Friday, August 5, 2016

I am reproducing an old poetry by Rudyad Kipling  that was written during the Raj era.


MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN

In Tropical climes there are those times
When the citizens oft retire
to sit and pant and catch their breath
to be dormant and perspire

The thieves don't care; the bandits don’t dare
The Hindus sleep till one
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go wander  in the sun

In the Philipines they have the screens
to protect you from the glare
In the Malayasia they have the hats
which the Brit will just not wear

At twelve noon the locals swoon
and no more work is done
But mad dogs and Englishmen
go wandering in the sun

When the world sits in shade
All the people see
The Englishman dons his solar hat
and rides around in glee

When the English claim the Earth these days
The people just poke fun
‘Cause mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun

In a jungle town where the Sun beats down
to the rage of man and beast
The English garb of the Englishman
Gets merely a bit more creased

The outdoors people shun at noon
The morning chores are done
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Keep wandering in the sun

The logic isn’t so hollow
Even the fools choose to follow
one must avoid the solar rays
In the heat of the tropical days

In Hong Kong they strike a gong
and fire off a noonday gun
But mad dogs and Englishmen
go out in the midday sun

In the mangorve swamps
where the python romps
there is peace from twelve till two
The deer lie and go to sleep
for there's nothing else to do

At noon in the humid tropics
Moving is seldom done
But mad dogs and Englishmen

Go out in the midday sun

Thursday, August 4, 2016

The bloody conception of Pakistan - in Kerala


The Bloody Conception of Pakistan - in Kerala !


I had often wondered what the British gained by breaking Greater India into India and Pakistan.  Growing up I had asked this question and had been told that this was simply done so that if Greater India was left intact, it would become a mighty country - something that the British did not want.  I now know that this was a flawed explanation.  It was merely an uneducated guess.  The correct answer is more complex.

The origin of the problem lies in the "Khilafat movement" that lasted from 1919 to 1921. Growing up we were told that the word Khilafat came from the Urdu word "Khilaf" (meaning against).  To the simple minded Indian student the obvious made sense - "British ke khilaf" (against the British) hence Khilafat.  But, not so fast.... There in lies the cleverly hidden lie that our "secular" historians have perpetrated simply by obscuring the details of this movement and encouraging the apparent false connection between "Khilafat" and the Urdu word "Khilaf" that comes as a default to the reader's mind.

The history books that most Indians learn History from during their school years are thoroughly sanitized.  As a result, students do not understand why the river of history chose its course. The reasons that led to these major historical events have been expunged from the History books for one simple reason - that it would be an uncomfortable truth for Muslims with and Hindus would be ashamed of it.  Also, it hides Hindu cowardice so that they can be lulled into staying tolerant and not only go on sticking with the absurdities of their superstition laden faith but stay tangled in their internal division and conflicts.
tj
In this case, Khilafat referred to the Muslim Caliphate (that is headed by a "Khalifa").  In those days, the Arab countries were a mess.  The Muslims of Kerala aka Malabar Muslims aka Moplah Muslims (who, in their pipedream considered themselves to be descendants of Arabs) declared that they did not want to be ruled by the non-Muslim British. They declared their allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan of Turkey as their new Khalifa. The Khilafat movement was, therefore, a purely Muslim uprising. It was not only directed at the British, but also at the Hindus as both were infidel kaffirs.  A large number of Hindus were brutally murdered in this uprising by the "Moplah" people of North Kerala.  The brutality exhibited by todays Daesh (ISIS) pales in comparison to what the Moplah did to the Hindus of Malabar.  

A fifty year old Gandhi who had arrived from Africa five years earlier in 1915 saw an opportunity.  He and some other equally myopic Hindu leaders (including V.D. Savarkar) who were trying to dislodge the British from India made a pact with the devil and lent support to the blood thirsty Muslim fanatics by publicly owning their participation in the Khilafat movement.  

The British never expected this from the Hindus especially since they themselves were being massacred.  It was the worst form of treachery they could imagine.  The leaders of a people who were themselves being slaughtered by the Moplah Muslims were throwing their support to them just to dislodge the British?!  The Hindu treachery was unbelievable. Within a couple of years the British had replaced the Ottoman sultan of Turkey by a military officer named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who put Turkey on a secular path.  This took the wind out of the sail of the Khilafat movement. Most of the Khilafat movement barbarians were arrested and sent to the cellular jails in Andaman.  Some were deported. Some of these were Hindus too!



As a result of the Khilafat movment two things were happened:

a) The Muslim league  - that was to ultimately break Greater India became immensely powerful in Indian Politics, and

b)the British developed a visceral dislike for the Hindu leaders who the began to regard as opportunistic and treacherous towards their own people.

The Hindu leaders were seen as people who had sold their souls to the devil.  The British quietly swore revenge. 

Mohammad Iqbal, peeved by the 1913 Nobel prize going to Rabindra Nath Tagore, first asked for a separate homeland for the Muslims in 1930. The British entertained the idea and when Britain got battered in World War II and could not hold on to the colonies, they were more than happy to split the country. Both communities got what they wanted. The became destined to keep going at each others' throats for as long as the two nations exist.  The British had exacted their revenge and two cursed nations were born. 

Today the Hindus have Pakistan at the doorstep and fanatic Islam around their neck in "secular" India.  Thank the British and the Hindu leaders for it.  Till this day the "secularism" of Kerala has been safeguarded by the Congress and the Communist Parties.  Their pusillanimous Hindu leaders pander to the fanatics and the separatists.  

Your understanding of the above will not be complete till you read excerpts of the report on the Malabar Rebillion (Khilafat movement) reproduced below:



ATROCITIES. 

In point of magnitude, organisation, and the atrocities committed by the rebels, this rising in the Moplah country is unparalleled in the history of Malabar, or for the matter of that in the history of the whole of India." (Madras Mail, November l9th, 1921). 

The history of the Moplah rebellion would be a history of the atrocities committed by the Moplah rebels against the Hindus, and to describe them in detail would fill a volume. There is hardly a Hindu in the rebel area who has not suffered and a general idea can be formed by a perusal of the memorial submitted by the women of Malabar to H. E. The Countess of Reading, an extract from which is appended:— 

" May it please your gracious and compassionate Ladyship, 

We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, have taken the liberty to supplicate your Lady- ship for sympathy and succor. 

Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last 100 years, the present rebellion is unexampled in magnitude and unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is possible that Your Ladyship is not fully apprised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiends;  and of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our Fathers; of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadside and in the jungles, with the unborn baby protruding from the mangled corpse ; of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive ; of our helpless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hell hounds could conceive of; of thousands of our homesteads reduced to cinder mounds out of sheer savagery and a wanton spirit of destruction of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie, or else smashed to pieces; of the wholesale looting of hard-earned wealth of generations, reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a pice (paisa) or two in. the streets of Calicut; or chilly or betel-leaf, rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies.  These are not fables. There are wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruin that once were our dear homes, the heaps, of stones on which a young man received 18 sword cuts on his back. 

What once were our places of worship- they are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till death will bring us peace. We have been driven out of our native hamlets. We wandered starving and naked in the jungles and forests ; we remember how we choked and stifled our babies cries lest the sound should  betray our hiding places to our relentless pursuers. We still vividly realize the moral and spiritual agony that thousands of us passed through when we were forcibly converted into the faith professed by these bloodthirsty miscreants ; we still have before us the sight of the unendurable, and life-long misery of those unhappy sisters who born and brought up in respectable families have been forcibly converted and then married to convict coolies. For five long months not a day has passed without its dread tale of horror to unfold."


APPENDIX IX

These are classified below : — 
(a) Brutally dishonouring women, 
(b) Flaying people alive, 

(c) Wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, 

(d) Forcibly converting people in thousands, and murdering those who refused to be convert. 

(e) Throwing half-dead people into wells, and leaving the victims for hours, to struggle till finally- 
released from their sufferings by death. 

(f) Burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses, in the disturbed area, in which even Mopla women and children took part, and robbing women, of even the garments on their bodies, in short reducing the whole non-moslem population to abject destitution. 

(g) Cruelly insulting the religious sentiments of the Hindus, by desecrating and destroying numerous temples, in the disturbed area, killing cows within the temple precincts, putting their entrails on the holy images and hanging the skulls on the walls and roofs.  

On 14th November 1921, a large body of armed Moplah entered the house of Puzhikal Narayanan Nair, a wealthy landlord of Nannambra Amsom. They looted the house, carried off one of the girls and a boy captive, seized nine of the occupants and brought them to a neighbouring rock where they murdered seven of them. Five died at once, and two lingered for a few hours. The other two grievously wounded were left lying on the spot. A boy in the house — Madhavan Nair — was killed and thrown into a well. Narayanan Nair made his escape. 

The Special Judge who tried the case against the Moplahs remarked, " to my mind this murderous attack indicate something more than mere fanaticism or lust for looting. There is no evidence that the murders were committed because the murdered persons refused to embrace Islam, or resisted the rebels, or refused to show property. The rebels seem to have meant to kill every male in the place whom they could catch hold of, and" the only survivors were those who either got away or were left as dead. The abduction of a young girl and a boy shows the deliberate ferocity of the attack." (Judgement in cases Nos. 116 and -116 A of 1922.) 

Narayanan Nair trusted his Moplah watchmen, whom he engaged to watch his house and they turned traitors. The Moplahs wanted to exterminate the family and very nearly succeeded in doing so. The girl was rescued from the hands of the rebels after a detention of six weeks and after suffering indescribable indignities. 

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Crony Capitalism

There is an excellent article on Crony Capitalism in "The Statesman" which is very unbiased.  While it focuses on Mallya's recent escape (from Indian authorities) to London with 9000 crores of unpaid debt, it does mention other similar flights of defaulters in earlier administrations.  If you feel up to it, you might read it here:

Time Modi took on Crony Capitalism


Monday, March 14, 2016

Leftism and Islamism - Joined at the hip?

Take time to view this discussion.  If you like it, tell your friends about Centerfire.


Anti nationalism or Intellectualism?

The recent controversial incidents at Jawaharlal Nehru University are merely symptoms of an underlying disease afflicting the Indian society.  Wrath and frustration on a myriad of issues has begun to surface as discontent which is often misdirected and not very well understood by those propagating it.  We see the classic mentality of the rajahs (who allied with the British forces in the 1700’s to defeat the kingdom next door) emerge in the form on sentiments which have widely been seen as antinational.

There are many nations inside India – all in a state of conflict and turmoil - and under various stages of siege.  There are the poor who see themselves as being oppressed by the rich.  Their frustration comes out in form of Naxalite gangs who make alliances with enemies of the Indian state for arms.  There are the homosexuals who resent a society that refuses to open its arms to them and accept them for who they are.  There are Muslims who, wrongly or rightly, feel that they do not get their due in the Indian society.  There are SC’s, ST’s, Backwards, Dalits etc. who feel like they are the underbelly of the society who have not gotten their fair shake.   And now the so called forward caste has started feeling that they are under siege because the quotas have taken jobs away from them – relegating them to menial jobs.  It tramples their pride and they now form gangs like ‘Ranvir Sena’ to protect their interests.  

When there is little to go around in a country where the population is exploding unchecked, tensions arise.  Lines between the peoples of a society that fade in prosperity darken and animosity develops.  In these circumstances, incidents like what we saw in JNU flare up.  India is now sitting precariously at the edge in a pre-anarchy state with a high degree of polarization between the ruling party and its supporters and the conglomeration of "everyone else".  This polarization  has brought Leftist intellectuals, Islamists, and troublemakers together in an unholy alliance under the "everyone else" banner.

India has a deficient political system that, because of a political divide, ties the hand of the executive.  This has kept the wheels of development frozen for decades.  The passenger of the Indian bus deflates the tires when he is not allowed to drive the bus.  That is the underlying problem.  The rest are symptoms thereof.

In this society, there runs a vein of a populace – the so called intellectuals who have been instrumental in coloring this state of discontent in the society with the paint of anti-nationalism.  The average intellectual of India has gone through the rigmarole of the Indian education system,  has lived through the rigors of daily Indian life, has haggled for vegetables, has put up with discrimination of various sorts in reaching a position where he/ she is considered “learned” enough to teach or control minds of others.  Sadly many of these individuals are ignorant of what is happening around the world.  They are products of the turmoil of their daily lives and their myopic education.  They can only see so far when it comes to the positions they espouse.  Very often they strive to be idealistic and may argue a case against their own existence – much like the Engineer who was allowed to say his last words before his head was to be chopped off by a guillotine.  He lay there looking up at the blade and said his last words, “The rope is twisted over the pulleys.  This guillotine won’t work!”   Was he saying the truth?  Yes.  Was it in his benefit? No!

 Many of our Intellectuals, whether they make a case for Kashmir’s independence or return their awards for the rising (and largely imagined) intolerance in the country are like that Engineer.  They do not speak in their own interests.

Farid Zakaria, the noted journalist who hosts the show GPS on CNN commented on many of the Middle Eastern political leaders, saying that they enjoyed the bounties of the West during the night and condemned it during the day!  Much like those leaders, these Indian Intellectuals enjoy the privilege of free speech (for which they would be executed in a theocratic / totalitarian state) to speak against the state itself!
The vision of  the Islamic Caliphate.  Grab a burka, Menon!
Our Desi intellectual is ignorant of the fact that the radical clerics of Middle East try to turn the minds of the Indian Muslims by defining land as being of two types – Dar-ul-Islam (Land where Sharia prevails) and Dar-ul-Kufr (Land of Infidels).  Here is the Desi Individual standing on Dar-ul-kufr, making a case for the secession of a territory from where the Pandits were expelled only a few years ago.  Our desi intellectuals miss it when the Pakistani delegates speaking with Indian Muslim delegates openly says that ‘Jihad’ is their divine mandate and they would never take a stand against it.


The Desi intellectual who foments trouble by trying to disseminate inflammatory opinions does not realize that these could just be frustration on a grid locked government, unchecked inflation, a homophobic society, and just a hundred other frustrations that are finding expression in form of lies and partial truths simply intended to destabilize a paralyzed government.

The Indian Intellectual should realize that idealism has its place, but practicality trumps it in every instance.  Go live in Pakistan before asking for Kashmir’s secession.   While there, try criticizing General Raheel Sharif.  If you choose to go to Saudi instead, try criticizing the house of Saud.  And by the way, it might be useful to learn a few terms. “Sangsari” means stoning to death.  Men are buried up to their waist and women up to their necks.  “Hudud” means major crimes mentioned in Koran and finally “Jald” means lashing your backside with whips.

Ref. 1
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kashmir-illegally-occupied-by-India-JNU-professor-says-in-controversial-speech/articleshow/51329622.cms

Friday, March 11, 2016

Gomutra, Gurus and Godmen - That's the art of living


In many societies people who walk dogs, carry plastic bags to pick up the dog’s poop.  In the same societies, hunters who are out in the middle of the woods and have to relieve themselves, carry a small shovel, so that they can dig a hole, put their deposit in it and cover it up.  In the same societies, there is a great deal of awareness that the air and water should be clean. Litter drives are held and trash is picked up.  If a whole group of people plan a get together or a festival, they go to a place where they do not cause any disruption to others.  And when they leave, there is nothing left behind that even suggests that there was someone there before.  Every piece of trash is picked up and the land is left in its original pristine condition.  Thousands of people gather in the Black Rock desert of Nevada every year to hold the festival of “Burning  Man”.  Derived from an ancient Aryan tradition, this festival attracts common folks and people of high celebrity alike.  If you visited the location after the festival ended, you’d never know that thousands of people had congregated in tents at that location just the week prior.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, these societies are far more spiritual than other societies like the mahan Bharat desh where Godmen and guru sell, yoga, meditation, and gomutra and claim an inheritance of spirituality. Yes, I am pointing my finger – not one, but all of them, at SS Ravi Shankar who has, by his denial to pay a fine for holding a “Cultural (sic) Extravaganza” on the banks of Yamuna, earned an F grade on his record.  He can stick that grade in front of the name of his organization – Art of living.



If there is the most basic art of living, it is living clean and keeping our environment clean.

Here are some references if you are curious to learn more:

“Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's mega cultural fest in Delhi, the opposition launched a scathing attack in Parliament demanding to know why the spiritual guru's Art of Living had not deposited a 5-crore fine imposed by the country's top green court.

“Burning Man is an annual gathering that takes place at Black Rock City—a temporary community erected in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The event is described as an experiment in community and art, influenced by 10 main principles, including "radical" inclusion, self-reliance and self-expression, as well as community cooperation, gifting and decommodification, and leaving no trace.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man

Comments:
Very well said about such events (as AOL gathering) on the ecologically vulnerable banks of Yamuna.  Such gatherings , one should not forget, are common in most religions. When Pope travels or during the Haj hundreds of thousands gather. But the litter is cleaned up very well during and after the event. During the Ramadan hundreds of Desis are employed for the clean up  in Saudi Arabia . But the very same guys don't stoop over to pick up and collect their refuse when they are in India.  What can Modi do- pray ' Sadbuddhi De he Bhagwan.'?
 - S. Anand MISHRA 


This was not a religious festival.  It was supposed to be a "cultural" festival.  When it was very obvious that this was an illegal event for which the government was going to have to fine the Ravi Shankar fellow, then Mr. Modi should have refrained from attending.  I was disappointed that he sent a wrong message by attending.
- Rakesh Chaubey

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Looking for feet to fall on

The stereotypical Desis have a deficiency that has brought misery to them time and again.  Yet, they have not learnt from it.  Many Desis are so deep into hero worship that they are quick to elevate someone to the status of "Mai Baap (parents)" or even to the status of the Almighty.  It is no wonder that criminal god men in India get a serious following of thousands of devotees thronging around them like flies on stale turd.  It was for this reason, that in the stratified Indian society,  a handful of British were able establish an Empire, rape the land and the people and rule effectively for 200 years! In the latest instance, a new poster has been in the news supporting Trump.  Trump has been shown sitting on a lotus like Lord Vishnu!


Supporting Trump is okay if you like his agenda, but this?!  This is beyond ridiculous.  To support someone you don't have to be so fawning that you place them alongside your deities!  Hopefully someday the Desis will learn some self-respect. From this poster, that day, however, seems far away!


Monday, March 7, 2016

Happy Holi and Happy Chaharshanbe suri!







"Sorkhiye tu az man, zardiye az man tu!"

The ancient Aryan chant in Farsi that translate as - Give me your redness (health) and take away my yellowness (sickness).  This chant is addressed to fire, which as per ancient Aryan belief, is the messenger of the creator.  Millions of people of Aryan origins around the world celebrate spring by venerating the fire.  The Christians venerate the fire by lighting candles during Easter,  The Tajik and Iranians jump over small bonfires and the Hindus celebrate the night before the Holi festival with a big bonfire.


Chaharshambe (Wednesday) Suri (of the Sun) is being celebrated around the World this month. So is Holi.  Both festivals have common roots.  Even the mythological tale behind both festivals are similar.  The Hindus of India talk of Prahlad and Holika.  Our Persian counterparts have to the story of Sheiavash and Saudaba.  Wishing both Ajaam and Hindus a Happy New year!  



Saturday, March 5, 2016

Proud of one, ashamed of the other (two)


Official 113th Congressional photo of Tulsi Gabbard
This is a complimentary article about a person who calls herself a Karm Yogi.  It is not about Bobby Jindal or Nikki Haley. They do deserve mention here because they (the two Desis) provide the contrast which makes this "Karm yogi" look like a a diamond placed between two pathetic clods of  dense clay that are really good for nothing.

We are talking about US ex - Congresswoman (D) of Hawaii's second congressional district, Tusli Gabbard. She recently resigned from her congressional seat and endorsed Bernie Sanders for President in 2016.  She is one of two veterans who became Congresswomen.  She came back from her deployment in Iraq in 2006 and volunteered to go in again in 2009  She is a Samoan American who got her Hindu faith from her American Mother and a Catholic Father who was of a spiritual bent.  He sang Kirtans and practiced Meditation.

Gabbard, unlike Jindal, visited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was on a visit to New York in September 2014.  She presented him with a ginger flower garland from Hawai  and her own copy of The Bhagwat Gita - the very same one which she took her oath of office and a US Congresswoman.

Ref:  Click here to read more about Tulsi

Nikki Haley did go to visit Modi.  Note  the contrast.  Some Sanskar!  Huh?!

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

I will let Anupam Speak


I will let Anupam Speak....


On my own post, on my own blog.  I, for once, take my hat off and stand down.  I will let Anupam Speak... for he left me speechless...


For readers who are not conversant yet with Hindi, below is a Translation of what he says

I am a Kashmiri Pandit.  With a firm belief in my own Indian identity, I am a peaceful, nonviolent, secular, educated, law abiding patriotic citizen of my country. On this very day 26 years ago, I was kicked out of my own home.  This is my story:

By the time Autumn arrived in the year 1999, the terrorists ran amok in Kashmir.  The state government had abdicated all its responsibility to the State, and administration had totally collapsed.  The terrorists had taken a stranglehold of the Kashmir Valley. It was as if the word "Indian" had become a cuss word.  The Terrorists were busy issuing "hit lists".  Every individual who was pro-India was labelled as "informant".  Killing him was not only Jihad but was also a holy act. Prominent Kashmiri Pandits were already being targeted and eliminated. Social Worker Tikalal Taplu was brazenly killed in broad daylight on the streets of Sri Nagar. Neelkanth Ganju was killed in Karannagar and his dead body was left laying in the Street for hours. Attorney Premnath Bhatt was butchered in the Anantnag area in the South of Kashmir. Countless Pandits whose names will never be knows were mercilessly murdered.  The message was clear.  On January 4, 1990 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen published a notice in the Newspaper Aftab ordering all Hindus to leave the Kashmir valley. In another newspaper, The same notice was also printed in another Newspaper, the Al Safa. And it wasn't very long before these notices were pasted on the doors of the houses of the Pandits.  On the fateful night of  January19, 1990 such darkness descended upon Kashmir that it seemed that all the lights had been snuffed out.

A uproar built up from every corner, every crossroad, every street, every bazaar, every village of Kashmir which was to be death knell for the Pandits.  Crowds numbering in hundreds of thousands gathered in the streets and chanted poisonous slogans.  Such a scene had never before been seen nor such chants heard.

All mosques were issuing statements that Kashmir would become a part of Pakistan.  Mujahideen were being praised and guns were being brandished openly.

"Wake up, Wake up,  its is morning!
Russia has lost.
India is damned
and finally it is Kashmir's turn."

This slogan was repeated over and over again over the P.A. systems from mosques.

"If you want to live in Kashmir, you will have to chant Allah-o-Akbar
"O wretched evil infidels, leave our Kashmir"

Slogans like these went on endlessly.  When one stopped, another took its place.  Among these slogans was one that said,
"Kashmir will become Pakistan without the Pandit men, but with the Pandit women" This slogan was repeated over and over and with increasing fervence. By now, our fear had changed to desperation.  Families locked the women in their store rooms (Pantries) with the tacit understanding that, when the crowd attacked, they would douse themselves with gasoline and burn themselves to death.  There will never be a parallel to the terror of that night.  Depression and desperation consumed us.  The message was loud and clear. "Convert, Die or get the hell out!"

There was no village, neighborhood or streets where these slogans were not being chanted. Faced with these contrary circumstances, most of the Kashmiri Pandits gathered whatever they could manage to salvage among their possessions and got out of Kashmir hidden under tarps on trucks, taxis and buses.  An exodus began.

The Government, the intellecutuals, the seularists the patriots - everyone's conscience was asleep.  Nobody was willing to speak up about it. In the days following January 19th, 1990, the massacre of Kashmiri pandits began. Atrocities on them peaked.  A female teacher Giriraj Tikku from Bandipura was gang raped and murdered.  News like this came pouring in. A whole book can be written about it how people were being tortured by the terrorists and how the Administration stood by and turned a blind eye to the plight of the Pandits. By 1991, most of the Pandits had fled the Kashmir Valley and were given refuge in dusty torny regions of Jammu in Tent cities. More than 60,000 families who fled were kept in refugee camps where there were no basic facilities.  Each family was given one tent each and in some of them as many as 10 individuals had to cram in.  Sanitation was non existent.  A large number of people perished to disease at these campsites.  Snakebites and heat, however, killed more people than disease did. They had been left to perish. Thousands of houses and temples belonging to the Pandits were burnt or razed.  All this was happening is a culturally diverse and secular India. The few that had remained in the Kashmir Valley were massacred. The terrorists did not spare even 2 month old children. The existence of entire villages belonging to Pandits were erased.  Till date not even one person has been found guilty for this.  Leave aside taking action on the massacre and murder of thousands of  Pandits, no one even expressed any concern about the massacre and forced displacement of the poor souls. Our houses lie barren.  Our temples defiled. Everything is about to disappear into oblivion.  26 years later even today Kashmiri Pandits are refugees in their own country - living in tent cities on the outskirts of Jammu.  They are not getting much assistance.  In the social media conscious modern society where things can be ordered and managed by keystrokes and screen swipes, these citizens are faring poorly in their own country. They have been left to their own fate.  Despite all this, I still bear hope in my heart that we are given justice.  Jai Hind.

****************************************************************************

Wake up!  Learn to protect yourself.  Ahinsa in the face of hinsa is foolish.  Ensure survival - your own and that of your ideology.