Kashmiri parties hold Pak Govt responsible for terrorism in valley
London,
ANI

London, (ANI): Ahead of ‘Black Day’, Kashmir leaders have slammed Pakistan for using their land for proxy wars and terrorism.

“They (Kashmiris in Pakistan occupied Kashmir) are being used from last 15-16 years. The way they started the proxy war. They use the Kashmiris basically, not only Kashmiris, all from the Pakistani jails actually.

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Those people in the jail bring them out and put them in the name of Jihad and we can’t call them Jihad,” Kashmir National Party Chairman Abbas Butt said at a conference here.

‘Black Day’ is observed on October 22, the day Pakistani tribals raided Kashmir.

The leaders of the parties who attended the conference expressed concern over the presence of Chinese troops in the region.

“Ten thousand army is here. They are here to stay. Previously they used to come to complete various projects and they used to go back. This time they are taking part in local politics. They are encouraging politicians and playing role in society. They are building proper houses, which indicates they are going to stay. What the Pakistan government is doing is they are leasing out different areas to Chinese for exploration,” said KNP spokesperson Shabir Choudhry.

The KNP has also decided to hold a public rally and a meeting in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

Sardar Shoukath Ali Kashmiri, the Chairman of the United Kashmiri People National Party, who has been living in exile in Geneva for the last decade said that the Pakistani government is supporting Kashmir valley based terror camps.

“All these organisations have no locus standi, even they have not any representation … because people of Pakistan not actually give them any kind of mandate like Jamat-e-Islami and Lashkar-e-Toiba LeT. They are actually isolated but they have big support from the state institutions,” he said. (ANI)

India Snubs OIC’S kashmir Resolution

ANI

NEW DELHI – India has rebuffed OIC resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir passed by 36th session of the Council of Ministers in Damascus, Syria recently.

The 57-member grouping has made a direct reference to the last year Amarnath land row in Jammu and Kashmir.

A statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs said: “We note with regret that the OIC has chosen to comment on India’s internal affairs during the 36th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers held in Syria on 23rd – 25th May 2009. The OIC has no locus standi on India’s internal affairs”.

The OIC in its resolution expressed concern over use of force against the economic blockade during the Amarnath land row agitation and have also regretted that following the Mumbai incident Indian government have put a pause on the composite dialogue.

The Islamic conglomerate also urged India to resume composite dialogue.

India also took umbrage over OIC calling catastrophic 26/11 Mumbai attack as merely an incident.

The MEA statement said: “We also note with dismay that in the resolution adopted, the terrorist attack on Mumbai in November, 2008, has been referred to as a mere “incident.”

For almost two decades, the OIC has been has been advocating the issue of self-determination and resolution of Kashmir in accordance with the UN resolutions of 1948 and 1949, but this time it went a step further by directly referring to the Amarnath Land row in its resolutions.

Pakistan, which is a member of this group, has vociferously raised issues pertaining to Kashmir at this forum. By Naveen Kapoor (ANI)

Problem having its Roots in Religious Fanaticism

By Narender Sehgal

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  The basis of Kashmir problem is neither economic backwardness nor political suffocation. Its roots are in the froth of religious fanaticism which are being nourished both by India and Pakistan.
   

As a result of our aimless and weak policies, Kashmiri youths have, with open support from Pakistan, taken up the spears for the Islamic Jehad. The programme of Islamisation in Kashmir, which is on in Kashmir for the last several years, is being given final shape. The mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits has left the Valley Hinduless. Conspiracies for removing all the Indian ymbols in Kashmir are being hatched. Temples have been destroyed. The ancient names of towns and roads have been changed and Muslim names have been given to them. The Indira Gandhi airport has become now Mohamad Ali Jinnah airport. “Aslam alekum” has replaced Namaskar on Srinagar Doordarshan. Watches have Pakistan timings. People take pride in burning of the Constitution of India and the Indian flag. Sanskrit words are being deleted from the Kashmiri language and are being replaced by Arabic words. The first phase of total indepedence for Kashmir was to oust Hindus from the Valley. Success has been achieved in this respect. The second phase was to destabilise and paralyse the state administration in which also success has been attained. Now the third process of guerrilla attacks on the Army are being undertaken to complete the third phase. Terrorists rule Kashmir these days.The intellecutals deserve pity because they avoid standing on the graund of reality by putting on the mask of so called secularism when they treat the grave situation in Kashmir as a result of economic backwardness and political suffocation. If they stop playing in their make-believe world and start search for realism, the real face of the problem will become as clear as the daylight. There is neither anything like poverty or political discrimination in Kashmir. The entire trouble is the product of religious fanaticism. The reality is that after independence our rulers, in the intoxication of appeasement, gave more political and economic facilities to Kashmir than to any other state. Not only this: they made available all facilities and amenities to the Kashmir valley at the cost of the rights of the people of the two other regions of the State, Jammu and Ladakh. Under the umbrella of Article 370 whatever maximum political and economic facilities were made available to Kashmir strengthened and deepended religious fundamentalism of Kashmiri youths.

Prosperous Kashmiri Muslims

Ignoring the population ratio, the Assembly seats in the Valley are more than what it is in the Jammu region. There is majority of Kashmiris in the Government services and hitherto, only a Kashmiri Muslim has remained the Chief Minister of the State. The number of ministers in the council of ministers is more from the Valley. Despite the fact that Kashmir has been considered the centre for political activities, the talk of political suffocation being the root cause of the current problem is bankruptcy of wisdom.

As far as the area is concerned, Kashmir Valley is one eighth of the total area of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. But the major share of the State’s revenue and the Central assistance is being spent on Kashmir. The 95 per cent of the budget of the Tourism Department is spent on Kashmir. The headquarters of all the 11 State Corporations are in Srinagar. Between 33 and 35 senior Government officers, secretaries, are from Kashmir. It is so because the population of Muslims is more in Kashmir. The height of discrimination became evident when veterinary hospital and college, Dental care centre, artificial limb centre, which were allotted for Jammu, were set up in Kashmir. All major industries including cement factory, HMT watch factory, telephone factory, television unit, Government press, textile industry etc. are being developed in Kashmir. Medical college, Engineeringcollege, Agricultural University and other educational institutions are in Kashmir. Major share of the State budget is being spent in Kashmir. Out of 2876 villages in Kashmir 2086 villages have been connected with main roads. More than 70 per cent seats in Srinagar Medical college are given to the Muslim students. It may be mentioned here that the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences at Soura in Srinagar has become a centre for militants. The Kashmir University and the Regional Engineering College in Srinagar have become centres for the militants because of the majority of Muslim students. As a result of liberal financial assistance from the centre and on account of petro-dollars from the Arab world, people of Kashmir have become more prosperous and rich than people in rest of India. Even the Government figures reveal that the per capita income in Kashmir is higher than any area in the country, except for Delhi and Bombay. Who can convince our intellectuals and politicians that in comparison to Kashmir there is major economic backwardness in Jammu and Ladakh regions? So far as political rights are cancerned these two regions live in suffocation. Had political injustice and economic backwardness been the cause for terrorism, the Jammu and Ladakh regions should have witnessed it much before it took roots in Kashmir. Those who in their mental exercise try to trace the genesis of the problem to economic backwardness should stop such exercise when Jagmohan’s suggestion for absorbing Kashmiri youths in a separate battalion ofthe BSF and for appointing 5,000 educated yauths as Government teachers was turned down on the plea that “we do not want it, we want an independent Islamic republic”. Experience has made it clear that the more money Government of India spends in Kashmir, the more religious fanaticism and exploitation are witnessed in Kashmir.

A former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Junejo, had told the National Assembly, while speaking on the Kashmir issue that the riches of Kashmiri Muslims wauld prove helpful for Pakistan. This fact now stands established that the pace of Islamisation increased because of wealth in Kashmir. It is because of riches that a mosque on the pattern of Mecca was built in Srinagar. Fundamentalists from outside the state have been posted on top posts in Government institutions. In place of Sanskritised Kashmiri language, Persanised Urdu has been made the official language. Money has played an important role in destroying fully the old links with India and the result is that nobody talks about the world famous Kashyap Rishi, Avantivarman, Lalitaditya and Kalhana. Mohammad Iqbal of Pakistan is considered there a great philosopher. India is now considered a foreign nation in Kashmir. The Indian Army has to listen to the insulting slogan of “Indian dogs, go back.” The suspected leaders like Mufti Syed and Dr. Farooq Abdullah keep on shedding crocodile tears over the dreadful situation in Kashmir when in the initial stages they too had favoured Islamisation and even today they are supporters of separate political existence in the Valley. Outwardly they feign support for India’s integrity and unity.

Incitement to religious fanaticism

Whatever is happening in Kashmir, it is not an ordinary reaction, a hartal or satyagrah but a revolt based on separatism. It is an anti-national volcano born out of Islamic fundamentalism which the fundamentalist organisations have, through conspiracies during the last 45 years, promoted it. In the schools run by Jamait-e-Islami boys were taught the lessons on fundamentalism and separatism. In the name of propagation of Islam a powerful campaign was launched in the mosques against the Indian nationalism. All these religious activities and campaigns have received support from the successive state Governments. The support of the state administration was fully made available.

At the time of the partition of India Maharaja Hari Singh finalised Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India and Sheikh Abdullah assumed power. Soon after his assumption of power Sheikh Abdullah’s first speech in Lal Chowk was itself the beginning of communal fundamentalism in Kashmir. He kept on inciting religious fanaticism by repeating the Kalima in his speech. He had said in a loud voice “We have picked up the crown frorn the dust. Whether we accede to India or to Pakistan, it is a secondary matter. We have to first complete our independence”. What does complete independence mean ? At the time of their accession 600 states did not say anything like this. What is the purpose of this complete independence when lhe accession of the State with India has been finalised ? It was evident that Sheikh Abdullah was preparing people of the Muslim majority Kashmir for launching a “liberation struggle”. During his detention in Delhi in 1965 Sheikh Abdullah had said: “The Muslim who becomes a member of the Congress will dig his grave. He will dig the grave not only for himself but for his family and his nation”. Since the Congress is an Indian political party, therefore he used to talk about the digging of the grave in order to convey that Muslims are non-Indians and they should remain so. The attempt to exploit Muslims during the time of Sheikh Abdullah, his son. Farooq, and his son-in-law, Gulshah, was part of the same conspiracy.

The Education Minister Sohrawardhy, in the Council of Ministers headed by Dr. Farooq Abdullah, had said, during the Republic Day function at Doda, “peace and order in Jammu and Kashmir rest on the tips of shoes of Muslims and here Delhi’s dictation and orders cannot run”. The same Sohrawardhy had told the Legislative Council that “My party accepted Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India to carry out Islamisation of entire India with Kashmir as the base”. The Muslim United Front leader of Anantnag, Qazi Nissar, who was dubbed as Bhindranwale of Kashmir, and his colleagues had openly said they wanted freedom (Islamistan) and Nizame Mustafa (Islamic rule). When the then Prime Minister of India had dubbed the Front activists as pro-Pakistani, Qazi Nissar got-further encouragement to say “Let the Prime Minister listen that it is not only the Front but 41 lakh people of Kashmir who receive guidance from Pakistan”. In 1986 one teacher of Biology, Mushtaq Ahmed, in a Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Kishtwar, indulged in activities which confirmed reports of misuse of schools for giving a practical shape to the on- going programme of Islamisation. During the prayer time he would force Hindu girls to cover their head with scarf as per the Islamic practice, as it is not India here.

The 20-month rule of Gulshah, son-in-law of Sheikh Abdullah, was fruitful period for pro-Pak elements. By constructing a mosque in the Civil Secretariat in Srinagar he gave a display of his bigotry. During his rule 46 temples were destroyed and a fundamentalist organisation like Jamait-e-Islami was given full administrative facilities. After the dismissal of his Government, Gulshah revived the old National Conference and called upon people in Kashmir to launch a struggle for the establishment of Islamic state.

As a result of guidance and support from the pro-Pak and fanatic fundamentalists, Jamait-e-Islami succeeded in running 11,000 Urdu and Arabic schools in Kashmir where over 30,000 Molvis and over one lakh students were being given anti-India indoctrinatian in the name of Islamic education. There were 2500 mosques in Kashmir in 1947 and their number rose to 15,000 in l992. There is domination of Aligarh University trained teachers in Government schools and colleges in Kashmir. It was done under a plan and the result of such evil schemes is the Kashmir of today. About l00 militant outfits are engaged in the struggle these days. There can be differences among them on the question of accession to Pakistan or to remain independent but all of them are united against India. They do not want to live in India and their names and style of functioning are of Irani, Afghani and Arabic traditions.

Goal of Nizame Mustaffa and conspiracy of Jamait-e-Islami

Whatever is happening in Kashmir these days, it is being done in the name and aim of Islam and Nizame Mustaffa. Its principle is based on the assumption that that system is supreme which is decided by Hazrat Mohammad in which Quran and Muslims are above all. Since Kashmir is a Muslim majority area, therefore, there should be establishment of Nizame Mustaffa which means that in any Muslim dominated area the political power should be based on the Islamic principles.

In order to achieve the above mentioned political aim, Ghulam Ahmed Ahar, established Jamait-e-Islami at Shopian, South Kashmir, in 1942. The ideas of this party, which has made secularism, socialism, Brahmin imperialism as the base for its opposition, are in line with the ideas and the policies of Jamait-e-Islami in Pakistan. This organisation has organised a cadre of disciplined youths in order to mould the life-style of Kashmiri Muslims according to the Shariat. Jamait-e-Islami hich is in favour of Kashmir’s accession with Pakistan, has achieved unique success in islamisation of politics in Kashmir. Its leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has said that the “politics of secularism and socialism is quite irrelevant. No Muslim should consider socialism and secularism as his ideal.”

A book “Muqdama-e-Ilaq” (Urdu), published by Jamait-e-Islami gives an account of Jamaat’s political aims. It says “you, people of Kashmiri Muslim republic, how long will you count yourself in the easily prepared list of slaves ? These cinema halls, casinos, liquor shops in every lane, these schools and colleges, these centres in free society where men and women live together unahamedly, all these indicate that your cultural tradition is being snatched from you. Who has thrown into dust the Taj Mahal of your civilisation ? Who has eclipsed your conscience ? Who has harmed your faith and religion ? How long will you sleep ? How long will you be a victim of selfish politics of others ? How long will you be a victim of the philosophy of atheism and agnosticism ? Are you waiting for the day when your mosques will be converted into places of atheism and the pages of Quran will be used for cleaning the dirt, as it happened in Afghanistan ? Your enemy is determined to finish your faith and identity. He is using his Army and arms for it. You are faced with a heartless power whose Brahmin bent of mind creates new problems for you”.

Jamait-e-Islami converted mosques into pewerful centres for its activities. The mosques are being used for making a congregation a victim of bigotry. The entire literarture is being made available to the subversives in these mosques. The religious festivals in these religious places are being used for preparing Muslims for Jehad. In reality, the politics in Kashmir has never remained free from the influence of the mosques. According to Jamait-e-Islami official organ, “During the Dogra rule, whatever voice was raised received support from the Muslim Conference, even though the majority of demands pertained to the people of the state. Therefore, during any political ups and downs the movement remained confined to Jamia Masjid, Khankai Moulla and Hazratbal”.

Jamait-e-Islami has, on a war footing, launched moves for making Kashmiri youths pro-Pakistan and anti-India. On the political level it has launched a movement for Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan. In the social field it opposes every programme connected with family planning. They treat every programme on family welfare as part of the conspiracy of the Indians for reducing the Muslim population and, therefore, accceptance of this programme is against the tenets of Islam. Students in Jamait-e-Islami run schools are taught: “We are Kashmiris and our country is Kashmir. It is surrounded by India, China and Iran”. In the book prescribed for the primary class there is no mention about Pakistan. It means that Pakistan is not a foreign country. India, China and Iran are foreign countries. It also means that Kashmir will either remain independent or accede to Pakistan but there will be no relation with India. There has been domination of Jamait-e-Islami on even the Muslim political forces belonging to the National Conference.

Religion and mosque made base for politics

In reality, in the context of the current Kashmir problem it becomes clear that both the National Conference and Jamait-e-Islami are bound by the same goal. Now even the people belonging to the National Conference have adopted pro-Pak and anti-India attitude. Leaders of the National Conference and Jamait-e-Islami have now started a compaign saying that after Kashmir’s accession with Pakistan job opportunities for Muslims would increase. The same Geelani Sahib is suggesting and blessing the struggle launched by Kashmiri youths and tells them that Kashmiri boys are achieving martyrdom. And the Indian Army cannot enslave Kashmir for a longer time now. In fact right from the beginning politics in Kashmir has remained under the eclipse and influence of religious fanaticism. The type of politics based on religion, which Sheikh Abdullah, Sadiq, Farooq and Gulshah promoted and developed in Kashmir, is being followed and copied by the youths these days.

From the loudspeakers, fitted in hundreds of mosques, the same thing is being repeated which had been said by Sheikh Abdullah and National Conference leaders.

When during the 1987 elections the Chief of Jamait-e- Islami, Dr. Qazi Nissar, received opposition to his bid to take advantage of his religious position he had told Hindustan Times, in an interview: “Who taught us all this ? What else Sheikh Abdullah was doing in his life ? Did he not deliver important political speeches from the Hazratbal shrine ? Have the National Conference workers forgotten the way they had sought votes while carrying the holy Quran in their hands during the 1977 and 1983 elections ?

The Islamic religious leaders had given full freedom for making religion and mosque as the base for politics. These religious places did not remain confined to only religious and political activities. These were converted to the centres for violent anti-India and subversive activities.

The misuse of religious places Act is not in force in Kashmir. To prevent misuse of religious places the Indian Parliament adopted a law in 1988 which was enforced in the entire country except Jammu and Kashmir which has a special status and where the law was fully violated. The approval of the State Assembly was necessary for extending this Act to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370. This approval was not made available and this law could not cross the Lakhanpur barrier.

In fact the need of this law was in Jammu and Kashmir. The way mosques are being misused for political activities is not being done elsewhere. It is in the same mosques in Kashmir that people are incited by dubbing Indian democracy, secularism and socialism as anti-Islam. After every Friday prayers, Mullas and Molvis indulge in open campaign for religious bigotry and Mullaism. If one listens to these speeches, one does not believe whether one is in India or in Pakistan. Nobody has stopped them from resarting to such an anti-India campaign. Can it be construed that non-enforcement of the misuse of religious places Act was done to facilitate the misuse of religious places in Kashmir ? Does it not support the growing religious fanaticism in Jammu and Kashmir ? On one hand the Government of India is propagating its secularism by adopting a law for delinking temples and Gurdwaras from politics, and on the other hand it keeps mosques in Jammu and Kashmir away from this Law in order to allow them to be misused for anti-national activities.

How far will it be proper to call the Government nationalist which provides constitutional assistance to terrorists and foreign elements for carrying out anti-national activities. Nobody can stop the destruction of the country when the rulers themselves get engaged in the politics of appeasement and vote catching devices by sidelining the country’s constitution, country’s integrity, unity of the society and religious tolerance like national values. Kashmir has presented a picture of this destruction.

Shahi Imam in Anantnag

Those fundamentalist leaders, who, under the Misuse of Religious Places Act, shirk in saying anything, should come to the Kashmir Valley, which is enjoying a special status, to give vent to their feelings. On April 8, 1988 Shahi Imam of Jamia Masjid, Delhi, delivered a speech after a Friday prayer congregation in a mosque in Anantnag. He blew up all the laws and practices of the Constitution of India by his bigotry. The congregated Kashmiri Muslims were advised to take up arms in the name of Jehad. He even blessed the birth right of Kashmiris to have an Islamic state while creating a pro-Pakistan atmosphere. While supporting the Muslim youhts, fight for their rights, Imam Sahib equated them with true Muslims meaning thereby that a true Muslim is he who is anti-India, who treats Islam higher than the nation and who snap their ties with the country’s culture, history and traditions.

Separatist actvities extended to Leh-Ladakh

The current problem in Kashmir is a reflection of the same religious fanaticism. The same fanaticism is being propagated in Ladakh region. The conspiracy for converting Hindu Buddhists to Islam is being hatched with the support of the state administration. People in Jammu and Ladakh are facing great difficulties because of the Muslim domination in the State machinery. Under a plan both these regions have been kept economically backward. A well planned strategy is being carried out to increase the population of Muslims in these two regions. To convere these two region into the Kashmir valley a Pak-sponsored conspiracy is being run with the assistance of Mullahs, Molvis and majority political leaders.

The Jammu and Kashmir Government has given a free hand to the Muslims to finish the local civilisation of Ladakh. There will be no law to ban their speeches and activities. On the other hand the Government does not spend even a penny on the protection of ancient art and paintings and religious places in Leh and Ladakh. Even the Buddhist language has been made a victim of the fanatic rulers. There is arrangement for teaching of Buddhist language in only 32 out of 252 educational institutions in the province. There is not a single Degree college in the region. The result is that people of Ladakh are deprived of higher education and consequently they do not get Government jobs. Even the agriculture is being deliberately destroyed. The conspiracy for converting the poor Buddhist to Islam is being carried out after keeping the people economically backward.

In order to raise a voice against the discrimination of Ladakh, people have formed an organisation called Ladakh Buddhist Council. The Council has presented its ideas and aims before the entire country in the form of demands. According to the Council, if Ladakh was discriminated against during the 45 years of independence, but after Sheikh Abdullah resumed power in 1975, Ladakh was deliberately neglected. Under a political intrigue Leh and Kargil were reorganised into two districts. By separating Kargil from Leh, Sheikh Abdullah wanted to remind the people of Kargil, who are mostly Shia Muslims, that in the Islamic setup, which he was trying to enforce in the state, historical and cultural ties had no significance. With Dr. Farooq Abdullah coming to power, the Ladakh Affairs Department became almost defunct.

The Central Government paid no attention towards these difficulties of the Buddhist society. Had such problems confronted the Muslim society, the Congress leaders would have rushed to Ladakh many times, because it would have meant a major issue pertaining to the Muslim vote bank. Since the Buddhist vote bank has no importance in the country, Ladakh Buddhists continue to suffer. Their voice too is feeble in the Lok Sabha because there is only one parliamentary seat in Ladakh. In reality Muslims as a united vote bank has taken full advantage of the policy of appeasement of the Congress. This is the sole reason for domination of Jammu and Ladakh by the Kashmiri Muslim society. It is because of this political weakness that Ladakhis’ economic condition is pitiable. As a result of it, Mullas, Molvis of Kashmir and the political leaders who have come under their influence have taken full advantage of the poverty of the Ladakhis. Rich Kashmiri Muslims have established their business in Ladakh due to several concessions from the State Government. Poverty may become a curse in Ladakh. This curse will facilitate religious conversion which had delinked Kashmir from the main national path and placed it in the hands of Pakistan. It may be mentioned here that Pakistan itself is the creation of a prolonged spell of religious conversion in India.

The Ladakh Council leaders have in their memorandum, talked about the need for isaving the Buddhists from the dangers of subversive politics based an religious conversion. After having felt secured by Article 370, Kashmiris have faced their guns on the Buddhists with the ultimate aim of converting them to Islam. The Kashmiri Muslim-dominated State Government is encouraging conversion of Buddhists to Islam. Its aim is to reduce the Buddhist population in comparison to Muslims. In the recent years the rate of conversion has increased. Fundamentalists receive support from the State Government for carrging out this merciless conversion. With the help of money and powerful propapanda several hundred Buddhist girls have been converted to Islam. Behind this campaign for religious conversion is the idea of Islamisation of Ladakh and uniting the Valley on the basis of the politics of separatism and subversion.

The then Governor of the state, Jagmohan, had given a serious thought to the problems of Ladakh and had formulated and started many schemes but the Congress rulers in Delhi think that their playing vote chess on the basis of their policy of appeasement is the biggest contribution of their life. Congressmen, who had left the party, were unsble to give up their tradition. Therefore, Jagmohan too was made a victim of the chess moves of appeasement and vote. After relinquishing his post, Ladakh again witnessed the same politics of subversion. The practice of converting the innocent Buddhists to Islam has been initiated again. Kashmiri Muslims purchase land and other property in Ladakh and in the same way the conspiracy of increasing the Muslim population in Jammu is underway. It means Muslims of Kashmir can settle in Jammu and Ladakh but Hindus from Jammu and Ladakh cannot think of doing the same in Kashmir. The condition of Jammu and Kashmir state and the Hindu society is the result of the policy of appeasement of Muslims of the Congress politics.

Understanding of fundamentalism in the world context

The growth of fundamentalism in Kashmir cannot be understood only by standing on the political plank of Kashmir. In order to understand it, it is necessary to understand the one type of Muslim bent of mind in the world. Kashmir’s religious fanaticism is a part of that international religious fanaticism the political goal of which is to convert the entire world into “Darul Islam” for the purpose of establishing Islamic rule (Nizame Mustaffa). This very goal does not allow Muslims to get linked with the soil af any country. The terrorists and separatist Peoples’ League supremo, Shabir Shah has explained the aim of terrorism in Kashmir through a poster.

According to him, “the enemies of Islam are uniting to defeat it on every front. The occupation of Kashmir is one such example. But now the Kashmir nation has awakened through encouragement and guidance from Islam. The sun of the Islamic revolution is rising. The faithfuls of Mohammad and the Quran should now come forward and make efforts for achieving freedom from India. The will of God is our guide, Quran is our constitution, Jehad is our policy and martyrdom is our wish”.

The basic society and the rulers of those countries, where Muslims are settled, are highly worried over unity and geographical integrity of their countries. It is so because Shabir Shah’s sun of revolution will rise everywhere. Wherever this sun rises, there the “nation” will get awakened and ultimately delinked from that country. Therefore, every country in the world has been forced to think of ways of protection against the heat of this “sun”. The problem of Muslim separatism is not confined only to Kashmir but is becoming a world problem. The big countries like England, Russia and China too have started devising ways for protecting themselves against dangers of the Muslim invasion on their national existence. The bigotry based on the foundation stone of separatism is so strong that even the powerful imperialists have not been able to break it. The very England which administered the poison of separatism in India for balkanising it has been scared now by the same Muslim separatism. The sins committed by England in India have disturbed the sleep of the rulers of England.

Now laws are being framed in England under which Muslims there cannot get separated from the traditions, culture and historical base of England. It will be proper to examine the words of one Britisher in the British embassy in Delhi in the context of the current problem in Kashmir. He said ‘It seems that the Muslim separatism is creating a danger for the integrity of Great Britain. Britain’s Commission on Racial Equality has expressed concern over the call of pro-Iranian Muslim leaders for establishment of a separate Muslim Parliament and non-regional Islamic state in Britain. The Director of the Muslim Institute, Dr. Siddiqi, has, in his Muslim Declaration paper, given an outline of his plan in which he has said that the ‘British style of living is not only unislamic but also against Islam’. Therefore, convert the Britishers to Islam. The British law is anti-God. It is the duty of 20 lakh Muslims here to establish a separate Muslim parliament and non-regional Islamic state. ‘If this separatist movement and attitude are not crushed’, establishment of an Islamic state on the soil of Britain cannot be stopped”.

The MusIim bent of mind which England has now understood, India has been fighting against this attitude for the last 1300 years. Every country in the world has decided to fight this mental attitude. China too has given its thought to it. In the Kiang area of China Muslim separatism is taking shape under the leadership of one Muslim leader, Abul Qasim. Money, Molvis and Mullahs are coming from outside for assisting the Muslim leaders in this region. They have opened schools upto the village level where the poison of separatism is being inculcated among the children. But the Government there has come to know of it. A law has been enforced there under which “no new mosque can be built and no outsider will be permitted or given freedom to propagate Islam”. The Chinese clever leadership has decided to weed out the roots of this conspiracy of establishing an Islamic state.

The Kashmir problem too is a part of the above mentioned Muslim conspiracy. But it is a matter of regret that when in many countries in the world an attitude for fighting it jointly is developing, in India the Congressmen and those who have left the Congress have not been able to understand it. It will be proper to say that the politics of vote based on the Muslim appeasement does not allow them to understand it. It is not yet known how many partitions will be carried out by the Congress which is responsible for the partition in 1947. Taking advantage of the weak mind and opportunism of the ruling Congressmen, Sheikh Abdullah succeeded in lighting the spark of separatism which now has turped into flames in the Kashmir valley. And now a days many Muslim groups are achieving success, with the help of Pakistan, in finishing “India” from Kashmir.

Fanaticism from Mohd. Bin Qasim to Farooq

The separatist organisation and their Pakistani patrons know it well that their aim cannot be fulfilled without finishing the symbol of Indianness in Kashmir, temples, monasteries, Hindu literature and the Hindus. Their activities are confined to the Islamisation of India and establishment of Islamic state. This is part of the same fanaticism the seeds of which had been sown by Mohd. Bin Qasim, Mohd. Gaznavi, Mohd. Gouri, Babar, Tamur, Aurangzeb and Ahmed Shah Abdali. This Kashmiri fanaticism is the same which partitioned India in 1947. It means the areas which witnessed Muslim majority will get delinked from India. The trend from Darul Harb to Darul Islam is giving birth to such a great conspiracy which will gradually grip the remaining part of India. But our political leaders, especially the central Government, are conscience sellers sitting cross legged and tolerating all this so that they do not lose the Muslim vote bank. What more mean instance of lack of initative can be there ?

Those foolish people who try to find political and economic reasons behind the Kashmir problem should be asked as to what came out of their 41-year long political process leaving aside the three-year Governor’s rule. If the economic backwardness could not be removed even with the central assistance of Rs. 80,000 crores, given in the name of development, then in whose pockets the money has gone ? The entire drama of destruction took place in front of our eyes which has brought the country on the brink of disaster but we have not been able to pull our mental attitude out of the policy of appeasement. In this context one question can be asked to the militants. If they find that the Muslims, who are in majority in Kashmir, have the right to organise religious upheaval, what will happen if people, who are in majority in rest of the country, start exercising the same right ?

It is highly unfortunate that our rulers have made Muslims simply a thing of vote. Having got blind in the personal interest of the vote bank these leaders have not made any attempt at bringing Muslims to the national mainstream. Nobody made them understand that the ancestors of Muslims and Hindus in India were the same and Muslims had the same right on the country’s civilisation, culture, history the Hindus have. They were not made to understand that changing the mode of worship or religion does not change the ancestry. The blood of Muslims is the blood of India. They are also an inseparable part of the soil of this country.

Therefore, the search for the settlement of the Kashmir problem can be initiated while standing on the plank of nationalism and patriotism. Any other effort for finding a solution will prove futile.

Living under the shadow of Article 370
Sunil Fotedar, Subodh Atal and Lalit Koul

There have been numerous suggestions that the Indian government needs to grant ’special powers’ to the state of Jammu and Kashmir to defuse the ‘nuclear flashpoint’. What ’special powers’ are left to be doled out to the state government? It already has sufficient autonomy under Article 370 to run roughshod over minority rights and keep them segregated from the rest of India five decades after Partition. The RSS has recently demanded abrogation of Article 370.

So what is this Article 370? A detailed analysis is necessary as a new debate heats up about the status of the state within the Indian nation.

In the Beginning: Article 370 Lays the Roots
Article 370 is  a special clause in Indian Constitution, a prize that was extracted out of India in 1950  by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah for throwing his lot with India, after lengthy negotiations with Indian leaders. Article 370 made Jammu and Kashmir a country within a country, with its own flag, emblem, constitution and Sadr-i-Riyasat (Prime Minister). The architect of the Indian Constitution, Dr. Ambedkar, opposed granting Article 370 but it was on India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s insistence and personal guarantee that it was granted to the state.

This Article specified that except for Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communications, the Indian Parliament needed the State Government’s concurrence for applying such laws to Jammu and Kashmir as did not fall under the heads of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communications. Parliamentary laws pertaining to these three subjects required consultation with the J&K State Government. Over the years, this procedure was followed to bring the state under the purview of Article 356, the Supreme Court, the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General, thus providing some level of order in the state. However, much else was left to the whim of the state rulers.

Thus the state’s residents lived under a separate set of laws, including those related to citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights, as compared to other Indians. An interim arrangement, the Constituent Assembly, had been convened to run the state while considering the ratification of the Instrument of Accession and framing the constitution. That Article 370 was a temporary arrangement is evident from its wording, which allows its abrogation by the President of India in consultation with the now long-defunct Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly was dissolved in 1957 prior to the first State Assembly elections and after it ratified the state’s accession to India and framed the state’s constitution adopted on 17^th November and coming into full force from 26^th January 1957.

The trouble began even before as Article 370 was promulgated, and the omens that were seen in 1951 presaged the damage half a century of Article 370 would do. The Kashmiri Muslim-dominated National Conference opposed the extension of India’s citizenship laws, fundamental rights and related legal rights to the state. They also began to question the finality of the accession of the state to India. Hindus in Jammu rose up in protest in a movement known as the Praja Parishad agitation. The Praja Parishad movement strongly opposed any moves towards independence of the state. Its slogan was ‘Ek Vidhan, Ek Nishan, Ek Pradhan’ (One Constitution, One flag, and One President).

The National Conference led by Sheikh Abdullah used the leeway granted to it by India to grab all the seats of the Constituent Assembly, squeezing out representatives of Jammu and Ladakh, and those of Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs. The Praja Parishad candidates in Jammu found their election papers rejected before the election, and appealed to Indian leaders including Nehru to set up an enquiry into the election conduct and to prevent the state administration from openly aiding the National Conference candidates. The Indian leadership, perhaps mindful of the unstable situation in the state, sided with the National Conference. The already narrow base of the National Conference among minorities was further eroded due to the manner in which the elections were conducted to the Constituent Assembly. The conditions set the stage for the intensification of the Praja Parishad agitation and the open communalization of the state. In the end the misgivings of non-Muslims and residents of Jammu and Ladakh were ignored.

Thus Article 370 and other crucial constitutional issues were effectively negotiated ignoring the wishes of nearly half of the state’s population which was non-Muslim, or from outside the valley. Article 370 was designed to maintain the separate character of valley Muslims at the expense of all other groups in the state, and at the expense of the stability and future of the subcontinent.

The Fruits of Article 370: Political and Socio-Economic Discrimination against Hindus
Religious oppression of Kashmiri Hindus (also known as Kashmiri Pandits and embodying a distinct character, culture and historic tradition), and forced conversions, had already dwindled the number of these original inhabitants of Kashmir valley to about 800,000 by 1947. After 1947, while the rest of India enjoyed the fruits of secular independence and religious equality, Kashmir valley was gradually and steadily converted into a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, a mini-Afghanistan. The Kashmiri Hindus, the largest minority in the valley and its original heirs, were clearly an impediment to this transformation of the valley. Every possible mean was employed by the outwardly secular National Conference to exclude Hindus from society, politics and the economy, and the primary tool used was Article 370.

With constitutional protections of India for minorities not applicable or constrained due to Article 370, Hindus were eliminated from the economic organization of the State, its government and administration, and relegated to a condition of abject servitude within a year after the exit of Maharajah Hari Singh. After 1957, when the Constituent Assembly gave way to the state legislative assembly, the National Conference government perpetually gerrymandered electoral districting to ensure a heavy weightage in favor of Kashmir versus Jammu and Ladakh. Within Kashmir, pockets of Hindu majority were combined with Muslim majority districts so that no Kashmiri Hindu was ever elected to the assembly.

The political hegemony quickly filtered down to the administrative level. The rapid process of summary removal of the Hindus from the State services was initiated on the pretext of communal imbalances in the services. The admissions of Kashmiri Hindus to various academic institutions, were restricted to a negligible 2-8 percent of the total admissions made every year. In effect, an unprecedented and unfair affirmative action program was instituted for the majority in the state. The total domination of Kashmiri Muslims extended to the media, with over 95% of the outlets controlled by them and used heavily for propagation of fundamentalism and secessionism. Again, due to the umbrella of Article 370, the Kashmiri Muslims could dominate all spheres of life in the state with impunity. The minorities had no recourse to many fundamental rights to equality and due process available in the rest of India. In fact in its latest demand of autonomy passed in a resolution by the state assembly in 2000, the state’s Muslim leaders have again asked for a different set of fundamental rights in what may be a renewed attempt to perpetuate discrimination and oppression of the state’s minorities.

The Fruits of Article 370: The State Subject Law
Taking full advantage of Article 370, the National Conference government, first led by Sheikh Abdullah, then by others, perpetuated the archaic, exclusionary and highly discriminatory rule known as the State Subject law. In 1890, the then Maharajah had instituted a law disallowing outsiders from owning land and property in the state. This law was further strengthened in 1927. The law made sense in those days, since it was meant to prevent the colonial British from establishing their presence in the state.

In 1947 and later, however, this rule has been used with surgical precision by the National Conference governments to gradually and decisively eradicate the Kashmiri Hindu population. Many of this community had already moved out in the decades and centuries before 1947, and now with full religious and political freedom and opportunities in the rest of India contrasting with severe oppression in the valley, many Kashmiri Hindus, especially young men, started moving out of the valley.

The State Subject law has a unique feature to it that acted as a double pincer in squeezing out a majority of the Pandit population. Women who marry men (including those who are Kashmiri Hindus) domiciled outside the state, automatically lose their right as a ‘State Subject’. Even if their children are born in the state, those children have no rights and are destined to live elsewhere in India.

As a result, generation after generation of Kashmiri Hindus started losing rights to their ancestral homeland. And no more than 400,000 of them were left in 1989 in the valley out of the over 800,000 at Partition, while the Kashmiri Muslim population grew steadily. Compounding the injustice was the denial of rights to the hundreds of thousands of Hindus who fled from areas in Pakistan soon during the 1947 Partition and settled in the state.

Not only the minorities of the state, but the entire state’s economic progress has been adversely affected by this uniquely retrogressive law. The same law that has dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus of their ancestral homeland has also acted as a hindrance to the entry of industry and technological advancement into the state from the rest of India. It wasn’t the militancy alone, but the same State Subject law applicable under Article 370, that prevented the revival of the Indian economy to filter into the state. And without the influence of the rest of India, the fundamentalist malaise has grown unabated in parallel with the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Fruits of Article 370: The `Kashmiriyat’ Red Herring
With the help of some intellectuals within the community, Kashmiri Muslims invented the word `Kashmiriyat’, which was ostensibly an attempt to preserve unique Kashmiri identity and focus on common culture of the Hindus and Muslims over centuries of co-existence, and mutual respect for each other’s traditions and religious practices. In reality `Kashmiriyat’ was coined successfully to fool the rest of the world, especially the media. The rest of India slumbered on for four centuries up to 1947, content in its belief that the state represented true religious coexistence. In the meanwhile, the communalists worked behind the curtain of Kashmiriyat to systematically eradicate minority rights and establish a Talibanic system long before Afghanistan was turned into a medieval wasteland by the group of that name. If Kashmiriyat had existed, it would certainly have prevented the National Conference from eroding the rights of Hindus in the state.

The unsuspecting media as well as so-called foreign ‘experts’ devour the term ‘Kashmiriyat’ today, as they did in the past, without asking questions. It has even been used as the basis for offering some untenable and dangerous solutions such as those offered by the Kashmir Study Group.

Is Abrogation of Article 370 Possible?
If Article 370 has created so much havoc, the question is how can it be removed. While some have tied the existence of Article 370 to the state’s accession to India, Kashmir experts like ex-Governor Jagmohan and state constitutional expert M. K. Teng have opined that the article can be abrogated without any constitutional hurdles. The article stipulated that India’s President needed to consult with the state’s Constituent Assembly before abrogating it. However, this by itself points to the Article’s temporary nature. As noted above, the Constituent Assembly was a temporary arrangement with its main task being the ratification of the Instrument of Accession. It was disbanded in 1957, thus invalidating this clause. The President can use Article 368 to remove the defunct provision of taking the Constituent Assembly’s consent. After this deletion is carried out, the President can then abrogate the Article forthwith.

The Politics of Article 370
If abrogation of Article 370 is a readily available solution, why hasn’t any Indian government taken the step to alleviate the oppression of Kashmiri minorities and help the state integrate with India? The answer is that it’s the politics, stupid. The Congress governments, heavily dependent on a solid block of Indian Muslim vote, never even considered the step that might have alienated any of them. The BJP, in its 1998 election plank, declared that abrogation of Article 370 would be one of its goals. However, using the excuse of coalition politics, it immediately abandoned this item from its agenda, thus betraying the Kashmiri Hindu refugees who had supported it en masse due to this promise.

Now the current state chief minister Farooq Abdullah is demanding even more autonomy, cloaking it in the guise of ‘honor’ for Kashmiris. One needs to ask Dr. Abdullah what more honor do they need, and indeed why do they need anything beyond the current level of autonomy which has been enough to deprive Hindus, Sikhs, Jammu Dogras and Ladakhis of their rights, as well as to create a mini-Pakistan within India? But in a repeat of history, and to its own detriment, the Indian government is again succumbing to such thinly disguised secessionist demands.

Beyond Article 370
Abrogation of Article 370 would be a first step in solving the Kashmir imbroglio, but by no means enough. The damage done is too deep and wide that this step would have little effect on the restoration of minority rights and the defeat of fundamentalist elements in the state. The control of Kashmiri Muslims over society, religion, politics, administration and the economy is so complete that returning valley minorities, and people from Jammu and Ladakh would find it impossible to gain back any lost ground.

In order to permanently and justly settle the issue of Kashmir, abrogation of Article 370 should be immediately followed by re-organization of the state into four distinct entities, Jammu, Ladakh, Panun Kashmir and Kashmir. Panun Kashmir, as noted in the Homeland Resolution of 1991, would comprise regions of the valley to the east and north of Jhelum River, and would allow the return of all 700,000 Kashmiri Pandits to their rightful homeland. The territory would also be converted into an economic zone attracting the best of Indian industrial talent, especially high technology. Kashmiri language, culture and traditions would be preserved within this territory, which would integrate with the rest of secular India at a much faster pace than the remaining portion of the valley. It would be the only effective means for India to regain the foothold it lost decades ago in the valley.

Was Anita, the 26/11 witness, grilled in the US?

Mumbai: The United States has denied any involvement in the disappearance of Anita Uddaiya, the star witness in the November 26 Mumbai attacks case.

Denying that the US had anything to do with her disappearance, a embassy spokesperson said: “No American agency have been involved.”

Asked where she could have been taken for interrogation and by whom, the spokesperson said: “You should ask her where she went.”

Anita Uddaiya, the woman who saw the six terrorists involved in the November 26 terror attacks arrive in the city, claims she was taken to the United States and questioned by investigating agencies there.

“I was informed that the (US) officers who questioned me about the Mumbai attacks here earlier would take me to America. They came on Sunday morning and took me to America,” Uddaiya told PTI.

“I had lied to the police when I returned home stating that I went to Satara district as the officers told me not to disclose anything about my visit to America,” Uddaiya said.

Uddaiya went missing on Sunday morning and returned to Mumbai on Wednesday at around 1.30 am.

She had seen the terrorists land in a rubber dinghy on the beach at the colony. But when she asked them where they had come from, she was told to mind her own business.

Giving details, she said on Saturday at around 10.00 pm, the investigating officers were supposed to come to her home.

“Since we were informed about Uddaiya’s America visit, we sat with her throughout the night waiting for the American investigators. Nobody turned up till morning 5 am. At that time, Uddaiya went to toilet from where she was whisked away by the investigators,” said Madhusudhan Nair, president of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Nagar slum area.

Uddaiya said four officers were inside the posh vehicle and one of them knew Hindi.

“First, I was taken to St George Hospital to see my husband Rajendra. I told him that I would return home in a couple of days. From the hospital I was taken to airport,” Uddaiya said.

“I was sitting in the airport while they (officers) were showing documents to the officials at the airport. I had no luggage with me. After sometime, I boarded the flight but I was feeling uncomfortable,” Uddaiya recalled.

Uddaiya, who spent 17-18 hours in her flight to the US, said she was told they were heading to America.

“I could not eat in the flight properly as they were serving chocolates, sandwiches and some other stuff. I don’t know how I managed to eat that food.”

“I was taken to a posh hotel in a car soon after I landed in America. After a couple of hours, we all went to a building where I was asked several questions about the terrorists and Mumbai attacks,” she said.

She said she was asked about the terrorists whom she had seen landing at Mumbai.

“The questions were translated in Hindi by one of them and whatever answers I had given were also explained to them in English. Everything was over in two to three hours. I even called Hamid Qureshi (a scrap dealer where she works in Mumbai) telling him I am safe,” she said, adding that she was taken to the hotel subsequently and then to the airport to board a flight back to Mumbai.

On returning home in a taxi from Mumbai airport, Uddaiya said she was confused and surprised at what was happening around her. She said she was taken to the Cuffe Parade police station for recording her statement.

After the Mumbai attacks, Uddaiya had also been shown pictures of ten terrorists but she was not taken to J J Hospital to identify the bodies of the terrorists, she said.

“Since I was unwilling to do so, the Mumbai police did not take me to J J hospital,” she said.

Uddaiya, who deals in scrap, had been living with her husband, daughter and son in the colony of Cuffe Parade in south Mumbai.

India rejects Miliband’s ‘unsolicited advice’ on Kashmir
Pak admits the presence of `terror camps’

LOOT, GRAB AND ARSON KASHMIRI PANDIT PROPERTIESIn their crusade launched with utmost fire and fury to establish a radical theocratic system, cleansing the land of Pandit infidels, the Muslim terrorists uncritically accepted as Mujjahids by the Muslim population went whole-hog to buttress up and fine-tune the record of gory traditions of their ancestors who roasted people alive and ripped open the foetuses of pregnant women and resorted to loot, plunder and massacre for whole-sale conversion thereby adding horrendous chapters to the despicable book of barbarity. Unflinching in their obedience to the tradition of tyrants, tile new brand of Muslim terrorists concealing their identities under resounding and high-flown Islamic names could not be found wanting in perpetuating the memory of vandals and consummating the holy task assigned to them by cesspits of Madrasas as the creation of Islamic fanatics. let them goes the credit of performing the sacred rites of loot and pillage, rape and arson.

Once the Kashmiri Pandits have been forced to flee their homes and hearths to uncharted destinations, Nemesis started her dreadful operations. Having looted and ransacked their living abodes, the terrorists and their large mass of Muslim collaborators displayed their fiendishness by torching off the Pandit houses built with the sweat and blood of their life-time earnings. As tribals in 1947 had been lured to the loot and rape of bazars in Srinagar, the Muslims lending unmitigated support to the surge of armed insurgency were promised loot, plunder, rape and unbridled appropriation of Pandit properties.

Loot and Plunder

The loot and pillage of Pandit houses was carried out under a well calibrated plan and strategy. As a first step they were marked red to stand them out from the mixed populations for purposes of loot, rapacious appropriation and arson. For looting operations areas were assigned to the gangs of looters working in cohesion with mosque committees and experts churned out from Madrasas. A lightning operation for stealing rubber shoes from Pandit houses was conducted by the same elements with mosques as pivotal centres and to the knowledge of all mosques had mushroomed at a quick pace in strategic areas with the massive aid of petro-dollars pouring in from channels abroad through local conduits. After the launch of insurgency the waves of looters replicating their history in time tanned out in various directions to get lost into the Pandit habitations and returned gage with immense booty to the precincts of mosques for distribution leaving a chunk for mosque committees led by hard-core Mullahs fanged with bigotry and separatism. The frenzied looters reflecting the apachi culture that has long been the essential ethos of Kashmir are said not to be the traditional thieves and anti-socials, but well-off and prosperous guys suffused with ferocious vengeance and anti-Pandit venom. Overpowered by predatory and confiscatory persuasions, acquired and instinctive, assiduously nurtured and cultivated in the Quranic schools, the Muslim looters broke open the doors and windows or bored burrow-like openings like predatory animals for access into the houses for loot and plunder. It will be a miracle if any Kashmiri Pandit house has escaped the looting sprees. The entire Pandit habitations scattered over the fertile valley have suffered not one bout of loot and plunder, but several such spells of depredations and ravages.

To the shame of the shameless, the Islamic looters set up bazars where the looted property was openly put to sale. The markets picked up for the purpose were not confined to the towns in the valley, but the looted goods were pushed into the national market from Jammu to Delhi to Bombay to Calcutta. Brass utensils spirited away from the kitchens of Pandit houses were pulverised into bits, stuffed into bags and sent across the border as proof of their true Islamic orientation which had faked and lost its sheen by an overlaying of Brahmanic culture. Gas cylinders stolen in spells of loot from the ravaged houses were kept without any twinge of conscience and when their numbers swelled beyond any count, they were openly sold as if slaves were being sold to the Muslim buyers in the slave-market of Turkistan. The shawls of various varieties maintained as the prized possessions looted from the abodes of expelled natives are said to be sold to the sophisticates throughout the national market especially the Bengali market where patronage is lavishly showered on pedlars of loot. Radio-sets, Television sets, wall clocks, sewing machines, newly sewn suits and dresses, saris of prominent delicacy et al acquired through organised loot and legitimised as booty are kept to swell the stocks of those either in business or venture to float new businesses The merciless looters engaged in “wiping out” operations against the religious enemies have not spared their mattings and beddings thereby beefing up the quantum of their material properties considered a value in desert cultures. With the looted properties from Pandit houses businesses have been diversified or rendered a specialised touch. There are looters who are said to peddle in all sorts of electronic goods and gadgets acquired through loot. There are others who have set up antique shops dealing in rare objects dart and artefacts looted from Kashmiri Pandit sophisticates and plucked out from temples.

With incalculable wealth of petro-dollars pouring in, Pakistan pumping millions to sustain and proliferate terrorism and India in response not lagging behind to quench the blazing fires of insurgency by allowing loot of public moneys or through huge packages and booty in kitties, the sole beneficiary, they say, is the Kashmiri Muslim who has visibly scaled new levels of prosperity and affluence incomparable to what he enjoyed prior to 1988 bench-mark. As a sure manifestation and indicator of newly acquired opulence and prosperity, there is an unprecedented construction boom in the valley. New structures are pompously built and old ones are dismantled and re-built more often than not with doors and windows, inner ceilings and G.I.E sheets and other building materials uprooted, plucked out and stripped from the houses of infidels. Those of their eviscerated houses which are yet standing and waiting for the date fixed for their blaze have a saga to relate and a statement to make. They carry grisly scars and gaping wounds as the marauders in their cycles of plunder and sack have looted away the house-hold effects that invested them with the throb and feel of pulsating abodes. Their doors and windows have been pitilessly removed. They are shorn of stones, bricks and other materials vitally placed to render monolithic wholeness to the edifices. Inside houses the same loot and plunder has been affected. Almirahs, ward-robes, electric fittings, water connections, switches, lamp shades, wash-basins and more than most toys of children and their wooden cradles have been looted away with savagery. There are houses galore with no roots to protect them form rains and snows as the ruthless looters in blitzkrieg operations have sadistically dismantled and removed them for installation in their own constructions. There are open spaces which once were sites of throbbing human settlements and piles of blackened ruins covering them now tell a cruel tale of pillage and plunder.

At Naqashpora, Sathu Barbarshah, Srinagar there were Kouls living, a cultured and prosperous family owning four houses which have been razed to the ground said to be the handiwork of near and distant neighbours. In the brutal operation sixteen houses belonging to Pandits were levelled storey by storey, wall by wall and brick by brick and the materials are said to have disappeared into the houses of apachies. As reported to a humanistic organisation working for human rights violations three houses belonging to Maharaja Krishen Bhat, Bhasker Nath Bhat and Kanth Ram of village Malmoh, Tehsil Pattan, District Baramulla were stripped off the G.I.E. sheets serving as roofs of the houses on 15th Dec., 1996 by Muslim looters. The said-village as a Kashmiri Pandit settlement had already suffered orgies of loot and plunder at the hands of tribal looters enjoying autonomy of destructing the religious foes.

Writes Bali, “Those of the houses that have been untorched have the structure of dilapidated walls only with gaping holes for doors and windows are shorn of all fittings, including electric and water taps. As per house-hold and personal effects, these are conspicuously absent. Audio and video tapes alongwith TVs, Video and audio tape recorders, music systems, stereos, kitchen ranges and kitchen gadgets, all have been pilfered. Recording details of this rampage and loot will be ludicrous, bizarre and emotionally painful.”

Writes Dr. R.L. Shant, “They have been reduced to a people condemned to suffer bearing tales of arson and plunder of their belongings left back by them in cities and villages from the very neighbours who leave no stone unturned in propagating through terrorist – friendly media in India that they are the custodians of minorities in Kashmir.”

Dr. Pandita’s House Converted into a Public Latrine

It is dismaying to learn that the ancestral house of Dr. K.N. Pandita situated at Khowja Bagh, Barmulla though standing and left untorched, has been converted into a public latrine at the behest of Muslim bigots. The extreme act of venegefulness against Dr. Pandita is being attributed to his exemplary role in exposing the inner motivations of the Muslim brand of terrorism in Kashmir. Dr. Pandita is a Persian scholar with doctorate from Tehran university and authority on Kashmir affairs. He has had the rare distinction of attending a number of international conferences on Human Rights where he as a deft expert presented the case of Hindus of Kashmir who have been ethnically cleansed from their autochhem abodes and are in exile.

Arson

By the spree of propaganda that they have blazed abroad and the statements that they have blurted out it becomes abundantly clear that the Muslim terrorists are wedded to the cause of Islam which is their soul, faith and driving ideology. As Pandit infidels have no station and role-model in the parochial state of theocracy that is envisaged for Kashmir, they have been ethnically cleansed and ethnic cleansing remains an unfinished agenda if non-Muslims are allowed to retain their abodes in Kashmir which though presently abandoned as a result of their expulsion can be reclaimed through pressures, and intervention from humanistic organisations operating at various levels. With this rationale in view the Muslim militarists have been assiduously busy in destroying the roots of Pandits and. roots as a matter of fact lie deeply embedded in settlements which generate an ethos and a culture pattern. It is to the achievement of sinister end of complete ethnic cleansing and also stalling their return to their land of genesis that all shades of frenzied bigots and dyed-in-the-wool fanatics have embarked upon the policy-path of burning Pandit settlements and the process has been continuously on since 1990. What is being done now is only the replication of their past history. Sayyids way back in the mists of time created waves by decreeing the total destruction of settlements when Kashmiri Pandits at the end of the tether of their patience revolted against severe religious persecution and encroachments on their possessions and assets.

As per a survey conducted by a non-government organisation nearly thirty thousand Kashmiri Pandit houses all over the Valley have been torched off thereby rendering one lakh and fifty thousand Pandits homeless and deracine if an average family comprises five members. The Report submitted to the National Human Rights Commission by the Panun Kashmir Movement puts the number of burnt houses of Hindus at 16,000 till 1995. The Government of J&K State have been silent over it as the victims being non-Mulsims are not on its agenda of policy and programme. Under a flawless design of communal diabolerie and chicanery the entire throbbing habitations of ancient origins have been liquidated with no traces left behind. There is no Bana-Mohalla which has been a principal settlement of Pandits with tremendous history in the life and times of Srinagar as an abode of Culture and spirituality. The pre-eminent house of Razdans with Bhaskar Razdan as one of its scions has been burnt to ashes. Bhaskar Razdan is famous for his Sanskrit rendering of Lalla’s vakhs in metrical verse. The house of Kokiloos in the same locality stands looted and wiped out. A brilliant ancestor of the family is credited with a work on Sanskrit Grammar which in a manuscript form lies in the Research Library buried and dumped in gunny bags. There is no Rainawari nestling in the creeks and inlets of Dal Lake and more than most the birth-place of Pandit Som Nath Beera who got killed in the hills of Doda while quenching communal fires. There is no Batapora in Shopiyan which was the seminary of a galaxy of nationalists who established educational institutions for Muslims whose descendants have destroyed the locality with a crusading zeal leading to the exodus of Pandit Swaroop Nath, a house-hold name in the district, who died in exile. There is no Gushi in Handwara known as mini-Sharda which has been the cradle of spirituality and folk-lore. The settlement with more than hundred houses has been burnt to cinders by the Muslims gone berserk. Mattan in the District of Anantnag as an ancient site of pilgrimage inhabited by Brahman-priests maintaining historically valuable religious records has been destroyed in blazing fires. Chowagam in the same district is lost to Pandits as Muslim vandals have ravaged and blazed the entire habitation. Zainapora, the home-town of Pandit Rishi Dev, a politician of long standing and Pandit Arjan Dev Majboor, a poet and literatteur, already in exile, was completely wiped out by a frenzied mob of thirty thousand Muslims in the wake of Mast Gul, a Pakistani vandal and brutal lout putting the highly revered shrine of Nanda Rishi to flames.

The two families of Pandits staying back in the village were not spared or shown any mercy. Their houses were first ransacked and then set on fire. Muslims hailed Mast Gul by crying hoarse, “Chrar bani hani hani, Mast Gul kati bani- Chrar will be re-built slowly, but Mast Gul is a rare find” and their hurricane fury as usual fell on Pandits and the paper general and his cortege went on watching the orgy of death and destruction befalling Pandits who have not caused portals of governance any anxiety or concern.

Languishing in tattered tents, one-room hutments and rented slums, beleaguered Pandits to their shock and dismay have lost their houses in Malayar, Kralakhud, Ganpatyar, Gundahlmar, Brayikujan, Zaindar Mohalla, Jawahar Nagar, Fateh Kadal, Saffakadal and Karan Nagar. Malayar in the city of Srinagar was a huge sprawling cluster of Pandit houses and it has been burnt down in blazing fires. The houses in Ganpatyar locality standing along roadside have been vengefully torched off. Jawahar Nagar having come up as a posh colony with a modern look and planning presents a scenario of a city sacked by the prototypes of Nadir Shah. Houses of Pandits in Zaindar Mohalla and Karan Nagar have met the same fate at the hands of marauders. Babapora with its interior depths touching the shores of Sheel-teng is a horror scene of war-ravaged waste land. Narparistan sunk in a maze of narrow lanes and bye-lanes has been licking its wounds as destruction is wrought on the Pandit houses which are now a pile of charred ruins.

The Jehadists as per their delineated plans have not confined their acrid war against the native Pandits to the purlieux of Srinagar, but the hurricane fury of their Jehad in its broad sweep has engulfed their settlements dotting the broad terrain of the valley. Poolie contiguous to the spring of Verinag as a village of Pandit concentration has been obliterated with vengeance. Anantnag with its tremendous Hindu past has lost most of its edifices which were sublime in their heights evoking awe and admiration. Verinag with its pristine waters has been a witness to the gruesome fires which Islamists lit in the Pandit houses for their decimation. The Islamic gun-totters have blazed the houses of Pandits in hamlets surrounding Kokernag which has gone gory with the blood of Pandits. The Muslim arsonists have burnt down Pandit settlements in Kupwara, Baramulla, Safapora, Chingund, Ratnipora, Wahibugh, Tahab, Tengapunna, Wachi, Zablipora, Krandigam, Salar, Tral et al.

The twenty eight residential houses of Pandits in Chingund falling in Tehsil Duroo were burnt to ashes by Muslim marauders. Even cowsheds, kothars and other structures were not spared. In the FIR filed by the village chowkidar it is clearly stated that a violent Muslim mob attacked and burnt down all the houses, cowsheds and kothars of Hindus of the village in the wake of Babri Masjid episode.

“It is shocking to learn that the wrath against the Kashmiri Pandits has assumed such proportions that those houses, which had already been burnt down and their skeleton structures only stood there, were either again set ablaze or were demolished or razed to the ground,” writes Arvind Razdan.

The grand old residential house of Pandit Madhav Koul in Anantnag when put to flames was smouldering, smoking and burning for a month’s time. It was a massive edifice built in stone, brick and deodar, a real monument speaking volumes for past glory and hence an eye-sore to the Muslim fanatics. The huge building of Pandit Siri Koul had the same style, grandeur and wood-work and when set ablaze it continued burning for days on end till it was said to have been pulled down by looting away its chiseled logs sustaining the weight of the structure. The house of late Nila Kanth Jad was equally a magnificent structure that had been the target of Muslims since Islamic resurgence in Kashmir and finally Muslim cyclone took a toll of it. The house of late Shridhar Joo Kachru at Babapora in Srinagar when set ablaze continued burning and smoking for ten days and the same is confirmed by Muslim witnesses who have oiled and soiled their hands with the loot of the house.

Records K.N. Pandita, “Indeed these mute and lifeless objects are dangerous because they embody in their lifeless souls the story of a great civilisation that has been allowed to be systematically destroyed by those very elements in building whose civilisation and identity Kashmiri Pandits made the largest contribution.”

Grab of Immovable Properties

There is a concerted movement going on in Kashmir to dispossess Kashmiri Pandits by grabbing and appropriating their left-behind immovable properties. All evidences, material and documentary purporting their Kashmiri origins, are under a fierce onslaught of Muslims. No government of the day despite innumerable petitions and submissions ever moved in the direction of protecting their properties from destruction or unlawful occupation. The properties which have not been torched off and are yet sending have been grabbed or are in the process of being seized by the grabbies. Not only have properties been illegally appropriated but shameless attempts have been made to forge false and unsustainable documents which have been audaciously presented in the courts to justify or substantiate the grab and surprisingly some cases have come to light where courts have issued stay orders without material evidences and even on the basis of fictitious and false documents hastily contrived.

There is a class of grabbies who do not stick to a house which they grab, but go on shifting from house to house as per their sovereign will and their essential targets in the houses are the residues that they lay their sinister hands on. There is another class of grabbies who are more brutal and under religious motivations deem it their right to grab the properties of infidels, who, they believe, are discomfited and have fled the land. Apart from these two classes are herds of intruders who craftily occupy the houses as a first step m the game and subsequently as fait accompli negotiate with the owners through a swarm of touts prowling about Jammu and other metropolises. The Pandit owners when informed of the forcible occupation of their properties are shell-shocked, yet do not take it lying down and submit appeals and plaints in neat language to the concerned authorities in the valley. As the government is and has been in deep paralysis, there is no response to their submissions and plaints which convinces them of the sheer fut~hty of the whole exercise and in despair and desperation are forced to enter into deals at the prices that are offered to them courtesy Muslim touts.

The grab and appropriation of Pandit properties which are left behind in the valley has gained so much of momentum that it has virtually assumed a universal character. There is hardly a Mohalla, locality, village or hamlet where properties have not been occupied and grabbed. In Jawahar Nagar alone there are hundred and eight Kashmiri Pandit houses which are under the illegal occupation of Muslims who taking advantage of collapsed state of law and order or in cahoots with broad sections of administration are emboldened for such intrusion, trespass and grab. In the’ posh locality of Karan Nagar, a Muslim said to be the Head of a Department is said to have grabbed two houses of a Pandit where he has set up his business venture and is battening at the expense of a hapless fugitive. The case of forcible occupation was said to have been brought to the notice of the then Chief Secretary, Ashok Kumar, who is reported to have cravenly expressed his inability to intervene in the matter thereby legitimising the loot and the crab. The locality of Channapora presents a glaring scenario of the forcible appropriation of Pandit houses where Muslims as a matter of right have been staymg their put without any government agency either obstructing or stalling such violations of law of the land. At Gogji Bagh in the cites of Srinagar the three storyed house of a non-Muslin has been ravaged by one Muslim family leaving and another entering at will. A Muslim said to be a vegetable seller from Qamarwari is said to have carted away all the furniture in the house in broad day-light and surprisingly the Muslim neighbours in their chance meetings at Jammu always assured the Pandit of the safety of the house and other house-hold goods and effects. Presently a leader of a renegade militant outfit has chosen the house for his stay and is at pains to force a deal on the Pandit.

There are instances galore establishing that shops, business establishments, tracts of cultivable land and more than most economically lucrative orchards belonging to Pandas have been illegally occupied, grabbed and appropriated. Shops of Pandits in prime commercial sites or areas have been under a constant threat of illegal occupation. From Maharaj Bazar to the end of Residency Road, Srinagar most of the business establishments of Pandits have been intruded, trespassed or occupied. It is also stated that after unlawful occupation, may be in certain cases buttressed by Court verdicts moshy ex-parte, deals were thrust on the Pandits through Muslim touts. Illegal occupations are generally realised through landlord-illegal occupant-admmistration nexus. The sprawling fields of cultivable land and huge thriving orchards have been grabbed by Musluns who share the proceeds in partership with the terrorist outfits and conniving authorities. There are a number of such localities where Muslim hordes vengefully felled the orchards from one end to the other thereby inflicting immense losses on the Pandit owners. The walnut trees generally cultivated within the precincts of Pandit houses have been cruelly felled and wood of the felled trees was kept or disposed of in the markets fetching a lucrative price to the marauders.

JKLF Warning

The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a banned terrorist outfit, in a bid to establish its so-called secular credentials, has issued a number of warnings to the illegal occupants of shops, business establishments and landed properties belonging to the Pandits and such warnings are a standing and over-arching testimony to the fact of their illegal usurpation by none other than Muslims.

Farooqi’s Statement

In a statement to the press in Jammu, M. Farooqi, leader of the Communist Party of India, suggested that all the left behind properties in Kashmir valley belonging to Kashmir Panda migrants should be declared as ‘custodian properties’ with a view to rehabilitating them in their native homes and hearths as and when they return to the valley. Appreciative of the government move to take the refugees back to the valley, Farooqi made it amply clear that it could be possible only when their houses are protected (from Muslim marauders) and maintained bit the government In his meeting with the Chief Minister and Finance Minister of the state, Farooqi is said to have broached the subject of the forcible grab of the shop belonging to Janki Dass in Akhara building, Maisuma by a protege of Dr. Karan Singh under the very nose of paramilitary picket which was asked to shift its position through correspondence with B.S.F. authorities by the dejure owner who was keen to re-start his business. To the suggestion to declare Kashmiri Pandit properties as “Custodian properties”, the Chief Minister and his Finance Minister to the surprise of Farooqi were said to be in the first instance non-committal and ambivalent.

The Migrant Immovable Property Act, 1997

The Migrant Immovable Property Act, 1997 as passed by the State Legislature establishes that the Kashmiri Pandit properties have been ravaged, destructed, arsoned and grabbed by the Muslim majority and the owners of such properties who have been reduced to absolute penury during the eight-year period of exile are forced to dispose of their left-behind assets in the form of denuded houses and cultivable lands and orchards. The Act also establishes the failure of the State and Central Governments in protecting their properties from the practicing marauders who have inherited as bequest a history of rapacity and plunder. The governments could have protected the properties from the Muslim vandals without the formulation of such an Act as there are laws galore which could have been invoked to establish rule of law. It is absolutely shameful that the state which forms a part of Indian territory had to formulate a distinctive Act for the protection of Pandit properties despite citizenship rights that stand sanctified by the sovereign constitution. The governments should have immediately provided protection to the Kashmiri Pandit properties when the Pandits fell victim to the militarised Islam. Now when each habitation has been decimated and landed assets are grabbed the government as an eye-wash has rushed through the legislation without consulting the Kashmiri Pandits. The reality is that the Pandits are m distress and are constrained to sell off the properties to eke out an existence in camps and rented slums. The government should have come out with liberal loans on softer terms thereby enabling the Pandits to tide over the hardships that they are faced with during the period of wretched and unhappy exile.

The Act does not stipulate to put the predators and usurpers on trial for offences that they have committed thereby reducing a av~ltsed society to the bottom level of barbarism and expelling even the feeblest ray of modernism and rationality.

A Report about vandalisation of Kashmiri Pandit Properties

A report in Kashmir Sentinel date-lined Dec. 15,1995 puts:

“After the vandalisation, destruction and forcible occupation of Kashmiri Pandit houses, it is now a land grab spree in Kashmir. The lands involved are those of displaced Kashmiri Pandit agriculturists and orchardists who had fled the valley four years back to escape the torture and tyranny of the terrorists.

Reports from different parts of the valley say that land holdings of hundreds of displaced KP families have so far been illegally taken over by the local Muslims who manage to get these lands mutated and indications are that hardly any agriculturist will be left with any land in his nan1e in months to come.

The fraudulent transfers are being done and legalised by the officials of the State Revenue Department in return for alternative bribes. The method usually adopted by the land grabbers in connivance with Revenue officials, especially the Patwaris, is to get some local villagers as witnesses to testify that the land holdings in question had been sold or transferred by the owners to the concerned villagers.

Recently a number of fraudulent land deals came to light when the displaced Kashmiri Pandit agriculturists made enquiries about the fate of their land holdings back in the valley.

In one case in Baramulla district a village bully backed by a local terrorist group had not only grabbed the agricultural lands of a KP family, but also had laid his hands on the family’s orchard. In another case in the same district the land owned by a Pandit family had been shown as belonging to the state by tampering with Revenue records.

Those who had grabbed the land had been entered in the records as rightful owners.”

The report further adds, “scores of orchards owned by displaced Kashmiri Pandits had fallen into the hands of unscrupulous Muslim villagers who made huge profits which they shared with the local terrorist groups. The land grabbing phenomenon has attained such alarming dimensions now that the State Government has issued a circular to check the fraudulent deeds.”

The Daily Uqab Srinagar date-lined Nov.27, 1994 reports: –

“A large area of land and houses belonging to Kashmiri Pandits near Mohalla Faqir Wani in Baramulla have been taken over by some people and distributed among themselves. There are standing pear, apple and walnut trees in this land. The income from the produce of these trees is pocketed by these people. The police have not registered any case in this respect so far.”

Representation To The National Human Rights Commission

A humanistic organisation dedicated to the restoration of peace in the valley has taken up the case of Abdul Karim vs Brij Lal Tamiri with National Human Rights Commission. Abdul Karim S/o Mohammad Sultan Sheikh, an employee of Military Engineering Service, has illegally occupied the house of Brij Lal Tamiri at Shivapora, Srinagar which has remained vacant after the family fled away from their house in early 1990. After contacting DIG, Kashmir Range, the owner of the house was informed through an ordinary letter dated: 22nd May, 1996 that the illegal occupant had approached the court of city Munsif, Srinagar directing the parties to maintain status quo, thus allowing the illegal occupation of Brij Lal Tamiri’s house by Abdul Karim.

After a thorough study of the case, the secretary of the NGO, Friends of Kashmir International, submitted a petition dated: 7th July 1996 to Hon’ble Chairman, NHRC, New Delhi which reads as under:

“I have been directed by my NGO to seek your Lordships indulgence in a serious matter of violation of human rights of the internally displaced persons from Kashmir valley living in refugee camps in Jammu, Udhampur and other parts of the country since 1990.

It has come to the notice of our organisation that there are cases of forcible occupation by the locals of vacant residential houses, shops, cowsheds or hutments of displaced persons from the valley. These occupations are all illegal and unauthorised.

In order to regularise forcible and illegal occupation of these places, the entrepreneurs have contrived forged documents and filed suits in courts of law seeking ex-partedecisions to legitimise their forcible occupation. A fraudulent mechanism has been evolved of issuing court summons to the owners. The Honourable courts knowing fully well that respondents being a threatened minority community would not be able to attend its call. What is more, even the summons are invariably not received by the respondents as these do not bear the correct addresses of the displaced persons, or get lost in the ordinary mail. Even the notices issued in local vernacular papers do not reach the displaced persons. Taking undue advantage of the forced absence of the displaced persons far away from their native land for last seven years, their inability to protect their property in absence, their inability to present themselves before any court of law in the valley even if a summon is received by them and lastly unwillingness on the part of state authorities to enforce civil order these illegal occupants move the local courts swiftly to process ex-partedecrees against the displaced persons seeking to dispossess or disinherit them of their properties.

In all fairness the local courts should not at all entertain such applications as involve the properties of displaced persons only if justice is to be done. But, somehow, in an unusual situation prevailing in the valley at present even the Honourable Judges would like not to be anything but accommodative even at the cost of Justice.

Your Lordship may kindly note that forcible occupation of the vacant houses or shelters of the displaced persons is violation of human rights (the right to property, and shelter) and admission of any case in this regard by a local court in which case an ex-parte decision would be the procedural result is further violation of human rights because it denies the persons involved the chance to be heard owing to circumstances beyond control. Evidently the state government has the responsibility to protect the property of the citizens (that being the constitutional right of all Citizens of India) and if it fails in discharging that duty the displaced persons should not suffer on that count. They are already fouled and it should mean their re-foulment which is not only unjust but also inhuman. As if sending them into forced exile is too small a punishment which must be upgraded to forcible occupation of their property.

In the light of what has been submitted our organisation approaches the Hon’ble NHRC with the request that appropriate steps commensurate with the lay.: and charter of human rights be taken at its earliest convenience to stop occupation of the vacant houses and immovable properties of the internally displaced persons from Kashmir either through muscle power or through fraudulent and illegal documentation. We would like to submit that proper steps be taken to give a fair chance to the displaced persons to follow legal proceedings wherever necessary in such cases only in Jammu and not in Srinagar. The threat to life by the armed militants prevents the internally displaced persons from presenting themselves before any court of law in the valley. The government could set up special tribunals in Jammu proper where such cases could be filed and heard. The state Judiciary is expected to demonstrate its responsibility in prevailing extra-ordinary conditions and spare the suffering displaced persons the travail of unnecessary litigation for which they are neither mentally nor financially prepared.”

In another communication dated September 30,1996 to the Hon’ble Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi the Secretary of Friends of Kashmir (India) conveys as under:

“We are grateful to the Hon’ble Commission for informing us vice their letter No. 9/73/96-LD of August 1,1996 that the matter of illegal occupation of Pandit houses in Kashmir valley submitted by us on 7th June, 96 has been taken up by the Hon’ble Commisssion with the concerned authorities in the J&K State. However, till date no state authority has contacted us nor do we know what action they would be contemplating to take in the matter.

Through our sources we learn that there is a spate in forcible and illegal occupation of Kashmiri internally displaced persons, left behind property by the locals in valley with tacit connivance of sections of administrative and judicial authorities. Fake documents are produced and accepted to claim proprietary rights over their houses, shops and immovable property. Physical absence of the owners from the scene and their continued inability to challenge false claims in a court of law encourages blatant irregalarities. What is more, reluctance of authorities to devise practical and collective safeguards against such lawlessness leading to a state of loot is deplorable.

Before we proceed to cite a few more cases, we would like to high-light the methodology employed to legalise false. ownership based on the sample study of the forcible and illegal occupation of the residential house of one Brij Lal Tamiri (case already submitted to the Hon’ble Commission on June 7,1996). These are as under:

i) Obtaining stay orders from a court of law even without any proof of the sale of property.

ii) when the victim comes to know of fraudulent ownership, the stay order and appeals for transfer of case to Jammu (for security reason), the opposition to the same is voiced on the plea that since the property is located in Kashmir valley it should not be heard by the Hon’ble Court in Jammu.

iii) a fictitious name is shown as one of the defendants He may be shown as intermediary for selling and described as a known person, relative or a friend. This serves the purpose of prolonging the case and would at the same time break the resolve of the victim. Then the victim could be forced to agree to distress sale of his rightfully owned property.

iv) entire strategy of this litigation revolves round prolonging the case on one pretext or the other, slow down the legal
procedure and oppose the case of transfer to Jammu.

v) Knowing that occupation of the house of internally displaced persons is illegal, under the grab of sta! order, the occupants resort to a large scale damaging of the house besides looting the left-over goods of the displaced victims.

Your lordship, in case of Brij Lal Tamiri, one Maharaj Krishen Watloo has been shown as a dependent, though no person of this name and address exists. No attorney has been given by the owner to anybody for sale of the house or for putting it on tenancy. But the Court has issued stay orders without any proof of purchase by the illegal occupant. This has forestalled the eviction by the police. In the meanwhile the occupant has resorted to a large scale damaging of the construction as the accompanying FIR indicates.

Your Lordship, we may be permitted to submit two more cases of forcible and illegal occupation of the left behind houses of internally displaced persons from the valley. In one case, a local English daily named Northlines of 24th August, 1996 has reported that one fruit merchant of district Pulwama in Kashmir contrived fraudulent sale deed of the residential house of Mrs P.G. (name withheld by the newspaper) an internally-displaced person originally residing in Hyderpora, Srinagar.

In another case, one Lassa Nath Bhat resident of Gouripora-Rawalpora tehsil and district Badgam in Kashmir valley issued a public notice in Kashmir Times of September 1, 1996 saying that somebody had produced fake documents and claimed the ownership of his left-behind residential house.

In view of the seriousness of the violation of human rights, especially the right to property, we are concerned h the matter and approach the Hon’ble Commission could besides holding an independent proble, advise the Government of J&K State to issue orders for :

a) Stopping sale of any kind of immovable property of the internally displaced persons from the valley until the time they resume normal life in places of their origin.

b) appointing an independent tribunal headed by a High Court Judge based in Jammu. All cases of internally displaced persons’ property could be referred to this Tribunal for speedy and summary disposal.

c) holding the forcible occupants responsible for damaging the house and looting of immovable property in it. Without a strong legal action this violation of human rights may not be stopped.

Many internally displaced persons are lodging FIRs with the police in Jammu stating that their houses/shops/orchards/lands have been fraudulently grabbed by musclemen with the connivance of authorities. As such, the Hon’ble Commission should supervene and stop violation of the rights to property of the displaced persons. As and when more cases come to our notice, we shall submit these to your Lordship for proper disposal.”

Grab of the Shop of M.K. Dass

M.K. Dass and Mrs Sheila Dass were in regular tenancy of a shop in the Akhara building, Maisuma. The shop as alleged is broken open, all medical goods and medicines ham been spirited away and a Muslim is said to have grabbed the shop with the connivance of one Puran Shal1 who manages and overlords the Akhara properties. M.IC. Dass has approached all concerned authorities for the restoration of the shop, but as alleged he is not heard. He coven met the Chief Minister who promised him redressal, but nothing concrete has emerged. His correspondence with authorities makes a curious reading.

That the tenant of the shop was in regular tenancy is perhaps substantiated by the letter that the BSF authority wrote to the Divisional Commissioner. The letter reads:

No. 311/16/OPS/15BN/96/730
HQ Srinagar Frontier
Border Security Force
Srinagar (Kmr)
09 Sept. 96

To
The Divisional Commissioner,
J&K Government
Srinagar.

Sub:- Removal of Bunker/Payment of compensation in favour of Shri M.K. Dass Prop. M/s Jank Dass and Co. Budshah Chowk, Srinagar.

Sir,

Please refer to an application submitted by M.K.Dass, Prop. M/s Janki Dass and Co. Budshah Chowk, Srinagar (Copy enclosed for ready reference).

1. In this context, it is to inform you that the matter has been got enquired into depth through concerned Sector DIG/Unit Comdt and reveals following:

a) During the year 1992, Security Forces were deployed in Kashmir valley and one bunker was constructed by security forces during that time to deal with militancy in the area in front of AKHARA BUILDING gate. This bunker is strategically covering MAISUMA road as well as dominate Akhara Chowk and adjoining areas. This bunker also provides Security to Akhara building and checks the entry/exist of visitors to Akhara building.

b) Since, Maisuma is the backbone of militancy and all sorts of demonstrations/ processions, grenade throwing are planned and conducted by public in Lal Chowk area, therefore presence of this bunker is essential to monitor the movement of the militants/public in the area.

2. The bunker in question is sited at appropriate place and tactically deployed. This bunker of course has obstructed the entrance to M/s Janki Dass and Co. but for Security reasons it is not possible for us to remove the said bunker.

Therefore, it is recommended that necessary compensation may be provided to the owner of the Shop, if deemed fit.

Yours faithfully

sd/-(S.Chanhan)
Addl. Deputy Inspector Genl
(Operations )

The Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Srinagar wrote to M.K. Dass which reads as under:

Zonal Police Headquarters Kashmir Srinagar
No. Crime/Misc/97/1550
Dated: 3.3.1997.
M.K. Dass House No.01, Sector No.10 Nanak Nagar Jammu.

Please refer your application regarding shop breaking/replacing the shop locks by Puran Shah, Manager, Dashnami Akhara Trust with the assistance of local gundas and looting the medicines from the shop known as Janki Dass and Co. Chemists 16 Akhara building Rudshah Chowk Srinagar.

Report called from concerned SP is enclosed.

sd/-Inspector General of Police
Kashmir Zone.3.3.97

M.K. Das has submitted to the Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone as under:

To

The Inspector General of Police
Kashmir Zone.
Ref: No. M-2/97/SPE/64246 dated. 27.2.97.

Sub:- Complaint against criminal trespass and looting of Goods/Cash records from a Shop M/s Janki Dass and Co. 16, Akhra Building Srinagar.

Sirs

In reference to above quoted letter on my application A; the application of Mr. M.K. Dass and Mrs. Sheela Dass.

I am submitting the following few lines for clarification:

1. That the shop is under the tenancy of Mahraj Krishan Dass and Sheela Dass. It is made clear that the shop under our tenancy belongs to Dashnami Akhra Trust and the tenancy started from 1961. However, earlier also the shop was in our constructive possession before 1961, being partners of a firm “Harker and Co.”.

2. It is also made clear that Sh. Janki Nath Dass, Father of M.K. Dass and B.L. Dass and father-in-law of Mrs. Sheela Dass expired in the year “1964″ Nov. as such tenancy of the said-shop devolved on Shrimati Janki Devi, widow of Shri Janki Nath Dass-II, Mr. B.L. Dass son of Sh. Janki Nath Dass III M.K. Dass S/o Janki Nath Dass. However it was Sh. B.L. Dass and Shri M.K. Dass who were working in the said-shop as the Proprietors of the firm M/s Janki Dass and Co.

3. That in the year 1990 on account of militancy above mentioned proprietors were forced to stop their business as the shop was located at a vulnerable place known as Budshah Chowk here a permanent BSF post was functioning in front of the shop and the militants used to attack the said-place.

4. It is pertinent to note that in the year 1992 a bunker was constructed by the Security Forces (BSF) to deal with the militancy in front of the shop and thereby obstructed the entrance and exit of customers to the shop. As there was no business conducted in the said-shop and because of militancy myself alongwith other family members shifted to Jammu. I used to visit Srinagar invariably with a purpose to transact my business in the shop as I and other members of the family were dependent on the income of the said-shop.

5. That on account of the increased index of militant acts a Pucca/concrete bunker was constructed completely closing the entry in the said-shop as the huge structure was built in front of the shop. Be that as it may, it is stated that the said-shop was full of medicines and other goods i.e; Thermametcrs, Cotton packs, Bandages, Sythethescopes, BP apparatus, air cushions, hot water bottles, baby soaps, oils and powders, surgical items like scissors, forceps, kidney trays, cadguts, etc. valued Rs. 4.00 lacs.

6. That in this connection I approached Director General BSF and other authorities to shift the bunker to some other site so that I could transact my business in the said-shop but I was not allowed to open or continue my business by the BSF authority for reasons of security of the area as was intimated by them through a despatch dated Sept. 9,1996 addressed to the Divisional Commissioner Kashmir. Moreover, they recommended the case for compensation to be paid to the firm M/s Janki Dass and Co. Nothing of the sort that expired medicines would prove dangerous and was advanced by them to the Management of the Trust was communicated to me which they could have done if the need was. It is worth to note that the concocted story furnished by the BSF authority to the management of the trust is nothing but explains a drama to camalouge their real involvement in this scandalous affair, where monetary consideration cannot be ruled out.

7. That I am in possession of the correspondence letters with the Home Ministry of India/State Governments and other concerned authorities of BSF which clarifies the aforesaid position.

8. That in response to the point mentioning that the firm did not pay any rent to the Management is all false and baseless. The fact is that no such default in payment of the rent has been ever committed either by late Pt. Janki Nath Dass or his predecessors. The firm has paid the rent up-to-date. The last receipt being of 15.11.89, then again a draft of Rs. 10,000/ – on account was sent through a registered draft No. 04183 State Bank of India aft. 27.12.1996 addressed to Secretary Mahadev Giri, Dashnama Akhra Trust, Budshah Chowk, Srinagar but the same was deliberately returned back and avoided without furnishing any reasons by Akhra Management. I again sent the draft to the concerned but it met the same fate with the remarks that the addressee had left the place without leaving any address here which was all fraud and fabricated. As the draft was addressed in the name of Secretary Dashnami Akhara Trust for which a routine office is functioning there was no question that the addressee had left the place. It transpires that Akhara Management in connivance with BSF authorities of the said post/bunker concocted a story of”Emitting foul smell” and wanted to remove the expired medicines from the shop as the chemical could be dangerous in case of any explosion caused near the bunker is only to interfere and induct Manzoor Ahmed Narwari into the said premises as a trespasser and in this deal Puran Shah, Manager of the Trust, the BSF Personnel of the post/bunker and Manzoor Ahmed are party and therefore they are to be criminally prosecuted.

It is stated that because of my filing of an FIR they have not succeeded in dispossessing me, but if they are not dealt properly they can succeed in their nefarious designs. It is also stated what business had the Management of the Akhara Trust to break open the lock of my shop and then take out the medicines/goods valued about Rs.4.00 to 5.00 lacs. It is a clear case of trespass and theft.

I sincerely feel that the culprits are arrested and immediately punished.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,
sd/- (M.K.Dass)
sd/- (Sheela Dass)

Fraudulent Allotment of Shops by the Executive Officer of Srinagar Municipality

Jaydish Lal, Bihari Kak, Vinod Kumar Suri, Manohar Lal Sadhana, and Raman Kumar were the tenants of the shops in the Municipal Building complex, Hazuribagh, Srinagar. As the Muslim terrorism had its thrust against the Kashmiri Hindus, the tenants deserted their shops to take shelter in safer zones. In their absence the Executive Ofticer of Srinagar Municipality, some Ganai, is said to have allotted their shops to Muslims with the result their shops were broken open and goods pilfered or looted. The tenants moved earth and heaven for the redressal of injustice perpetrated on them, but to no effect. They called on the concerned Minister, Molvi Iftikar Hussian Ansari, who is an expert in prevarication and procrastination and has dragged his feet from using the whip of law against the intruders and defaulters for the fact that all involved are of the Muslim brand.

In a representation to the Chief Minister the tenants wrote: –

a) We were allotted shops in the complex by Srinagar Municipality in the year 1977 for a period of 17 years with the clause that the lease period would be “renewable thereafter in favour of the lessee.”

b) In the year 1990 we along with lakhs of other members of the minority community were forced to migrate from Srinagar in the wake of wide spread violence. We locked our shops as we could not take them out because of turbulent conditions.

c) While in migration we learnt that the shopping complex had been partially gutted in an incident of fire in July, 1990. However some shops including the one belonging to the applicant No.2 remained unaffected by the fire.

d) Early this year we learnt that by taking advantage of the absence of the members of the minority community some unscrupulous officials of the Srinagar Municipality were reallotting their shops to third parties without following the process of law or without sending proper notices to the bona fide allottees of the said-shops.

e) We have reasons to believe that the papers of allotment have been prepared illegally in a clandestine manner by the Executive Officer of Srinagar Municipality, Mr. Ganai. In certain cases he has also forged the signatures of the earlier Administrator of Srinagar Municipality for illegally allotting the shops to others.
f) The shops have been re-allotted at a premium of only Rs.30,000 per shop while the current market value of the shops is around Rs.7 lakhs each. We have authentic information to believe that Mr.Ganai has reportedly accepted Rs.2.00 lakhs per shop as illegal gratification from the illegal allottees of the said-shops.

g) In case the shops that were not gutted in fire, the locks were broken open and goods worth lakhs stolen by the said official before allotting the shops to some other person.

h) While none of the tenants of the shops of the said complex including those who have been running their business from these shops for all these years has been paying rent to the Srinagar Municipality due to the troubled conditions in the valley. Only the migrants who have at least paid partial rent have been singled out for this treatment.

i) In view of the foregoing it will be clear to your goodself that certain officials of Srinagar Municipality have tried to tarnish the image of the administration by acting in a manner contrary to the declared policy statements of the J&K Government as well as the Government of India. While the Union Ministers and bureaucrats belonging to both the Union Government and the State Government have time and again been voicing the resolve of the government regarding return of the Kashmiri migrants to the valley soon, these officials of the Municipality, just in order to make a quick buck, have been working against this policy by making all efforts to ensure that the migrants do not return to the valley.

Their action of re-allotment of the migrant shops is one step in this direction.

We, therefore, request your goodself to please use your good offices to ensure that the culprits in this case of blatant misuse of power and corruption are brought to book and the shops are restored to the original owners of the said-shops after making good the loss caused to them.

Dr. Kashi Nath Ticku’s House Grabbed by the Government Department

Dr. Kashi Nath Ticku now an octogenarian has been in banishment for the last eight years. It is reliably learnt that he has been spending the evening of his life in Gujrat. He is pained and anguished to learn that his posh house at Jawahar Nagar in Srinagar city has been grabbed. After making thorough enquiries about the grab he learns that it is not a Muslim who has broken open his house and spirited away all the goods from his house but it is a Government Department that has occupied his house in his absence in exile. The Department in the hands of frauds, fanatics and unscrupulous elements has been in occupation of his house for purposes of running a school. Dr. Ticku has been on jaunts to Srinagar to get his house vacated and has been meeting the officers of the Department of Education to ensure the vacation of his house. It was after a long struggle that the officers of the Department agreed to pay him rent since the time the house has been under its occupation. But no rent has been paid to him so far. Every tin1e he flies to Srinagar he has to re-open his case as the officers suffused with communal venom feign ignorance about the illegal occupation.

Dr. Kashi Nath Ticku is a doctor be profession and has been vitally linked with the so-called nationalist movement led by Sheikh Abdullah. What his contributions have been to the movement can be learnt from the galaxy of freedom fighters who wore honestly motivated for heralding a new era of democracy, liberalism and religious Catholicism.

Felling of Poplars from a Kashmiri Pandit House and Hakim Ghulam Hassan

Hakim Ghulam Hassan is said to be a retired judge from the state judiciary. His house near Polytechnic, Gogjibagh, Srinagar is fringed by the house of a Kashmiri Pandit hailing from a respectable family of Mattoos from Rainawari. The house of the Pandit was deserted by the inmates when the Muslim killers started the murder of Kashmiri Pandits as they were labelled as the agents of India and anti-Muslim.

It was after a year or so that Hakim Ghulam Hassan is said to have informed his Kashmiri Pandit neighbour that he had sold the poplars growing within the premises of his house for a sum of Rs. 10,000 which he would be remitting to him very soon. The Pandit took Hakim Ghulam Hassan for his word and believed that the money would come to him sooner or later. Rut the hopes of the Pandit were belied. Money never came to him.

The Kashmiri Pandit in absolute despair is said to have gone on writing to his Muslim neighbour about the despatch of money. Ghulam Hassan is said to have proved callous and discourteous in not writing back to his Pandit neighbour Ultimately the Kashmiri Pandit is said to have phoned him from Jammu and asked his immediate neighbour to send him the money that had accrued from the sale of poplars. Hakim Ghulam Hassan reportedly informed him that he had deposited the money in the treasury. The Pandit put the word “treasury” to an incisive analysis but could not come to any satisfying rational conclusion.

Hakim Ghulam Hassan perhaps meant that the money was deposited in the coffers of Muslim killers who are said to have earned full-scale support and succour from men of his breed.

Courtsy : M.L.Koul

Indian Complaint to the Security Council
Letter Dated January 1, 1948
from the Representative of India
to the President of the Security Council (S/628)

The Government of India have instructed me to transmit to you the following telegraphic communication:

“1. Under Article 35 of the Charter of the United Nations, any Member may bring any situation whose continuance is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security to the attention of the Security Council. Such a situation now exists between India and Pakistan owing to the aid which invaders, consisting of nationals of Pakistan and of tribesmen from the territory immediately adjoining Pakistan on the north-west, are drawing from Pakistan for operations against Jammu and Kashmir, a State which has acceded to the Dominion of India and is part of India. The circumstances of accession, the activities of the invaders which led the Government of India to take military action against them, and the assistance which the attackers have received and are still receiving from Pakistan are explained later in this memorandum. The Government of India request the Security Council to call upon Pakistan to put an end immediately to the giving of such assistance, which is an act of aggression against India. If Pakistan does not do so, the Government of India may be compelled, in self-defence, to enter Pakistan territory, in order to take military action against the invaders. The matter is, therefore, one of extreme urgency and calls for immediate action by the Security Council for avoiding a breach of international peace.

“2. From the middle of September 1947, the Government of India had received reports of the infiltration of armed raiders into the western parts of Jammu province of Jammu and Kashmir State; Jammu adjoins West Punjab, which is a part of the Dominion of Pakistan. These raiders had done a great deal of damage in that area and taken possession of part of the territory of the State. On 24 October, the Government of India heard of a major raid from the Frontier Province of the Dominion of Pakistan into the Valley of Kashmir. Some two thousand or more fully armed and equipped men came in motor transport, crossed over to the territory of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, sacked the town of Muzaffarabad, killing many people and proceeded along the Jhelum Valley road towards Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir State. Intermediate towns and villages were sacked and burnt, and many people killed. These raiders were stopped by Kashmir State troops near Uri, a town some fifty miles from Srinagar, for some time, but the invaders got around them and burnt the power house at Mahora, which supplied electricity to the whole of Kashmir.

“3. The position, on the morning of 26 October, was that these raiders had been held by Kashmir State troops and part of the civil population, who had been armed, at a town called Baramulla. Beyond Baramulla there was no major obstruction up to Srinagar. There was immediate danger of these raiders reaching Srinagar, destroying and massacring large numbers of people, both Hindus and Muslims. The State troops were spread out all over the State and most of them were deployed along the western border of Jammu province. They had been split up into small isolated groups and were incapable of offering effective resistance to the raiders. Most of the State officials had left the threatened areas and the civil administration had ceased to function. All that stood between Srinagar and the fate which had overtaken the places en route followed by the raiders was the determination of the inhabitants of Srinagar, of all communities, and practically without arms, to defend themselves. At this time Srinagar had also a large population of Hindu and Sikh refugees who had fled there from West Punjab owing to communal disturbances in that area. There was little doubt that these refugees would be massacred if the raiders reached Srinagar.

“4. Immediately after the raids into Jammu and Kashmir State commenced, approaches were informally made to the Government of India for the aeceptance of the accession of the State to the Indian Dominion. (It might be explained in parenthesis that Jammu and Kashmir from a State whose ruler, prior to the transfer of power by the United Kingdom to the Dominions of India and Pakistan, had been in treaty relations with the British Crown, which controlled its foreign relations ceased with the transfer of power on 15 August last, and Jammu and Kashmir lilce other States acquired the right to accede to either Dominion.)

“5. Events moved with great rapidity, and the threat to the Valley of Kashmir became grave. On 26 October, the ruler of the State, His Highness Maharaja Sir Hari Singh, appealed urgently to the Government of India for military help. He also requested that the Jammu and Kashmir State should be allowed to accede to the Indian Dominion. An appeal for help was also simultaneously received by the Government of India from the largest popular organization in Kashmir, the National Conference, headed by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah. The Conference further strongly supported the request for the State’s accession to the Indian Dominion. The Government of India were thus approached not only officially by the State authorities, but also on behalf of the people of Kashmir, both for military aid and for the accession of the State to India.

“6. The grave threat to the life and property of innocent people in the Kashmir Valley and to the security of the State of Jammu and Kashmir that had developed as a result of the invasion of the Valley demanded immediate decision by the Government of India on both the requests. It was imperative on account of the emergency that the responsibility for the defence of Jammu and Kashmir State should be taken over by a Government capable of discharging it. But, in order to avoid any possible suggestion that India had utilised the State’s immediate peril for her own political advantage, the Government of India made it clear that once the soil of the State had been cleared of the invader and normal conditions restored, its people would be free to decide their future by the recognized democratic methods of a plebiscite or referendum which, in order to ensure complete impartiality, might be held under international auspices.

“7. The Government of Indian felt it their duty to respond to the appeal for armed assistance because:

“(1) They could not allow a neighbouring and friendly State
to be compelled by force to determine either its internal affairs
or its external relations;
“(2) The accession of Jammu and Kashmir State to the
Dominion of India made India really responsible for the
defence of the State.

“8. The intervention of the Government of India resulted in saving Srinagar. The raiders were driven back from Baramulla to Uri and are held there by Indian troops. Nearly 19,000 raiders face the Dominion forces in this area. Since operations in the Valley of Kashmir started, pressure by the raiders against the western, and south-western border of Jammu and Kashmir State had been intensified. Exact figures are not available. It is understood, however, that nearly 15,000 raiders are operating a gainst this part of the State. State troops are besieged in certain areas. Incursions by the raiders into the State territory, involving murder, arson, loot, and the abduction of women continue. The booty is collected and carried over to the tribal areas to serve as an inducement to the further recruitment of tribesmen to the ranks of the raiders. In addition to those actively participating in the raid, tribesmen and others, estimated at 100,000 have been collected in different places in the districts of West Punjab bordering Jammu and Kashmir State, and many of them are receiving military training under Pakistani nationals, including officers of the Pakistan Army. They are looked after in Pakistan territory, fed, clothed, armed and otherwise equipped, and transported to the territory of Jammu and Kashmir State with the help, direct and indirect, of Pakistani officials, both military and civil.

“9. As already stated, the raiders who entered the Kashmir Valley in October came mainly from the tribal areas to the north-west of Pakistan and, in order to reach Kashmir, passed through Pakistan territory. The raids along the south-west border of the State, which had preceded the invasion of the valley proper, had actually been conducted from Pakistan territory, and Pakistan nationals had taken part in them. This process of transmission across Pakistan territory and untilisation of that territory as a base of operations against Jammu and Kashmir State continues. Recently, military operations against the western and south-western borders of the State have been intensified, and the attackers consist of nationals of Pakistan as well as tribesmen. These invaders are armed with modern weapons, including mortars and medium machine-guns, wear the battle dress of regular soldiers and, in recent engagements, have fought in regular battle formation and are using the tactics of modern warfare. Man-pack wireless sets are in regular use and even mark V mines have been employed. For their transport the invaders have all along used motor vehicles. They are undoubtedly being trained and to some extent led by regular officers of the Pakistan Army. Their rations and other supplies are obtained from Pakistan territory.

“10. These facts point indisputably to the conclusion

“(a) that the invaders are allowed transit across Pakistan
territory;
“(b) that they are allowed to use Pakistan territory as a base
of operations;
“(c) that they include Pakistan nationals;
“(d) that they draw much of their military equipment,
transportation, and supplies (including petrol) from Pakistan;
and
“(e) that Pakistan officers are training, guiding, and
otherwise actively helping them.

“There is no source other than Pakistan from which they could obtain such quantities of modern military equipment, training or guidance. More than once, the Government of India had asked the Pakistan Government to deny to the invaders facilities which constitute an act of aggressian and hostility against India, but without any response. The last occasion on which this request was made was on 22 December, when the Prime Minister of India handed over personally to the Prime Minister of Pakistan a letter in which the various forms of aid given by Pakistan to the invaders were briefly recounted and the Government of Pakistan were asked to put an end to such aid promptly; no reply to this letter has yet been received in spite of a telegraphic reminder sent on 26 December.

“11. It should be clear from the foregoing recital that the Government of Pakistan are unwilling to stop the assistance in material and men which the invaders are receiving from Pakistan territory and from Pakistan nationals, including Pakistan Government personnel, both military and civil. This attitude is not only un-neutral, but constitutes active aggression against India, of which the State of Jammu and Kashmir forms a part.

“12. The Government of India have exerted persuasion and exercised patience to bring about a change in the attitude of Pakistan. But they have failed, and are in consequence confronted with a situation in which their defence of Jammu and Kashmir State is hampered and their measures to drive the invaders from the territory of the State are greatly impeded by the support which the raiders derive from Pakistan. The invaders are still on the soil of Jammu and Kashmir and the inhabitants of the States are exposed to all the atrocities of which a barbarous foe is capable. The presence, in large numbers, of invaders in those portions of Pakistan territory which adjoin parts of Indian territory other than Jammu and Kashmir State is a menace to the rest of India. Indefinite continuance of the present operations prolongs the agony of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, is a drain on India’s resources and a constant threat to the maintenance of peace between India and Pakistan. The Government of India have no option, therefore, but to take more effective military action in order to rid Jammu and Kashmir State of the invader.

“13. In order that the objective of expelling the invader from Indian territory and preventing him from launching attacks should be quickly achieved, Indian troops would have to enter Pakistan territory; only thus could the invader be denied the use of bases and cut off from his sources of supplies and reinforcements in Pakistan. Since the aid which the invaders are receiving from Pakistan is an act of aggression against India, the Government of India are entitled, under international law, to send their armed forces across Pakistan territory for dealing effectively with the invaders. However, as such action might involve armed conflict with Pakistan, the Government of India, ever anxious to proceed according to the principles and aims of the Charter of the United Nations, desire to report the situation to the Security CDuncil under Article 35 of the Charter. They feel justified in requesting the Security Council to ask the Government of Pakistan.

“(1) to prevent Pakistan Government personnel, military
and civil from participating or assisting in the invasion of
Jammu and Kashmir State;
“(2) to call upon other Pakistani nationals to desist from
taking any part in the fighting in Jammu and Kashmir State;
“(3) to deny to the invaders: (a) access to any use of its
territory for operations against Kashmir, (b) military and other
supplies, (c) all other kinds of aid that might tend to prolong
the present struggle.

“14. The Government of India would stress the special urgency of the Security Council taking immediate action on their request. They desire to add that military operations in the invaded areas have, in the past few days, been developing so rapidly that they must, in self- defence, reserve to themselves the freedom to take, at any time when it may become necessary, such military action as they may consider the situation requires.

“15. The Government of India deeply regret that a serious crisis should have been reached in their relation with Pakistan. Not only is Pakistan a neighbour but, in spite of the recent separation, India and Pakistan have many ties and many common interests. India desires nothing more earnestly than to live with her neighbour-State on terms of close and lasting friendship. Peace is to the interest of both States; indeed to the interests of the world. The Government of India’s approach to the Security Council is inspired by the sincere hope that, through the prompt action of the Council, peace may be preserved.

“16. The text of this reference to the Security Council is being telegraphed to the “Government of Pakistan.”

The Tashkent declaration 10th February 1966
The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan, having met at Tashkent and having discussed the existing relations between India and Pakistan hereby declare their firm resolve to restore normal and peaceful relations between their countries and to promote understanding and friendly relations between their peoples. They consider the attainment of these objectives of vital importance for the welfare of the 600 million people of India and Pakistan.
(i) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan agree that both sides will exert all efforts to create good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan in accordance with the United Nations Charter. They reaffirm their obligation under the Charter not to have recourse to force and to settle their disputes through peaceful means. They considered that the interests of peace in their region and particularly in the Indo Pakistan subcontinent and, indeed, the interests of the peoples of India and Pakistan were not served by the continuance of tension between the two countries. It was against this background that Jammu and Kashmir was discussed, and each of the sides set forth its respective position.

(ii) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that all armed personnel of the two countries shall be withdrawn not later than 25 February, 1966, to the position they held prior to 5 August, 1965, and both sides shall observe the ceasefire terms on the ceasefire line.

(iii) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that relations between India and Pakistan shall be based on the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of each other.

(iv) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that both sides will discourage any propaganda directed against the other country and will encourage propaganda which promotes the development of friendly relations between the two countries.

(v) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that the High Commissioner of India to Pakistan and the High Commissioner of Pakistan to India will return to their posts and that the normal functioning of diplomatic missions of both countries will be restored. Both governments shall observe the Vienna Convention of 1961 on diplomatic intercourse.

(vi) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed to consider measures towards the restoration of economic and trade relations, communications as well as cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan, and to take measures to implement the existing agreements between India and Pakistan.

(vii) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that they will give instructions to their respective authorities to carry out the repatriation of the prisoners of war.

(viii) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that the two sides will continue the discussion of questions relating to the problems of refugees and evictions/illegal immigrations. They also agreed that both sides will create conditions which will prevent the exodus of people. They further agree to discuss the return of the property and assets taken over by either side in connection with the conflict.

(ix) The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan have agreed that the two sides will continue meetings both at the highest and at other levels of matters of direct concern to both countries. Both sides have recognised the need to set up joint IndianPakistani bodies which will report to their governments in order to decide what further steps should be taken.

The Prime Minister of India and the President of Pakistan record their feelings, deep appreciation and gratitude to the leaders of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Government and personally to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for their constructive, friendly and noble part in bringing about the present meeting which has resulted in mutually satisfactory results. They also express to the government and friendly people of Uzbekistan their sincere thankfulness for their overwhelming reception and generous hospitality.

They invite the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR to witness this declaration.

Prime Minister of India President of Pakistan
Lal Bahadur Shastri Mohammad Ayub Khan

Tashkent, 10 January 1966.

Pak army behinde Ajmal Kasab and mumabi terror : Nawaz Sharif
EmailWritten by aindia Challenging President Asif Ali Zardari’s assertion that there was no proof that the arrested Mumbai attacker Ajmal alias Kasab hailed from Pakistan’s Punjab province, former premier Nawaz Sharif has said that Kasab indeed belongs to the country’s Punjab province and that Pak Army must admit its role in terror.

“I have checked myself. His (Ajmal Amir Iman alias Ajmal Kasab) house and village has been cordoned off by the security agencies. His parents are not allowed to meet anybody. I don’t understand why it has been done,” Sharif, who hails from Punjab, said in an interview to Geo News channel.

“The people and media should be allowed to meet Iman’s parents so that the truth could come out in the open,” he said, adding that “We need some kind of introspection.”

Meanwhile, the Pakistan government has termed Nawaz’s comments as “ill-timed” and asked all political parties to unite in the difficult times.

Zardari, who earlier acknowledged that the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage could be ‘non-state’ actors from Pakistan, has now said there is still no “real evidence” that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai came from Pakistan.

“Have you seen any evidence to that effect? I have definitely not seen any real evidence to that effect,” Zardari told BBC in an interview this week.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched a cover-up since India made it public that Kasab belonged to the village in Punjab province and his father acknowledged to a Pakistani newspaper, that the gunman captured in India was his son.

Sharif also slammed Zardari’s rule, saying the functioning of the current Pakistan People’s Party-led government is making Pakistan look like a “failed state”.

Pakistan presents the picture of a failed and ungovernable state due to the absence of the government’s writ and the country urgently needs a new roadmap to pull it out of the problems it is currently facing, he said.

The PML-N chief said the dictatorial rule of former President Pervez Musharraf had made the country ungovernable.

“Since 1977, the army has ruled the country for more than 20 years… A state subjected to frequent military intervention in politics can only become ungovernable.”

He said India should have shared intelligence about the Mumbai attacks with Pakistan instead of approaching the UN Security Council.

Sharif also criticised what he described as the government’s “clarifications” regarding the purported violation of Pakistani airspace by Indian fighter jets.

Noting that Pakistan was getting isolated in the international community, Sharif said there is a need to find the root causes of terrorism. He also condemned Zardari’s reported statement that US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas would continue.

The government should make it clear to the US that such attacks went against the country’s integrity and would not be tolerated, he said.

Though the PPP-led government had been in power for ten months, there was little hope of any improvement in the affairs of the state, Sharif said, adding that it was up to the nation to decide whether to make Pakistan a failed state or a successful state.

Sharif said the PML-N wanted an independent judiciary and the repeal of the 17th constitutional amendment, which gives the President sweeping powers, including the ability to dissolve parliament and to dismiss the Prime Minister.

The PML-N will pressure the government to implement the Charter of Democracy, which according to him, was the “will” of slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto. Sharif and Bhutto signed the Charter in 2006 when they launched a joint movement against Musharraf while they were both in exile.

The Charter envisages wide-ranging reforms, including the scrapping of the President’s powers, making the judiciary independent and clippin2g the powers of the military.

India welcomes admission

In its first official reaction to Nawaz Sharif’s admission anout Mumbai attackers being Pakistani, the Indian government has said the world knows Pakistan’s territory is being used to foment terror.