Donald Trump has long been the enemy number one for all the so called liberals. He gets called names such as bigot, racist, xenophobic, misogynist almost everyday. And just after Trump won the elections, the so called liberals themselves turned intolerant and partook in violent protests. We saw how devastated our Desi left-liberals were after Trump was elected president. Now, as Trump swore in as president yesterday, rather than accepting the fact and moving on, some soc-called liberals in the USA somewhat hilariously went ballistic. Here are some gems we managed to compile:
In this case, the liberals chanting something along the lines of ‘This checkpoint is closed’ blocked two Air-force personnel in order to prevent them from reaching the inauguration checkpoint. So after protesting against the proposed wall on the Mexico border, liberals themselves ended up creating one.
A large group wearing a full Ninja like black costume with their faces covered, ran riot in Washington DC by smashing glasses of MacDonald’s and other nearby buildings.
Apparently people from that same Ninja group also ended up smashing the glass of starbucks and after they were done, one yelled F*** Trump as they withdrew.
Some protesters had managed to get a fire going, a Trump supporter was then proceeding to extinguish it while very calmly stating that this wasn’t the way to protest. He was being heckled while he was doing so and even got a couple of bottles thrown at him. Then finally a couple of protesters visibly manhandled him and took his Make America Great Again cap before fleeing
Just as election season approaches, RSS becomes an important tool for the opposition in an effort to indirectly attack and question the BJP. The media, which has a regular habit of twisting facts in the hope of sensationalizing an issue, was found aiding the ‘attack RSS policy’ by spinning RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya’s statement on the reservation policy.
Aaj Tak, in a Breaking News format, went big alleging that in a statement ahead of the UP election RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya had stated that reservations should be abolished.
Barkha Dutt to tried to further this idea, but was promply rebutted by people who were actually present at the venue, including Mr Sanjaya Baru, former media advisor and chief spokesperson of former PM Manmohan Singh
@BDUTT I was in audience. Not quite what was said. Heavy over interpretation of a nuanced statement.
In order to quell the rumors, the whole video of Mammohan Vaidya’s proceedings was provided by the Editor-in-chief of news channel WION:
The video started with Vaidya stating that SC/ST’s have been neglected and that it is the nation’s responsibility to reconcile them into the mainstream. He then proceeded to quote Babasaheb Ambedkar by stating that reservations shouldn’t go on forever, and everyone should be provided equal opportunities as soon as its need ends. And in conclusion, stated that other ways like education etc. should also be properly implemented in order to help the backward sections of the society.
So nowhere did Vaidya express his personal opinion about abolishing the reservation policy. He was only quoting Ambedkar when he said that reservation should be time bound.
Back in September 2015 Mohan Bhagwat had issued a statement calling for a re-look at the existing reservation policy. This statement, even though asking for a re-look and not a ban, and made by someone who isn’t directly associated with the government, was blown out of proportions and was considered one of the key factors for which the BJP might have had to pay dearly in the Bihar assembly elections. This was also pointed out in a post analyzing the BJP’s defeat wherein it was pointed out how the RJD-JDU alliance was successful in conveying to Dalits that BJP was against reservations, and it ultimately cost BJP Dalit votes.
How defensive the BJP has had to be on the reservation issue can be gauged by this speech by Narendra Modi wherein he had to explicitly state that he and his Government wasn’t against reservations, and proceeded to chide those who spread such false rumors in this regard:
PM Narendra Modi takes a Dig on Lutyen Media twisting Manmohan Vaidya statement on Reservations
Like Bihar, even the UP elections are heavily influenced by caste and such statements by the RSS leaders may ultimately come back to haunt the BJP, chiefly based on people’s perception of BJP and RSS being two sides of the same coin.
Now even though Manmohan Vaidya has issued an explicit clarification that RSS is not against reservations, it needs to be seen how this spin impacts the elections.
Early this year, Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao had said that the Roman Catholic Church in Goa will guide its followers to vote for genuine candidates in Goa, for the upcoming state elections. He further stated that the guidelines of the church will not name any political party or candidate. However, even as he said this, a video came out showing a Goan Padre appealing to the people who had come for the annual Christmas mass, to vote for 2 specific candidates, both of whom were of dubious reputation.
The Church in Goa has always played a role in the politics of the state. The last time Goa went for Assembly Elections, Goans had seen a brazenly corrupt Congress Government, and the church had then attacked the Congress. Of course there was no clear naming of any party, but the sermon back then, did not lay any focus on “secularism”, rather, the focus was on “corruption” and “election freebies”.
The next elections seen in Goa were the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and things had vastly changed by then. The BJP had now turned “communal” since Narendra Modi had been annointed as the PM candidate. Here, the tune of the Church changed, and the buzz-word now was “secularism”. The church expressed concern over “corporate communal forces” and the campaign which saw the “promotion of one individual as if this is a presidential election”. It also commented that “models of good governance” presented to society are a myth, and that those in power and those able to manipulate power like the industrialists were the cause of various types of destruction like indiscriminate mining, unregulated constructions and polluting industries. The hint was clear.
Come 2017, the Church has now gone fully brazen in its attack. Some in Goa, accuse the Goa BJP of having let-down its own cadre (the splinter group from RSS), to appease the Church, on the issue of Medium of Instruction. But it appears the Church has taken any cognisance of this alleged favour from the BJP led Government.
The Council of Social Justice and Peace, the “Social Work wing of the Archdiocese of Goa”, on Friday released guidelines to the electorate on how to vote for the February 4 Legislative Assembly elections. It started of on the note of encouraging voters to participate in the election process, but proceedings soon took a political turn.
Various references were made to aspects relating to the BJP ruled Government in the state, and a negative light was cast on the same. A few of these are:
“Rupees ten thousand crore public debt on the heads of Goan Citizens”
“The commissioning of an Investment Promotion Board (IPB) by Union or State Governments” (The Goa Government started such a body to provide a single window clearance to large projects)
The guidelines also chose to refer to the Central Government, in a bid to raise the bogey of Modi, once again:
“In the federal structure of our democracy, the elections to the State Government cannot be seen in isolation from the Union Government. Citizens have to be aware of the reality that any oppressive, discriminatory and destructive legislations and policies proposed at the national level require the collaboration of State Governments for enactment and their cooperation for implementation.”
“The terror unleashed by the State and non-State actors to silence dissent or diverse opinions about governance by labelling them as anti-national or unpatriotic cannot be ignored by Responsible Citizens.”
“nationalisation of our State’s natural resources (referring to the nationalisation of rivers) to push projects in villages and towns by undermining the constitutional powers of the self-governments like Panchayats and Municipalities are in no way expected in good governance”
“The shift from the social policy of ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makaan’ for uplifting the poor sections of the society to an emphasis on digital and cashless policy involving smart phones, ATM cards and Paytm apps as the basic requirement for every citizen to avail of government benefits and purchase their basic needs is a worrisome phenomenon.”
The above clearly signals which way the Church is going: Do not vote for BJP. In the latter part of the guidelines, the Church touches on the issue of the “split of votes” among various parties. This probably refers to the AAP and other regional parties in Goa, who are all vying for a chunk of the anti-BJP votes. The church stops short of telling its flock whom to vote for, but the message of not voting for BJP is clear.
At a time when the Code of Conduct is on, whether such veiled sermons violate any norms is unclear. And even if they do so, no party or person would dare take the Church to task, considering the attack of being “communal” which the complainant may face.
Supreme Court lawyer Ishkaran Bhandari though felt that such negative appeals are exploiting a loop-hole in the recent Supreme Court order which had banned canvassing for votes in the name of religion, caste or language. The Court had forbidden direct appeals by religious bodies to vote for a particular person, but there doesn’t seem to be any restriction on negative appeals to not vote for a particular faction.
In such a situation, the Church may get away without any trouble. The question though will remain about the morality of such appeals, and whether similar appeals in the opposite direction, by other religious persons or bodies, will be allowed similar liberties.
Like millions of people around the world, I too watched with gleaming eyes, a young President addressing his people by saying “Yes we can”, on the election day evening of November 2008, a year that already sunk the whole world into a deep depression a couple of months before that, and a world mired by the tensions in the Middle East due to the greed and goof ups of the previous administration that led to a disaster in Iraq and disorientation in Afghanistan. In a country not long ago that practised inequality among its people based on the colour of their skin, there couldn’t be anything more inspiring that “Yes we can”, speech invoking the dream of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Yet, eight years and a few months later, when Barack Obama leaves his office, I am reminded of the Norwegian saying, “When all is said and done, more is said than done.” Starting from the irony of earning a Nobel Peace Prize and ending up dropping bombs around the world every 20 minutes or so throughout his two terms, and in fact more than his supposedly “war mongering” predecessor (or more than any President so far if I am not wrong), to the tensions in Syria and arming the rebels there coupled with the vacuum that he left in Iraq that led to the growth of ISIL which is the number one threat in the world today, to making claims of record jobs being created that still didn’t put more money in the hands of low income people, creating more income inequality so that factory workers and Unions in Democratic party’s bastions would vote for an obscenely rich billionaire who ran a reality show than their own “progressive” candidate, a Universal healthcare that he wanted to last more for his legacy than its practicality and usefulness, that today his own party admits it is a monumental disaster given the way the costs have gone up, the worst of racial divide and violences in a nation where the Blacks hoped to heal the wounds with one of their own being the President, pushing the whole world to the brink of World War III and reminding us the dark days of the Cold war of the second half of the nineties simply because he couldn’t stand Putin, or for that matter Netanyahu, that he would go to the extent of reversing decades old policy of the US with respect to Israel, and more importantly a divided America today, where the ones who are threatening to secede are not the traditional Confederacy, but the modern and liberal Californians, and a highly diminished Democratic Party, that lost the Presidency, Congress and is at a historical low in terms of the number of States they control, even as its outgoing President has the highest approval ratings, I wonder if Obama himself has to rate him in future against the promises he made in the beginning, how would he do that against what was achieved by the end of his two terms. Given his smugness, I don’t expect him to be honest there, as increasingly I have felt his middle name is H for Hypocrisy.
Perhaps given that he himself came up as an anti-establishment breath of fresh air who fought Hillary in the Primaries and mobilised funds from large sections of common people than typical Wall Street funding, there were much more expectations about him bringing the Change he promised in his campaign, yet belied it to become the very establishment himself, so much so that space today is occupied by, of all the people, his successor who will take oath today, as Obama himself passively allowed a better candidate in Democratic party to lose that space even as Wikileaks were exposing how his party fixed and rigged the Primaries against Sanders, yet would blame Russians for losing the elections eventually. Such selective silence that he practised, like not addressing the Islamic radicalism, but going high in rhetoric about a non-existent intolerance in Modi’s India, blaming the gun (and the lobby) instead of the ones who pull the trigger, and above all, in the Benghazi issue or the Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti links to Clinton Foundation that according to him is not meddling with the elections as much as Russians who allegedly hacked into Podesta’s mails. Even his biggest foreign policy achievement which was the Iran nuclear deal, turned out to be a complete sham on the ground as sanctions continue to exist, and Cuba would have normalised the relations anyways as Castro is history now.
No not all things were as bad as it sounds. In fact at the end of the first term, he had a pretty decent four years when Osama was killed, Syria was not a problem as it is now, Putin was still a good friend and he had launched his ambitious Universal healthcare program despite its obvious glitches and horrendous execution. In fact his progressive stand with respect to Gay marriage or Climate change and the Paris accord that he and Kerry put together into a deal were definitely appreciable. It is just that his unwillingness to work with anyone who differs with him and the high pedestal that he stands on, like a Messiah who wouldn’t deal with the lesser mortals among the opposition, that created the divide even further, and made him bypass Congress many times to pass an executive order where key legislations are required. The classic example and the inflection point in his Presidency was the Newtown school shooting in 2012 December that crushed almost every American soul, an event that made him champion the responsible gun control personally, I sincerely thought he would go to any extent to make that work like how Lincoln did for 13th amendment or even a Lyndon B Johnson did for Civil rights as shown in the movie All the way. The fact that he failed in it perhaps made him even more uninterested and derisive of Opposition. As Obama himself admitted, he lacked the ability of a Lincoln or Roosevelt to walk across the aisle and work along with the Opposition to make key legislative reforms. In my opinion, more than any oratory, this is what I would expect in a great President that Obama was woefully short of, that he looks good only because his predecessor was that bad. Or the successor looks (and sounds) terrible!
Eight years ago this day, I warmed upto his inaugural speech fighting the cold in Heathrow as I was waiting for my return flight, much like the many thousands who were braving the cold in Washington to listen to him as he said – “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
Sadly, it sounds more an empty rhetoric to me now when I read it again. As the next one is going to take oath, I don’t look forward to a great speech anymore when a 140 character tweet from the new President would do much better to convey what he wants to convey, than a 140 minutes long speech. That he has made even long and inspiring speeches passé, and meaningless, somewhat sums up his Presidency as well.
Rahul Gandhi seems to be having somewhat of a hard time since demonetization after he had to first queue up at a SBI branch in Delhi to exchange Rs 4000 and on 18th January showed off his torn Kurta at a rally in Uttarakhand:
First Rahul Gandhi stated that his Kurta was torn and then proceeded to provide proof for the same, by driving his hand through the hole and out. Also during his Kurta torn speech Rahul had attacked Modi by claiming that one would never see him(Modi) wearing a torn Kurta even though he indulges in the politics of “poor people” and of those who wear torn clothes. This statement of putting out an analogy between torn clothes and poor people might itself reek of snobbery.
Moved by the plight of Rahul Gandhi, Editor of NAMO Patrika and well known Twitter Celebrity, Tajendar Bagga today ordered a new Kurta for him.
The Kurta would be delivered at Rahul Gandhi’s residence by 30th January so Rahul Baba might have to make do with his torn one for a few days. And to make it clear the whole amount for the ‘Royal’ Kurta has been paid for by Mr Bagga including the Rs 169 shipping fee.
Like Mr Bagga, there have been other good Samaritans who have helped out Mr Rahul Gandhi during his time of need. In one case a man from Gaziabad sent Rahul Rs 100 so that he could fix his Kurta and in another case BJP Yuv Morcha workers ended up sending him a new piece.
The impasse on Jallikattu doesn’t seem like ending. Now the Supreme Court has declined to step into the matter and directed the petitioner to approach Madras High Court. Incidentally the Madras High Court had said just yesterday that it won’t interfere in the matter as the ruling for banning Jallikattu was passed by the Supreme Court. After getting banned by the Supreme Court in 2014, there were protests and public outpouring against the decision, but not quite close to what is being seen now. Not just are a ‘sea’ of protesters cropping up in various parts of Tamil Nadu including Chennai’s Marina Beach, the Jallikattu movement has also got a shot in the arm via various celebrities also showing their support.
So here’s a list of some of the most well known faces, fighting for Jallikattu:
Legendary music composer AR Rahman was the latest to support the movement after he announced his intention to fast tomorrow.
I’m fasting tomorrow to support the spirit of
Tamilnadu!
Just four days ago Rajanikanth had expressed his support for Jallikattu and reports suggest that he might even join a silent assembly organized by Tamil Nadu’s top actors in support of Jallikattu.
Dhanush, most well known for the song Kolaveri Di was one of the first celebrities who showed their support.
Actor Kamal Hassan has been one of the most vocal supporters of Jallikattu by speaking about its millenial old heritage. He also questioned the connection between animal rights and vegetarianism and even talked about his personal respect for bulls.
Even cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin tweeted out to laud the peaceful protests in favor of Jallikattu
Scenes of peaceful protest all around TN.Unity, peace and resolve will show our plea in the right light.#peacefulprotests#jallikattu
Also chess wizard Viswanathan Anand called Jallikattu a cultural symbol which pointing out that the main point here wasn’t animal rights but was tradition and livelihood.
#jallikattu is a cultural symbol . Respect it. Im all for animal rights but here that is not the point.tradition & livelihood are .
Ever since PayTM founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma praised the demonetisation scheme, he has been under a constant attack from Congress, AAP, and the liberal ecosystem of India. The emerging entrepreneur, who was once a big fan of Arvind Kejriwal, is being targeted based on fake charges, for TV ads and for celebrating parties, yes for celebrating parties.
The PayTM founder recently gave a boisterous speech at PayTM’s annual party, the video was circulated on social media and his statements were scrutinized, analyzed and judged on the matrices of demonetisation, Narendra Modi, etiquette and class.
Some of the media outlets thought that this is not enough, so they found patriarchy in it. No, seriously! The news blog NewsLaundry first attacked Vijay Shekhar for celebrating his annual party with his office people despite tragedies related to demonetisation, then preached to him as to how he should celebrate parties and finally declared him a patron of patriarchal culture that threatens to overwhelm workspaces and seats of state power. Here is a portion from the blog:
It is just an irony that NewsLaundry, which portrays itself as a left-liberal site and calculates liberal quotient of people, is publishing articles which are didactic, pedagogic and holier-than-thou in nature. In the same article, the liberal-author sermonises:
When you’re celebrating success, you thank your customers, you thank your employees, instead of taunting your rivals. You don’t use language that your women employees might not be comfortable with – although a fuller version of the video shows no women in the audience, which makes one wonder if this is a boys-only party. (And if so, why?)
Vijay Shekhar was demeaned by the liberal ecosystem for many things, but the most-common line of attacks mentioned lack of class, sophistication and demeanour. These attacks also expose the deep-rooted class bias and hypocrisy of liberal ideologues who talk about freedom of choice, diversity and acceptance, but leave no stone un-turned to eject venom against those with whom they don’t agree.
Not only this, the same set of people who mocked the Snapdeal protest against Aamir Khan as a case of bullying, united to slam PayTM. A member of the Congress IT cell, who has been caught multiple times for spreading lies and rumours, found this video as an excuse to indulge into organized character assassination of Vijay Shekhar. This campaign was later joined by many Congress and AAP supporters, including Janta Ka Reporter — the alleged mouth-piece of AAP:
No news channel will show PayTM founder’s crass video mocking misery of people. Why? All of them are sponsored by PayTM. So, no -ve news! 🙂
With these kinds of targeted campaigns, AAP and Congress are exposing their desperation. These vile attacks will create more and more hatred against these parties among entrepreneurs. Vijay Shekhar will jump, dance, shout and party because had he cared about these liberal sophistication, he would not have built a multi-billion organisation.
Left inclined media outlet, The Hindu, headquartered in Chennai, is known for its penchant of carrying erroneous reports in India. Just last month we had exposed how The Hindu had lied about a statement by the Indian Government. Later, The Hindu went international and got slammed by the Greek embassy as well for presenting their Minister’s views on demonetisation “out of context”.
Now The Hindu seems to have gone after the big fish, USA President-elect Donald Trump. In the USA, such “digressions” from the truth by media are called “fake news”, and that is what Michael Pillsbury called it. Media reports suggest Pillsbury is an adviser to Trump’s transition team but Pillsbury himself denies being in any such role.
The Hindu had reported Michael Pillsbury as saying:
‘Trump has declined Dalai Lama’s request for a meeting’
This news item was preceded by a another report based on the same quote, titled: “Is Trump preparing to change the script on Tibet?”. This obviously had larger ramifications for the US-China relationship and Trump’s foreign policy on this tricky aspect.
Pillsbury though quickly took to social media to call out The Hindu:
Pillsbury demands retraction of this fake news immediately by Indian reporter in Beijing https://t.co/16IHuQ9CAz
Soon, both the articles based on the one quote from Pillsbury were taken down by The Hindu.
A Tibetan media outlet reported that the Central Tibetan Administration run site Tibet.net had denied such reports. It mentioned that Tibetan PM Lobsang Sangay had responded to the fake news saying:
Pillsbury wrote me an email last night rubbishing the news and said he supports a meeting between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Columnist Rupa Subramanya questioned the editorial team of The Hindu as to whether any clarification was issued by them regarding the two stories which have been taken down:
In this entire saga, it needs to be remembered that The Hindu is a left-leaning newspaper and the two reports which The Hindu published were based solely on the reports in the Chinese media. News such as Trump refusing to meet the Dalai Lama could very well have been planted by the Chinese in their media to create a particular perception about Trump, and it seems only The Hindu played along and re-ran the information, or added its own spice to the story.
Whether The Hindu fell for a Chinese trap, or was it hand-in-glove, or this isn’t an issue of ‘fake news’ at all, will depend on The Hindu’s response, which at the moment, is awaited.
Prashant Bhushan isn’t the happiest of man these days after losing the case wherein he alleged Narendra Modi took bribes from Sahara and Birla. He famously reacted to the judgement by calling it a setback to anti-corruption movement and also a ‘Black Mark’ on the Supreme Court’s record.
SC refusing to order an indep inqiry into the Birla/Sahara payoff docs is a setback to anti corruption campaign& a black mark on SC’s record
Now taking it a step further he has made a controversial claim that Supreme Court had reached this judgement because it was scared that the power brokers might land in jail due to its judgement. His exact words were:
Judges who were dealing with this case did not feel emboldened enough to order an investigation against the high and mighty.
Often, the hands of the SC tremble when there is a situation when the judgement is going to determine the fate of high and mighty and may lead to a situation where some of them may land up in jail.
These are very serious allegations wherein he questions the possible lack of independence of the judiciary and the lack of empowerment of the Judges to take on the ‘high and mighty’.
Bhushan later somewhat became defensive after maybe the implications of his statements dawned at him.
Here he says that SC getting scared of the ‘big fish’ isn’t always true, as evident in 2G, Coalgate but often do like in the case of Sahara and Birla. He incidentally refrains from stating other instances wherein the SC was allegedly bogged down by the mighty.
Another interesting aspect of this whole saga is the support Prashant Bhushan is getting from Arvind Kejriwal. You might have noticed that the tweet of Mr Bhushan targeting the Supreme Court was re-tweeted by Arvind Kejriwal who according to common logic wasn’t on friendly terms with Bhushan, as evident by the fact that he ensued Bhushan’s exit from the AAP.
Another year in exile has passed. Another “19th January” is here.
On 19th January 2017, as we Kashmiri Pandits observe “KP Holocaust Day” yet again, we will begin our 28th year in exile. In just half of those years in exile, sons of King Dasharatha became immortal. Sons of Rishi Kashyap though, continue to tread towards oblivion.
Kashmiri Hindus – a community forgotten?
I was in 10th standard when the Jihadi tsunami triggered ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Kashmir, resulting in forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley. Most of us had never stepped outside the valley before we were forced out.
Kashmir had been the only cocoon we had known. That year, when we were forced to cross the Banihal tunnel – little knowing that the return journey will remain an illusion for decades – we not just lost our roots, but a little bit of our identity too.
After a few years in Jammu, I landed in an engineering college in sleepy town of Pilani. That was the southern most I had traveled till that day. From Kashmir to Jammu to now Rajasthan, a lot had changed rapidly. Identity fog had thickened.
‘Fresher period’ rituals in college became an amusement. My introduction that would go “I am … basically from Kashmir, now from Jammu” soon turned comical with a chemical twist, “basically from Kashmir, acid-ically from Jammu, now neutrally a Rajasthani”. Genuine inquiries, jokes, ridicule and debates about the situation in Kashmir – all were part of the routine.
Then one day, a senior asked out of the blue, “So, what do you think of Kashmiriyat?”
I was stumped. I knew lot of things from Kashmir were popular across the country. Kashmiri Hangul. Dum-aloo, Wazwan, Pulao, shawls, carpets, other handicrafts, and many such things. But, what was this “Kashmiriyat”? I had never heard of it!
But, here was a nerdy senior who was apparently reading beyond front & sports pages of the newspapers. Little did I know, as Kashmiri Pandits had joined the endangered Hangul in a race towards extinction, newspaper editorials had begun projecting this magic of “Kashmiriyat” as panacea.
In these 28 years though, the hoax of Kashmiriyat has been spun and continued to spread far and wide. Yet failed to deliver.
Kashmiriyat was brokered bliss, if any, paid for by the silence and subjugation of a microscopic minority, swallowing bitter cups of insults repeatedly over decades. If at all anything like Kashmiriyat existed, it was just the silent agony of submission of the Kashmiri Hindus over centuries in an attempt to survive in the valley.
As a minuscule minority in Kashmir, Hindus were largely a diffident lot – cautious not to get their majority ‘brethren’ on the wrong side. And, be silent when an insult was hurled at him for his religion or being an Indian at heart. Yes, there were good days, personal friendships, individual bonds. But, the moment those individuals merged into a crowd – the bonhomie vapourised.
A few days ago, when I saw this, I realised, all they need is to create a fable of “Pakistaniyat”.
It must have been Kashmiriyat, when Pandits’ homes in downtown Srinagar would get pelted with stones each time India and Pakistan met in a sporting arena. Be it a celebration of a Pakistani victory or anger over India winning, stones flew at our homes. I vividly remember when Indian hockey team lost miserably to Hassan Sardar’s onslaught in 1982 Asian games, our home in downtown received a shower.
Stones were pelted on KP homes to mourn Bhutto, when Zia executed him. And again to mourn Zia when he died. KP’s bore the brunt even during factional wars between Shers (Sheikh Abdullah supporters) and Bakras (Mirwaiz supporters).
Kashmiri Pandits were not just all-weather whipping boys to uphold Kashmiriyat, we apparently were quite international too. Since UN office was somewhat away from downtown, often Friday afternoon protests against some act or statement by US/Israel around Palestine or Iran would result in a token round of pelting on Hindu homes in the downtown. If not stones, abuses or taunts of “Dal’e Batta” (pulse eating weaklings who can’t match the might of the non-vegetarians) were commonplace. No one objected, lest Kashmiriyat would get tainted.
For decades KPs have lived with an annual insult, as the state observes July 13th as “Martyrs Day”. On July 13th 1931, Muslims mobs, supposedly out agitating for self-rule, went into a frenzy of communal violence and looting against minority Hindus. What should have been a “Black Day” is officially observed as Martyr’s day in Jammu & Kashmir. Calling arsonists, looters and criminals who rained hell on hapless Hindu minority that day as martyrs is another sample of classic “Kashmiriyat”.
In Feb 1986, some events of Jammu were used as an excuse to loot and ransack Hindus in valley. Hundreds of old and sacred shrines across Anantnag, Pulwana, Kupwara, Baramulla and Srinagar were destroyed, desecrated and razed to ground in another rousing tribute to Kashmiriyat.
Kashmiriyat formula was always simple. Kill a KP and become a hero; be it those killer mobs of 1931, or Bitta Karate and Yasin Maliks of recent times.
It must have been Kashmiriyat in literature, when on 4th January, 1990, a leading local Urdu newspaper Aftab published a press release from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen ordering all Kashmiri Pandits to leave the valley. Few days later, another Urdu newspaper Al-Safa issued this two day ultimatum on their front page.
“musalmano per zulam va sitam dalney ke zimedar Pandit do din ke andhar chale jayee”
And even few years later, newspapers in Srinagar openly carried hate speech against Kashmiri Pandits.
Not welcome to return – reality of Kashmiriyat
The state has since then been slowly and steadily obliterating all signs of our existence. In last decade or so, Hari Parbhat has become Koh-i-Maran, Shankaracharya hill is now Takht-e-Sulaiman and Anantnag is Islamabad. Talibanization of centuries old Hindu names of iconic places in the valley must be an intellectual tribute to “Kashmiriyat” as well.
Blatant refusal of the state and majority community in 2008 to even allow a mere 99 acres for Amarnath Yatra amenities was another tribute to Kashmiriyat. Followed up by curbs on Kausarnag yatra in 2014.
And now, they do not even try to feign Kashmiriyat anymore. The very people who beat their chests over sanctity of Article 370 and cried wolf over so-called attempts to “change demographics of Kashmir” are conniving today for settlement of illegal Burmese Rohingya and Bangladeshi muslim immigrants in J&K, and yet continue to outrage over even a mere suggestion of Kashmiri Pandit resettlement colonies in Kashmir.
Today, those who have lived through the nightmares of 1989-90, still recall those blood curdling chants of “Kasheer bann’e Pakistan! Batav ross’, Batnev saan” (Kashmir will be Pakistan, along with Hindu women, but without Hindu men), or still remember Nadimarg, Wandhama, Sangrampora – can only manage a wry smile when they hear “Kashmiriyat” romanticised in public discourse.
Yet, the hoax continues to live and thrive in lit-fests, TV debates and liberal Op-Eds.
Meanwhile, I wonder if my nerdy senior is still tracking how Kashmiriyat continues to thrive and swell.
