Kidnapped , raped , converted ~ Rinkle Kumari | #Rinkle

Exclusive picture of Rinkle Kumari ~ taken two weeks before she was kidnapped , raped and forcibly married . You may never see her smiling again .  Just in case she is still alive .

From Friday Times ~

Malalai Yusafzai, the brilliant Pakistani girl who defied Taliban’s dictation and stood firm on getting educated and persuaded her peers to do so, is a face of Pakistan that we all want to see. More and more. With pride and denial. We like to see Malalai in denial of Rinkle. Rinkle Kumari, the 19 years old Sindhi Hindu girl who was kidnapped and allegedly forcibly converted to Islam before coercively marrying her to a Muslim Naveed Shah. The ones who show this uncomfortable face of Pakistan are condemned to be the ‘traitors’ and ‘Pakistan-haters’. If trying to correct these painful imperfections of our society is treason, let me commit it for once. Rinkle’s story needs to be told loudly and to everyone.

Rinkle was kidnapped on February 24 by Naveed Shah and four other people. Police refused to lodge an FIR and to include the names of the influential Mian Aslam, Mian Rafique and their father Mian Mithu. She was produced in the court of Civil Judge Ghotki where she insisted on going to her family but the judge illegally sent her to the police custody in Sukkur Women’s Police Station.

Read the complete story HERE 

Fai, my beleaguered friend by K.N. Pandita

Fai, my beleaguered friend
By K.N. Pandita [ref]

It was the summer of 1992.  An African NGO at the UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva had given me accreditation, and I spoke usually on IDP issues at the UN.

I sat sipping coffee in the lounge. A neatly dressed person of rather smallish height, carrying a portmanteau, came to me, introduced himself as Ghulam Nabi Fai, pulled the chair and sat down. I leapt, and fetched him a sizzling coffee, and we both sat down to speak in chaste Kashmiri. We felt, or I felt, relaxed. In response to his inquisitive probing, I said that I was a Kashmiri Pandit and a RAW agent. He chuckled, but had no courage to say he was ISI agent.

Our long association usually interspersed with pleasantries and sarcasms continued throughout our two decade-long associations in Geneva, Brussels, London, Washington and elsewhere. Talking to his flock from both sides of Kashmir at Geneva or Brussels, he used to tell them about me,” This Pandit is the guide and path finder for the Indians.” I think for a long time he did believe that I was a mole of Indian intelligence. My reaction was let sleeping dogs lie.

I will recount only two jokes about him that I can recollect. Once, Fai and I sat in the spacious lounge at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva with a large group of Kashmiri separatists drawn from both sides of Kashmir whom he was briefing. We talked on Kashmir culture. Fai was euphoric about Kashmiryat and delivered a short but passionate speech. I posed a question. What is Kashmiriyat, please concretize. He started with many elementary things, salt tea, wazeh-wan, kangari blisters (nareh taet) etc. I quipped, “Fai Sahib, our real Kashmiriyat was the widespread head skin disease of favus (khaer in Kashmiri and Ganjapan in Hindi). Curse the Indians, now not a single Kashmiri afflicted with favus is to be found in the valley.” Peals of laughter from the audience. Fai retorted, “Damn you! We could be squire with the Indian might but you damned Pandits of Kashmir are our Achilles heel. Such sadists are you, the Lucifer.”

At the NGO Committee meetings of the ECOSOC at UN in New York, India opposed Fai’s application for ECOSOC status for his NGO (KAC) and Pakistan opposed my application for the same for our NGO (Asia-Eurasian Human Rights Forum). Year after year and session after session since 2001 our applications were deferred because the Indians and the Pakistani delegates opposed us respectively. I told Fai let us make a compromise formula. We tell both Indians and Pakistanis to accept both and we sill work together in unison as human rights activists. With this proposal, we first met the Paki but unofficially. After hearing our proposal, he exclaimed in Persian, “ yak na shud du shud” meaning so far there was one scourge but now there will be two of them. We all had a hearty laugh, and neither of the two has been granted status so far. I wonder what this Committee will do with our application in its next meeting when it again comes up for consideration.

Fai is suave and a soft spoken person. He is a decent man in his bearing, never irritated, never angry. At lunch time, he would often beckon me to come along to the restaurant for eating together. We did so many times. But once I had a 2-hour long one-to-one meeting with late Ayub Thukar in Geneva. We talked about the need of inter-community dialogue without government interference in Kashmir to bring normalcy in the strife-torn valley. It was around 2003. In the course of that talk, Thukar hinted that we did not need inclusion of Fai in our effort as Fai was only pseudo-academic and a failure on ground strategy. Some months later Ayub Thukar died of throat cancer in London but some weeks before his death he had sent me an email saying he cherished the return of peace to the valley.

In my personal meetings with Fai, he never talked of politics much less Kashmir politics. He talked mostly of Kashmiriyat and many vague things. I never felt any need of dragging him to a discourse on political issues.

In the briefings at the UN in Geneva, Fai seemed to be dominated by another anti-India and pro-separatist activist and theoretician, namely Barrister Abdul Majid Tramboo, who is now running the Brussels branch of Fai’s Kashmir Centre. While Fai would like that knowledgeable persons like I on Kashmir situation should be given the freedom to ask questions in the seminar/briefings and express views, Tramboo manipulated the briefings in a way that he left no scope for anybody to ask a question. The reason is that the speakers they dragged to the platform like Galloway and Victoria Schofield and others were paid persons and far removed from the history of Kashmir and the sub-continent.  We would and often did corner them and expose them.  So both Fai and Tramboo preferred to keep us out of those briefings.

Fai’s main work was to influence opinion makers, law makers, human rights activists, intellectuals and NGOs in the US and in Europe in favour of Kashmir’s secession from India and accession to Pakistan. He never supported independence of Kashmir. In that sense he is a dedicated Jammat-e-Islami and among the first few students of Ali Shah Geelani and protagonists of his pro-Pak ideology. Fai’s skill lies in roping in not only the European and American intellectuals only but some Indian and Kashmiri Pandits also. Even one of the three-member team of interlocutors, too, has been once the beneficiary of Fai’s largesse.  Their names are now fully known and the Times of India of 21 July has posted video clips of the speeches of one Jammu journalist and a Kashmiri Pandit in Fai’s latest seminar in Washington. They have been regular participants in his sponsored seminars and thus frontline beneficiaries of his largesse.

Fai invariably would send me a notification regarding a seminar going to be organized by him (KAC) giving the theme, the persons invited, the venue and all information. But he never sent me an invitation letter and I never attended any of his seminars. In response to his notification, I always wished him great success in deceiving himself and the deceivable Kashmiris.

Ali Shah Geelani has given a call for general strike on 22 July and the “separatists”. Forgetting that Fai stands for merger of Kashmir with Pakistan, Kashmiris will give him a thundering response. This buries their fake azaadi slogan deeper in its grave.

The Jammu-based pro-Fai media outlet has started the propaganda of calling Fai’s arrest as shift in America’s Kashmir policy. It is a shift, of course, and it is a facet of the intelligence sharing understanding between India and the US. But wait, many more skeletons will tumble out from the cupboard when the Home Ministry begins a through investigation into this anti-national perfidy.  In the first place, and without delay, our foreign office should immediately impound the passports of all those Indians who have been receiving ISI’s largesse through its Fai outlet and whose names have been mentioned by Fai in his website as having attended his seminars in foreign countries. But it has to be seen if New Delhi is content with making the US its cat’s-paw.

US Govt Department of Justice Press Release HERE 

Copy Of Criminal Complaint HERE

For G.N.Fai click HERE 

Osama is dead : Remarks by the US President on Osama Bin Laden

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

May 02, 2011

Remarks by the President on Osama Bin Laden

East Room

11:35 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory — hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support. And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.

Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.

Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad.

As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well, and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.

Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.

So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.

Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.

We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.

Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.

The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

END 11:44 P.M. EDT

 

Peace-Process- Hidden Agenda

 By Dr. M.K. Teng

Now that the Government of India has repeated its Sharam-ul-Sheikh performance at Thimpu and offered to resume the composite dialogue with Pakistan, virtually jumping over the stand it had taken in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, there is much more that the Indian Government has to explain about what it intends to do in Jammuand Kashmir. Evidently the climb-dam by the Government of India on crucial issues involved in its policy in respect of Jammu and Kashmir, reflects a willful surrender. This perhaps eminates from its inability to face political blackmail and pressure brought to bear on the Indian leaders in the name of economic development and under the cover of peace and security of the region.

The Indian policy reflects a strange sense of helplessness, which pervades the outlook of the Indian political class and which acts as an impelling force to drive those in power to invite Pakistan to the conference table again and again, after every small and major misdemeanor Pakistan has committed. Every time, Pakistan has returned to the conference table, grumbling and growling at the inability of the Indian Government to make the composite dialogue purposeful and result oriented. The cause of concern is not the abrasive attitude of Pakistan, but the uneasiness with which the Indian political class reacts to it.

The Indian Government has rather, with deliberate intent, tried to play down the way Pakistan has expressed its dissatisfaction with the purpose and the pace of the peace-process. It is mainly because the Indian leadership has shown reluctance to face the prospect of laying down a baseline of its policy on the Kashmir issued In fact, the Indian political class has so far evaded the crucial decision of fixing the “irreducible minimum”, beyond which it would not go to reach a settlement with Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir. Its exhortations to urge upon the Indian Government” to walk an extra-mile” from its “stated positions” in order to be able to reach an “out of the box” solution of the Kashmir problem and its extravagant eagerness to nudge the Indian Government “to go far enough in its engagement with Pakistan, to reach, a settlement on Kashmir”, are idle expressions used to camouflage the subterfuge it has indulged in so far. The truth is that the Indian political class has never mustered courage to stand upto its neighbors. In fact, the Indian political class has never shared with the Indian people the import of defending their borders.

 

Muslim outlook

The Government of Pakistan, its military establishment as well as the civil society in Pakistan, are, all agreed upon the baseline of their stand on Jammu and Kashmir. The civil society in Pakistan has, on no occasion, found it necessary to urge upon the Government of Pakistan, “to walk an extra-mile” in order to reach an “out of the box settlement” on Kashmir. Pakistan has stuck to its stated position that : (a) the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir are apart of the Muslim nation of Pakistan (b) the Muslims of the state of Jammu and Kashmir acquired the right to unite the State with the Muslim homeland of Pakistan from the partition of India, (c) the Muslims of the State were denied their right to unite the state with Pakistan in 1947, when the ruler of State Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India, against their wishes and (d) India, which pledged itself to implement the United Nations resolutions, envisaging a plebiscites to enable the Muslims of the State exercise their choice to determine the final disposition of the State in respect of accession, has not redeemed its promise.

From the very inception of the peace-process, which was primarily an Indian initiative, Pakistan has unflinchingly stuck to its self-righteous commitment that its claim to Jammu and Kashmir, based upon the Muslim majority composition of the population, is non-negotiable. Pakistan has stressed time and again that its claim to Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of the Muslim majority composition its population underlines the principle on the basis of which India was divided in 1947 and the Muslim homeland of Pakistan was created. Pakistan has repeatedly stated that the partition of India marked the culmination of a historical process which underlined the Muslim struggle for a separate Muslim homeland in India, comprising the provinces and the regions of the British India populated by the majority of Muslims and Muslim princely states. Pakistan has consistently held that the partition of Indian recognized the Muslim majority composition of the population of the British India and the princely States as the basis on which the territorial jurisdiction of the Muslim homeland was determined. The Kashmir dispute, Pakistan has claimed in unequivocal terms, is a manifestation of the unfinished agenda of the partition of India.

 

The Muslim League laid claim to the Muslim ruled princely states as well, on the basis of prescription and conquest because it could nor bring itself round to accept the exclusion of the Muslim ruled states from the Muslim homeland of Pakistan. The Muslim League leaders considered the Muslim ruled princely states to be the citadels of the Muslim power in India, which had survived the establishment of the British rule inIndia. The insistence of the Muslim League on the lapse of the Paramountcy was used by it to isolate the Muslim ruled states. Except that the lapse of the Paramountcy caused the Muslim League some tactical disadvantage in the Jammuand Kashmir, its acceptance by the Congress brought India to the verge of disintegration. Were it not for the people of the Muslim ruled States, who defeated the designs of the Muslim League and the Muslim rulers, India would have been divided further. The ideological commitment of the Muslim struggle for a separate Muslim homeland in India to secure the Muslims in India, a separate freedom which ensured them the realization of their Islamic destiny was fundamentally Muslim in outlook. The territorial claim to a Muslim India, comprising the Muslim majority provinces of the British India and the Muslim ruled States the Pakistan Resolution envisaged, was also Muslim in outlook. The claim that the unification of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan is the unfinished agenda of the partition of India is also Muslim in outlook.

 

Irreducible Minimum

Pakistan has not allowed its stand on Jammu and Kashmir to be wrapped in any ambiguity. In fact it has spelt out the baseline of its stand on Jammu and Kashmir in unmistakable terms. It has refused to deviate from its stated position that the Muslim majority composition of the population  of the State is basic to any settlement on Jammu and Kashmir. It has refused to delink the Muslim majority composition of the state from the right of self-determination, which it has consistently maintained, flowed from the partition of India. Exactly, as the Muslim League agreed to divide the Muslim  majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal and the Hindu majority provinces of Assam, on the basis of population, Pakistan has offered to accept the division of the State on the basis of population, as a basis for a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir. It has proposed the separation of the Muslim majority regions of the State, comprising the Muslim provinces of Kashmir, the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province and the Muslim majority district of Kargil in the frontier division of Ladakh and their unification with the Muslim homeland of Pakistan, as the irreducible minimum which it is ready to accept as the basis of a solution of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. The participation of Pakistan in the peace-process, in the ultimate analysis, is aimed to persuade  the Indian people to accept the application of the principle which underlined the partition of India, as a basis of a settlement on Kashmir.

 

Interestingly the peace-process carried on between the Vajpai Government and the Government headed by NawazSherrif; followed by negotiations between the Bajpai Government and themilitary regime headed by General Musharraf; the long and atrocious talk held at the Track Two level, largely a framework of conflict resolution, fabricated by the American diplomacy and the Manmohan Singh-Musharraf parleys leading to the so-called “non-territorial settlement” on Kashmir; reveal a continuity in the stand taken by Pakistan. The stand taken by Pakistan has underlined; the separation of the Muslim majority regions of the State, on the Indian side of the Line of Control with their eventual disengagement from the Indian Union and their re-integration within a framework of political imperatives evolved by the two countries India and Pakistan, with the consent of the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir.

 

The Musharraf plan lay bare theperfidy. It recognized the separation of the Muslim majority regions of the State and their reorganization into a new political entity on the territories of India which was governed by Pakistan. The Musharraf plan envisaged the division of the State into six geographical zones of which five were Muslim majority zones, the transfer of power in the state to the Muslim separatist regimes under the garb of self-rule; withdrawal of the Indian armed forces from the State in the name of demilitarization; the unification of the Muslim majority zones situated on the Indian side of the Line of Control with theoccupation territories of Azad Kashmir under the cover of “irrelevant borders” and the placement of the State under the joint-control of India and Pakistan. Manmohan Singh cried aloud, undoubtedly to attract the attention of the Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir and perhaps, the Muslims in India, to the historical task, he had accomplished by putting Jammu and Kashmir on a ten year long journey tojoin Pakistan. The Musharraf plan provided for the revaluation of the arrangements made in accordance with its provisions after ten years a stipulation which the Indian Government tried to underplay.

 

 

Greatest Betrayal

 Pakistan appears to have convinced itself that India has finally accepted the principle of the partition of India as the basis of a settlement of Jammu and Kashmir. Evidently the impatience and the urgency, the Foreign office of Pakistan has exhibited about the progress of the peace-process, arises out of  its eagerness to evolve a procedure for the separation of the Muslim majority regions of the State, their disengagement from the Union of India and the eventual integration with the Islamic power-structure of Pakistan.

The territorial boundaries of Pakistan, laid down by the partition of India in 1947, were confined to the territories of the British India. The Indian princely states were not brought within the scope of the partition of India. The claim Pakistan has laid to Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of the Muslim majority composition of its population did not from a part of the process of the partition and the transfer of power in India. The right of the self-determination of the colonial peoples was an expression of the historic process of decolonization, the Second World War set into motion. The right of self-determination was never conceived as an instrument of any religious war. India was not divided to ensure the Indian people their right of self-determination.

 

Jammu and Kashmir forms the most crucial part of the northern frontier of India. It continues to be central to the security of the Indian borders in the north. Any prescription for a second partition of India, to disengage the State from the Indian Union will not usher in a State of peace between India and Pakistan. Peace  between the two countries  will always depend upon the mutual respect they have for each other’s strike capabilities. The Indian political class, whatever, the nature of its commitment to the Indian unity, cannot ignore the hard fact that Pakistan has a stock pile of nearly two hundred nuclear weapons in its basement. Pakistan is an ideological state-a fact, which the Indian people can overlook at their own peril.

 

*(The writer heads Panun Kashmir advisory).

Source: Kashmir Sentinel, April 2011 issue

Kashmir is not an economic problem

It is fashionable for bleeding heart liberals (BHL) to offer unsubstantiated arguments on behalf of the militants of Kashmir Valley. Lumpen liberals like that one book wonder Arundhati Roy (who proudly proclaimed in the US two years ago that she had seceded from India since India was not a democracy) need not bother us here. But when other BHLs talk about hurt aspirations of the people of Kashmir, we need to sit back and wonder what is happening.

Why are Kashmiris hurt? According to the BHLs, the first reason is that polls were often rigged in J&K (not just in K). This argument is specious because in that case the first candidate to secede from India should be Bihar where polls have been rigged from time immemorial. Or Bengal, for that matter. Jyoti Basu could not have lost his Baranagar seat but for rigging by Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s Juba Congress boys. Now, in every poll, the CPM repays that compliment.

The Dalits of western UP can tell horror stories of rigging by Jats till the arrival of AN Seshan and the BSP in that order. But none of these states want to secede from India. The stone-throwers of Kashmir should realise that even though some polls may have been rigged, our general elections are different from those in Pakistan where the generals get always “elected”.

The second grievance is the socio-economic condition of Kashmiris. The government of India has recently constituted yet another committee to suggest ways to improve the state’s economy and employment. However, J&K is near the top in almost all economic parameters. Consider:

The per capita net state domestic product at factor cost (at 1999-2000 prices) was Rs17,590 for J&K in 2007-08, which is higher than that of the Bimaru states (Bihar, UP, MP, etc). It also figures in the top quarter of Indian states (CSO figures). The state received more money from the Centre than anyone else.

In 2008-09, out of a total revenue of Rs19,362 crore, more than 70% came as grant from the Centre. All the Central assistance came as grant, and not loan (state budget documents & RBI), unlike other states.

On the other hand, the urban property tax generated by the state in 2008-2009 was — hold your breath — a measly Rs1 lakh (state budget documents). Despite such poor tax collections, the state is not at the bottom in terms of development indicators.

Among the 1.6 million households in the state, 37% are covered by banking services, 65% have radios or transistors and 41 % possess TV sets — one of the highest in the country. Per capita consumption of electricity, at 759 kwh (2006-2007), is much higher than in UP, MP, Rajasthan, Bihar and West Bengal (Rajya Sabha Question No 2908, April 21, 2008). Some 81% of households get electricity (rural 75 % and urban 98%) and only 15% are dependent on kerosene. This level of electricity usage is highest among states.

Kashmir’s per capita availability of milk (2005-2006), at 353gm per day, is much higher than most of the states with an all-India average of 241gm a day. The per capita spending on health (at Rs363) is much higher than most states, with Tamil Nadu at Rs170, Andhra at Rs146, UP at Rs83 and West Bengal at Rs206 and a national average of Rs167.

The percentage of children under age three who are undernourished on Anthropometric Indices (stunted, wasted or underweight) is lower for J&K than many other states: 28 for stunted (too short for age), 15 for wasted (too thin for height) and 29.4 for underweight (too thin for age) against the national averages of 38, 19 and 46 respectively.

It goes on. Any socio-economic indicator one looks at one finds that the state is in the top quartile or among the top 10 percentile. If Jammu feels neglected, it could only be because the people there don’t know how to blackmail the country. They are foolish enough to carry the national flag in their agitations!

The Valley is imitating Pakistan on two counts. Pakistan begs globally by threatening to self-destruct even while the elites of Pakistan send their children to study abroad and the poor Abduls and Kasabs are made to die for the cause. The same hypocrisy is practiced in the Valley by its leaders.

The stone-throwing youngsters shouting azadi on the streets of Kashmir should ask themselves whether they would like to be a part of India that is democratic and becoming a world power or want to be ruled by the ISI of Pakistan. If it is the later, the road to Muzzafarabad can be opened for those willing to leave their land of honey and milk! As far as India is concerned, it should hold an all-India referendum about the timing to scrap Article 370. That is the only referendum we should think of.

Source : DNA

Author : R Vaidyanathan

Hindu minority homeless in Kashmir – AjJazeera report

Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri reports from Jammu & Kashmir about a Hindu minority left homeless by Islamic radicals and the demand of Hindu refugees for a separate Homeland in Kashmir

Kashmir Violence -Media Instigators from Pakistan

In my last post I had proved of how LeT, JuD and Hurriyat activists are actively promoting hatred and anti India activities through facebook.

Today I am again presenting to my readers some interesting facts promoted by Pakistan based media , the intent remains the same. Here is one of them which operates under the domain http://www.kmsnews.org

KMSNEWS provides some statistics of killings which have happened in Kashmir since 1989.  Here is a screen shot of same.

If one goes by the above figures , which are often quoted by separatists in the valley , we need to believe that

• 13 people have been killed in Kashmir everyday without a fail for last 20 years , not even a moron would believe it.
• It claims over One lac seven thousand have been orphaned in the valley , but the total killed are less than that figure. That means more than 10 thousand siblings lost a parent , and rest 90,000 or more also lost a parent. I guess the KMS editorial havent studied mathematics.
• The mathematics of KMS proves that of those who were killed around 22,728 were married and rest of 70,547 bachelors….
• And the data ends with statistics of around 1 women raped/ molested each day since last 20 years.
• Considering 107,351 children orphaned and 22,728 widows , makes out that each married person who dies had average 5 children.

Many of my friends who have different ideologies would believe these statistics. It is people like these , who receive huge some of money from certain quarters, and whose main job is to keep the valley burning and ensuring that peace doesn’t return.

On further check up , I found out that the website is run by one Mr Tajammul Islam from Islamabad, Pakistan. It doesnt surprise me to see a ‘foreign hand in this’. Check below the registration details ..

Mr Geelani, were you served biriyani for the day?

Mr Geelani, were you served biriyani for the day? -Dr Sanjay Parva

Geelani & Biryani

More than a decade-and-a-half back I was on a photographic assignment to Fatepur Shekhawati, a town in Sikar district of Rajasthan, known for its exquisite havelis and frescos. It was a beautiful, wintry but sunny Friday afternoon at the bus adda in Jaipur. When the bus didn’t leave at its stipulated Rajasthan Roadways timing, I went to the driver to ask why he was delaying the departure. “I am sorry for the delay, bhaisahab,” he said politely and pointing towards a remote corner on the platform, he added, “Some countrymen are offering their Friday namaz.” As I turned around, I found some 8 to 10 Muslims offering namaz in a seamless queue and in perfect synchrony. It was a sight to behold, and to be honest I loved it. For a Muslim in India, and that too in a state like Rajasthan, where Advani et al had left no stone unturned spewing venom against Muslims some years before that on Babri issue, it was azadi at its best.

Since it was only a few years before this incident that I had become a so-called Kashmiri migrant (some Indian dhoti-clad, paan-spitting politicians still call us refugees, not knowing the difference between the two; but that is another story, not debatable here), my instant reaction to this incident was that the bus driver is a Muslim. I could not hold my inquisitiveness and asked him if he was himself a Muslim. Pat came the reply, “I am a Hindu.” Needless to say, I had asked a ridiculous question.

More than a decade-and-a-half later, and some 3 weeks back, as I was taking pictures around old Amirakadal in Srinagar, I found this little boy of around 8-9 years jumping into almost every other frame till he caught me perfectly into one that I intended to have this gloomy-looking but typically-smiling man (a trait wed to Kashmiris – both Pandits and Muslims – despite pain and parch) in thirties selling fresh currency notes in exchange for the old, torn-out currency.

The boy was impressive and innocent, likable to the core, and rather than dissuading him from doing his lovable mischief, I tried to strike a chord with him. Reluctant and shy in the beginning, he walked a step towards me later. “You look pretty smart in the picture,” I complimented. He smiled and came one more step closer, his cheeks growing pink. “Do you want to see how you look?” I asked. “Aa hawkhe haz,” he asked as if doubtful. As I handed over the camera to him for a live view, his doubts shrank and trust grew more. Looking at himself he smiled and tried to frolic away; but before he would, I asked him if he was studying. He gave a vertical nod first and soon effaced it with a horizontal one; seemed to be in no mood to take another question on the topic and freed himself from my grasp and went out of sight.

Long after the incident, the boy was lingering on my mind and I wondered what his hybrid nod meant. Did he mean he was enrolled in a school but because of frequent hartals and official/ unofficial closures he was infrequent to attend; or did he mean school, as it used to be, was nomore a basic right of children in the Valley? I cannot and must not presume answers for this dilemma; because I leave that to Syed Ali Shah Geelani and men and women of his ilk who are so blinded by their personal aspirations and interests that for young boys as these they feel it is wise to let them march from post to pillar instead of encouraging them to go to school. For innocent boys as these – sadly some of whom fell prey to bullets recently – this certainly is not azadi of any sensible kind.

However, for people like Syed Ali Shah Geelani this must be azadi of the very true and ‘kind’ kind. Diagnosed with renal cancer he knows no other country (not to speak of a bankrupt nation as Pakistan) could have been as sumptuous on him as India by providing him free sarkari biriyani and free medical treatment throughout his detentions and doing everything to defy God’s will and keep him up and running against the nation itself. Azadi, for him, is his best weapon to incite vulnerable parents of the Valley to deprive their children of the previous gift of education, exploit youth to pick stones, take out procession and alas, destroy their own futures by what can never be a fulltime, honorable profession; so much so that youth of the Valley have found a good pastime in sanghbazi until CRPF retaliates.

For Syed Ali Shah Geelani azadi, as a Urdu word, would be more sweeter than Kashmiri phirni, since it is this word that helps him blackmail India and extract money from Pakistan to prevent his own fortunes from plummeting. There are reports that Hurriyat chairman has received a whooping 80 crore rupees ever since the “struggle for self-determination” began. Hurriyat is once believed to have remarked that the money was “collected” for “relief and rehabilitation” of “militancy-affected people of the Valley”. Relief and rehabilitation? One may ask where and what did they rehabilitate so far. And can one expect relief and rehabilitation from a party that incites hapless Kashmir’s to come out in to streets, pick stones with an intention to kill or get killed in the process. All this looks preposterous; it may be a human being on one or another side of the fence; at the end of it all, it is someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s husband and someone’s loved one that departs.

It has become an irony in Kashmir that when a sanghbaz gets killed, people who initiate him into the most medieval act actually convey his dear ones a message that he was worth just Rs 50 to 150 a day. Well-meaning, thoughtful people of the Valley realize this; some even want to speak out since they believe it is time to be in peace rather than turmoil, but they can’t since either they fear elimination or don’t have a platform to do so. History is also testimony to the fact that evil spreads fast; trampling goodness on its way.

Goodness in the Valley has been strangulated; but fortunately still prevails. People at the grassroots, irrespective of being rich or poor, still beat with a warm heart; they welcome you, they hug you and they respect you as a fellow human being, a fellow Kashmiri from whom they had departed 20 years ago. Matchless hospitality, as against azadi, runs through these people’s veins. Such people – during my personal and innumerable interactions with them – have come as a ray of hope who might keep the impeccable Kashmiriyat alive.

The general perception that I gather is that people of this understanding are well-informed about all aspects of the Valley as it stands ruined post-terrorism now and as it was beautifully flourishing before murderers started getting glorified post-1990s. That must bring Kashmiri awam to Yasin Malik, whom money accumulated from terrorism landed him from a congested Maisuma Bazar house to a plush new bungalow in Maisuma, not to speak of commercial buildings, hotels, and investments in real estate not only in Kashmir but in United Kingdom also. Renunciation of violence, as he has done, after accumulating so much of fortune is a natural and safe recourse from the movement that took lakhs of lives in what he had promised as “separation of Jammu & Kashmir from secular India as an Islamic Nation”. Ironically the guy who can barely speak sense, whenever he opens his mouth, says now he is looking for “peaceful methods to come to a settlement on the Kashmir conflict.” Sadly no one questions his integrity that he had shown earlier, no one dares him ask his accountability for the personal fortunes he has built over the dead. Average, hapless Kashmiri has been and still is at the receiving end; his mind practically a hostage to a misled thought emerging from a perverted mind. The trend is fatal, and if it continues parents would wish in future if only they could have reverse the past for their children’s good.

Bytheway, it is Friday again, and across the length and breadth of the country devout Muslims would be offering juma namaz peacefully (and surely in complete azadi) in thousands of mosques. In the Valley, however, menacing concertina wires have been put up to prevent any human movement. A friend calls me up and says he has run out of milk and vegetables for lunch; and in the same breath (almost as a salute to his Kashmiriyat) he asks me if I needed anything? I tell him I can live on just oxygen-rich air nonstop for at least 76 hours; but am seriously worried about Geelani whether or not he was served in time his regular biriyani for the day ….

WANDHAMA MASSACRE -12 Years Later

The Massacre at Wandhama,Kashmir

On January 25, 1998, 23 Kashmiri Pandits living in the village of Wandhama were killed by unidentified gunmen. According to the testimony of one of the survivors of the incident, a 14 year-old Hindu boy named Vinod Kuman Dhar. the gunmen came to their house dressed like Indian Army soldiers, had tea with them, waiting for a radio message indicating that all Pandit families in the village had been covered. After a brief conversation they rounded up all the members of the Hindu households and then summarily gunned them down with Kalashnikov rifles.

The indiscriminate firing on the Pandits spared 16 year-old Manoj Kumar Dhar, and, he was the lone eyewitness to the massacre. In a statement to police on that night, Kumar said a group of masked gunmen came to his house at about 11:30 pm and forced all those inside to come out. “I jumped out of the wall of my house. As soon as my father, brothers and sisters came out, I saw the gunmen shooting them. They were crying and begging for life,” he had told the police.

The massacre was allegedly committed by Abdul Hamid Gada of Hizbul Mujahideen and was timed to coincide with the Shab-e-Qadar, the holiest night of the month of Ramzan, when believers stay awake until dawn. Gada was subsequently shot dead by Indian security forces in 2000.

Kashmir’s Divisional Commissioner S L Bhat, who knew some of the Pandits personally, was quick to arrive at the scene of the carnage. He said, “This is the worst incident I have witnessed”.

Meanwhile, the police that day claimed to had recovered a letter in which an unknown militant organisation, Intikaam-ul-Muslimoon, had claimed responsibility for killing of Pandits. The letter that was tagged to one of the bullet-ridden bodies disclosed that this was the beginning of a seriesof such attacks

After the massacre, the local Hindu temple was destroyed, as were the houses of the Pandits.

Police , as usual, falied to arrest or get anyone convicted . The case was subsequently closed by police.Sub Divisional police officer Ganderbal Showkat Ahmad, who was then Station Hose Officer for the area told Kashmir Times, “The case has been closed, as no one was identified as the killer of these Pandits.”

Also Check : Massacre at Wandhama KOSHUR SAMACHAR

Also Check : A Slide Presentation on IKashmir

Also Check : Roots In Kashmir Blog

Also Check : Soul In Exile blog

Also Check : The Forgotten Tragedy

Also Check : AdityaRaj Koul’s Blog

What happened to our Homeland ?

An elderly Kashmiri Hindu lady shares her experience of how she and her pregnant daughter in law fled Kashmir in the middle of night to escape being killed by Jehadis

Lost Home – Kashmiri Hindu Houses

This video should make every Kashmiri Hindu nostalgic and it would be very diffcult to fight back tears.

I would be greatful if someone can translate the Kashmiri Song in English so that the same may be added to this blog.

 

Update [ 30th Sept.,2009 ] “Irma” has shared the below translation of the song which is in the background.

MY  LOST  HOME  IN KASHMIR
GET  UP  ALL, 
WE WILL  TOGETHER  CROSS  TO  OUR  HOMES
ON  FOOT  WE  WILL WALK  TO  OUR HOMES,
HOME WHICH  WE  LEFT  BEHIND, 
WHICH  WE  LOST TOGETHER 
WE  ALL WILL  SEARCH  THAT  HOME!

SMALL  AND LITTLE  WAS  THAT  HOME  OF  MINE
SMALL  AND  LITTLE WAS  THAT  HOME  OF  MINE ;
LOVELY  AND PLEASING  WAS THAT  HOME  OF  MINE :
HOME,  WHERE  I  PLAYED  IN MY  CHILDHOOD  DAYS.
I YEARN  TO  SEE THAT  HOME  ONCE AGAIN  !
GET  UP  ALL ,  WE WILL TOGETHER  CROSS TO  OUR  HOMES  !

WHAT  WORTH  HAS  ONE  
WHO  HAS  NO  HEARTH  AND  HOME  ?
IT’S  LIKE  OUR  EYES  WITHOUT  THEIR  VISION.
UP  AND  DOWN   I  WOULD LIKE TO RUN IN MY HOME ,
AND  DANCE  AND PRANCE  IN  MY  COURTYARD  ONCE  AGAIN  !
I YEARN  TO SEE THAT HOME ONCE AGAIN .

THEY  SAY  SOMEONE  HAS  TAKEN  OVER MY  HOME     ,
SOME  SAY  A  STRANGER  HAS BEEN ALLOTTED  MY  HOME
SINCE  THEN  I  FEEL  I  AM  DYING    ONCE  AGAIN .
GET UP  ALL ,  WE  WILL  TOGETHER  CROSS  TO  OUR  HOMES  !

(HARI) PARBAT AND TULAMULA  (OUR  RELIGIOUS  ICONS)  WERE  NEAR  MY  HOME ,
ZEETHYAR AND MATTAN  (OUR  SHRINES  ) WERE  MY  RELIGIOUS  BACKBONES  ‘
OH  THEN!  WHY  WAS  MY  HOME  SHATTERED  TO  SHAMBLES ?
I  YEARN  TO  SEE  MY  HOME  AGAIN  !
GET  UP  ALL,  WE  WILL  TOGETHER  CROSS  TO  OUR  HOMES ,
ON  FOOT  WE  WILL  WALK  TO  OUR  HOMES :
WHICH  WE  LEFT  BEHIND ,  WHICH  WE  LOST
TOGETHER,  WE  ALL  WILL  SEARCH  THAT  HOME  !!

Hindu Temples in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir

Mirpur has a special place in sub-continent’s history. The famous battle between Alexandar and Porus was fought here in 323 BC.  A large number of Hindus lived in Mirpur once . Today Mirpur doesnt have any hindus living in there.

Please find below the state of Hindu temples in Mirpur …

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Raghunath Temple in Evening – Mirpur Pakistan Occupied Kashmir

Pictures Courtsey : Mohsin

Kashmiri Pandits hand over memorandum to Ban Ki-Moon at United Nations Office in New York

 

On September 26th, 2008 scores of Kashmiri Hindus demonstarted outside the United Nations Office in New York [USA].

Some of the demands of Kashmiri Pandits to the UN were :

• Declare Kashmiri Hindu community as Internally Displaced People (IDP). The Human Rights Working Group on Minorities in Geneva has since recognized Kashmiri Hindus, formally, as a Reverse Minority. The use of the insulting term ‘Migrants’ for this forcibly exiled community may be removed from all records and communications relating to us hence forth.
• Direct the Government of India to set up a ‘Commission of Enquiry’ to establish the causes that led to the selective and targeted killings of Kashmiri Hindus and their subsequent forced exile, and appropriate the responsibility and punish the guilty.
•  Direct the Government of India to ensure adequate protection to the residual Kashmiri Hindu population currently living in the Kashmir valley.
• Direct the Government of India to restore Kashmiri Hindus’ political and economic rights that would give them equal status rather than a second class citizenship in their native land of Kashmir. Share of Kashmiri Hindu jobs in government bureaucracy, placement in state supported professional educational institutes and the representation in the state assembly has steadily diminished to virtually nothing in the last two decades.
•  Grant funds to Kashmiri Hindus for the preservation and documentation of relics of Kashmiri Hindu heritage and culture.
• Direct the Government of India to hand over the management of Kashmiri Hindu religious shrines, icons and cultural centers to Kashmiri Hindu leadership.

 

It is further requested that the United Nations Human Rights Commission may put on record these Human Rights Violations by Pakistan and its agents, and Pakistan be declared a terrorist state.

The complete memorandum can be downloaded by clicking here iakf-un-memo-sept262008

 

For more info , log into www.iakf.org

 

500000 Kashmiri Pandits Fled From Kashmir :Beersmans Paul [ President Belgian Association..]

 

REPORT ON THE STUDY TOUR OF BEERSMANS PAUL, PRESIDENT OF THE BELGIAN ASSOCIATION FOR SOLIDARITY WITH J&K TO INDIA AND THE INDIAN J&K STATE FROM 02 TO 30 AUGUST 2008

Syed Ali Shah Geelani started agitation against the land transfer to the Amarnath Shrine Board because he feared Hindus would settle permanently and thus change the demographic composition of the population.  This fear is completely without ground as it is impossible to settle permanently in that area: more than six months of the year this area is covered with snow, there are blizzards and it is so cold that nobody can survive there.  On the other hand, it is surprising that the same concern regarding the demographic composition of the population was not there in 1990.  In that year, the Kashmiri Pandits were hounded out of the Valley by militancy in 1990.  The Kashmiri Pandits are the original Kashmiri speaking inhabitants of the Valley.  Some 500.000 of them fled from the Valley to safer places.  This exodus changed drastically the demographic composition of the population in the Valley.  At that time, nobody cared about this: no agitation, no demonstrations, no harthals, no bandhs, no strikes, nothing.  After more than eighteen years, the return of the Kashmiri Pandits is more and more blurred.  Nevertheless, they have their emotional attachment with their birth ground, their roots.  They only can return when peace is there and when the rule of law, not the rule of majority is re-installed.

 

Pakistan has no stand in J&K.  Pakistan invaded J&K and is at the origin of the de facto partitioning of the State.  As early as 13 August 1948 the UN Commission for India and Pakistan requested Pakistan to withdraw its troops from the State as a pre-condition for organising the plebiscite.  The same Commission in its resolution of 5 January 1949 repeated this request.  Until this date, Pakistan has not withdrawn its armed forces and consequently the plebiscite has not been held. 

 

This conclusion is confirmed by the ‘Report on Kashmir: present situation and future prospects’ of Rapporteur Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Vice Chairperson of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Union, and almost unanimously adopted by the Committee on Foreign Affairs (March 2007) and by the European Parliament. 

‘Panun Kashmir’ Homeland – Better Sooner to save India !

A Homeland for the seven hundred thousand displaced Kashmiris in the valley will be the only logical, natural and permanent solution for the displaced Kashmiris. Homeland is where home is and home is where land is and our land is in the valley of Kashmir. Our demand for a Homeland within the valley, from where we have been driven out by armed Islamic terrorists, is an assertion of our rights as much as of our patriotism for India. In order to save Kashmir from the clutches of Pakistan which has been instigating, encouraging and perpetuating terrorism in Kashmir, the Indian nation has to shed all inhibitions and unequivocally declare its resolve of resettling tbe displaced Kashmiri Hindus in the Homeland which will serve as a bastion of secularism and democracy in an otherwise Islamic State.

 

Panun Kashmir is an expression of the innermost hopes and urges of the Kashmiris displaced from Kashmir valley, that were suppressed for centuries and lost in the nethermost corner of their subconscious. It is a natural and instinctive desire of the community to seek its roots, to preserve its identity and to assert its political, legal and historical nghts. It provides a nascent political rostrum to translate the idea and vision of an honourable and peaceful existence emanating from a sense of pride and a feeling of self- esteem which has been snatched from this community. 

 

Essentially the Homeland will contribute to the aims a ideals of democracy, secularism, free exchange of thought, trade and culture, right to work and right to live, justice and equality for all, including women. It will not be a theocracy. It will identify with the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India and exist in amity and brotherhood with all the regions and provinces of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and with the rest of India.

We have asked for the area North and East of the River Jehlum. The valley has to be divided in acceptance of our claim. River Jehlum provides a natural geographial divide and, therefore, shall represent a line of demarcation between the Homeland and the rest of the valley. The southern region of the State to the North and East of the Jehlum with the National Highway passing through it also happens to be the region with most of our holy shrines including the holiest of the holy, Sri Amarnath. Logistically and demographically, this area is most suitable for conversion into the Homeland with a Union Territory status. 

Picture courtesy : Mr R.Raina ;Mr Aditya Raj Kaul

Contents : www.panunkashmir.org