir dispute, Chatterji said Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and India are interlinked “and if US wants peace in the subcontinent, it can’t be achieved by bypassing Kashmiri dispute”.
Others who also spoke ne the occasion included President Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), Parvez Imroz; Editorial Consultant, Economic and Political Weekly, Gautam Navlakha; Vice-President JKCCS Zahir-ud-Din; Tribunal Legal Counsel and Lawyer, Mumbai High Court and Supreme Court of India, Advocate Mihir Desai and Tribunal Liaison and Programme Coordinator JKCCS, Khurram Parvez.
The report has been prepared with the help of Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and communities across these border areas besides research staffer Parvaiz Mata and IPTK’s other technical and administrative staff.
On the tenth morning of every month when the clock strikes 10, Abdul Rehman Paul—a middle-aged government employee -- skips his work. Instead, he catches a vehicle from Lawaypora to reach the Pratap Park in Srinagar city.
This half-an-hour travel started six years back. Paul’s elder son, Showkat Ahmad who was studying in Amar Singh College and working as freelancer for a news publication ‘Srinagar News’, was picked up by Major Pratap of Army's 2-Rashtriya Rifles on June 23, 2003.
For past six years, he has joined all the 72 silent sit-ins along with hundreds of relatives of disappeared who are demanding impartial probe into the enforced disappearances of their relatives in Kashmir. And since that afternoon the search of his loved one began.
“It was there,” Paul points towards the telephone exchange building, outside which, his son was picked up. “And then he never returned.”
Paul’s first filed an FIR in the nearby Kothi Bagh Police Station. But all his attempts proved to be futile.
The three other young men were also picked up at the same spot by the same army officer. His struggle to locate his son continues.
“There would have been a greater public outcry across India and the world and much greater police response if the missing youth had been sons of politicians rather than ordinary students in the world’s most militarized zone,” Paul says.
Unlike those who believe that their relatives are no more alive and have been buried in any of the unnamed, unknown and mass graves up in the mountains, Paul has a hunch that his son is alive. But he is not sure.
“If my son is dead, they (Army) have to show me his grave,” he says, and “if he is alive…… I swear upon God I will get him back.”
At a stretch 72 sit-ins at Pratap Park seem to have proved futile. But what is it that keeps his hopes alive.
“It is the pain of losing a son,” he says, his eyes brimming with tears. “I know my son won’t be in this park, but I share my suffering with those who have also lost their dear ones like me.”
Paul briefly talks about a woman of Bandipora whose four family members were subjected to custodial disappearance.
“If she can come from a far flung area to city, why can’t I,” he says. “When she hasn’t given up, why should I.”
How long he will continue searching his son? “Till the clay falls on my dead body.”
Tell him that the day also marks the International Day of Human Rights; Paul makes a humble appeal to the international community.
“It still smolders,” Ajaz Ahmad Shah says softly to a group of relatives as he lifts the iron shutter to lay bare his burnt shop.
Shah is among a dozen of shopkeepers who lost their shops on Friday evening to a fire that erupted after violent protests and police action here at Red Cross road.
As he steps in, the grief-stricken finds blackened debris welcoming him. From the ceiling hang charred wooden beams and mesh of burnt wires. On the half burnt shelves, valuable car spares and accessories lay exposed with melt plastic casing glued partially.
For a moment Shah stands silent. His eyes wide open with shock. Then he asks “Why?”
“I toiled for years to put up this shop. But see what was done to it,” he laments while trying to pull a half-burnt handle of a drawer.
The owner of ‘Sunrise Motors’ also curses his fate as he looks towards the softened walls and water-logged floor on which blackened particles lay floating.
“I saw it burning. But I couldn’t do anything,” Shah says.
It was amid violent stone pelting and smoke canister lobbing when Shah was called by his friend informing him about the fire.
Shah rushed from his home at Lal Bazaar to Maisuma where he saw orange flames and plumes of thick smoke going up in the air.
“I couldn’t move forward from Taj Hotel,” he says. “The stone pelters were in a deadlock with both troopers and police.”
Then he decided to get nearer from the rear side of the lane. But so much was the fire intense that he couldn’t bear the heat.
“I was restless. So were my family members. My shop was going to ashes,” the middle-aged says.
The firefighters who arrived on time earlier hesitated to go into the lane; however, they were allowed to enter with their vans only after police and troopers decided to stay back.
“It was only after that I could also enter the road. By that time my shop was gone,” he says.
It was for the second time that this market was devastated in the fire. Last time it was in 1987 when the inferno turned several shops into ashes.
Picking through the blackened debris, other traders also wonder over what had caused the fire. But most of them conclude that it was a teargas shell fired from a police van.
“Though they (police) are yet to claim it, but it was a teargas shell that caused the fire,” a shopkeeper says while he tries to salvage something from the ruins of his shop.
On Friday, people had also alleged that the shops caught fire after a tear smoke canister landed on the ceiling of one shop where inflammable material was stored.
“Then it must not have been a teargas shell but a fire ball. When have we heard that tear gas canister doesn’t cause tears but fire,” other shopkeepers wonder.
Unlike Shah who claims that goods worth 26 lakh have been destroyed in his shop, traders put the collective loss in crores.
“I don’t know how much I have lost, I am yet to pull up the shutter,” owner of ‘Hamid Motors’ says. “But we all lost valuable goods worth crores.”
The fire had engulfed portion of Matoo Complex where famous Helpline Advertisers bore the maximum brunt.
“The fire came from here,” Director of Helpline Advertisers Gowher Bhat points towards an exhaust fan that was fitted in the brick wall above a room.
He says that the fire spread from the opening and suddenly engulfed all chambers of the advertising agency.
“It was within minutes,” he says, adding that three staffers were injured while shifting computers, documents and other gadgets from the rooms.
All done, the traders want apology from police, if it had caused the fire, and a proper compensation to restart their business.
“We have lost everything. Both these things should happen soon,” a trader who looks at a small signboard strung by a cable reading ‘Barkat Hardware’ says.
SMC says more abattoirs needed, offenders are being charged
While calls for protecting environment and water bodies across the world upped since past couple of weeks with Kashmir too witnessing singers like Terra Naomi crooning in support, it was yet another Monday evening for Rainawari’s milkmen and butcher community to flush out tons of cow dung and animal waste into the lake.
This activity, the residents have alleged, has been a continuous process for past several years taking place under the nose of authorities.
“They (milkmen) do it clandestinely when it gets dark. And it is impossible for anyone to believe that authorities are unfamiliar of this activity,” Nayeem Ahmad, a local of Khwaja Yarbal, Rainawari said.
Ahmad said that it has become increasingly unbearable for people to stay around as the waters emit “horrible stench” caused by daily pumping of pollutants into the lake.
“You could feel the pungency around. Even the colour of water has turned black,” another local said.
The milkmen (Goors) who rear cows in the area clean their cowsheds throwing in the lake, not only animal shit, but wasted fodder and rice straw as well.
“They use huge water pipes for cleaning cattle, sheds and then drain cow dung with the aid of water pressure. The dirt simply finds its way into a drain which ultimately opens its mouth in the lake,” locals explained.
Another community that is threatening the Lake is butchers.
Residents allege that this community has been continuously disposing of animal blood, casing and other stuff in the lake “deliberately”.
“The drains of abattoirs open into the lake. Even the waste from lavatories and septic tanks end up in the lake,” residents of many areas including Khwaja Yarbal, Saidakadal, Naidyar, Kralyar and Jogi Lankar said.
At some places, so much are residents bothered over the issue that they are selling their properties.
“Dal Lake has become so polluted that people are fleeing from the area and buying houses in other localities,” Mohammad Ishaq of Kralyar said.
“This lake,” an elderly lady said, “has ceased to be a world famous water body. Had it been a world famous, world would have come to protect it.”
With so much happening in the past many decades, locals say that the authorities have continuously failed to stop such activity.
“The authorities know it and everything is happening under their nose,” residents alleged.
A decade back, part of the lake running through the edges of Rainawari was used by tourists as a transit route to reach Nehru Park, Boulevard Road and Nigeen Lake.
“Until mid nineties, the water was clear,” residents said. “But later it was converted into a cesspool by authorities. They did not penalize offenders, but minted money from them.”
Meanwhile, officials of Srinagar Municipality Corporation (SMC) believe that the issue would be solved once “we have more abattoirs in the city.”
“For a population of 14 lakh people, we have only one abattoir operational in Rainawari where almost 450-500 sheep are slaughtered each day. Other butchers who don’t use this abattoir are slaughtering animals in the sheds which we know push the unused material in the drains,” an official of the SMC told Rising Kashmir.
The official said that SMC is planning to construct four abattoirs in the city each at Lasjan, Tengpora, Zakura, and Eidgah, which he said, “would help reduce pressure to a large extent.”
“Moreover, we have been acting against the violators from both butchers and milkmen community. This year only we have filed some 68 FIRs against those who were found dumping waste into the drains that end up in the lake,” he said.
SMC officials also say that work on new drains and abandoning of traditional ones will also help save Dal Lake from getting polluted.
Naomi’s ‘Say It Is Possible’, Rashid’s ‘Ye Chu Bilkul Mumkin’ call for protecting environment
In a climate-change concert that Kashmir will remember forever, world famous alternative rock and pop artiste Terra Naomi along with Kashmiri singer Waheed Jeelani sang ‘Say It Is Possible’ and its Kashmiri exact ‘Ye Chu Bilkul Mumkin’ in a jam packed hall at SK International Convention Centre (SKICC) here on Monday.
The concert coincided with the Copenhagen Denmark Climate Change Conference in which world leaders have gathered to deliberate on issues concerning climate change effects, reduction of carbon emission and bringing down the world temperature by 2 degree Celsius in the coming years.
Although the song ‘Say It’s possible’ specifically explains the perils of global warming and need to address it, the Kashmiri version is no less better in comparison.
Before the performance, Naomi told the gathering that her purpose of coming to Kashmir was to raise awareness among masses about the dangerous of climate change.
“The purpose of my concert is to aware masses regarding climate change so that they also lend their hand to come up against this catastrophe,” she said.
About Kashmir, Naomi said she feels excited and happy in the region and her concert was a contribution towards creating awareness about climate change that has hit Kashmir too.
“Everybody can contribute in his or her way. The concert was my contribution,” Naomi added.
With this the soft-looking and humble singer mesmerized the audience with her songs.
Naomi began her solo performance with ‘Close To My Heart and then it was her favorite number ‘It’s Magic’ which saw her magical voice gel with the hands of audience who responded with claps in great numbers.
Other songs which Naomi sang included ‘Mama’ and ‘Go Quietly’ and both kept audience waxed on their seats as their response came up with heavy cheers after every song. The singer has written and sung both these songs in dedication to her mother and a deceased friend.
Then it was the time for singing her YouTube hit ‘Say It’s possible’ with the team of Waheed Jeelani.
The fusion was welcomed with the loud clapping and hooting from the crowd. Till the end the singers made audience go gaga with the amalgam of Anglo-Kashmiri mix.
The highlighter of the event also included a famous Kashmiri song ‘Karsa Myun Nyay Andey’ which Naomi and Jeelani sang together.
The crowds went ballistic as the US-born singer in her American accent crooned the first lines of this song. The song also wrapped up the concert pushing audience to admire the artiste and astonish over how Naomi successfully sang the Kashmir number.
The concert organized by Mercy Corps— world’s noted relief and development organization also witnessed participation of politicians from both mainstream and separatists groups.
Among separatists, JKLF Chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik was the prominent one while from the mainstream, Minister for Tourism and Culture Nawang Rigzin Jora, MoS Tourism Nasir Aslam Sogami, City Mayor Salman Ali Sagar were present. A number of writers, journalists, students, academicians, police officials, artists and people from different shades of life participated in the function.
The function was moderated by noted Kashmiri playwright Muhammad Amin Bhat while it was also announced that Naomi will be writing and singing a song for Kashmir’s climate change.
Earlier a documentary ‘Global Warming-A Catastrophe in Making’ by Shafqat Habib and Shahid Rasool of Educational Multi-Media Research Center (EMMRC) Kashmir varsity was also screened.
'Record time version'
On the Kashmir Climate Change Concert, its Programme Director and noted Playwright Muhammad Amin Bhat said that the Kashmiri version of ‘Say It Is Possible’ ‘Ye Chu Bilkul Mumkin, Aes Zenav Jung, Ye Chu Jang Aasi Panas Seeth’ was composed in a record time of only one day.
“The lyricist Shehnaz Rashid has tried to make it an exact Kashmiri version and it was composed in a record time,” he said.
Bhat who also moderated the concert said that the song and its Kashmir version will be available at YouTube as well.
To mention Shehnaz Rashid is the same lyricist who had composed the theme song of the daily Rising Kashmir.
‘Discuss Kashmir in Copenhagen meet’
Chairman, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Muhammad Yaseen Malik on Monday expressed concern over the degradation of environment and fast receding glaciers saying any impact on Kashmir will tell upon the lives of million in the sub-continent.
“I am happy to be a part of climate change concert. The rate at which glaciers of Kashmir are melting will led serious implication for whole subcontinent. The world leaders meeting at Copenhagen this month should discuss the climate change in Kashmir on which millions of lives are at stake,” he said.
Malik also said that international investment must be allowed in Kashmir for saving environment and if JKLF is asked, “we would support such climate change concerts in future.”
'Militarization on glaciers cause of Kashmir climate change'
Appealing US-based singer and song writer Terra Naomi to take in consideration heavy militarization of Kashmir while writing song on Kashmir’s climate change, noted child specialist Dr Altaf Mufti Monday said the valley which is full of glaciers and water reservoirs should be demilitarized.
“When you have huge troop presence on both side of Siachen and other glaciers what would be the impact there. Our glaciers, forests, water reservoirs have been occupied by troops. In such a case how is it possible for a common man to help in changing the climate,” he asked.
Dr Altaf also suggested that Naomi while writing a song on Kashmir also take into account the loot and plunder caused to Kashmir’s precious forests and water bodies by troopers.
“The militarization of Kashmir’s natural assets will affect millions of people across the globe. And this has to be discussed by leaders across the world,” he added.
He also said that unrestricted pilgrimage into forests and eco-fragile regions is adding to the problem.
From the world renowned resort of Gulmarg, US based singer Terra Naomi urged the world leaders meeting at Copenhagen in the world summit on climate change to take strong note of Kashmir’s changing climate.
Amidst bone chilling cold, the American pop star sung 'Say Its Possible'—the song which won her a YouTube Music award, for Kashmir’s melting glaciers.
“Why I am in Kashmir is because this is where climate change effects could be felt. This is where it is happening,” said Naomi, who is an ardent supporter of climate change and has portrayed the same in her previous albums and songs.
She said that through music she will try disseminate information and raise awareness on climate change.
Terra expressed surprise after learning about the climate change effects in Gulmarg too.
“I was told that Gulmarg used to receive more than 10 ft of snow during this time of the year many years back. At present I find it is not the case,” she told reporters.
Naomi who writes and performs her own songs, plays guitar and piano also promised to write a song for Kashmir's changing environment.
“When I will go back to US I will write a song for Kashmir,” she promised at Kongdoori peak which is at the altitude of 10,000 ft.
Terra’s song ‘Say It’s possible’ is inspired by former US Vice President Al Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, which is based on the phenomena of climate change.
Naomi shot to fame when she received one of the inaugural YouTube Video Awards for the music video category in March 2007.
Naomi was accompanied by noted glaciologist of the valley Shakeel Ramsoo, who revealed that Kashmir was going through “a massive” climate change and it would hit the entire region.
Usman Ahmad, Regional Director of Mercy Corps, an NGO which has brought Naomi to Kashmir, said Terra will participate in a concert on the banks of Dal Lake and will sing her famous ‘Say It’s Possible’ song.
“Terra will perform on the stage while dressed in Kashmiri attire and she will sing along with local artists who are playing a leading role in supporting this event,” he said.
Usmaan also said that the group will also develop a Kashmiri-English version of Terra’s inspiring song besides composing a traditional Kashmiri musical orchestra to back up Terra.
Terra Naomi to croon for climate change in Kashmir
As the world leaders discuss climate change affects in Copenhagen, Denmark, Terra Naomi—the latest Youtube sensation would be performing today in Srinagar in a climate change musical concert together with some reputed Kashmiri singers and musicians.
Organised by Mercy Corps—world’s noted relief and development organization, at SK International Convention Centre (SKICC) here, the songwriter and singer’s concert is part of her initiative that places that are hardly responsible for climate change suffer the most.
“This concert will coincide with the Copenhagen climate conference, and will hopefully draw some attention to one of the areas hit hardest by climate change,” the singer said.
Naomi said that ‘Say It's Possible’ is a part of this event to raise awareness for climate change that has hit parts of the world where people are already struggling, and living in difficult conditions.
“These areas will continue to become increasingly challenging places to live as natural resources disappear. I was absolutely amazed to find out that the glaciers in Kashmir provide water to one-fifth of the world's population. That's a huge number,” she added.
Terra Naomi is an alternative, rock, and pop artist, whose song ‘Say It’s possible’, which she also singing today became an instant hit on the video sharing site YouTube.
The song was also inspired by former US Vice President Al Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, which was based on the phenomena of climate change. Naomi shot to fame when she received one of the inaugural YouTube Video Awards for the music video category in March 2007.
On how she can address the issue of climate change and its impact on the regions that are hardly responsible for its, Naomi said, “I want to be able to inspire other people and help the world in some small way. Music seems to be the most effective way for me to contribute and I feel so lucky to be able to do this.”
Meanwhile organisers associated with Mercy Corps said that the concert will include online music videos and appeals from the singer to support grassroots environmental projects in Kashmir, an ecologically fragile region.
“Terra’s song is an opportunity to raise awareness and at the same time communicate to her fans about the situation in places like Kashmir which hardly contribute to climate change,” said Younis Anjum, organisers with Mercy Corps.
The local artists would also play a key role in supporting the event by developing a Kashmiri-English version of Terra’s inspiring song ‘Say It’s Possible’. They will compose a traditional Kashmiri musical orchestra to back up Terra while Kashmiri singers who will be performing with her.
Another organiser with Mercy Corps Usmaan Ahmad revealed, “Besides Naomi’s performance we will also host the first show of a new documentary film that takes a close look at some of the observable impacts of climate change taking place in the valley.
The film is titled ‘Global Warming—A Catastrophe in the Making’ and has been made by Shafqat Habib and Shahid Rasool of Educational Multi-Media Research Center (EMMRC) Kashmir varsity.
Just a kilometer before Sonamarg, in the lap of nature, on the green rug, eight small tents are pitched in a row. Each in a shape of an octagon. Tucked next to a road that leads to famous Thajiwas Glaciers, these tents juxtapose with the sparkling stream (Sindh) that gushes loudly below the edge of a green slope on top of which sheep graze in thousands.
Outside these tents, Showket Ahmad, the first Kashmiri to have led any expeditions to couple of initial base camps of the world's highest peak, Mount Everest enjoys warmth of the big orange sun that had just emerged from behind the Himalayan ranges.
Donning sports gear, Showket a visibly stiff, red-faced round man with deep wrinkles on both cheeks sits in a wing chair.
As he puffs a cigarette sending in air loops of smoke, he opens up.
“I am leading a team of 'Highland Excursion Pvt Ltd'—an offshoot group of Australian adventure sports firm 'World Expeditions',” he finishes pointing towards a van with the agency’s name inscribed on its white coating.
These days Showket's team takes incoming tourists for rafting in Sindh and Zorbing or Sphereing (an adventure sports wherein a person travels in a huge round ball, generally made of transparent plastic) on the slopes.
"It is a new concept here. People are picking up," he says, while a young man rolls down the green slopes—Sphereing.
Having mastered adventure sports and a hardcore travel aficionado, Kashmir’s beauty and thrills involved in its exploration injected in him a 'Strange fanaticism'.
"I was born in Kashmir which obviously attracts everyone but it made me its bed-fellow. The first time I went up in the mountains I decided to conquer Himalayas. And play in its lap," he says easing his forehead ruts.
Born in the city's Khanyar, Showket had his primary studies from Biscoe School. He was insisted by his parents to be in civil service after graduation; however, he refused his father's suggestion.
"Rather, I chose to become a fashion designer. For some time I kept myself busy with it, but the aim was to be in adventure sports," he says as he fiddles with his sports watch.
He quickly drops his hand in a shirt pocket and comes out with an I-Card reading his designation and job at the Women’s Polytechnic, Bemina where he would teach in 2003 till 2006.
Besides, he would also spend some time participating in several rafting and skiing events across India. And the autumn of 2006 saw him leading an expeditionary team to Everest.
"That was an amazing experience," he says hurriedly with bright eyes that shine like a diamond. "But it was only till the base camp 1 and base camp 2.”
It costs around 20 lakh rupees to get on to the summit of Everest; and Showket's company had fixed him for the first two base camps only—both at the height of more than 6,000 m above sea level.
"Thereafter Sherpa's are the best guides," he explains.
In school, Showket had trekked Mahadev and after some years, he trekked to Kolohari, Annapurna Daulagari, Everest Circuit and Gokyo Lakes—all in Himalayas and each site a 20-day snowy treks. Months after the trip, Showket was soon skiing with the famous Australian skier and Everest Climber Nick Farr. Not once but several times.
However, it was Everest which he never went for. But he is planning for it.
"This company pays me good, and God willing, one day I will hit the Everest summit with my 10-year-old son," he smiles showing for the first time his white teeth.
And once on the tip, unlike others, he will not be pitching any flag or a memento, but he will do something unique.
"I will light a cigarette there," he says making himself sit relaxed.
"I don't believe in boundaries and nationalities. I am the child of this planet and the whole world is my playground."
There are other aspects of Showket’s specialization.
When he was in Fashion Designing, he managed to produce an unpublished dictionary on the fashion designing terminology.—a feat first by any Kashmiri.
"'A-Z of Fashion' was its name. But it didn't get published," he says. His work was supposed to be published by Prentice Hall, a New Jersey based publisher of academic and reference textbooks and technology.
“But it didn’t mature,” he says.
It was in the year 2006 when he finished its compilation and the same year he left his job in polytechnic and joined Highland Excursions.
Most part of the year, Showket stays outside his home and he hardly gets to see his family. But he says, it has hardly affected any relationship.
"My dad knows me. He understands my profession and my likings. Even the lady, I got married was told much before the wedding that the person would spend most of time in the jungles and mountains,” he laughs for about a minute.
He says he is thankful to all of them as such a job needs everyone's blessing and satisfaction.
As we talk, he seeks information from his colleague about a tourist's health, who was injured while rafting in the Sindh.
"He is okay now," Showket's colleague reports.
The conversation also gets interrupted when another colleague, Joti of Nepal, complains of pain in the abdomen and ribs.
"Go and get the tablets from the first aid box," Showket points his fingers towards the box. "Have some tea and take rest."
"He was also injured during rafting," Showket says.
Joti's condition takes Showket straight into a flashback, to a time, when he was also badly wounded during a Parasailing attempt over the Dal Lake in Srinagar.
"I was actually treading a Parasailing world record," Showket puts in.
Showket recalls the summer of 1998 when he tried to create a world record by trying to claim an unaided 330 feet freefall from a parachute over the lake. It risked his life as the attempt couldn’t be recorded while he wounded himself fatally.
"Everything was going as planned. But as the boat pulled me up, a sudden jerk off-loaded me midair detaching the rope with the boat," he explains using his hands to emphasize.
The cameraperson in the boat had him in the frame initially but the jerk caused imbalance and he lost his control.
Showket was nowhere in the frame.
The next moment saw Showket towering over the Lake. And he saw himself saying ‘Leave the parachute’.
"As soon as I left it, the upward pull kept me suspended for about a second in air. And then I came down like a meteor," he says.
The contact with water surface was so firm that it sent a splash of water in air with the diver successful in his feat. As the waves spread constantly over the surface. There was no movement in the water. Just a huge bubble burst. Showket was fished unconscious. The impact had ruptured his eardrums, a mid rib hanged by the skin as the blood mixed with the water. His chest bled profusely.
To his shock, nothing was recorded.
"I was successful in creating a record, but I needed to prove it through a camera. I was nowhere in the frame," Showket says in a low voice.
He did not try it next time. He was sad. Not because he had evaded death, but his bravado remained unrecorded.
Visibly disturbed but content deep downwards, Showket scratches his head, tries to ignite a half-puffed cigarette that was doused hours back. No one speaks for a moment. And then the conversation begins with a cup of tea.
"I am mad about cigarettes and tea—my permanent companions," he says between couple of sips.
The sun starts descending, scattering red flash till the mountains that stand guard on the rims of bowl-shaped Sonamarg. Shadows of these blue-coloured tents begin lengthening till they permanently halt, while hooting shepherds come down from slopes with the herd.
"Pack up boys," Showket gives a call. Colleagues start rolling up raft boats and green plastic sphere.
“Expedition to these mountains,” he stresses, “is never an easy going”.
“It is like eating grass and struggling because your food supply is running low. Or perhaps it's the adventure of using water can for three days in a ferocious blizzard outside your tent. And all it needs one to be a fanatic."
Post-Amarnath land transfer row, a technologically savvy new age Kashmiri youth is offering belligerent resistance to the State and the mainstream media.
In a small corner of a modest but well-lit room, Haseena, 45, at her spinning wheel is an archetypal image of a Kashmiri mother. She is at work by a poster-size photograph of her elder son Tanveer Ahmad Handoo who was killed in the CRPF firing last year at Safa Kadal, Srinagar, during the Amarnath land row.
The family remembers Tanveer with a video which is a treasured possession for them. This is a two-minute long flash video of a dying Tanveer captured on a mobile phone. The video shows images of protestors on August 14, 2008, near the Safa Kadal Bridge and gunshots followed by images of Tanveer and another injured youth Tariq Ahmad. The video not only preserves the memory of Tanveer’s martyrdom but has also become iconic of a new electronic front between the Kashmiri resistance and the Indian State.
Says Tanveer’s brother, Riyaz Ahmed Handoo, while viewing the video clip: “These are the last moments of my brother’s life after he was shot in the abdomen and before he could even make it to the hospital.” The Handoos say that the mobile clip was shot by an anonymous protester in the crowd and someone shared it with them via Bluetooth. For Riyaz, the memory of his brother’s death is the memory of his brother’s life and he wants the video to be there on his mobile phone forever. This disturbing image of a Kashmiri life fading into death has become a symbol of protest and martyrdom in the neighborhood. The video was widely circulated on the Internet and was uploaded on video sharing websites like YouTube as “Kashmir Burning” that fuelled protests across Kashmir.
The same video also shows Tariq, a worker, sustain multiple bullet injuries. But Tariq survived. “This is me,” he says heartily on being shown his video on YouTube. “That day I received two bullet hits.” Tariq feels a deep sense of gratitude for the anonymous Internet users who shot and uploaded his video immediately after the firing. But Tariq is not alone in applauding the efforts of these anonymous Internet users. Many in the diaspora feel that the Internet users have succeeded where the mainstream Kashmiri media has failed.
This phenomenon typifies an emerging trend with the Kashmiri youth disgruntled with the mainstream media: Kashmir’s own electronic intifada. The new media technology which was once perceived as the gaming tool of an indulgent youth has emerged as a weapon of resistance. In Kashmir’s Internet cafes and homes, a technologically savvy new age Kashmiri youth is offering belligerent resistance to the dogged ways of the old media. This new electronic intifada does not need anything other than a few mobile phones equipped with video recorders and fast Internet connections to help upload the videos of Kashmiri protest to video sharing websites like YouTube and Google videos.
Malik, one of the young Kashmiri Net warriors, says: “Our battle is fought on two fronts. In the streets between unarmed protestors and the troops, and on Internet by the youth.” Malik is cautious enough not to give us his full name as he is certain of reprisals by security agencies. He does not come out to protest on the streets but records the way in which protests in Kashmir are brutally and violently suppressed by the police and the Indian paramilitary forces, often leading to serious injuries which are sometimes captured live in these videos. Malik calls these videos “the struggle digitized.” He also explains what motivates him to anonymously record these protests: “Every day people in Kashmir witness brutalities. I just make sure that the truth gets out to the world outsideKashmir.”
Malik is not alone in this virtual war. The young, tech savvy netizens of Kashmir record the everyday brutality in Kashmir and upload them to provide instant updates of the developing stories in Kashmir. Some of these videos on YouTube give an idea of the political energies released by the new media in Kashmir. The videos might often appear to be amateurish but they do serve the purpose of bringing the Kashmir protest to Internet users worldwide.
Post-Amarnath land transfer row, this appears to be the beginning of an intrepid and intractable, young and mobile, uprising, an uprising which challenges the control of India’s security agencies over the flow of information from the Kashmir Valley. Does this role of the new media in Kashmiri politics suggest a new direction? “Of course, yes. But change will take time,” says Sameer Bhat, an award-winning Kashmiri blogger. Bhat, honored with an online bloggers award in 2006, quotes a study from a public opinion research organization, Pew Research Center (PRC) that suggests that the penetration of bloggers and other alternative media in the recent flare-ups across the world has been immense.
“Regarding Kashmir, our struggle is in transition. The Kashmiri youth are yet to use alternative media as effectively as the Palestinians. But what has really changed with the new media is the difficulty to defend lies which are often privileged as the truth by our politicians,” says Bhat who is also one of Kashmir’s earliest bloggers. Bhat also observed that the urban youth have used the Internet in conflict zones to combat the pro-authority spin that often skew mainstream media accounts.
“We have an example of a non-profit online publication, Electronic Intifada, which covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective. Be it Obama’s campaigning, Hurricane Katrina, or Gaza siege, lots of people around the world rely on blogs and video sites that give them first hand accounts from ground zero,” Bhat says. As an example, he cites the assassination of Benazir Bhutto when, according to researchers, 20 percent of UK’s population relied on Pakistani blogs and video sites to know who was the actual perpetrator when conflicting media reports began to emerge.
Bhat feels that it is not merely news which is being recorded with the help of the new media but history itself. Bhat clarifies: “Kashmir’s history was either written by Kashmiri Pandits or by the Europeans colonists. We might not be writing books, but our blogs and video sites will offer alternative accounts for a new literature and history.”
The experts are skeptical however of the impact such online content can create for Kashmir. “If we compare videos or written material being uploaded by Kashmiris against their counterparts in Iran, Iraq, Palestine (or for that matter, even in India, Pakistan, US or Brazil), the result will be in fractions. It may take time to register a serious impact on world opinion,” explains Tawheed Ahmad, a Google staffer. Ahmad, however, believes that the high speed connection and cheap access could shape emerging trends for new media in Kashmir.
But perhaps an even bigger danger for this new media revolution is the security agencies. “Nobody should be under the impression that government is unaware of such activities on the web,” says a senior officer of the Intelligence. Asked if any arrests have been made so far or any content uploaded on the web, the official refused to give any further information.
Whatever the government response, people like Haseena do not want authorities to remove the video of like her dying son from YouTube. The blogger, Sameer Bhat, also feels that it would be “stupid” for the government to filter or censor online content from Kashmir. “If ever such a move is reported from the Valley, it will place India on the list of severe and repressive regimes like Iran and China which closely monitor online content,” Bhat says.
Baba Umar
The article has been taken from the third issue of www.conveyormagazine.com (P 54-55).
Already on the backfoot over Sharm-el-Sheikh joint statement that included Baluchistan tangle in the bilateral talks and de-linked terrorism from composite dialogue between India and Pakistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his August 15 speech has only articulated the conventional rigid Indian policy towards the Kashmir problem.
Terming the ‘separatist’ ideology completely irrelevant, Manmohan Singh held forth the ready reference of elections held in J&K for the local assembly in 2008 and for six parliament seats in 2009.
But it was apparently an attempt to salvage something after the Sharm-El-Sheikh ‘shock’ and countering the domestic pressure that enveloped Indian politics later on. Congress handlers may conceive any diplomatic script that suits their need to calm down BJP and the Left, but does this entire suit Manmohan’s admirably see-through personality he is best known for?
In May 2006, when he chaired the Second Kashmir Roundtable, inviting Hurriyat Conference on the common table was seen as ‘something serious from India’ towards achieving peace in the region.
Singh was seen as someone, unlike his predecessors, sympathetic to Kashmiris.
The best example is when the conference was over, he cut shout his visit and argued that the security ring his stay in Srinagar entailed was troubling common people and tourists.
Three years later, the statement made by the same leader from the ramparts of Red Fort has surprised many. If yesterday Manmohan displayed honesty by acknowledging a ground reality, today he seems ignoring a bigger one.
Who says separatists or for that matter the separatism is irrelevant? Shutdowns still take place on the call of separatists; government still resorts to iron-hand tactics; at least 25 separatist leaders are languishing in jails. Doesn’t this mean that their still is a huge gulf between the state and its ‘subjects’?
Before the assembly elections, in a television interview to an Indian news channel, CM Omar Abdullah had reckoned the combined force of all separatists saying that he could never manage to congregate more than 40,000 crowd in any of his political gathering when the separatists assembled close to 10,00,000 people in the historic Eidgah.
These are the realties which occur under the very nose of establishment that daily reports to New Delhi. One wonders why the worthy prime minister chose to ignore these towering realities.
However, separatists reacted smartly this time. Calling Dr Manmohan Singh a victim of contradictions about Kashmir issue, they said sometimes the PM speaks of Kashmir’s resolution through talks and sometimes he denies Kashmir’s disputed status, thereby making his own position ridiculous. ‘Hold referendum if we are irrelevant’ they dared the Prime Minster.
Not only this, they have called for a two-day protest on August 21, 22 to prove their relevance, which they believe is going to trash Singh’s assertion that the separatists have lost ground to those who have elected through the franchise. Let’s wait for Friday and Saturday. No guesses on whose showdown it would prove!
Two years back when Asrar Mushtaq Dar opened his Facebook account along with his friends, he would not have thought that the same page would be used by his friends to write him virtual condolences. In his own mind, Asrar was not a warrior of the year 2009 neither a revolutionary defending his country with stones. But a fun loving boy from what many call as ‘Gaza Strip of Kashmir’—Maisuma.
Soon after the news regarding the recovery of the throat-slit body of the missing youth Asrar reached every home, his Facebook page turned into a virtual book of condolence.
Sumit Singh, his Facebook friend inscribed: “When I heard about you I was in shock. It is impossible to believe but still we have to. My friend I miss the days we spend together Zed Education.
Another friend who knew Asrar was Ifat Pandit. She wrote: “May your soul rest in peace. It is hard to believe that he is no more. Big shock.”
Falak Hussain, Asrar’s friend wrote: “I feel so sorry for your friends and family.... I am sure we'll earn justice for u.... Please people let’s do something for the young soul...” Mushahid Hussain, a close friend scribbled: “I will miss you my friend. I will always miss you. You were and will always be my friend.”
Adil Abbas wrote “Asrar we miss you... Please come back!” Not only this, the first day of his death also saw over 150 of his friends joining a cause ‘Justice for Asrar’. According to Asrar’s college friend, Adil, who did not give his second name for the fear of parents’ anger, Asrar despite a guy from Maisuma would never stone pelt. He would never indulge in fighting nor discuss politics with his friends.
But he says, he missed twenty days of college at a stretch which seems to be hinting at something. “He was purely a funky, stylish, and a cool dude. He was an average student but a sharp minded who would also work in part time as computer accountant in Infahs Cybernetics India Pvt. Ltd.,” Adil said with his eyes saturated.
A look at Asrar’s profile and photo shows it all. In one of the pictures, he makes a cross of himself against a rock wall, something done on ship by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Yet in another picture, his rosebud lips, long face, brown hair, bright and clear complexion gives him an honest frame.
Adil said that one of his best picture uploaded on Facebook was his pose with his much-adorned bike—the same bike along with which he disappeared on July 3. Another thing that would haunt Asrar’s friends is his birthday which was on July 22. “We used to celebrate it. He would have turned 21 this July.But…,”they said.
Asrar’s Facebook profile reveals the personality he was which even his friends might not have known until today when everyone of his acquaintances scroll through his Facebook page to see his pictures and read about him.
His favorite cause was ‘Stop Human Rights Violations in Kashmir’, his activities having fun, racing and listening music, his favorite film ‘Final destination 1, 2, 3.....’ ‘The Heartbreak Kid’, ‘Die Hard 4’ along with other movies.
Asrar would also share his thought on several causes which include, Truth Commission For Kashmir, Justice For the Victims of Shopian Rape/Murder, Kashmir, No polythene please, Curfewed Night, Jashn-e-Azadi (How we celebrate Freedom), Coffea Arabica, Srinagar (Kashmir), Project for Peace (Paigaam for peace), Islamia college Rocks!, I Love My Mom.
He would also write on a theme called ‘If I could turn back the time’ which his friends now say he could never.
Arif, now dead, was not meant to look like this. His rosebud lips, long face, bright and clear complexion that gave him a truthful air bumps with the monster reality of how he was shot.
He was only 17 when he was aimed at and killed with the bitter accuracy of a “lawful” ‘uniformed- mercenary’.
In his own mind, Arif, was not a warrior of 21st-century neither a rebel defending his territory with stones. But a motivated student who had study material in his childlike hands when he was attempted.
On Friday afternoon after finishing prayers, Arif went home at around 2:30, came back to collect some reading material from a close by computer centre and fetched some friends for Rajouri Kadal—Srinagar’s enraged area where hatred against policemen and troops is bitter and profound. As the group reached Kawdara, where hundreds of youngsters had gathered to stone pelt the incoming wave of troops, the group smelt risk. Before they could think of getting out of the melee Arif got separated from his friends when policemen and paramilitary CRPF strode in with force.
Spotting Arif in dark alley and parallel to a house where he had concealed himself, an obsessed cop thought to set off a projectile. Arif looked cautiously from the corner of the alley. His arm curved resting on his back. His one hand gripping rolled white pages of study material. And the other hand gathering support from the red brick wall.
Arif must have felt safe, but he didn’t stop pushing his head in and out of the alley. The cop aimed him. The view finder must have shown Arif’s face. The cop pulled the trigger. A flying tear gas canister left the cask. Soared for a while. And then hit Arif on his face. Injecting probably his right eye. The blood splashing the walls and mixing with Arif’s cries. The thud must have eased the grip on notes. The shell remaining closely ploughed into the skin. Partially out and partially pegged into the drenched face. Its rear end detectable, soaked with blood. The other end breaking head bones and tattering brain muscles.
Arif must have felt deadness. The cop happy to see crowd dispersed. And a small group of boys that surrounded Arif quite stiff to pull out the burning shell. Arif was numb. But his heart wasn’t. There was some hope. The group shouldered him to hospital.
At SKIMS, Arif was placed in ICU and was breathing on life supporting system until Tuesday afternoon. It took the cop few seconds to empty his barrel by pumping a teargas canister into the innocent face and it took Arif five days to lose the battle of life.
The 10th standard student vanished. The Royal Public School will look gloomy for few days. Mudasir and Rahil would miss their friend for life. In Kashmir this is routine. Arif is a part of statistics. To outer world it hardly matter.
In an age of careless slaughter, such killing has become institutionalized. Police in riot gear see every jeans and T-Shirt clad, a hatchling stone pelter. Familiarity may make Arif a hero. He may be hailed as the ‘hero’ of Srinagar’s resistance. But watch out. We have been here before. Since two decades, faces like Arif had bled and scythed in Kashmir streets. So observe the crimson cheeks, rosebud lips, bright and clear complexion that form the portrait of every Kashmiris worst terror: a child who is being killed to satisfy a power that wears a uniform.
And together with the lack of regret, the cunning and the emotionless comments from jugglers who rule Kashmir could mean Arif soon becoming a poster boy of Srinagar’s resistance and the culprits, as ever, psychopaths.
Who wouldn’t have wanted to save this youngster? Everybody would have, except for the uniformed men who have menaced Srinagar streets into a permanent marsh.
They stroll with smoking guns in squad of mindless vampires haunting alleyways and road intersections.
Past week they forgot that Arif was just a little child who was not to be exposed to an education through canister shells and bullets. And it was not his fault to pay that early, the fee of hate that is flamed with blood.
Meanwhile, Arif’s acquaintances say that common Kashmiris are very compassionate. But the pain has tentacles. And it will always be there for his family.
The server brews a pot of steaming coffee and places it on the wooden table by the overstuffed chairs around. Two other waiters pile plates and talk loudly in Kashmiri at the Graduate Tea shop. ‘Graduate’ because a science graduate runs it after failing to secure a decent job.
It is located in a shopping complex tucked near a pleasant fringe of river Jhelum that cuts across the Srinagar City.
It is almost 2:00 in the afternoon when I enter the shop. Back and forth, over the tables and on the faces of devoted visitors, heavy beam of glaring light of Television make patterns. The empty coffee boxes decorated on the shelves start shaking after someone ask a waiter, “Zore Thaw TV Thoda (Increase its volume a wee bit), making it certain that the news about parliamentary poll results is audible to all information hounds, who have gathered in the teeming tea stall.
“Who is winning in North Kashmir?” a young man sitting in one of the corner tries to inquire from his friends. “Sajad Lone has lost and it’s UPA that seems to form the government at Delhi,” he gets the answer from his friend sitting opposite to him. The news anchor establishes it right away.
The young man is round. His eyes bright, big, but wet. The color of his little beard real. His body lingers just around the last edge of his youth. He seems almost 18.
I feel the young man sensing a hint of scandal or potential misfortune for Lone.
He feels embarrassed. He appears depressing after the news. The only thing that I feel he will like to do is sledgehammer the TV set or upside down the tables. A look at his face reveals anger, so much, that he may wish to either pull his hair or at least try to scream. I can make that he must have been sure of Lone’s win. He can't, however, seem to have imagined the apparent. It is hurtful. And he is upset.
While I watch the small screen flashing fresh results repeatedly, SMSs begin to pass. Again, Mr Sajad Lone the subject matter. The content mostly sarcastic. Largely meant for those who had wished luck to separatist leader, Mr Lone. The SMS displays a sort of ‘obituary’ for the first separatist leader who broke the election boycott call to stand as a contender.
It reads:
Marci 4r Sajad—Election Ladeth Konu Moudokh, Hindustans Saeth Ruzeth Kith Roodukh, Te Harith Zinde Keth Roudukh.
Means:
·Why didn’t you die after contesting elections?
·How come you exist while siding with Hindustan (India?)
·How are you alive after losing elections?
I read the SMS, save it and keep the phone in my pocket before having a final look at the youngman.
Before this place, I toured many parts of the city. Everywhere people hooked on instant announcements, sequestering themselves before TV sets and radios that reflected larger mood prompted by the parliamentary poll results and greatly by the Lone’s decision to vie.
In a corner of a dimly lit hall, at my college where I had just gone to get a certificate, and check the mood as well, I saw Mr Sheikh—a senior clerk literally hugged to a small black Kochibo radio.
Across the day, I was told by the staff around that Mr Sheikh was snooping to know who had won. He had had more than a dozen cups of tea besides three packets of cigarette.
Mr Sheikh is thin and lean with typical sharp features. Dark face, laced with patchy skin. His best possession right now. Radio.
He has been listening to radio for a day and a half. A more than five hours of news without any work didn’t lead to any withdrawal symptom.
At another tea joint I visited, just before 4:00 pm, someone scorned Varun Ghandi’s win at Philibit saying that he made his victory sure by indulging in anti-Muslim tirade, but at the cost of BJP’s stature.
Others but well-informed enthusiasts deliberated on the wisdom of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P Chidambaram.
“The economists have ultimately prevailed. It is another six-year government,” a youngster said.
In Kashmir’s markets, across the day the usual crowd was there, but those who turned up were more fascinated in poll gossip, instead of hedging over prices.
At bus stands, in grocery shops, colleges canteens, offices everywhere I went people were snooping over what the final results would mean to Kashmir.
“PDP has lost in South,” Bilal, a student told me in a rough voice, before boarding a Sumo vehicle for Pulwama. He did not vote when South Kashmir went for ballot, however, he wanted PDP to prevail.
Quite usual in South Kashmir.
In the evening I was at Kashmir’s one of the angriest spot, Batamaloo where irritation against troops– together with frequent traffic jams, run deep. Here too people visiting shops and saloons had vigorous debate on the results. With mostly Mr Lone dominating the topic everywhere.
Perched on a shelf in a saloon, youngsters waiting to get shaved or get their hair done, were glued with the TV screen amid conversations.
“Again Congress,” Rafiq who is known to me sighed. “But how will it matter to us,” he told me when I began to leave.
Rafiq didn’t want Mr Lone to win either. Reasons, he said, were known to everyone.
He liked to say; however, that it was a sign of Mr Lone’s immaturity and that he was quite opposed to, what he believed was like an ‘incredible stage-managed polls where Mr Lone was bound to be among the losers’.
Rafiq was convinced that everything went according to the script.
For months we all heard news reports about the possibility of People’s Conference Chairman Sajad Lone contesting parliamentary elections. Some denied it overtly while others called the news reports as a handiwork of several covert ‘Conspiracy Nuts’ sitting somewhere at 10 Janpat. Few took the shortest path. They simply sought the reaction form horse’s mouth on his Facebook leaf.
But before a large section of Kashmiris conjure up ideas over what the news reports actually predict, the horse opened his mouth. So wide that it left nothing to question, but his fidelity towards the pro-freedom cause, he has been a part of.
Because of the experiences Kashmiri’s have, a deep-seated realization has been there that the primary adversary Kashmiris had encountered and have to be wary of is not the one that assaults from outside, but the one that smacks from within. From Abdullah’s, Bakshi’s and Mufti’s, everybody in the ladder came up with their ‘other-way’ proposals of solving Kashmir issue but Kashmir saw itself being pushed into a permanent quagmire, just because their leadership based on their “gifting” or “talent” didn’t work before the powerful centre.
Now it is Sajad, who we heard saying that he has changed the methodology not the ideology. And we are also witness to the day when he kept his hand on the holy Quran and swore about his non- allegiance with the Assembly polls or to get himself on the seat on India-set protocol. If ever he wins one of the 543 parliamentary seats. The new ‘methodology’ may require him to swear on the constitution--a document that describes Kashmir an integral part of India, which he has been scornful about for long.
We are told that he is aspiring to enter Parliament to raise the voice of Kashmiris. But is India or its people unmindful of the situation here. They know it all. They know greatests and highests of Kashmir. They know Kashmir has the world’s highest battlefield in the name of Siachen. They know in Kashmir, the concentration of troops, which is hanging somewhere between 500,000 to 700,000, is largest anywhere in the world. They know Kashmir has the world’s largest and heavily fortified army cantonment at Badami Bagh. Human rights violation, killings, custodial disappearances, torture and property plunder caused by the troops—they know it all. In spite of this, there has been a total trivial response from the world’s largest democracy, its followers and media. A killing from militants’ side will take no time for police to launch manhunt, and if caught, the culprit is within weeks, brought to justice. While as bullet from trooper’s rifle that kills an innocent Kashmiri will go unnoticed. Leave aside booking the trooper, the government’s response at central level will be deplorable. Booking a trooper, it would deem, will demoralize the rest of troops who are fighting India’s battle in Kashmir. There already know that there are 400 cases of custodial disappearances and torture that are pending New Delhi’s nod for trail since more than a decade.
Sajad what is the guarantee that you will be listened and whatever solution to Kashmir tangle you propose will be accepted? Could you press for scraping Armed Forces Special Power Act or Disturbed Area Act? Did you forget how the centre rebuffed several times the tender of their oldest loyals National Conference (NC) for persisting on autonomy? Didn’t New Delhi reject to heed self-rule application of People’s Democratic Party (PDP)? And what about Hurriyat core members who went for talks with their head held high but came back, regretting and airing contemptuous words against their corresponding team.
Sajad may be having a plan B of re-entering pro-freedom camp. But at this time he might be thinking that the population will rush to embrace his merger with the parliament and forget all about their individual history, rights and mores. In a single fell swoop, they way it happened every time, in yet another loyalist’s presence around, Kashmir will be clobbered into absolute tyranny where people will be helpless to do anything because their leaders will have become worthless? And because Sajad might be followed by some more guys there.
Why are Kashmiris used to betrayal! Disloyalty by comrades. Calculated, deliberate and despicable switch overs! Seems separatist leaders are tired. These are same leaders whom the CM Omar Abdullah in an interview called a “mighty force” to be reckoned with. He was stunned to see lakhs coming out on the calls of pro-freedom leaders past summer, while he acknowledged that he never ever managed more than 40,000 strong crowed in any of his public gatherings.
The situation could be better illustrated by Rudyard Kipling’s lines: ‘If any question why we died. Tell them because our fathers lied’.
Sajad might have heard about the Great Wall of China. The stories of the building of the great wall in China epitomizes his “change of methodology” diagram of solving the world’s oldest unresolved dispute and playing hide-and seek in the separatist camp. It is said that to shun invasion from the militia in the North, the Chinese got on to put up a great wall for defense. It took several years to build the wall, which was unbelievably high and wide to endure and repulse enemy attack. However, during the construction, Chinese were raided three times by the armies from the North. They simply induced the gatekeeper through hefty bribe and marched through the gate.
Yes, you got me right.
India seems and has been successful in copying the counter-insurgency tactics first engaged by Russians in the second Chechen war that began in the year 1999. That strategy, with a wee bit of amendments, modified to suit the context and realities of Kashmir, mingles a synchronized political and armed response with nonconventional tactics that include political jargon, information warfare, financial action, confinements, wipe-up operations, and more critically, ad hoc appointment of local leaders.
Now that Sajad is another ad hoc leader in the list, he will be covered by journalists who are already covering pro-India political parties, but before someone else, who had represented Kashmir’s aspiration on all fronts, from the separatist camp, think of the ‘political switch over’, there should be a binding contract for anyone to sign before entering the camp. Or he/ she should not be allowed to be counted among the separatists, lead any protest, or make speeches even if he is the son of the most powerful had–been pro-independence leader.
And if there were an obligatory agreement to sign before entering the separatist camp, the fine print should include: "The undersigned concedes that the seat is sacrosanct, which if rejected after being made use of, may be perilous for the common Kashmiris who have already lost their 100,000, fellowmen and that it would result in the extensive expressions of antipathy from the public side, that would also not be limited to slur and slander.”
Some one said that Sajad would surely represent himself in Parliament not Kashmiris. But one thing he can be expected to do is tell the parliamentarians that when a militant is killed in an encounter thousands march into streets, sloganeer in favour of freedom and lay the dead to rest before fighting against the troopers for the corpse. While as no one cares when a trooper is killed in any encounter. Sajad can tell them that the alienation is deep rooted and so much strong that ‘buying’ shepherd won’t do, it may need to buy the cattle, which New Delhi will never allow to happen. Because that would mean giving up claims of having Kashmir as a proud possession and priceless crown (An overturned world map will show the existing position of Kashmir—a green Valley trampled under India’s feet.)
As I write above about hiring loyalists, I am reminded of Chechen separatist turned Moscow loyalist, Ramzan Kadyrov. Like Abdullah’s fought India’s rule in Kashmir for sometime and later switched over side, Kadyrov and his father also fought federal forces of Russia in early 90’s, with Ramzan, leading a small band of fighters in the first Chechen war.
Kadyrovs switched over to the Moscow side at the start of the second war in 1999. Since then his militia enjoyed the patronage of Russia's state security service. And after his father, Chechnya's then president, was assassinated in 2004, Kadyrov became deputy prime minister and prime minister a year later. Married with five children, he has a pet lion, a wolf, bear and rare Siberian tiger to pride himself on.
I wish to live to the day to see what Sajad will be given. Kashmir free of tyranny or outright dejection as has been the norm of New Delhi to deal with such loyalists.
For months we all heard news reports about the possibility of People’s Conference Chairman Sajad Lone contesting parliamentary elections. Some denied it overtly while others called the news reports as a handiwork of several covert ‘Conspiracy Nuts’ sitting somewhere at 10 Janpat. Few took the shortest path. They simply sought the reaction form horse’s mouth on his Facebook leaf.
But before a large section of Kashmiris conjure up ideas over what the news reports actually predict, the horse opened his mouth. So wide that it left nothing to question, but his fidelity towards the pro-freedom cause, he has been a part of.
Because of the experiences Kashmiri’s have, a deep-seated realization has been there that the primary adversary Kashmiris had encountered and have to be wary of is not the one that assaults from outside, but the one that smacks from within. From Abdullah’s, Bakshi’s and Mufti’s, everybody in the ladder came up with their ‘other-way’ proposals of solving Kashmir issue but Kashmir saw itself being pushed into a permanent quagmire, just because their leadership based on their “gifting” or “talent” didn’t work before the powerful centre.
Now it is Sajad, who we heard saying that he has changed the methodology not the ideology. And we are also witness to the day when he kept his hand on the holy Quran and swore about his non- allegiance with the Assembly polls or to get himself on the seat on India-set protocol. If ever he wins one of the 543 parliamentary seats. The new ‘methodology’ may require him to swear on the constitution--a document that describes Kashmir an integral part of India, which he has been scornful about for long.
We are told that he is aspiring to enter Parliament to raise the voice of Kashmiris. But is India or its people unmindful of the situation here. They know it all. They know greatests and highests of Kashmir. They know Kashmir has the world’s highest battlefield in the name of Siachen. They know in Kashmir, the concentration of troops, which is hanging somewhere between 500,000 to 700,000, is largest anywhere in the world. They know Kashmir has the world’s largest and heavily fortified army cantonment at Badami Bagh. Human rights violation, killings, custodial disappearances, torture and property plunder caused by the troops—they know it all. In spite of this, there has been a total trivial response from the world’s largest democracy, its followers and media. A killing from militants’ side will take no time for police to launch manhunt, and if caught, the culprit is within weeks, brought to justice. While as bullet from trooper’s rifle that kills an innocent Kashmiri will go unnoticed. Leave aside booking the trooper, the government’s response at central level will be deplorable. Booking a trooper, it would deem, will demoralize the rest of troops who are fighting India’s battle in Kashmir. There already know that there are 400 cases of custodial disappearances and torture that are pending New Delhi’s nod for trail since more than a decade.
Sajad what is the guarantee that you will be listened and whatever solution to Kashmir tangle you propose will be accepted? Could you press for scraping Armed Forces Special Power Act or Disturbed Area Act? Did you forget how the centre rebuffed several times the tender of their oldest loyals National Conference (NC) for persisting on autonomy? Didn’t New Delhi reject to heed self-rule application of People’s Democratic Party (PDP)? And what about Hurriyat core members who went for talks with their head held high but came back, regretting and airing contemptuous words against their corresponding team.
Sajad may be having a plan B of re-entering pro-freedom camp. But at this time he might be thinking that the population will rush to embrace his merger with the parliament and forget all about their individual history, rights and mores. In a single fell swoop, they way it happened every time, in yet another loyalist’s presence around, Kashmir will be clobbered into absolute tyranny where people will be helpless to do anything because their leaders will have become worthless? And because Sajad might be followed by some more guys there.
Why are Kashmiris used to betrayal! Disloyalty by comrades. Calculated, deliberate and despicable switch overs! Seems separatist leaders are tired. These are same leaders whom the CM Omar Abdullah in an interview called a “mighty force” to be reckoned with. He was stunned to see lakhs coming out on the calls of pro-freedom leaders past summer, while he acknowledged that he never ever managed more than 40,000 strong crowed in any of his public gatherings.
The situation could be better illustrated by Rudyard Kipling’s lines: ‘If any question why we died. Tell them because our fathers lied’.
Sajad might have heard about the Great Wall of China. The stories of the building of the great wall in China epitomizes his “change of methodology” diagram of solving the world’s oldest unresolved dispute and playing hide-and seek in the separatist camp. It is said that to shun invasion from the militia in the North, the Chinese got on to put up a great wall for defense. It took several years to build the wall, which was unbelievably high and wide to endure and repulse enemy attack. However, during the construction, Chinese were raided three times by the armies from the North. They simply induced the gatekeeper through hefty bribe and marched through the gate.
Yes, you got me right.
India seems and has been successful in copying the counter-insurgency tactics first engaged by Russians in the second Chechen war that began in the year 1999. That strategy, with a wee bit of amendments, modified to suit the context and realities of Kashmir, mingles a synchronized political and armed response with nonconventional tactics that include political jargon, information warfare, financial action, confinements, wipe-up operations, and more critically, adhoc appointment of local leaders.
Now that Sajad is another adhoc leader in the list, he will be covered by journalists who are already covering pro-India political parties, but before someone else, who had represented Kashmir’s aspiration on all fronts, from the separatist camp, think of the ‘political switch over’, there seems to be a binding contract for anyone to sign before entering the camp. Or he/ she should not be allowed to be counted among the separatists, lead any protest, or make speeches even if he is the son of the most powerful had–been pro-independence leader.
And if there were an obligatory agreement to sign before entering the separatist camp, the fine print should include: "The undersigned concedes that the seat is sacrosanct, which if rejected after being made use of, may be perilous for the common Kashmiris who have already lost their 100,000, fellowmen and that it would result in the extensive expressions of antipathy from the public side, that would also not be limited to slur and slander.”
Some one said that Sajad would surely represent himself in Parliament not Kashmiris. But one thing he can be expected to do is tell the parliamentarians that when a militant is killed in an encounter thousands march into streets, sloganeer in favour of freedom and lay the dead to rest before fighting against the troopers for the corpse. While as no one cares when a trooper is killed in any encounter. Sajad can tell them that the alienation is deep rooted and so much strong that ‘buying’ shepherd won’t do, it may need to buy the cattle, which New Delhi will never allow to happen. Because that would mean giving up claims of having Kashmir as a proud possession and priceless crown (An overturned world map will show the existing position of Kashmir—a green Valley trampled under India’s feet.)
As I write above about hiring loyalists, I am reminded of Chechen separatist turned Moscow loyalist, Ramzan Kadyrov. Like Abdullah’s fought India’s rule in Kashmir for sometime and later switched over side, Kadyrov and his father also fought federal forces of Russia in early 90’s, with Ramzan, leading a small band of fighters in the first Chechen war.
Kadyrovs switched over to the Moscow side at the start of the second war in 1999. Since then his militia enjoyed the patronage of Russia's state security service. And after his father, Chechnya's then president, was assassinated in 2004, Kadyrov became deputy prime minister and prime minister a year later. Married with five children, he has a pet lion, a wolf, bear and rare Siberian tiger to pride himself on.
I wish to live to that day to see what Sajad will be given. Kashmir free of tyranny or outright dejection of what he is sure to get from New Delhi.
As television screens and YouTube flashed images of Israeli bombing on Palestinian children and maimed bodies draped partially in the black-and-white checkered scarfs, almost 3000 miles away in Kashmir, I met a young protester, Bilal, who had decided to don the traditional Palestinian headdress as a sign of sympathy with the Palestinians.
Wearing it around neck with embroidered fringes hanging by his shoulders, Bilal shouted a slogan “Israel” while hundreds of other boys retorted “Hie Hie” (Down with you) with fists blossoming from the shoulders during a protest march in the Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
Like most of the Kashmiris, Bilal supports Palestinian people’s struggle against Israeli belligerence.
“And this scarf stands for my views,” he said.
In another such protest march, as I crossed a market street heading for an intersection, I looked at the upright, nicely-groomed, mostly young, mostly white and brown crowd, many wearing the scarf and holding fists high, asking Israel to stop the aggression, to free Palestine, and to stop "thinking like Colonialists."
Here I was reminded of kuffiyeh's political message that took shape when Palestinian peasants wore the utilitarian cloth over their heads in solidarity against British rule in the 1930s. Its place in Palestinian identity was hardened in the 1960s when Arafat and his resistance faction adopted it in its fight against Israel, while the trend of wearing it reached Kashmir, this time, however, more profusely.
The boys I talked to said that they feel what Gazans are enduring from past sixty years. And wearing the headdress, they said, they feel more connected with the land and the resistance where it was born.
When I was six or seven, the Palestinian scarfs were a famous possession among Kashmir’s armed guerrillas who had declared confrontation against mighty Indian troops after 1989. I remember, they would roam around the city with guns slung on shoulders but later the trend of donning it was reduced to those going out for religious tours and Muslim clerics.
And those days people would call it Molvi scarfs (scarfs for clerics), but now youngsters, mostly students are attracted to the cloth who visit Kashmir’s markets every day looking for Kaffiyeh—The Palestinian scarfs.
And if we observe the shops in city's diverse Nowhatta, Koker Bazaar and Maharaja Bazaar and other neighborhoods, vendors could be seen selling the bright-coloured item in several brands while as stylish youngsters could be seen in the city's attractive cafes and restaurants sporting red, blue, green and crimson versions of the scarfs.
The dress, however, seems to have hit the streets of Kashmir much to the displeasure of older Kashmiris who say that the scarf stands for Palestinian’s honour and valor.
“What are the youngsters here going to prove…They have made it a craze,” a visibly frail Bashir Shah, told me while explaining the customs of his time.
When Shah was young, he was awarded the scarf in a local Madrassa for his brilliant comprehension of holy Quran. It used to be an achievement and only few would headdress the cloth.
But Shah’stime Kashmir has changed when peace would prevail. Now the killings, protests and violent demonstrations have become the routine and from protest ralliesto small informal talk shows,supporters of the Palestinian cause have begun adopting the traditional scarf as a show of shared aims.
Her portraits of naked Pakistani women are her proud possession. Mushaal Mullick, now wife of Kashmir’s Muslim Pro-independence leader Yaseen Malik, may soon arrive in Srinagar with canvases of an even more sexually explicit nature. The artist known for her flesh tones, critical outrage, shadowy, disturbing and other worldly “unholy shit”, if she gets the time, would soon sketch Kashmiri women. Who knows?
Mullick on her site, mushaalmullick.com , says that she began water color paintings at the age of six and then moved to other media including pestel, charcoal, and glass painting. Her inspiration stems from the raw beauty of the 'feminine mystique,' and the horrors of abject poverty.
Raw beauty she says. Take any of her sketches, even though if you try to pick the least “explicit” pictures, the oil on hard paper has displayed her subjects both ‘poverty-stricken’ and ‘victims of male-chauvinism’ showing to men, a cloth like thing on their bodies. Bare, however.
‘ART THEY WOULD SAY IT’
I think Mullick is a classic example of what happens to nude artist who are luckily born in an Islamic country, when they achieve early success, get their work fit in the discourse and template of west and the high-profile society of their country; they tend to coil around looking at the same thesis and artistic brushes and ‘raw beauty’ because they know where their market lies.
Mullick promotes her “art”, and aim to collect aid for NGO’s that work for women development in Pakistan. Imagine a picture of bare chest Pakistani women getting sold for money which is to be used for ‘women development’ inturn. Sounds out of the ordinary.
However, the real issue here is that the artists who hashad Pakistani women painted naked may not have the maturity to understand the value of women in Islam and life of Prophet ( SAW) and his teachings or either she may be not fully aware of the ramifications of what she is doing.
Hey, I won’t love to be called a boy from caves.
Because I am wearing Wrangler jeans, have Addidas jacket enveloping me and just finished a burger at my workplace along with Kashmiri Kehwa (That's cultural fusion)
Another interesting thing about her is that her husband, Yasin Malik is the third high-profile Kashmiri separatist leader to marry a non-Kashmiri woman. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chief priest of Kashmir, married a US citizen of Kashmiri origin while Sajjad Ghani Lone, another pro- independence leader wed the daughter of JKLF leader Amanullah Khan from Pakistan Administered Kashmir.
The other day, an old fatigued lady at the backseat of a 407 bus wished pro-independence leaders to marry girls who are the victims of Kashmir Conflict.
“Why didn’t the pro-freedom leaders or their sons marry girls from Kunanposh pora,” she sought the answers. “Awaam would have followed their foot steps.”
About the Raped Village
Sexual violence has been used as a weapon in a conflict area. Kashmir too had its fair share. An example being the mass rape of more than 40 women, allegedly by troops, during a crackdown in Kunanpospora village in early nineties. The event has left a black scar on the victims and their families; so much that nobody has been marrying the girls of that village because of the stigmatization after the shameful incident.
The Rapeof 40 women also echoed in Assembly House on Feb 28 when after about a decade, the Speaker, Abdul Ahad Vakil, expressed anguish over the way the government had ignored the need for the rehabilitation of the rape victims, while the perpetrators were let go scot-free.
Anyways it is Maisuma—the Gaza of Kashmir, where the couple will be living. The area will get a new arrow in the bow as the artist has vowed to back her husband’s non-violent struggle on the Kashmir issue. Good one.
But hope she uses the brush to paint Kashmir’s ‘inner conflict’ and ‘unresolved conflict’ in ‘not-so-bad’ way.
Meanwhile, I read that Shahid-ul-Islam, friend of the leader called Malik’s choice of bride as his own personal affair.
Now this how a friend should arbitrate.
Shahid—a father of three, who recently left separatist quarter APHC and started working with a German lady, some Catherin, (sorry if I spelt her wrong) in a social welfare organization believes that the Kashmiri freedom struggle is a political and not religious struggle.
“And as far as I know Mushaal is a well-known painter and if she finds her paintings as a way of expression, there is nothing wrong," he had commented.
Shahid—the “reformed man” seems to have not bothered visiting the site before jumping over to comment.
This is an important piece of work. And much enough to enlighten and inform the community that has been holding Kashmiris responsible for their exodus and killings(209 Kashmiri Pandits killed since 1989, say JK cops in first. Though everyone has condemned the killings of the minority people, they are yet to condemn the killings faced by the popular majority. But this one is exception. Read on...
Professor Manohar Nath Tickoo
Professor Manohar Nath Tikko, 74, was a college teacher and head of the department of Education at the Governmnt College Islamabad. He lived in Haire Mohalla, Janglat Mandi in Islamabad before he left Kashmir at the peak of insurgency in 1990. For the last two decades, he is living at the scorching locale of Bohdi in Jammu.
Q1) What prompted your migration?
A:-I left with my family on Friday, 31stMay 1990 with the first light in the dawn and reached Jammu same day in the early afternoon. I still remember that fateful day when I was forced by none other than my own wife and daughters to leave. All my Muslim neighbours came to my home biding my family a fond farewell with tearful eyes. Me and my neighbours never wanted my family to leave Kashmir but there was definitely a massive psychological fear created by unknown agencies against the Kashmiri Pandits which forced us to leave. Although the fact remains that not a single Muslim forced us to leave.
Q2) Do you nurture any dreams of coming back?
A:- Well, I do believe that Pundits will get back to their home land but I can't predict a time for it. However, I don't not believe the Central [Indian] or [local] State government claims that the Pandits will be rehabilitated in their original homes. This is a blatant lie, as there hasn't been any strategy for our rehabilitation since we have left the Valley. The past governments did built some residential houses at places like Tulmul, Budgam and Mattan, but I believe this was for electoral politics.
Q3) There are many examples of Pandits returning back. Could you perhaps follow the suit?
A:- No I am sorry. I don't hesitate to tell u a stark fact that I would feel emotionally insulted if I return back to my home this time because we left our mother land without any force from our fellow people. I believe that Kashmiri Pundits should have remained in the Valley and they must have fought the freedom struggle with their fellow Muslim citizens. Even we should have sacrificed in the similar fashion our Muslim brothers did for the Kashmir cause, but unfortunately we did not do that. Even I wouldn't mind if hundred thousand Kashmir Pundits would have been martyred for freedom struggle because Kashmir cause has no less a meaning for Kashmiri Pundits. It is bizarre when we "Kashmir Pundits" vociferously beat the drums, searching for "Panun Kashmir", ironically outside the Kashmir , therefore it has literally lost its spirit and meaning..
Q4) How do you view the Kashmir problem?
A:- Kashmir is a very old issue which has mutated into a monster now. But it can be solved by sincere and honest leadership in India , Pakistan and Kashmir . Gimmicks like holding elections cannot be used to fade the reality of Kashmir being an unresolved issue. Holding election in the presence of half a million troops shows the level of legitimacy and the feigned democratic nature in Kashmir .
My personal opinion is that Kashmir issue is the issue of those who speak Kashmiri language. It should not be hyphenated or related to the other parts like Jammu and Ladakh; they have never been a relative part of Kashmir and had never any cultural, ethnic or communication links with Kashmir . Kashmir has its own history and it should be recognized as an independent state. It had never been a part of India or British India .
Q5) Would the Kashmiri Pandits accept independent Kashmir?
A:- Well, not necessarily. I am expressing my opinion without any bias and duality. The opinions are never same even on a common issue. Let me tell you that majority of Pandits did not support Sheikh Abdullah but the Ahrar Party of Moulvi Yousuf Shah. Well know Pandit activists Prem Nath Bazaz and Prem Nath Yash were in favour of Kashmir's accession with Pakistan . I still remember that time when people were asked to opt between India and Pakistan . My late father Sarvanand Tikko who was the Post Master at Anantnag at that time and we used to live inside the Post Office, signed on the document favouring accession with Pakistan and his four collogues including Ghulam Muhammad Shah of Bijbehra and Jagan Nath Rayess. My late father unfurled the Pakistani flag on the top of the Post Office but the goons of National Conference which include Abdul Ahad Tak of Anantnag town made an assault on my father and his colleagues, beat them to pulp and put down the Pakistani flag. They also tried to set the Post Office on fire.
Q6) Many Kashmiris often refer to Sheikh Abdullah as 'Gaddar' or traitor. How do you view him?
A:- Well, It is easy to be wise after the event. Sheikh Abdullah should have not done the "Ilhaq" or accession with India . He did a very serious blunder for the reason that kashmiri people are suffering a lot. Sadly Sheikh Abdullah had no political vision. Prem Nath Bazaz observed that Sheikh Abdullah had no sense of history and he had never read any history on Kashmir . So one can understand the level of political maturity and sincerity of Sheikh Abdullah.
Q7) The Pandit argument is that Kashmir has always been part of India ?
A:- Kashmir has never been part of India and has no cultural, traditional, ethical and religious semblance with India . Even we Kashmiri Pundits have totally different religious ceremonial and ritual days than of the Indian Hindus and we practice a different mythology. We have no religious attachment with river Ganga ; we used to put the ashes of the dead into the "Naraan Nag Gangbal" near Sonamarg . We never celebrate Diwali but "Hearath". We celebrate a religious day which is called "Sheshar Shenkraat" which is celebrated in the winters in order to avoid demonic influence in winters and there is no example of celebrating such a day in the Indian Hindu mythology. Moreover, Kashmiri Pundits celebrate "Shiv Raatri" differently than Indian Hindus; we prepare a lot of non vegetarian food to break the fast, contrary to Hindus who abstain from meat on the day.
Similarly Kashmiri Muslims have a different culture with no relevance with that of Indian culture. Politically, the UN resolutions stand witness to the Kashmir dispute and promises the right to self determination. Had Kashmir not been a disputed state then why Kashmir has its own constitution and flag. And why Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations. It was only because of Indian political prejudice and insincerity that autonomy of Kashmir was eroded.
Q 8) How would you see the contours of its resolution?
A:- Well, Kashmir is a much political issue than a religious one. Kashmir has suffered because of a historical political mistake so the key to its resolution is strong political struggle which is possible only when we have strong political institutions with sincere leaders having unanimity on the common Kashmir cause.
So far we have failed on diplomatic and international level only because of the poor and corrupt leadership. It is imperative to coordinate the political groups and bring them under one banner and one single leader. I would suggest Sayed Sayed Ali Shah Geelani who has shown strength and resilience while others change their cloaks often. But there has to be inclusion of Pandits in the political leadership.
Q10) How would you place Article 370 in this jigsaw puzzle?
A:- The Article 370 has no future unless it does not get a permanent place in the Indian Constitution. Since the Article 370 is a temporary Article, it can be abrogated any time by the parliament of India and BJP has included the abrogation of Article 370 in its election manifesto. I think we Kashmiris should have fought vigorously for the permanence of the Article 370. Since the Article 370 is followed with the word "Temporary" has no meaning unless it does not get divorce from it. Moreover, the Indian leadership has always failed to give the due share to the Kashmiris in their democratic doctrines as established in 1950.
Q12) How do you see the future of Kashmir?
A: - We must pin hope against hope on the fourth generation after 1947 who can give respite to Kashmiris if they succeed to apply their brains properly.
Yellow News and Sensationalism are the result of 24x7 media, overselling the news and when Kashmir is there, overselling becomes effortless. Here I evaluate the diverse treatment of the release of Indian prisoner form Pakistani Jail Kashmir Singh received in various media outlets.
World is flat. The neo-capitalist perception may not be true for the whole globe but the statement holds water in the context of Kashmir. To Kashmiris, their’s has been a real flat world which from time and again have been razed to ground along with centuries old aspirations and dreams.
Kashmiris who live in a small valley squeezed between nuclear armed Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan have been killed whenever Indians perceive them as threat to their “territorial integrity”. Even Pakistan leaves them in the dock as a matter of exigency. Indians ridicule Muslim Kashmiris and back out from promises (Guys they are yet to carry out what their PM during a UN general Assembly in 1948 promised Kashmir- a full fledged plebiscite) whenever they get a feel of having consolidated their position on ground. Between these two extremes no effort is spared to hurt, demoralize and demonize Kashmiri people. Kashmir, in a way, has turned out to be a project for the India’s national consciousness of which army, politicians, media and intellectuals are just active contestants.
This is why when Kashmir Singh, a spy, was released from Pakistani jail after 35 years, headline experts of several news agencies in India, newspapers, radio and television invoked their ‘creative’ instincts to come up with something sensational—a dirty yellow.
Nationalistic venom, Journalistic freedom, or creativity—call it anything, but Kashmiris believe that, in a veiled reference 'Kashmir' was made a butt of jokes. Media men came up with sensational headlines, which apparently were directed more towards Pakistan but hit the ‘national pride’ of Kashmiris, consciously, in the process of news blitz.
‘Pakistan hands over Kashmir to India’ was how United News of India (UNI) broke the news. 'India gets Kashmir back from Pak' read The Times of India issue. Pak returns Kashmir to India—flashed CNN-IBN and many more news media organizations following suit. But apart from creativity, I believe that it was just another day of selling news while sensationalizing Kashmir, because Kashmir gets them TRP’s. Simple.
You might think that these headlines are quite catchy, but the headline writers have tried to add salt and pepper to sell their news—they have bartered Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The creativity is there, but the headlines are actually aimed to lampoon Kashmiris.
And again, if we try to draw out denotations from these headlines, these clearly indicate favoritism on the part of copy editors. Headline like ‘Freedom of Kashmir from Pakistan’ not only takes one aback but pushes a Kashmiri living under a thatched roof to curse his fate not the headline writer who is creative somewhere in New Delhi of Mumbai skyscrapers.
When was Kashmir the part of either of these two countries? I ask myself fiercely. And why didn’t they add 'Singh' with the initial name of prisoner. They rather chose to give it a definite slant as if Kashmir was their property.
Because Kashmir Singh's initial name is also the name of a region—Kashmir that is divided between India and Pakistan, and both of whom claim whole of it as their own part, media, mostly Indian had a good fun-time playing with the word.
Whenever the two countries have to settle their score, Kashmir always comes handy for both. And this is what we as Kashmiris have gone through form past 62 years, despite Kashmir subject to 14 UN resolutions.
'Kashmir back from Pakistan after 35 years', NDTV ran as Breaking News, while other channels flashed 'India gets Kashmir from Pakistan after 35 years' as headline. Then there is a web portal news www. webindia123.com that pasted 'Pakistan returns Kashmir to India' on its home page. Daily News and Analysis (DNA) wrote 'Cheers & tears as Pak hands over Kashmir'.
From such ‘creativity’ it again proves that Kashmir is a scoop for news makers in both the countries—but the irony is news makers played with the sentiments of more than 7 million souls of J&K.
These titles don't suggest Kashmir Singh as a free person, rather, in the present context it is clearly referred to the Kashmir region being ‘handover’ by Pakistan to India. The name Kashmir Singh seems to have been deliberately confused with the Kashmir only to get attention and improve audience attendance.
"What if tomorrow any person with the name Bharat dies—shall they run, 'Bharat is no more’ as a headline," my friend asked me when I was writing this piece. Though a fan of NDTV and Times of India, he believes that the local Kashmiri press has been successful in upholding all the ethics of report writing.
Surely such organizations have undermined the journalism ethics and cannons and these titles are nothing but a part of "perverse journalism" intended to oversell news.
Tail Tale: “It’s not Murdochisation. It is Bharkhanisation of media. We may soon witness another –isation.”
AND THE CREATIVITY:
Pakistan hands over Kashmir to India’------UNI
Kashmir back from Pakistan after 35 years'--- NDTV
Cheers & tears as Pak hands over Kashmir---DNA
Pak returns Kashmir to India, raises hopes----CNN-IBN
Pakistan returns Kashmir to India----www.news.webindia123.com
India gets Kashmir from Pakistan after 35 years----- CNN IBN
India gets Kashmir back from Pak' ---- The Times of India
Bodies can be leashed not the souls. For freedom is the song of souls. Liberty is to souls as flight is to birds. This is exactly what Dream work's Spirit: The Stallion of Cimarron is all about. Employing the daring struggle of a wild horse, who loves freedom more than his life, as the metaphor of liberty and freedom; the animation film has wonderfully portrayed the essence of life that is instinctive in its origin and appeal across species inhabiting this wonderful planet.
The horse in action we come to see is Spirit, who right from birth challenges his seniors while racing down the meadows. He loves to drink water from a water body beside the herd of giant wild Bison. And when he grows up, he leads the Cimarron herd against all odds.
Spirit becomes a prey of his own inquisitiveness, when a needless exploration, miles down the American cowboy campfire, earns him a lariat around his neck and the riders take the unwilling animal over the army camp for labor. He loses his freedom for inquisitiveness. The alien people and place shocks Spirit. He regrets his decision to have come down from green slopes. And after seeing thousands of his likes roped and obeying their riders; his remorse deepens.
Man, as usual is known to be mean to horses. Likewise, the army's immediate reaction is to break down Spirit’s toughness. They starve him, accuse him of being disruptive when the defiant, determined Spirit bucks, kicks and throws rider after rider out of the square field where horses are beaten and rode by force. Apparently, they must have been erring for taking spirit as a novice.
However, the cavalry's leader (voice of James Cromwell) is a tough nut. But his order that a detained Red Indian be tied to a post with Spirit and kept without any food or water for three days turn into a bad scheme. The caged join forces and manage their escape thudding across the prairie grasslands while the cavalrymen bite their dust.
The Red Indian (voice of Daniel Studi), is the Spirit's new captor. Giving the name Spirit to his new animal, he teaches the stallion the doctrine of compromise and the power of love. Not with a man, but with a foxy blonde, blue-eyed mare —the Red Indian's friend.
While the love between two animals starts to germinate, Spirit longs to go back to his herd. However, an attack on the village by the cavalrymen puts the stallion to run again. The troops ransack through the village and leave Spirit's new girl dying in the roaring stream. Spirit manages to save his mate, but again finds himself caught up.
Next day, he is sent by train far away from his homeland to a countryside mountain where thousands of other horses are slogging with government laborers to construct a transcontinental railroad. Spirit is forced to join the band.
A time in the plot for exaggeration comes. With 'Rambo' style, Spirit dodges a bomb; neutralize a section of soldiers and gets away from a locomotive engine he just toppled. Not only he frees himself but also the horses, who had been forced to toil, escape in the jungles. Little red Indian also appears in the scene and helps him run away from the place.
All the shots are rousing, packed with action and amazingly animated.
However, the cavalry leader chases the fugitives atop a mountain where on one side a wide stream parts the two ridges and on the other side cavalrymen draw closer the duo. Spirit's perseverance filled with freedom to ramble again on the prairies takes him to the other ridge of the mountain with a mid air long jump along with the red Indian (the scene, which would later, become the cover picture of the film DVD's).
While one of the cavalrymen aims his gun on the escapees, the team leader stops him. He has realized the power of those who want to remain free of shackles. He nods towards the Spirit from this side to show that by coercion nothing can be tamed for long.
Stunningly tinted in picturesque sunset and columbine countryside watercolors, both the directors, Lorna Cook and Kelly Asbury had tried to explore a lyrical style of story written by John Fusco, utilizing music of Bryan Adams (Here I am kind of a) and a bare narration by Matt Damon to take on the plot.
It is a real treat to watch the juxtaposition of narrative with the cutting edge technology of visual medium that sparks a creative synergy between the story and its expression. And the mesmerizing special effects add proverbial icing to the visual cake of Spirit’s animation.
The animation film, which has performed exceptionally well across the Hollywood, is really an elegant, enjoyable film for movie lovers. However, this telling-tale of freedom and its costs holds a special charm for all those who dream about freedom very often but are yet to taste it and experience its spirit.
Results: Over 1200 killed and more than 5500 injured
Mahmoud Dervish’s land has blown up again. How? As the US-supplied F-16s pounded Gaza for over 22 consecutive days, the New York Times headline howled ‘Israel Deepens Gaza Incursion as Toll Mounts’. Definitely Israel will penetrate deeper into Gaza because the world is not watching. UN is sitting at leisure to witness Gaza’s isolation from the outside world with the helpless people brave carpet bombing and no corner to escape, the highways and lanes littered with charred bodies of burnt children, barrage of missiles crumbling building and setting fire on hospitals and schools.
In UN, the members failed to release report on Gaza humanitarian crisis because US vetoed. It thwarted an effort by Muslim Libya to persuade the U.N. Security Council to call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza after Israel launched a ground invasion. US vetoed because it believes Hamas broke the six-month long ceasefire with Israel by firing projectiles that have killed 15 Israeli’s in 15 years. Sheer lie. US says nothing on the 5000 Palestinians who were killed by Israelis during the same time. It ignores the November 5 and November 17 Israeli assaults on Gaza when the truce was in effect. Everything is shocking. And so is US’s doublespeak.
Israel won’t cave in because it has the influential US beside it whose tax payers continuously find their money drained off to manufacture war machines for the illegitimate child. And interestingly Israeli President Shimon Peres, who is also the 1994 Nobel Peace prize winner believes that all those killed, were terrorists or their sympathesizers.
Peres, I suppose the Jews struggling for their lives in the Poland ghettos and German shanties were never dismissed as militants by Hitler or his ‘Mein Kemp’.
Hitler did call Jews ‘Untermenchen’ (Sub Humans) which you proved to be again by stroking hell fire on the innocent Gazans who have already been battered by six-month long blockade imposed from sea, air and land.
And still on.
Because Muslims blood is white, it mismatches with theirs. So the jungle law should prevail for the world belongs to powerful only. It’s only parasites that have full rights to exist and survive. Being minnow is unethical and unacceptable. So the rot should get out of the planet. The fall of Babylon should follow the fall of Beit Hanoun. Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo are the things of past. Fairy tales are they. So the devil duo (US and Israel) would carve out the new ones from Palestine. Blast the Gaza. Plunder it of its souls. This is their priority. This is the prerequisite. Condel will keep on counting civilian causalities, but the green signal for Israel will remain on.
Time and again, it has been made clear by United States that it stands by Israel and approves of its horrendous foreign policy in the mid east, especially in Palestine. Its double standards are quite visible, inevitable too. W are told that US is ready to send millions as aid, but it also needs Palestinian blood on quid pro quo basis. Applauds are aired for the puppet Mahmud Abbas government for condemning Hamas. At the same time sonic booms from US made precision missiles are wrecking havoc on Gazans. Cut the Palestinian melon is the theme Israel and US are working on.
And what is more shocking is the idiocy of Arabs. They prefer remain silent to see Palestinian streets painted with blood of innocent human souls, annihilated roads and bridges, maimed bodies, scattered human flesh, children in their mothers’ lap buried under the rubble and carpenters running short of wood to make cots.
While digging mass graves is the routine of survivors in Palestinians, King Abdullah is undisturbed in his fortress and Husseni Mubarak is breaking bread with Israelis. Notwithstanding the fact that streets of Arab also protested against Zionist Israel aggression, but the view to Gaza from Arab streets is quite different from Arab palaces.
An Arab analyst on the Press TV show cried ‘I am embarrassed to call myself as an Arab’. Even someone on the same show proposed that Arab league which saw three absentees , Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt in their latest meet, should be moved to Venezuela, which was the first country to kick out Israeli Ambassador from it soil followed by Bolivia.
Interestingly, President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez called the Gaza attacks as “Palestinian holocaust”, the Arab troika are yet to give it a name. He had in 2006 also threatened to break ties with Israel over its military campaign in Lebanon in a war of words that led both nations to withdraw their envoys. The Arab league which aims at protecting interests of all Arab nations has failed once again and its reallocation to Caracas seems a better idea.
Khalil Jibran’s lines, ‘Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking’ gels with the attitude of Arab governments.
In Israel, President Olmert may say that he has reached all the goals of the Gaza war, and beyond. Surely he has reached, because the value of human life is less in Gaza than that of citizens elsewhere in Israel. The Gazans are the children of lesser God and an Israeli teardrop is worth more than a million drops of Gazans’ blood.
UN is calling both the factions to restrain. Both sides? Do Hamas and the Israelis both have F-16s and F-18’s? Are Hamas’ home-made rockets (firecrackers) and Israeli military and air power comparable? Have you seen Hamas fighters in Haifa or Tel Aviv? Or have you seen Israeli women and children taking refuge in schools?
And where is the peace envoy to mid east. Tony Blair has gone dumb. So much dumb that he cannot at least say that when IRA fired mortars into Northern Ireland, London didn’t respond by pounding Irish Republic with white phosphorous and pressure bombs, it was not sending tanks and naval ships to demolish churches and hospitals to teach the Irish a lesson.
Some one argued that Hamas should have acted smart but instead it provoked Israel by firing rockets. Alright! When Israel was preparing its soldiers for war six months prior besides strangling Gaza from every direction, the question of provoking doesn’t really matter at all. Even if Hamas would have stopped sending its firecrackers beyond Gaza, who would have gambled that Israel wouldn’t invade Gaza. A slave mind set, in fact.
Though western governments may decline to subscribe it, here in Gaza, the SP Huntington’s theory ‘ The clash of civilizations’ is becoming valid. Fukuyama’s assessment might differ again because he thinks that it’s resources that are being targeted but not Muslims, but Gazan’s or Lebanese aren’t sitting on any oil wealth. Are they?
Now that Bush is gone but Olmert must remember that when an Arab has nothing else to toss at you, he hurls a shoe. And till the Arab world run out of shoes, you will have to allow running riot and a lot more fatalities from the skies till they have no more legs to stand on. The ad hoc states can’t kill all the Arabs and watch out they still have a pair of shoes to fling at them and their bosses.
Immediately after Indian parliament attack in 2002, that followed military mobilization by India and Pakistan along the international border, I remember, a special radio package was aired by BBC Urdu service. A cigarette seller in a village tucked close on the Radcliff line in Rajasthan was asked why he had not migrated to a safer place if the war was imminent.
"I believe there will be no full-fledged war. Because both the countries are nuclear-armed," he said, affirming that those who left the village in haste will come back soon.
Six years have passed, and November 26 attacks on India's financial capital Mumbai have escalated the war of words between the two countries similar to the point of 2002. However, media in India doesn't seem to understand what the poorBaniyaobserved then.
Indian media appears hell bent upon dragging India to invade Pakistan, which has denied have orchestrated or abetted Mumbai attacks. It doesn't realize the war-affects on the people of twin nations who were born to same mother between 24 hours in August 1947 after a line daggered between them.
In a show of a terrible reporting during Mumbai siege, Indian media risked lives of hundreds of hostages inside the hotels by airing details about what the security agencies were up to, exact location of the trapped who were until out of sight to heavily armed assailants, and a mediocre telephone talks with one of the assailants beseeching his mission scripts and location in the hotel.
Nothing could be more dangerous and mischievous than this.
To increase the TRPs, the chicks with lipsticks continued to hold the logo Mics straight and blabber the hurriedly thought-over 'Piece –to-Camera', but little did they bothered about the gleam of television screens that must have startled the hostages and simultaneously sparkled the faces of assailants who had the television sets kept on.
Take few instances for example:
As the world watched the news of Mumbai attacks, it was shocking to see NDTV’s Barkha Dutt breaking every canon of fair journalism. At one instance she asked a husband about his wife being trapped or seized as a hostage. The poor man fell in line and revealed where exactly his wife was hiding when he last saw her.
In another instance, the Reporter called the head of Oberoi Hotel, who confirmed that there were possibly more than 100 people in the building.
In short, the media acted too speedy and horribly when slow action was needed.
Then the mantra that propels these channels is the borrowed but unabated denouncement. Few days after the event, to condemn the attacks, which India blamed to Muslim Lashkar-e-Taiba based in Pakistan, top Bollywood stars, Shahrukh Khan, Amir Khan and Salman Khan were chosen. Though the threesome love to love reel life dance and drink with half-bare actresses, they were there, invited every evening in news studios, to accentuate on what the correct form of Islam is in real life.
"There are two forms of Islam, one theAllahwalaand second theMullahwala," Sharukh Khan told an English news channel.
All aired!
Now the non-stop but raucous news shows continue make prognosis about the future of India beside defiant Pakistan. An impression is being created among masses especially the political leadership of India, who until recently had not directly held Pakistan responsible for the attacks, about more possible attacks from Pakistan-based groups.
A consensus is being formed to belittle efforts of Pakistan in cracking down the militants in its region, who according to India had perpetrated the attacks in Mumbai. Attempts are being made to establish that Pakistan failed in tracing down the mastermind of Mumbai attacks and India must step in urgently with its huge army and artillery to twist the enemy's arm and dislodge it.
Though few could be spared, the truth of the matter is that most of the Indian media persons are sick. In fever. Contaminated by huge salary packages. Infected with the extravagant lifestyle which is not sustainable by the ordinary poor. The infecundity of the infected organism is going to plague the whole sub-continent, if at all war erupts.
While the growing influence of India in Pakistan's decade-long strategic depth-- Afghanistan and its dogmatic attitude on Kashmir is simply overlooked, hours-long debates and chat shows deliberate upon Pakistan's attempts in subverting India.
Arnab Goswami of Times Now (of latechristened as General Arnab in Kashmir) in his voice gives the notion of a dictator. All civilized Indians will be appalled at his judgmental news presenting. He seems to be a rabble-rouser and a person technically at war with Pakistan when he seeks comments with ferocity and asks war experts whether precision guided missiles will be fired on Pakistan administered Kashmir or the war will be rather of more unconventional nature.
Goswami and his likes sideline the composition of the India-Pakistan geography and their military might, given the fact, that the primary conflict, if ever ensues, will be fought in the area close to both India and Pakistan with the air conditioned news studios bound to get caught in the crossfire, both in New Delhi and Mumbai, if India, incase of war, penetrates deeper into Islamabad and Karachi.
And same has been voiced by India's Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh, a former journalist, who slammed the television channels and newspapers for "ridiculously" talking about war and creating "unnecessary war hysteria" among the people.
Now that the war clouds were allowed to gather, a serious media at this particular juncture needs to give hype at how much people of both countries are going to lose if the war erupted.
According to Strategic Foresight Group, if a nuclear bomb of 15 kilotons (Highly Enriched Uranium) was dropped in the Fort area of Mumbai on any weekday, the immediate death toll would be 23 lakh and would destroy the entire financial, intellectual and governing elite of Mumbai, leading to a financial collapse hard to recover from.
Likewise, it says, if India retaliated with a 50 kiloton (Plutonium) bomb on Karachi's Cantt Railway Station, the immediate death toll would be close to 18 lakh with all the financial and services infrastructure destroyed and life crippled.
The group believes that the troop mobilisation on the pattern of 2002 for a year will cost India 0.46 percent of GDP and Pakistan 2.25 percent of GDP.
Since both countries have been claiming victories in all of their fights against each other, the figures released by the group prove the assertion is wrong as both countries have suffered almost matching fatalities and same balance of power between the two countries still exist.
Like a child having a tantrum and an adult with disturbed childhood, the Indian media has been coming up with so much 'twisty tales' about Pakistan without any evidence (but their sources). And the irony is that there is no criticism coming up. The Pakistani media's stance is no different from the stance of its people. We have witnessed so many times, when people in Pakistan criticized their media for exaggeration and the useless panicky stuff but one must have to confess in this instance that Pakistani media has shown some restraint and acted sensibly contrasting the Indian media that has come up with the most idiotic stories and the usual melodrama that one would have had a chance to watch.
'Bombard Pakistan', 'How India should hit back Pakistan' and 'Wake-up India' is what we have been barraged with from the past several weeks through papers, web and news channels..
It's a shame that the Indian media is inciting anger amongst the Indian people when people in the sub-continent were thinking that both countries could at last get over their differences, with the non-interference of Pakistan in the J&K Assembly elections being the greatest CBM offered to India as a starter.
Keeping these things in view, it will be prudent on the part of Indian media neither to sketch state policies nor be the voice of a particular politician and surely not activate wars but help diffuse tensions between India and Pakistan.
And about the great generosity and compassion from the people and journalists of Pakistan, a piece that appeared in the Indian Express on December 20—The Microphone Wars and the National Interest by Shekhar Gupta fits in the current situation where the author called on the senior Indian media people particularly editors to intervene before the great professional decade-long bond between India and Pakistani journalists starts to morsel.
Umarblogs is an irregular blogger. He spends a lot of his time either at city saloons or at press colony among gossipers. Srinagar is where his taste for black tea grows stronger as his taste for Kashmir politics is eroded everyday. Feel free to reach him at www.umarblogs.blogspot.com
Last night I had a dream. I saw UN General Secretary Ban ki Moon has come to visit Kashmir. He is flanked by Indian Prime Minster Manmohan Singh and former CM of the State Ghulam Nabi Azad prompting an estimated 1 million people to take to streets to protest against Indian policies in Kashmir.
Many carried banners and placards calling the latter duo with some really bad names in Kashmiri.
"Welcome to Kashmir, Mr. General Secretary," Azad said, shaking Moon’s hand in Srinagar. "You are going to love it to be here. Your appreciation rating is much higher here than us. Kashmiris completely love you."
“Oh Yeah," Moon said.
The UN bigwig saw some placards reading ‘Ban Ki Moon didn’t come soon but his eye caught an old torn placard, probably used in several protests earlier that read: ‘No ban on Ban—Let Him Come.’
“May I know what has happened here before?” he asked Azad.
The General Secretary also sought the reason over why 1 million of people are rioting and calling Sing and Azad with bad names.
“I am afraid to see what they would do to you two if they loathed you so much," he said to his hosts.
"Don't take it the wrong way," Azad replied. "It's only 1 million Kashmiris. Rest of all love us absolutely. They are also going to vote for us to power. "
Another thing Moon realized was that most of the troopers have crossed their service ages as compared to protesters who are mostly young to which Azad explained that life expectancy rate of Kashmiris have gone down over the years, except for politicians. “Since we spend most of the time in New Delhi. And security forces in the valley rest assure things,” he said.
“Oh I see, Poor Kashmiris,” Moon shrugged.
Seeing the protesters getting angry, Moon said, “So you think you are safer in your own backyard and no one will harm you. Ha?"
"Very safe Mr Moon," Singh chipped in. "As long as we have two guns for every rioter."
Between the conversations, the visiting dignitary heard some loud chants in native language.
“Could you please interpret it for me” Moon said when he heard ‘Kathi Chue Sani Gobrau’.
“They are saying ‘where have all the sons gone’,” Azad replied.
“But where have all the sons gone?” Moon sought the answers.
Azad explained that most of them have crossed over LoC before the cross-LoC trade started and rest of them are seeking jobs in the Indian cities, without telling their parents.
“But our state police is quite active. All the youngmen would be chased up very soon,” Azad said.
The tallest among the troika scratched his skull as Azad winked his right eye towards the calm Turbanator.
After two days, in New Delhi, speaking to some Hindi news channels, Singh said that the reports of 1 million protestors were largely exaggerated.
"I am contradicting that 1 million people were on Srinagar streets," he said. “But it was a smaller section of youth who had some resentment.”
“Mr Singh, they were 1 million souls,” Moon tried to correct the Indian PM.
Azad replied quickly, “Mr Moon what looks like a million march to you is just a usual thing there. In an hour, two or three miscreants can assemble million-strong crowd in valley. You know what I mean, No?"
“O, that way every Kashmiri is a greatest convincer living. Isn’t it,” Moon replied, while Azad pulled back his chair feeling sullied, but he kept his smile till the end of press conference.
Among the protestors a 25-year-old resident of inner city, Nike Koatur, who had helped organize the rally was seemingly unhappy after the protest march.
He said that the protests would have been more successful if all banners and placards had been spellchecked.
Infact, one protestor, shown on a news channel, carried a sign that said, "We want Azad,”. And another displayed, "In Dependence-- only solution”. Also, one of the placards read,” Pebble site”.
“You see what they really intended to mean Mr Moon,” Singh said to the visiting personality.
And inspite the huge protests in valley, Moon's visit was framed as a big success that will consolidated India’s position at the international level.
“In honour of your last name, we have sent a mission to Moon,” Singh told Moon.
And after biding him the final good bye, Singh whispered in Azad’s ears, “Mission ‘Moon’ accomplished” while both guffawed to the top of their lungs.
Umarblogs is an irregular blogger. He writes a bimonthly humor column for his blog. He spends a lot of his time either at city saloons or at press colony among gossipers. Srinagar is where his taste for black tea grows stronger as his taste for Kashmir politics is eroded everyday. Feel free to reach him at www.umarblogs.blogspot.com
I am not sowing a new idea. It was always there. I am just reacting to the fears and apprehensions expressed in several blog entries, newspapers, and discussion boards over the improbability of Kashmir sustaining its independence from India.
Now that Indian literati have realized that Kashmir is serious about its independence from India, what they try is to baffle rather swank that Independent Kashmir would survive for just 15 minutes. Since they are ‘worried’ more than Kashmiris about how it can sustain its sovereignty especially without the tax payers of India, a clarification as a Kashmiri becomes urgent.
When some of the Balkans, Central Asian countries, Caucasus, Eastern European and all of the Baltic countries could survive after gaining independence from former Russia, why can’t Kashmir. Right now, most all of these countries, have their GDP per capita tremendously increasing and six times more than India or for that matter Pakistan.
Baltic countries like Estonia Latvia and Lithuania were not much developed than what Kashmir is now, but after liberation, things changed. Even Caucasus countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have become more developed and industrial than they were with second world power of those days (USSR).
Notice the eastern European states Belarus Moldova and Ukraine; they are happier than they were ever before. And sustaining their independence!!
Disintegration never ever means economic deprivation and collapse, and in case of Kashmir, it will prosper like anything. Things would be difficult in first three-four years, but after that, Kashmir would come into flower.
Only its hydro electricity can turn it into a Singapore. Its wildlife, forests and diverse landscape can open floodgates of money.
Kashmir’s climate and fresh atmosphere is exactly what BPOs and MNCs need. In Baltic countries, many MNCs are opening their offices—and that has reduced the number of its unemployed youth moving in to UK or US for jobs.
Kashmir’s pastures can turn it into a heaven for milk production and cattle rearing. Currently 70 percent of all pastures are under the activity of army. And 80 lakh sheep are imported from outside states. With its own pastures, it would save 1600 crores of money spent on importing livestock.
Kashmir’ soil is very much fertile, and the sectors of agriculture, horticulture, floriculture are yet to be fully exploited.
In the Agriculture and Horticulture sectors, Kashmir can base a big industry. Even processing of fruits could be a separate industry. For example, in foreign nations, apple is grown at 50 metric ton on a hectare of land. However, here in Kashmir, it is just lingering on 10.5 metric ton per hectare. If Kashmir starts to produce 50 metric tons; there will be huge exports. Right now the apple industry is worth Rs 2500 crores and if technology is involved apples can produced 5 times more than this figure. And a part of it can be used for processing.
Likewise Kashmir’s vegetables industry is going great. From the last three years, vegetables are being grown at large scale, so much, that a huge quantity is being exporting it .Kashmir can produce more than what it is producing now and can flood its immediate regions with fresh vegetables.
Recently florists’ organization in Kashmir said that the valley can overtake countries like Holland which is sitting on the world’s 93 percent of the commercial flowers revenue. They said that the climate, fertile soil and geography is fit for producing fresh flowers thereby ending the hegemony of Holland in this sector. Commercial flowers contribute to Holland’s 95 percent of economy. And Kashmir could become the next Holland. There is a season in Holland when they don’t grow some flowers while as in Kashmir those are grown and are in demand across European and US markets. These flowers are quite expensive and Kashmir can replace Holland by chipping in and exploiting the timing.
The horticulture department, few months back, released figures about walnut production saying that 1 lakh metric ton walnuts are being produced every year. But it can be increased. By planting walnut trees on the forest land where there are no trees, Kashmir can have promising harvests. Of 22,000 sq Km of forest land, 11 percent area is lush while as rest of the area is barren where walnuts can be grown. Estimates say that Kashmir can raise the existing figure of walnut production to 10 lakh metric tons. Kashmiri walnuts, no doubt, have a competition from Chinese walnuts. But Kashmir walnuts are preferred in foreign markets.
Then Kashmir has a huge mineral-based potential resource sectors. You name any mineral, it is available here. Kashmir has a got a huge limestone deposits. Right now only 0.03 percent of these deposits are being exploited and only from that 8 lakh metric tons of cement is being produced. Just raising that level to 0.5 percent would mean generating revenue of 2500 crores.
Likewise huge deposits of gypsum, bauxite and quartzite have not been explored. In Kashmir’s Kupwara we have a marble mine of 45 million cubic meter. And that marble is considered best than its Italian counterpart. Kashmir has 50 million cubic metres of granite mines in bountiful Sonamarg and beyond. Borax, blue sapphire-- which is priceless and several other minerals are yet to be prospected. Currently only 0.05 percent of Kashmir’s total mineral wealth is being utilized, if the level is raised to only 2 percent, Kashmir would witness a renaissance.
Talking about huge Knowledge-based potential sectors, it is crucial to mention that when the IT boom was going across India, Kashmir was in turmoil. All European and US companies had first agreed to establish their bases in the Valley because of the suitable climate, but then, conflict pushed them for other options in South India. But still there is a big space available and we can exploit it fully. Financial service centre is the evolving concept. Here Kashmir cannot afford to miss that as it had come in the same way as IT did.
Remember 1 lakh crore industry within next 20 years is waiting for Kashmir. But it all depends how things are allowed to happen.
Kashmir is best known for its silk, saffron, honey, medicinal herbs that are to be explored. Leave aside, handicraft, woodcarving and other sectors, imagine what if Kashmir explores all of its mountains, harvest rainwater, start mountaineering expeditions, and water boat safaris ( just like Sweden, Norway, Austria, Hungary) at large scale levels, export timber, initiate wildlife safaris, and improve fish nurturing.
The world knows what sort of potential Kashmir has in Tourism sector. Despite conflict, tourist economy has been incredible and once the conflict ends, one can calculate the economy of state and 1/3 of Kashmiri population that is directly or indirectly linked with tourism trade.
Kashmir’s water resources are its biggest possessions. And because the 1960 India-Pakistan Indus Waters Treaty is regarded as "the worst thing to have happened to the state of Jammu and Kashmiri, under which, India has all the rights of water utilization of three rivers - Ravi, Beas and Satluj - while Pakistan has rights over three other rivers - Chenab, Jhelum and Indus - all of which flow through Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmir would certainly charge both the countries for its waters and again millions of dollars it can bank.
Kashmir would also like to seek compensation for water and electricity all these decades India and Pakistan have used. Probably at the later stages, it will be exactly the replica of how Israel drew reparations from present Germany for the atrocities their ancestors suffered from the Hitler’s era Germany. However, Kashmir can also absolve them both.
Now that every independence sustaining efforts mentioned, what actually is needed is the sincerity on the part of India that is forcibly ruling Kashmir. Remember former Pakistan President Mushraff had offered in 2007 to pull back its troops from its controlled Kashmir provided India follow suit. However, India, which is now stressing on the conditions of plebiscite, did not respond to Mushraff’s calls. It could have simply turned Kashmir as a link not only between Pak and India, but also with China and Afghanistan.
Before or immediately after the 1990’s, Kashmir never ever witnessed million strong protest rallies. Which indicates that despite pumping huge money into the valley, raising education standards, so-called globalizing it and all that, the aspirations have remained same; rather Kashmiris have realized where they have to head for. India has been simply abortive in buying the common aspirations.
Suggestions:
The tax payers should rather ask their leaders, whom they select in elections, to channelize their money in the care of farmers and weavers who are committing suicide in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, on illiteracy, disaster hit areas and road building across India. They can ask them to reduce India’s defense budgets by solving Kashmir imbroglio. A Chapaati costs Rs 500 at Siachen peaks. No doubt an Indian taxpayer can afford it who sleeps in the airconditioned room somewhere in Mumbai skyscrapers, but there are millions in India who have only one time meal to eat and rat- packed streets to sleep.
India tax payers might say that their sweat is being used for Kashmir’s welfare, but what about the sweat that has gone into the spendings on army for six long decades. The results are actually surprising to all which Indian authors too realized lately. Notwithstanding huge spendings on army, nowhere has been army successful in suppressing Kashmiris. Instead, their presence has fomented the lava of dissent that has been accruing in the vale since long. We have a 28-year-0ld Indian army Captian claiming it before BBC’s George Arney who recently traveled to Kashmir to speak to young people to find out what they want and how they view India.
Myths Exploded:
That Kashmir lives on these taxes is a fable always used to bully Kashmiris. Kashmir’s 88 percent of electricity is transported to outside states. Kashmir is using only 12 percent of its electricity that too on higher rates. Because the electricity is first guided out towards Northern grid. Then it is pumped back with additional charges lagaaned.
Kashmir lightens some parts of North India and if India spends something back here, it is doing no act of kindness. Because Kashmir too is spending billions in the form of electricity, that India squeeze’s out. Of Rs 1 India spends on Kashmir, it obtains Rs 14 as profit.
Kashmir rears almost two lakh migrant labourers, mostly from Bihar and UP. The money they make here in Kashmir can be consumed by the local work force who is sitting idle. While they are being killed in Maharashtra and elsewhere, Kashmir always proved Dubai for them.
Threats from other countries:
When the Kashmir issue will be resolved, there will be nothing to fear from Pak, India or China. Possibly, Kashmiri people could ask for UN troop presence and Kosovo-like support until Kashmir recover from the losses it has incurred from the past 62 years of turmoil.
So many small countries are living in the lap of other giants, but they act as buffer zones rather than colonies. Taiwan, East Timor, Bhutan, and again Balkans, Kosovo, Kuwait should serve as an example.
Even South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
It is a fairy-tale that independent Kashmir will not survive. Let believers of such theory ask questions to themselves and India show sincerity and give it a try.
