Islamization of Kashmir through Media Manipulation

Hira Fotedar

On August 15, 2008, on India’s Independence Day, Kashmir valley witnessed an unprecedented event as Pakistani flag was hoisted in Lal Chowk in the heart of Srinagar while Indian security forces stood by as moot and passive spectators. Following this, on August 18, 2008, separatists organized a huge rally attended by over 100,000 Kashmiri Muslims denouncing India and demanding Azadi and the imposition of Islamic rule in Kashmir. The demonstration was led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani an ex-government school teacher and Congress supported former Member of J&K Legislative Assembly. He was accompanied by other Kashmiri Muslim leaders such as Mirwaiz Omar a religious leader, former terrorists Shabir Shah, Yasin Malik and invited guests such as leftist writer Arundhati Roy and other fellow travelers for maximum propaganda effect.

According to press reports (Guardian 8/22/08) “there were green flags on every lamp post, every roof, every bus stop, and on the roof of chinar trees. A big one fluttered outside the All India Radio building. Roadsides were painterd over. Rawalpindi they said or simply Pakistan”

Everywhere there were Pakistani flags, everywhere the cry Pakistan se rishta kya? La illah illah (What is our bond with Pakistan? There is no God but Allah.) Azadi ka matlab kya? La illah illah (What does freedom mean? There is no god but Allah). The crowd chanted “crush India”, “When Lashkar comes India will be defeated”, “Kashmir ki Mandi-Rawalpindi”.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani a leader of Pro-Pakistani faction of Hurriyet began his address with a recitation of Qur’an told the crowd that the only way for the struggle to succeed was to turn to Quran for guidance. He said “Pakistan was created for Islam and must continue to safe guard interests of Islam. Likewise in Kashmir nationalism will not work, the American world order will not work, only Islam unites us……….”

In an interview (Rediff.com) with Asha Khosa on August 25, 2008, Mr. Geelani expounded on his plans for Kashmir. He said “I have a three point target, first to impose Islamic Nizam (jurisprudence) in Kashmir. Islam should govern our political thought, socio economic plans, culture and the ongoing movement. The creed of socialism and secularism should not touch our lives and we must totally be governed by Koran and Sunnat (precedents from Prophet Muhammad’s life)”.

Watching this scenario unfold in the Kashmir Valley must give the rulers in Pakistan, the Pakistani Army and ISI great satisfaction. Having failed to annex Kashmir by force in 1947, 1965 and 1971 wars with India, Pakistan was finally achieving Islamization of Kashmir through subversion, intrigue, media manipulation and terrorism.

ISLAMIZING KASHMIR VALLEY

To achieve the goal of Islamization, Pakistan ISI had been working hard for over 30 years to change the centuries old Kashmiri Muslim outlook of secularism and Kashmiriyet to the ideology of fundamentalist Islam. This was done by implanting seeds of subversion and terrorism in two stages:

Stage I began in 1965, with operation “Gibraltar” with heavy infiltration of Pakistani nationals as well as military training of Kashmiri Muslim youth. These youths were recruited by Jamaat-i-Islami a theo –fascist outfit with connections to Rabita-ul-Islam the international headquarters of the Islamic fundamentalist movement based in Saudi Arabia and Pakistani Jamat-i-Islami. This organization developed an elaborate infrastructure for propagating Wahabi style Islamic ideology through mosques, study groups and schools in Kashmiri towns and villages with the connivance of civil adminstartion funded by Indian tax payers. Study circles received money directly from Arab countries through the medium of Muslim Welfare Society, ostensibly for promoting Islamic culture. In mid seventies these Study Circles started operating openly in colleges and universities as well as in Government offices. Moulvis were recruited from UP and Bihar in India to whip up communal and secessionist passions. These Moulvis have played a critical role in subverting the Kashmiri Sufi-Islamic tradition and whip up passions against secular and liberal Kashmiri Hindus and Muslims. To expand its influence among women Shoba-i-Khowateen was launched. It advocates strict observance of Islamic codes for women. Its impact began to be noticed when Kashmiri women who for centuries never accepted veil now were using Arab style Burqa. Many members of this organization formed Dukhtarain-i-Millat with the goal of supporting Islamic terrorists by engaging in intelligence gathering, ferrying arms, keeping under custody the kidnapped victims as well as raking up false stories of human rights abuse and accuse Indian security forces of committing rapes in order to gain international media attention. Stage I produced Kashmiri leaders such as Yasin Malik of JKLF, Syed Ali Shah Geelani of Jamat, Dr. Ayub Thukar of World Kashmiri Movement, Ghulam Nabi Fai of Kashmir American Council as well as Syed Sallahudin of Hizbul Mujahdeen based in Pakistan. These people have been at the forefront of media manipulation to denigrate India and present Islamic movement in Kashmir as a movement for liberation and freedom to hoodwink Indian and foreign Journalists, Academics and Politicians.

Stage II of Pakistani subversion and terrorism began with operation “TOPAC” in late 70’s after the defeat of Pakistan in 1971 war with India. It was designed as part of a proxy war by Pakistan against India to wrest control of Kashmir. Having established a viable fundamentalist Islamic infrastructure through Jamat controlled schools, colleges and with thousands of trained sympathizers in the police and civilian government, Operation TOPAC aimed to bleed India and make it powerless in Kashmir. The goal was to provide Pakistan complete deniability of its involvement as the conflict would appear as an indigenous uprising by Kashmiri Muslims fighting for Azadi against “oppressive Hindu Indians”. Operation TOPAC was conceived by Gen. Zia Ul Huq as an Action Plan for incorporation of Kashmir into Pakistan through Jihad and creating a grass roots movement of freedom from India using Islam as the uniting force.

OPERATION “TOPAC”

Operation TOPAC had four aims:
1. Train Kashmiri youths in handling of sophisticated arms
2. To destabilize and discourage the state administration
3. To make Kashmir valley a Hindu-less Muslim area.
4. To prepare Kashmiri Muslims for Jehad.

This was to be accomplished in two phases:

Phase 1
1. The sentiments of students and farmers be aroused against India and their cooperation will be sought for anti-government demonstrations and riots.
2. Create chaos and spread terror
3. Impart military training to Mujahdeen for fighting Para-military forces and the army
4. Disrupt communication links between the valley, Jammu and Laddakh.
5. Help of Sikh militants be sought for insurgency activities in Jammu region in order to divert the attention of security forces in the valley and make the governments position awkward and disgraceful
6. Take control of the areas where security forces are camped. South Kashmir is suitable for this action.

Phase 2

1. Mount pressure on the Indian Army in Siachin, Kargil, Rajouri and Poonch areas in order to bring down the morale
2. Sudden and vigorous attacks be made on the Army depots and Army convoys at Srinagar, Pattan, Kupwara, Bandipoa and Chowkibal.
3. Afghan Mujahdeen would be infiltrated from Azad Kashmir (Pakistan occupied Kashmir) in order to intensify the freedom struggle of Kashmiri Mujahdeen.
4. Mistake in carrying out “Operation Gibraltar” of 1965 should not be repeated.
5. Special task force under the command of retired Pakistani Army Officers, mainly Afghans will be sent to blast the railway stations, Aerodrome, Jawahar Tunnel, Leh Sonamarg road and Army cantonments etc. After successful operations in the valley, parts of Jammu and Laddakh will also be brought under the full fledged armed insurgency operation.

OPERATION “TOPAC” IN ACTION

The very first evidence of the presence of arms and trained terrorists in the valley came in August 1988 during the riots that occurred in Srinagar after Pakistan President General Zia-ul-Huq’s death in an air crash. The entire town of Srinagar was in turmoil with wide spread looting and arson. Curfew had to be imposed on several areas of inner-city Srinagar strong hold of Jamat-i- Islami. During curfew hours mobs attacked the paramilitary police with semi-automatic weapons, a phenomenon which was unknown before this time.

After a lull of one year violence started again in September 1989 with the murder of prominent Kashmiri Hindus such as a prominent Lawyer Mr. Tika Lal Taploo, Justice Neel Kanth Ganjoo, famous Kashmiri poet Sarwanand Premi along with thousands of Hindu teachers, engineers, doctors and civil servants.

Mosques became the hotbed of terrorist activity during the winter months of 1989-90 for the recruitment of Kashmiri Muslim boys for the cause of Jihad. Video shows describing terrorist tactics and guerilla warfare began running on a 24 hour basis in the mosques and other public places. Pakistan television and radio started creating a sense of hysteria by broadcasting vicious propaganda aimed at arousing the religious feelings among Kashmiri Muslims. Posters started appearing in Srinagar and other towns asking people to observe strict Islamic codes regarding dress, food and entertainment. Video shops and cinema theaters were forced to shut down, drinking of alcohol was banned. Pakistani currency started to appear in circulation and several attempts were made to ban Indian currency. By the end of 1989 Kashmir valley had become a de-facto Pakistani territory with each move of the terrorists legitimized and accepted by the public under duress. Young men wielding guns and pistols began to be accepted as a status symbol in Kashmir and being called a Mujhdeen became a real honor for the Muslim boys and their families.

HINDU EXODUS

On January 4, 1990 Aftab an Urdu daily of Srinagar published a press release from Hizbul Mujahdeen asking Kashmiri Hindus to leave Kashmir or face annihilation. Alsafa another Urdu newspaper repeated these warnings. On January 19, 1990 JKF, Hizbul-Mujahdeen and other terrorist outfits declared the introduction of Nizam-e-Mustafa (Islamic rule) in Kashmir.

On the night of January 19, 1990 all mosques in the valley began to issue threats and warnings to Kashmiri Hindus with loudspeakers broadcasting taped messages, continuously for 24 hours for three consecutive days creating a psychosis of fear and doom.

“Kashmir mein agar rehna hai; Allah-o-Akbar Kehna hai” ( If you want to live in Kashmir you will have to convert and chant Allah-o-Akbar)

“Asi gachchi Pakistan; Batao roas te Batni san” (We want Pakistan with Kashmiri Hindu women but without their men folk)

“Yhan kya chalega; Nizame Mustafa” ( What kind of law will work here Islamic law)

These threats led to the exodus of 350,000 Kashmiri Hindus form the valley ensuring complete Islamization.

MANIPULATION OF MEDIA

1. Misguided Youths, Militants, Jehadis and Islamic Terrorists

The manipulation of Indian media by Kashmiri Muslims began in late sixties after 1965 Indo Pak war with the formation of Jamat-i-Islami affiliated Al-Fatah and Muslim Janbaz Force. These outfits were at the forefront of armed terrorists acts in Kashmir. Their cadres received training in Pakistan and funding from Arab countries, eventually morphing into JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) and present day Hurriyet with the active backing of Pakistan. JKLF and Hurriyet touts itself as a secular even though its core ideology is to impose Islamic rule in Kashmir and banish Kashmiri Hindus. No one in the media ever questioned why its leaders were only Muslims if it was indeed secular. When some of their activists were arrested and convicted for murder, loot and arson the sympathetic J&K Government Officials would release them by referring to them as Misguided Youths. As reported in India Today, April 30, 1990 “Between July and December 1989, 70 hardcore terrorists were released by Farooq Abdullah government. All detentions had been confirmed by the Advisory Body headed by the Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court”. No one in the media took Farooq Abdullah to task for releasing convicted killers and thus encouraging more terrorism.

These misguided youths later became, Militants, Jehadis and now Islamic terrorists

2. Migrants, refugees or internally displaced people

Kashmiri Hindus forced to flee their homes were dubbed as Migrants by Kashmiri Muslim press. No one in Indian media challenged this terminology. Calling them refugees or internally displaced people would call into question the secular façade of Kashmir valley and its Muslim Leadership who were in cahoots with the Congress Government.

3. Militant religious organizations operating under secular garb

In Kashmir valley many organizations espouse to be secular where as their core membership comprises of people with close association with Jamat-i-Islami such as People’s League, People’s Democratic Party, and Hurriyet etc. Outside India, World Kashmir Movement (WKM) in London and Kashmir American Council (KAC) in Washington DC serve as mouthpiece of Islamists and pro Pakistani elements. These organizations have hired western lobbyists to project Islamic terrorists as freedom fighters fighting for liberation of J&K from India. These Lobbyists are paid by Pakistan and Arab countries.

In order to keep India and its security forces on the defensive these organizations employ leftist Indian Journalists, Academics and politicians to espouse and parrot the cause of the secessionist. Kashmir American Council has published pamphlets for distribution to journalists and members of the Congress and Senate in the USA. These pamphlets have sympathetic reports from Ashok Mitra of Daily Telegraph 5/16/1990, Dr. N. Y. Dole of Rashtra Seva Dal, Syed Shahabudin President Insaf party, reports from All India Revolutionary Students Federation Karnatka, Dipankar Bhattacharya, Secretary General, India’s People Front, Minoo Masani of Dalit Voice and retired Justice V. M Tarkunde. In order to discredit Indian security apparatus in Kashmir, Separatists falsely accused Indian Army of rape which was at first accepted at face value and reported as such by the leftist Indian media.

In the last 18 years new generations of anti- Indian Mao- Islamists have been recruited to be the mouthpiece of radical Islamists operating under the secular garb. Some of them are Dr. Angana Chaterjee, Arundhati Roy, AS Aiyar etc. These pamphlets are used to give legitimacy to the point of view espoused by Pakistan funded secessionists outfits.

4. Worldwide Disinformation Campaign through Demonstrations, Symposiums and Tours

Pakistani ISI and Arab countries have organized and funded the formation of various organizations in Kashmir and around the world to coordinate demonstrations, organize symposiums and lectures to promote disinformation regarding human rights abuses by Indian security forces and project humane face of Islamic insurgency fighting for the liberation of Kashmir. Some of these organizations are: Muslim Welfare Society, Falah-I Am Trust, Dukhtarain-e-Millat in Kashmir and Kashmir American Council in Washington D. C, World Kashmir Movement in London, International Institute of Kashmir Studies in London, Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights in London etc. Amir of Jamat-i-Islami Pakistan Qazi Hussein frequently tours Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE in support of Independence of Kashmir and fund raising.

One of the earliest examples of disinformation campaign undertaken by Kashmiri Muslims and their secular allies in India was to deny that any atrocity or ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus had happened. All the blame for the exodus of 350,000 Hindus was laid on Governor Jag Mohan who according to them wanted Hindus out so that he could deal with the Islamic terrorists. Indo American Kashmir Forum has worked hard to debunk this canard through symposiums and workshops.

Another example of disinformation was the massacre of 35 Sikhs in Chittisingpora near Srinagar on 3/20/1990 by armed Islamic terrorists dressed in official Indian Army uniforms. Islamists and its allies in Indian media initially blamed Indian Army for the massacre which was proven not to be the case after detailed investigation by Barry Bearak of New York Times.

5. Task Forces, Petitions and Letter Writing Campaigns.

Faroukh Kathwari a prominent U. S based Kashmiri Muslim businessman has financed Kashmir Study Group composed of University Professors and U. S Diplomats to examine the situation in Kashmir and propose solutions. The Islamist Separatists have taken politicians, journalists and diplomats from various countries to visit Kashmir valley for propaganda purposes to show-case human rights abuses by Indian security forces. The cadres of Jamat-i-Islami along with Dukhtaran-i- Millat are used to spin horror stories with usual drama. Whenever there is a demonstration in the valley KAC, WKM get into action and activate their friends and sympathizers worldwide to write petitions and letters to the United Nations as well as various Government Agencies. Recent case of a petition to U.N by Dr. Angana Chaterjee against Jammu agitation in support of Amarnath Yatra is a good example.

CONCLUSION

Reacting to the demonstrations in Srinagar, a well known liberal Indian Columnists Swaminathan A. Aiyar in Times of India dated 8/17/08 wrote: “We promised Kashmiris a plebiscite six decades ago. Let us hold one now and give them three choices: independence, union with Pakistan and union with India. Almost certainly the Valley will opt for independence. Jammu will opt to stay with India and probably Laddhakh too. Let Kashmiris decide the outcome not the politicians and armies of India and Pakistan.”

On 8/19/08 Arundhati Roy commented to Times of India “India needs Azadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs Azadi from India”

It is surprising that these Indian columnists who claim to be liberal, secularist have no problem to propose the dismemberment of India to appease and satisfy Islamist demands. It seems after sixty years of partition we Indians have learned nothing from Muslim mechanization of deceit through Taki’ya to create Pakistan which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from West Punjab, Sindh and East Bengal. If we do not wake up it is only a matter of time that India will be partitioned into hundreds of small Muslim enclaves governed by Qura’nic Sharia laws, virtually no-go zones for Hindus and Indian security forces from where Indian Mujahdeen will be free to engage in murder and arson to terrorize Indians and demand freedom from the “Oppressive Hindus”. Recently Gen. (rtd.) S. K. Sinha, former Governor J&K gave an interview with Kallol Bhattacharjee, The Week 31/08/2008, which sums the challenge we face in Indian media. He said:

“There is an environment of religious intolerance in Kashmir. There was ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) from the state but no one talks about them. Kashmir has been Talibanized by the Separatists. The Secular lobby never condemns the communal politics of Syed Ali Shah Geelani”.

Hira Fotedar is Co-Founder and past President of IAKF (Indo-American Kashmir Forum). This paper was presented at the Sixth Annual Human Empowerment Conference in Chicago in October 2008 as a Case Study in manipulation of Indian media.

Florida church plans to burn Quran on 9/11 anniversary

AFP

MIAMI: A Florida church said it plans to publicly burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, prompting threats from Islamic groups and warnings the move will trigger a rise in hate crimes.

The Dove World Outreach Center of Gainesville, Florida said on its Facebook page it will hold an "International Burn a Koran Day" on September 11, asking other religious groups to join in standing "against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!"

"Islam and Sharia law was responsible for 9/11," pastor Terry Jones said. "We will burn Qurans because we think it’s time for Christians, for churches, for politicians to stand up and say no; Islam and Sharia law is not welcome in the US," the organizer of the burning action added.

Reactions to the Koran burning announcement were swift. Members of the Al-Falluja jihadist forum have threatened to "spill rivers of your (American) blood" and "a war the likes of which you have never seen before".

Mainstream Muslim groups also denounced the move and lamented the sentiments promoted by the Gainesville church.

Abdicating India

Tarun Vijay

On Kargil Victory Day (July 26), the UPA government has gifted the Indian forces a bizarre decision: scrapping the purchase of artillery guns, which the Army has been demanding urgently. As a defence report says, artillery guns ran havoc on the enemy during Operation Vijay in the Kargil war. These guns are extremely necessary for mountain conflicts. It is predicted that there is 80% probability that the next war India will fight will be in mountains. Nobody answers why we have not bought any artillery guns for long. Whatever we are left with are in bad condition. This news shows the lacklustre attitude of the UPA regime. For the fifth time in the last eight years such a process has been stalled.

The second major fiasco has happened on the external affairs front.

Even in the worse days of the Gujral doctrine, Indian interests were never abdicated the way this government with a CBI mascot has done. The Indian foreign minister not only swallowed the bitter pill of humiliation on a land hostile to us, yielding to an arrogantly unmannered Qureshi, he committed a diplomatic sin against his own country by criticizing his home secretary, synchronizing his fool mouth with Qureshi's foul one on Pillai. What a Track 2, friendly diplomacy at zero level by state players.

Even if Pillai was wrong and the content and the timing of what he said was not music to Krishna, the faceless minister for foreign affairs did a great disservice to Indian interests and honour by publicly lampooning his own government's secretary and choosing to walk with a Qureshi, who is not even a Congress voter. It seems the Congress has waged a war on the home ministry. First, the minister was targeted by none other than the centre of all decisions — Sonia Gandhi. She was religiously followed by the beguilers Digvijay and Mani. Poor Chidambaram couldn't even expect help, or even feeble support, from his constitutional boss, Man Mohan Singh. And a failed leader from Madhya Pradesh, seeking solace in the lap of Naxalites and jihadis through ill-timed pilgrimages to their homes sought to get a few headlines by certifying Chidambaram left-handedly through ‘arranged' interviews on news channels and in the print media. The government and the party are managed through the media a la Rakhi Sawant's Swayamvar. "I won't speak anything till the media is present."

When the mechanic loses the will to repair the car, he fights with his tools to harass the complaining clients. The people, in this case are the receivers of a failed government's irritation, born out of self-realized incompetence. The governors intimidate an opposition through the most-abused tool of CBI in preparation of elections and then ask its leaders to enjoy lunch with them! They say no one should use the term Islamic while reporting terrorism and then make sure that a new term Hindu terror is widely circulated on the basis of a few unbaked ‘homemade' servings of politicized Intelligence agencies. Their CBI lets off Mr Honey “Q” of an Italian clan and unfreezes his London accounts while a blue-eyed boy of 10 Janpath is let off by the same agency which is now sarcastically believed to have shifted it headquarters to Congress party's tool room, earning its daily bread by exonerating Jagdish Tytlers from having any ‘hand' in the massacre of 3,000 Sikhs. The same clan gives Bharat Ratna to a person who had justified the killings by an infamous line "when the big tree falls earth shakes", and refuses honours to Savarkar and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who lived and died for the unity of the nation. Yet, they say, they believe in democracy.

They have no qualms in inviting the divisive Muslim League to join the Cabinet and talking affectionately to the traitors and offering olive branches of love and ‘understanding' to Naxalites. But have you ever heard a Hindu leader was ever invited by the PM on lunch for exchanging notes on what's happening in the nation? It's the most revengeful governance horrendously practising ideological apartheid against a particular section of believers who happen to be Indians and patriotic. They are harassed, condemned and sought to be banished just because they demand Kashmiri Hindus' return with safety and honour, and a temple where Ram was born. They get delisted for saying no to the destruction of a bridge that was built by Ram. These saffrons are not Nehrus and believe that even a boy who was pasting posters of the party in his young days can become party president and you don't have to be essentially born in a family to dream high. They oppose tooth and nail any theocracy -- no Hindu state and no special privileges to any one on the basis of religion and want a united India.


But they are projected as the biggest threat to Muslims who have fared worst in any secular regime from West Bengal to UP and Kashmir to Kerala. From Day 1, when we got a truncated independence, the Nehrus were always inlvolved in unsavoury deals. First we saw the Jeep scandal involving Nehru's blue-eyed boy Krishna Menon, while jawans were fighting a battle in Kashmir. Followed by Mundhra and Nagarwala cases. India lost 1.25 lakh sq km of land to China and Pakistan after 1947 and under a Congress regime suffered 1962's humiliation due to ignoring defence preparedness. We lost Haji Peer in spite of the 1965 win and left Kashmir unresolved at Simla after 1971's great victory. The Congress rate of own-goals was furthered by assaults on Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha's verdict, Emergency, Blue Star, faux pas of IPKF in Sri Lanka, Bofors deal, Submarine purchase scandal and kowtowing to Washington's pressures.

Poverty and rural unemployment has increased abysmally in Congress regimes forcing thousands of farmers to commit suicide while 40% of India lives on a mere Rs 20 a day earning. The footpath people, who are born, live and die on the pavements of the metros have got no solace while the multistorey buildings of the rich get even higher. This government has proved that the Nehruvian doctrine of the elite has only fattened the rich and robed the emasculated masses. And the world's most atrocious exile of an entire community too occurred in Kashmir under the dispensation of the Congress, whose flagship is marked with a soft attitude on Afzal and affectionatly mourning LeT's Ishrat Jahan.

The most scandalous incident of ignoring the nation's defence needs relates to the inability of the Congress/UPA regime to purchase urgently needed military hardware for the forces.

A kiddish media fed on government largesse and ready to be used for revenge killings becomes a tool of the secular machinations to mount assault on the Hindus on the dotted pattern of the Stalinist Soviet Russia. They forget tarnishing Hindu name tarnishes India too. They forget that Hindus have never ever supported any extremism in their age-old lifespan. Pluralism and a warm appreciation of a different viewpoint are intrinsically woven into the Hindu fabric, which has given shelter to the persecuted communities of the world and the uniqueness is expressed through Dargah worship to the Indian Islam, a trait which is strictly forbidden in the Wahhabi lands. They appropriated Gandhi murdering his legacy of tolerance and an indigenous pattern of development seeking to eliminate the fact that Gandhi represents not only the best in India but the best in Hindu Dharma. They never gave anything substantial to Muslims and the worst-ever riots since 1947 against Sikhs and Muslims occurred during Congress regimes, read the home ministry's reports. It was the Congress that showed all the love for the world's biggest perpetrators of mass murderers who unleashed dictatorial terror regimes like Stalin and Mao, inviting their Indian followers to share governance and copied the hateful Godse to suffocate Gandhi's legacy in governance and organization by supporting family rule and intimidating everything that represented the Indian ethos, from Ayodhya to Sharda in POK, yet claim to be ‘tolerant, objective and cultured' politicians.

They support the separatists in Kashmir, help them gain weight and provide medical help and logistics to them, yet want Kashmir to remain in India. They wish the world would recognize the fact that Kashmir is India but we fail to emphasize the unanimous resolution of Parliament that pledged to regain the land Pakistan and China grabbed illegally.

Governance was never at such low ebb. And at its riotous best. Keep your fingers crossed as it can go to any length in ts hunger to harvest elections in Bihar and UP.

The only loser would be the idea of India.

Pakistan or Pornistan?

No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan

They may call it the "Land of the Pure," but Pakistan turns out to be anything but.

The Muslim country, which has banned content on at least 17 websites to block offensive and blasphemous material, is the world's leader in online searches for pornographic material, FoxNews.com has learned.

“You won’t find strip clubs in Islamic countries. Most Islamic countries have certain dress codes,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. “It would be an irony if they haven’t shown the same vigilance to pornography.”

So here's the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for "horse sex" since 2004, "donkey sex" since 2007, "rape pictures" between 2004 and 2009, "rape sex" since 2004, "child sex" between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, "animal sex" since 2004 and "dog sex" since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country also is tops -- or has been No. 1 -- in searches for "sex," "camel sex," "rape video," "child sex video" and some other searches that can't be printed here.


Read full report at
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/12/data-shows-pakistan-googling-pornographic-material/

Hindus in Sindh attacked after boy drinks from mosque cooler

TOI News

ISLAMABAD: Several members of the minority Hindu community were attacked and forced out of their homes in Pakistan's southern Sindh province after a boy drank water from a facility outside a mosque.

About 60 Hindu men, women and children were recently forced to abandon their homes at Memon Goth in Karachi, the capital of Sindh, after influential tribesmen of the area objected to the boy drinking water from a cooler.

"All hell broke loose when my son, Dinesh, who looks after chickens in a farm, drank water from a cooler outside a mosque. Upon seeing him do that, the people of the area started beating him up," a Hindu man named Meerumal told The News daily.

"Later, around 150 tribesmen attacked us, injuring seven of our people — Samo, Mohan, Hero, Chanu, Sadu, Heera, and Guddi — who were taken to the Jinnah Hospital," he said.

The Hindus who were forced out of their homes have taken refuge in a cattle pen. One of the injured, Heera, said about 400 Hindu families are being threatened to vacate the area.

"Our people are even scared of going out of their houses. We are also putting up with living in the filthy (cattle) pen because we cannot go home for fear of being killed," said Heera, who too is living in a cattle shed.

"A trivial incident led to riots between the people of the area. Since both the communities happened to be illiterate, the matter just flared up," said the chief of Memon Goth police station.


Sindh's Minority Affairs Minister Mohan Lal has assured the Hindu community that it will receive full government protection. "I have directed the (district police chief) and the SHO to ensure that these people go back to their houses safely," he said. Lal said the culprits will be dealt with severely.

I am a Hindu now: A former Muslim’s life story

Courtesy:http://www.interfaithshaadi.org/

I was born into a very staunch Muslim family in the US. Learning to read the Quran the moment I could read. I was under the misconception that if I did not do as Allah told me to do, I would be punished severely. I was also told that if I didn’t wear modest clothes I was being immoral. Right from a little girl I wore the head scarf. My friends would ask me why, and I would tell them “because God said so’.

Around the age of 14, I realized how much of life I was missing out on. How my father commanded that I do my prayers 5 times a day and never play any sports because they would only lead me to the devil. One night I was talking to my parents about college and my father said that I would never go to college because he had chosen a boy for me and I was about to get married to him as soon as I turned 18. I was shocked….my mother ran out of the room crying. I began to plead with my father to let me go to college. But he said no. When I asked him why, he told me that Muslim women are not supposed to be educated or go to work. They are supposed to be good wives, who never disagree with their husbands and be good honorable women. I couldn’t belive my ears. This man was still living in the dark-ages.

The next day after school I went to the mosque to talk with our Maulvi Sahab. When I told him about my father’s irrational behavior—he agreed with him. He told me that if all the Muslim men in our community thought like your father, we would be in a really good place right now.

I was stuck and didn’t know what to do. I kept thinking about it till late that night. At around 2am my mom came to check up on me and found me crying. That night I came to know what a sick religion Islam was. She told me that she had been a well educated (Doctor) Hindu woman who had fallen in love with my father in India. During their courtship my father had told her that he was very broad-minded and did not want her to convert when they got married. Against my grand-parent’s wishes she married him and did the Nikaah just so her mother-in-law would like her. Thats where her nightmare began. Her In-laws would not let her go out of the house. No one could come and visit her. She was confined in a home where everyone would spit on her for being a ‘Kafir’. They made her read the Quran and do Namaz. If she didn’t they would beat her. My father would come home and force himself on her. When she would ask him not to, he would tell her that it was written in the Quran, and she was nothing more than a slave to him. After about a year of their marriage, they left for the US. My mom was already pregnant with me.

When I was born he was not too happy with my Mom. He said that if he had married someone of his own faith he would have had a boy for sure. Giving him a girl was the way Allah was punishing him for marrying a Hindu.

When I heard all this I began to hate my father and Islam. I promised to get my mom out of this situation and also never ever end up like her. When I turned 18, along with the help of a lawyer, I managed to get my mom and dad divorced. My mom actually went back to school and has a flourishing practice now.

As for me, you might say that I reverted. I am a practising and loving Hindu now. I have changed my name (new name is not given with the fear of punishment of death for apostasy). I live a life full of love and adoration for a God who does not preach hate, who encourages me to think and gain knowledge, who shows me the way without fear and who loves everyone no matter who they are.

I got married to a Hindu guy and having one beautiful daughter.

Stone pelters of Srinagar and the walnut tree

Tarun Vijay


Rafiq was a small-time wage earner in Srinagar. He worked in a suburban bag factory as a semi-skilled labourer. His cousin had been found dead in police custody a day before and hence he took leave to join the jenaja — last journey of his dear cousin the week we were in Srinagar to organize a seminar in memory of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who laid his life for the full and irreversible integration of Kashmir with the rest of India. Suddenly stone pelting began by some of those who were part of the jenaja, as anger mounted to see police personnel in the way, resulting in a shootout.

Next moment, Rafiq, who had come to share the grief of the loss of his brother, was dead. A stray bullet had pierced through him.

I felt disturbed hearing the news. What was Rafiq’s crime? How can one explain to the mother and sister of the poor fellow the reason of his jeneja at the age of 28? Couldn't the police have acted with some restraint and let the anger pass with looking the other side or just keeping away from the jenaja route? Can all the Muslims in Srinagar or the valley be dubbed anti-nationals and terrorists? If we say the valley belongs to us, then those who people the valley must also be owned up and made to feel our warmth of belongingness.

Kashmir is us. Then surely the people too are our own.

And so was Colonel Neeraj Sood, who died fighting the terrorists. He laid down his life courageously serving the motherland. While we empathized with the family of Rafiq and felt strongly about how police can be further restrained, I found no one, in Srinagar publicly mourning the martyrdom of Colonel Sood.

No politician went to salute his body at the airport, no media organization wrote about his death with a sense of sorrow.

On the contrary, there was a provocative glee on the front pages of the Kashmir dailies describing the colonel’s death.

Why?

The security forces are in Kashmir on the orders of the constitutional powers and they are simply obeying the democratically elected governors. The same people are happily accepted as personal security guards by even the separatist leaders of the valley, but are often mocked at, almost lynched and brutalized when found lonely and vulnerable. I can understand the anger among Delhi or Murshidabad people against the rough and rude behaviour of a police force run under a colonized framework, but if a soldier in khaki is beaten up in Srinagar, it’s not because he is wearing khaki. It’s India he represents. His motherland, India, which is beaten up.

Why?

If the Srinagar youth are us and we feel an affinity with them, it’s not because they are pro-Pakistan or demand separatism, but because we feel they are Indians and we must show our camaraderie to them as fellow citizens living under the grace of the tricolour. Hence, we must share their agonies and pains and dreams and ambitions to rise like Shah Faisal, who topped the Indian Civil Services exam and wants to be a role model for the Kashmiri youth — not the stone pelters.

Jawans of the security forces, which include the police too, are as much children of Mother India as are the Indian Kashmiri youth of the valley.

I visited various parts of Kashmir and know for sure the trouble that hogs the limelight in Delhi and elsewhere is simply limited to a few urban centres crowded by a lazy and almost semiliterate on Kashmir, national and international media. The whole exercise of the stone pelters and their “abbas” is to attract attention and show that not everything is fine in Srinagar. The local people, be those shikarawallas (boat owners in Dal Lake) or small shopkeepers want their business to run, see their children grow in a happy atmosphere, have them study in good schools and colleges and rise in life. For them, business means attracting more tourists. They feel aghast that if these stone-age separatists are so devoted to Kashmiri welfare, why do they spoil their business in the peak tourist season? They don’t want to shut their shops and businesses almost every other day, sometimes for weeks at a stretch, but the fear of getting killed by the anti-national elements and having no corner to take shelter, they yield to the bandh calls of the terrorist groups. It’s the separatists who are using the common Kashmiri as cannon fodder to their lunatic agitational approach, funded and guided by Islamabad. They have a vested interest in keeping the common people poor, backward and indulging in stone pelting, because a happy, prosperous and peaceful Kashmir would delegitimize their claims and demands.

So what happens when a Shiva temple is burnt on the outskirts of Srinagar during a bandh call? Or an Amarnath Yatra is sought to be shrunk to just 15 days in the name of environment protection by those who were responsible to kill the Dal lake with pollutants and have nothing to say about that? When the falsehood overpowers the stark naked truth and the media laps up the make-believe stories strengthening a notion that all Kashmiris support separatism? Nothing.

Half a million Hindus were coerced to leave their homes and nothing happened. Temples were destroyed and nothing happened. Not even a feeble series by a chivalrous mediaperson to document the destruction of places of Hindu worship. The president of the Bar Association of Srinagar gave a statement to the press that said: “I am not Indian.” It was front-paged by many newspapers. Nothing happened. An advocate, who declares that he is not an Indian, is practising in the courts and the authorities are keeping a silence on his mouthful of anti-India statements. Being an Indian has become a matter of loss in Kashmir with the Centre’s Nehruvian policies and provincial politicians using separatist emotions for votes.

No stories on Hindus who still remain in Srinagar and Anantnag. They seem to have been categorized as expendable.

Kashmir is full of good, noble-hearted and intelligent people. It’s only the small coterie of separatists fed on New Delhi’s appeasement and American support (like Hurriyat — no base except a Washington-Islamabad helpline). A scholarly politician, a Muslim leader, was in tears while describing the pathetic condition of Hindus in the valley. And he narrated a true story of an abandoned Hindu home that turned my eyes moist.

In a village near Srinagar, abandoned by Kashmiri Hindus, he saw a walnut tree peeping out of a window. It was a strange sight. Walnut trees are grown in an orchard and not in drawing rooms. He went close and found the tree had taken roots inside a room and since the windows were broken, it grew to the side where the light of the sun came from. The plants always grow like that, towards the sun. How was it possible that a walnut tree was planted inside a room? No, perhaps, and he used his imagination, when the Hindus were on a run, in a hurry a member of the household might have left some walnuts inside the room. Years of moisture and a dilapidated condition of the house, which used to reverberate with sounds of laughter and tears of joy or mourning, made the left-over walnuts take root and grow.

Take root and grow?
A house was turned into a jungle.
And nobody would like to speak about it.
A walnut tree grew from inside a house.

Usually, and quite naturally houses grow under a tree shadow. Trees never grow from within a living house.
The walnut tree growing from inside a baithak, a living room of a family must be telling a tale. Where were the samovars, children, the kahwa and the songs when the walnut took a root?

And the slogans of the Hindu Muslim unity, the sufi tradition, the message of brotherhood emanating from Charar -i-Shareef and Hazrat Bal?

No one answered.

I share the grief of Rafiq. But not at the cost of forgetting the martyrdom of Colonel Sood.
I must, with thanks, reproduce a poetic tribute by Shiv Om Rana to Colonel Neeraj Sood here as my tribute to a great martyr:

An ode to Late Col Neeraj Sood
(who laid down his life Kashmir while chasing terrorists)
Rest In peace.
O! My brother-in-arms.
For you wished very young,
To be thus destined.
Expect not your countrymen,
Or political masters
To mourn or give a trime.
For them your life is yet another brine.
TV channels will show a flick or two,
So will print media do.
But all will be forgotten
In another day or two.
Only your family will carry the cross
Of missing son, brother
Husband or father
For rest of their life.
Rest In peace.
O! My brother-in-arms.
For you wished very young,
To be thus destined.