dont forgat khashmir 50 year

PARADISE ON FIRE

THE BLOODY 50-YEAR OLD DISPUTE OF JAMMU & KASHMIR LINGERS ON...

Please take a moment to pray for those innocents killed in the recent terrorist attacks in the WTC and elsewhere in the US - These atrocities have shaken all of us! We need peace and good sense to prevail to make this world a better place!

The State of Jammu & Kashmir is under brutal subjugation of 600,000+ Indian mercenaries, who are licensed to kill by the Indian Parliament!!!   60,000+ innocent people have been mercilessly butchered to death in the last 9 years in the occupied Kashmir.  There is 1 soldier for every 6 Kashmiris, majority of whom are old men, women and children!

Dear visitor,

You may be aware that it has been more than 50 testing years for our brethren in Kashmir. In the last 10 years or so, the hardships and miseries of Kashmiris have increased manifolds with the Indian State continuously upping the ante against a people asking for justice. Unfortunately as things stand, there seems no end to the miseries of those unfortunate Kashmiris whose only crime has been to ask for their right to self-determination.

The once beautiful valley is now a smouldering hell. The holocaust is being recreated in Kashmir almost every day. And it is a very unfortunate fact that the international media finds opportunity time after time to commemorate the 50 years old Jewish Holocaust, but hardly finds time to give due attention to the ongoing holocaust that is Kashmir.

My Kashmir Web Site started way back in 1994, when as a member of the External Relations Committee of Pakistan Students Association International, I worked on a campaign with some colleagues to bring Kashmir to the attention of people that mattered. Yes we did not have the money nor the control over the international media. But what we did have was something even more powerful, it was the voice of conscience and that of truth. And we had reckoned that the truth was out there, meeker in posture but perhaps bigger in numbers. Now that the greatest democratising tool, that is the Internet, was under our fingertips things had to change for the better.

The Kashmir Campaign of the PSAI did not last long. The devoted group that had formed the External Relations Committee soon disbanded with members graduating and getting lost somewhere in the realities of life, far removed from the virtues of idealism and yes also from the power of Internet. But then these days the Internet is getting mass acceptance. And many more thoughtful citizens of this planet are taking their due place in this mass medium of common people, and they are making themselves heard.

I hope that this Site slowly but steadily develops into a platform to bring such citizens together for the cause of Kashmiris which is indeed the cause of humanity. I invite you to express your views and suggest ways of highlighting the cause of Kashmiris around the world. I also invite you to spread the word around so as to help make this Web Site into an open forum of collaboration for those seeking to uphold the values of humanity.

Remember that just five minutes of your time can save five lives in Indian Occupied Kashmir. So please act now.

Best Regards and Happy Reading...

 

Some of my articles related to the Kashmir problem:

• Brief letter describing the Kashmir problem
• Detailed analysis of India's unbridled militarization, its attempt to usurp Kashmir, its impact on India-Pakistan relations in particular, and the South Asian region in general
• The myth of 'third option' - a firm rejoinder to Amanullah Khan of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front [July 20, 1995, Daily The Nation]

Important Documents

• United Nation Resolutions on Kashmir Dispute

Kashmir News from around the World:

• Kashmir News from the Cable News Network [CNN Interactive]
• Kashmir News from the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC Online]
• Kashmir News from HotNews Online
• Kashmir News compiled by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front

Other  Kashmir Sites:

• Violence as Policy in the Occupation of Kashmir - A thesis paper by Michael Kolodner
• Kashmir - Desolation or Peace: By Dr. Majid A. Siraj
• Official Web Site of the Kashmiri-American Council
• Official Web Site of the Kashmiri-Canadian Council
• Government of Pakistan Official Kashmir Page
• Gharib Hanif's Comprehensive Kashmir Site
• Kashmir Council for Human Rights
• Kashmir Research Site
• KRIS - Kashmir Information Service
• INCORE: Conflict Data Service - Kashmir
• Ahsen Ahmed's Kashmir Site
• Kashmir as a Disputed Territory
• PakSA's Azad Kashmir Site
• Kashmir Web Site on Pak Avenue

The fundamental problem between India and Pakistan is not that of Hindu-Muslim hatred. Not that these are the same people. No they are not. Hindus and Muslims are indeed fundamentally a very different people because of their religions, who have amalgamated perchance into each other by virtue of a shared history. The fundamental  problem in the Subcontinent is that of intolerance, mistrust, and a lack of pragmatic and humane vision for all.

Gandhi honestly attempted to provide the vision for a united Sub-continent. But he failed because he could not rescue himself from the narrow confines of his Hindu mentality. Jinnah was once the greatest ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, but above all he was a pragmatist too. He was pragmatic when he believed that the Sub-continent would fare far better united, and he was also pragmatic when he came to the conclusion that the Indian mindset was far from that of his higher ideals.

Pakistan failed to solve the fundamental problem of mutual intolerance, but perhaps it did manage in the end to protect most of the Muslim peoples from a dominant Hindu majority. After all that was its purpose in the first place and it served this purpose well. But the people of the Sub-continent must not forget what ills them. Their ills manifest clearly in the Hindu-Muslim clashes, in the Sunni-Shia clashes, in the Kashmir freedom struggle, in the Khalistan struggle, in the emergence of Bangladesh, and of course in the perennial India-Pakistan vendetta.

Kashmir was, is and will continue to be a flashpoint, and a potential source of nuclear conflict. Kashmir is central to the India-Pakistan dispute. India has failed to accept Pakistan as a nation-state, and Pakistan's worst fears have come true. India seeks to undo the very foundations of partition, that is, Muslim majority areas to Pakistan, and the Hindu majority to India. This obduracy and rigidity hasnt served any one. Not even the Indians.

We in Pakistan fervently hope that the Indians will someday accept Pakistan and its right to exist. Similarly we hope that they will let the process of partition, started some odd fifty years ago, come to its logical conclusion by allowing the Kashmiris their right to choose between India and Pakistan. Only when the Indians accept our right to exist and the right of Kashmiris to decide their future, with all sincerity, can peace return to this region. Till then our people shall continue to suffer our misfortunes.

If we seek emancipation for our future generations, now that our present generation has been given to poverty and squalor; we must rise above our prejudices and our "us vs. them" mentality. This self-stratification of the Sub-continental society is the unfortunate after-effect of the ancient Hindu caste system. The remnants of this stratified and mutually antagonistic society remain today to haunt us. It does not bid well for a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual area such as the Sub-continent to remain enslaved to such universally discredited notions with disastrous implications for us all.

What remains to be seen is how and whether we do manage to see the writing on the wall.

Let us all be blessed,

Peace!