SACW | 31 Jan 2005
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Sun Jan 30 22:12:36 CST 2005
South Asia Citizens Wire | 31 Jan., 2005
via: www.sacw.net
[INTERRUPTION NOTICE: Please note there will be
no SACW posts between the period 1st - 5th of
February 2005 ! ]
[1] Distorted histories and divisive myths have
made the Kashmir conflict messier (Anuradha
Bhasin Jamwal)
[2] Kashmir: So Close, Yet So Far (Zafar Meraj)
[3] India: Gujarat Crying and Dying for President's Rule (I.K. Shukla)
[4] India: On Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in Uttaranchal (David Hopkins)
[5] Pakistan: Entries Invited for Third Annual Gender in Journalism Awards
--------------
[1]
Communalism Combat
January 2004
PREJUDICE IN PARADISE
DISTORTED HISTORIES AND DIVISIVE MYTHS HAVE MADE
THE KASHMIR CONFLICT MESSIER, MURKIER, ETCHING
DEEP DIVIDES IN A LAND THAT ONCE BOASTED A RICH
AND UNIQUE TRADITION OF SYNCRETISM
By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
Where does one begin the story of the Kashmir
conflict? Does one begin at 1947 when India was
partitioned and Kashmir became a bone of
contention between the two new dominions - India
and Pakistan? Or does one just wish away history
with the blink of an eye and move on to 1989 when
armed insurgents began to surface in the Valley?
Or does one move ahead to newly created histories
of prejudice framed by religious and ethnic
divides - Kashmiri Hindus versus Kashmiri
Muslims, Kashmir versus Jammu Dogras, Gujjars
versus Paharis, and so on and so forth. The irony
is that the story of the Kashmir conflict is read
by most just where the chapter of prejudiced
histories becomes more pronounced. The perils are
that a conflict that was not essentially communal
or regional in nature becomes more vulnerable to
such divisions and polarisation. While the gun
was introduced with the slogan of azadi and talk
of a secular Jammu and Kashmir, it was
essentially the government response through its
various agencies and sponsored or patronised
organisations that ensured that seeds of division
and consequent fanaticism were sown.
The Kashmir conflict can be dated back to the
partition of 1947; the violent conflict is also
steeped in long years of historic wars between
India and Pakistan fought over the land of
Kashmir. But the insurgency operations and
counter insurgency operations are a far more
recent phenomenon that gained momentum in 1989,
beginning first in the Valley. Ask a Pandit from
the Valley about the genesis of the conflict and
he will blame the Islamisation of the Valley and
talk of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits
following threats to Kashmiri Hindus in the
Valley. Ask any Kashmiri Muslim and he'd swear
that the threats are vastly overrated and that
the Pandits deserted them when the azadi slogan
gained momentum in the Valley. The two
diametrically antagonistic histories born in
1989, when the gun arrived, have contributed in
sharply dividing the two communities and shaped
communal politics within and outside the ambit of
the gun. The much-fabled Kashmiriyat, bonds of
which every Kashmiri on both sides of the
communal divide would love to eulogise, was the
casualty. But if the bonds were so strong, why
did they suddenly snap, the bullet piercing
through age-old harmony?
It is necessary to first explore the genesis of
the gun. Why did this come about? Was Islamic
jehad a propelling force? It would be difficult
to describe this genesis in a nutshell. And yet,
for a cursory glance through the events that
shaped the history of militancy in Kashmir one
would have to begin in 1947 itself with the
Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir
State. Jawaharlal Nehru's unfulfilled promise for
plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir followed by New
Delhi's dictatorial policies and centralising
control of the state had subverted all democratic
institutions in Jammu and Kashmir. It was obvious
that New Delhi could not implicitly trust any
leader with a mass following in Kashmir,
particularly one who questioned central policies
or actions. Sheikh Abdullah was arrested,
released, re-arrested and finally released on a
number of occasions during the period between the
Delhi Agreement, 1952 and the Indira
Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1975. It was
mainly government policy followed in New Delhi
that led to the Sheikh's oscillation from the
demand for plebiscite to a mellowed autonomy, an
autonomy that had been totally eroded long before
his death. The puppet regimes imposed in Jammu
and Kashmir may have been mere extensions of this
policy but they were nevertheless a clear signal
to the only state in the Indian union with not
just a Muslim majority population but also a
disputed history that New Delhi was in no mood to
set aside its bid to rule the state through
autocratic policies.
That religion may have had something to do with
this is not known. For even in the case of
Pakistan, which administers one-third of this
divided state, with a majority Muslim population,
various governments of Pakistan ensured that only
puppet governments took charge in Pakistan
administered Jammu and Kashmir. However, religion
was definitely being liberally used by India to
convey the message that the people of Jammu and
Kashmir were not to be trusted owing to their
ethnic and community identity. This was the same
state, the south of which burned like other parts
of the subcontinent in 1947, but where in the
north, in the Valley, Mahatma Gandhi saw a beacon
of light. Not a single killing was reported on
communal lines. Muslims and Hindus of Kashmir
under the secular umbrella of the National
Conference also rallied for peace in October 1947
when raiders began their attack. Sheikh
Abdullah's clarion call raised 15,000 volunteers
and a peace brigade was formed as all of Srinagar
echoed with slogans of "Sher-e-Kashmir ka kya
irshad, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh Ittehad" and "Hamlawar
khabardar, Hum Kashmiri hain taiyar" ("What does
the Sher-e-Kashmir decree, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh
Unity" and "Attackers beware, We Kashmiris are
prepared").
The secular essence of the Valley was embodied in
the Sheikh's words, when he addressed the people:
"Today the raiders from Pakistan are a few miles
from Srinagar. They are raising the slogan of
Islam. It is open to you to be with them or to be
with me. If you opt to be with me you must know
that you have to live for all times on the
principle that Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are
brothers. If that is the language of a 'kafir'
you should raise your sword against me. If you
want to raid or rape 'kafirs' I am the first
'kafir' and you must start from my place and my
family."1
The holocaust that raged through certain states
like Bengal and Punjab in 1947 "failed to have
any echo" in the Kashmir Valley, which had a 93.7
per cent Muslim population. The Hindus in the
Kashmir Valley remained safe and protected even
in the wake of communal killings of Muslims in
the Hindu dominated Jammu region. Credit for this
goes mainly to Sheikh Abdullah and his colleagues
in the party.2
If this was the picture of communal harmony in
Kashmir in 1947, did it take five decades for the
fabric of Kashmiriyat to be tarnished, or did
this happen suddenly in the 1990s? Though the
chasms between the two communities seem to have
appeared suddenly, with both sides being caught a
little unawares, a closer scrutiny of their
prejudiced histories shows that cracks had begun
to form long ago. Many did not realise this and
many chose to overlook it as a passing phase. The
Kashmiri Pandits formed a minuscule minority in
the Kashmir Valley, being only about two to three
per cent of the Valley's total population. The
rest were largely Muslim, mostly Kashmiri
speaking. The creation of the gulf between the
two sides was shaped by several events and
follies of history and the manner in which both
sides interpreted these events. The story
probably began some time in 1947 itself, with an
incident in Baramulla:
"Left behind in Baramulla [on 27 and 28 October]
were assorted groups of [Pathan] tribesmen from
the North-West Frontier Province and, even, it is
very possible, Afghanistan. Discipline was not
the strongest characteristic of such men; and
their officers experienced serious difficulty in
keeping them under control, particularly when
stories began to circulate of the arrival of the
Sikhs (who had been generally accepted by the
tribesmen as the greatest scourge of the Muslims
in the communal massacres which accompanied
Partition, and the legitimate foe in any jehad,
holy war) at Srinagar airfield. The inevitable
killing of Sikhs and Hindus in Baramulla,
particularly merchants who had remained to guard
their stock, now began to be accompanied by
indiscriminate looting and a considerable amount
of rape, applied as much to unfortunate Kashmiri
Muslims as to the infidel. Usually these outrages
did not lead to massacre; but in a few cases,
where leaders completely lost control over their
men, an orgy of killing was the result. This was
certainly the case at St. Joseph's College,
Convent and Hospital, the site of what was to
become one of the most publicised incidents of
the entire Kashmir conflict. Here nuns, priests
and congregation, including patients in the
hospital, were slaughtered; and at the same time
a small number of Europeans, notably Lt.-Colonel
DO Dykes and his wife, as well as the assistant
Mother Superior and one Mr. Barretto, met their
deaths at tribal hands."3
The Baramulla affair has become central to the
Indian or Kashmiri Pandit mythology about
Kashmir. Events to the south of the Valley in the
same state during the same period may also have
shaped the sense of respective insecurities of
both the Kashmiri Hindus and the Muslims. In the
Jammu province, things went very differently.
There, unlike every other part of the state,
Hindus and Sikhs slightly outnumbered Muslims;
and within a period of 11 weeks starting in
August, systematic savageries, similar to those
already launched in East Punjab and in Patiala
and Kapurthala, practically eliminated the entire
Muslim element in the population, amounting to
500,000 people. About 200,000 just disappeared,
remaining untraceable, having presumably been
butchered, or died from epidemics or exposure.
The rest fled destitute to West Punjab.4
According to official records of the United
Nations Security Council, Meeting No. 534, March
6, 1951: "Shortly after the terrible slaughters
in India, which accompanied Partition, the
Maharaja set upon a course of action whereby, in
the words of the special correspondent of The
Times of London published in its issue of 10
October 1948, "in the remaining Dogra area,
237,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated,
unless they escaped to Pakistan along the border,
by all the forces of the Dogra State headed by
the Maharaja in person and aided by Hindus and
Sikhs"."
GK Reddy, a Hindu editor of Kashmir Times, said
in a statement published in The Daily Gazette, a
Hindu paper of Karachi, in its issue of October
28, 1947: "The mad orgy of Dogra violence against
unarmed Muslims should put any self-respecting
human being to shame. I saw armed bands of
ruffians and soldiers shooting down and hacking
to pieces helpless Muslim refugees heading
towards PakistanŠ I saw en route State officials
freely distributing arms and ammunition among the
DograsŠ From the hotel room where I was detained
in Jammu, I counted as many as twenty-six
villages burning one night and all through the
night rattling fire of automatic weapons could be
heard from the surrounding refugee camps."
The communal violence that gripped Jammu was not
altogether one-sided. A large number of Hindu and
Sikhs too were butchered in some parts of the
region, particularly in Rajouri, Mirpur and areas
now under Pakistani occupation. But the fact that
there was an obvious bid by State forces to
patronise the killings and victimisation of
Muslims was a more glaring occurrence. Trouble
was brewing in Poonch where a popular
non-communal agitation was launched after the
Maharaja's administration took over the erstwhile
jagir under its direct control and imposed some
taxes. The mishandling of this agitation and use
of brutal forces by the Maharaja's administration
inflamed passions, turning this non-communal
struggle into communal strife. The Maharaja's
administration had not only asked all Muslims to
surrender their arms but also demobilised a large
number of Muslim soldiers in the Dogra army and
the Muslim police officers, whose loyalty it
suspected. The Maharaja's visit to Bhimber was
followed by large-scale killings in some areas of
Poonch like Pulandri, Bagh and Sudhnoti with a
large number of ex-servicemen and soldiers who
had joined the British Indian Army and had served
them in the Second World War raising a banner of
revolt against the Maharaja.5 The events in
Jammu province revealed that there was an attempt
to change the demographics of the division. The
1947 carnage left several Muslim majority
populated villages in Jammu district alone
totally Hindu or Sikh populated. In Jammu
district alone, which is a part of the larger
Jammu province, Muslims numbered 158,630 and
comprised 37 per cent of the total population of
428,719 in the year 1941. In the year 1961,
Muslims numbered only 51,693 and comprised only
10 per cent of the total population of 516,932.
The decrease in the number of Muslims in Jammu
district alone was over 100,000.6 That there was
a design to change the demographics is
demonstrated by another incident. Prime Minister
of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehr Chand Mahajan told a
delegation of Hindus who met him in the palace
when he arrived in Jammu that now when the power
was being transferred to the people they should
better demand parity. When one of them associated
with the National Conference asked how they could
demand parity when there was so much difference
in population ratio. Pointing to the Ramnagar
natural reserve below, where some bodies of
Muslims were still lying, he said, "the
population ratio too can change."7
The events in Jammu may have stirred up
insecurities among the Muslims and Pandits of the
Valley for different reasons. The Kashmiri
Muslims may have felt threatened by the State's
role in patronising violence against Jammu's
Muslim population. Added to this was the fact
that while the raiders who attacked Kashmir in
1947 from the Pakistani side were notorious for
loot, plunder and rapes, the policy of the Indian
forces was not particularly sympathetic towards
the Muslims. The Pandits had reason to fear a
backlash for what happened in Jammu where Muslims
were in a minority. The fears may have stemmed
from a minority syndrome, which could to some
extent have been natural due to their minuscule
population in the Valley. But much of this fear
stemmed from a history of the misplaced sense of
persecution that Pandits began to feel especially
after 1947 when the rule of the Hindu Dogra ruler
was over and the state was ruled by a government
led by a Kashmiri Muslim. The fears were
misplaced on several counts. The Baramulla
memory, one of the bitterest, was haunting for
Pandits and Muslims alike because the raiders did
not spare any community. Secondly, Jammu and
Kashmir, despite its disputed nature, was for all
practical purposes administratively a unit of
India. The state was initially granted full
autonomy barring three issues - external affairs,
defence and communication. The presence of the
Indian army, an epitome of security for the
Pandits, itself ensured a smoother integration of
Pandits with the rest of India and they were
indeed a part of the larger Hindu majority.
Besides, the New Delhi dominated politics that
took hold in Kashmir in subsequent years was
proof enough that Pandits had no reason to feel
insecure where majority Hindu State-centric
policies were to determine the fate of the land.
Coupled with this was the State-sponsored bid to
change demographics in 1947, followed by the
Hindu nationalist demand to dilute Jammu and
Kashmir's special status with their slogan of "Ek
Vidhaan, Ek Pradhan aur Ek Nishaan". In fact,
Hindu right wing leaders like Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee and Balraj Madhok's repeated rhetoric
questioning the safety of border villages where
Muslims were in a greater majority was a greater
source of insecurity for the Muslims than it was
for the Hindus. Thirdly and more importantly, in
1947, unlike elsewhere in the subcontinent, here
it was the 97 per cent Muslims of the Valley who
ensured full protection to the minority Hindus.
But it seemed that one isolated event of
Baramulla and exaggerated rumours were more
likely to shape the psyche of the Kashmiri
Pandits in years to come.
There were some more compelling economic reasons
as well, making both the Pandits and Muslims reel
under a minority syndrome. Sheikh Abdullah's land
reforms had mainly affected the Pandits or the
upper caste Hindus of Jammu province in whose
hands the major portion of landholding was
consolidated. A mere two per cent of Pandits
owned 30 per cent of all landholdings in the
Valley. The land reforms introduced by Sheikh
Abdullah from 1948 to 1953, together with the
spread of free primary education, had created a
new class of ambitious Kashmiri Muslims. But no
new institutions had been provided to accommodate
these Muslims; and the older ones were
monopolised by the minority Hindus who ran
schools and colleges and had a disproportionate
presence in the bureaucracy. Thus on the part of
Muslims there was also a brewing resentment
against Pandits who had a history of being
over-represented in government employment as
compared to the overall proportion of their
population. They were better educated and
occupied all top posts in the bureaucracy and
other professional fields. Even as Muslims
started making indents in various fields, taking
a share of what was otherwise a monopoly of the
Pandits, during the 1960s and '70s, the Pandits
gradually began to slip into a syndrome of
insecurity. They were aware of their minuscule
minority and their history of monopoly,
educational, professional and economic.
This feeling of 'dispossession', along with the
interplay of rumours and some stray events that
became part of a bitter collective memory,
enhanced their insecurities within the Valley.
Whether motivated by misplaced psychological fear
or deliberate design, most of the rumours were
exaggerated through a whisper campaign projecting
the Pandits as victims and the Muslims as
perpetrators. Several incidents such as the
involvement of a group of five men with Pakistani
agencies in the mountains of North Kashmir during
the 1965 war, the murder of a Hindu youth in a
downtown area and the damage to a temple in
Anantnag in South Kashmir in 1986, were cited
again and again to magnify the threat perception
to Pandits. Kashmiris in the diaspora have been
particularly active in engaging world opinion
with this sort of perception. The Tiger Ladies: A
Memoir of Kashmir, the memoirs of an expatriate
Kashmiri woman, Sudha Kaul, is trapped in the
same mindset. Despite its high literary merit, it
talks of such myths as memories that are suddenly
shaped into history without chronological
details. This is a clever ploy as the writer
jumps from the incident of 1965 to the militancy
of 1989 as if the events are not just
interrelated but as if there were no intervening
period in between. Such myths that were only oral
history became more prevalent after 1989. The
perils here cannot be overemphasised as today
these distorted histories from a community
perspective are being handed down in written form.
In retrospect, several Pandits look back and
recall that they had always felt secure amidst
the presence of the Indian army, a presence of
which most Muslims were wary. Their 'patriotism'
towards India was their potential weapon against
any Muslim domination or the threat that Muslim
Pakistan would take their side. This is what
essentially shaped the Pandit psyche in the years
preceding the insurgency. Thus, when militancy
suddenly surfaced, with reports that disgruntled
Muslim youth were going across the Line of
Control to receive arms training in camps set up
by Pakistan, the fears multiplied. Added to this
was the nationalist discourse going on at two
levels - one at the government level and a
parallel one at the Hindu right wing level. The
killings of some prominent Pandits, including
right wing leaders or men who had affiliations
with the Hindu right wing like Tikalal Taploo,
added fuel to the fire. The killings of all
Muslims was eclipsed by the killings of the
Hindus, projected more widely and with a twist
both by the Pandit community, under the shadow of
its growing insecurities, and the Indian
agencies. The media happily played the role of
force multiplier, this side or that.
When men from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation
Front (JKLF) began the armed struggle, it was not
an Islamic jehad. Slogans of 'azadi' rent the air
as the JKLF presented its vision of a secular
Jammu and Kashmir, although aberrations by some
over-zealous youth talking also of
'nizam-e-Mustafa' and sloganeering from mosques,
which has been a traditional manner of
politicking in the Valley, cannot be ruled out.
The first casualty of the struggle was a Muslim,
Mohd. Yusuf Halwai, demonstrating that the
targets were not only Hindus but also Muslims.
Though in proportion to their population a larger
number of Pandits were killed in this first phase
of militancy, they were not killed because of the
community they belonged to. There were other
reasons behind the killings. The Kashmiri Pandits
formed a kind of elite in the Valley; they had a
large presence in the bureaucracy, both in the
Valley and in Delhi, where government policy on
Kashmir was often dictated by the fears and
concerns of this tiny minority. Their connections
with India and their relative affluence made them
highly visible targets during the first few
months of the insurgency in 1990.8 The myth of
selective killings is further exploded by
statistics. According to a report in The Times of
India in 1993, quoting official sources,
militants killed 1,585 men and women, including
981 Muslims, 218 Hindus, 23 Sikhs and 363
security personnel between January 1990 and
October 1992. According to research by the
Strategic Foresight Group, 29 Muslims were killed
in 1988 in militancy related violence. There was
no Hindu killing. In 1989 and 1990, six and 177
Hindus respectively were killed, as against 73
and 679 Muslims, besides six Sikhs. In 1991, the
killings of Hindus are recorded at 34 and those
of Muslims at 549. These killings are not Valley
specific but hold good for the entire state.
Moreover, these figures also include Hindu
pilgrims or tourists killed in the state. The
statistics reveal that at no point of time were
more Hindus killed than Muslims. In fact, barring
1990, Hindus formed a minuscule percentage of the
total killings.9 In fact, the victimisation of
Muslims is also greater in view of the
large-scale atrocities by security forces.
But the damage had been done. The minority
syndrome, the perpetuated myths and baggage of
distorted history that the Pandits carried,
coupled with the killings, the sloganeering and
mosque calls, which, like the Anantnag event of
1986 when a temple was damaged, became the
accepted generalisation. This was further
compounded by the appointment of a new governor
to the state, Jagmohan, and the consequent
announcement of governor's rule. The exodus of
Pandits from the Valley had become inevitable.
For many, Jagmohan is seen as the man who
engineered the mass flight. Whether this was true
or not, Jagmohan did see the Kashmir problem as
essentially a Muslim versus Hindu one, where
Muslim was perpetrator and Hindu the victim. This
was no strong departure from the myths those at
the helm of affairs in New Delhi shared. In an
interview to Current, May 1990, Jagmohan stated,
"Every Muslim in Kashmir is a militant today. All
of them are for secession from India. I am
scuttling Srinagar Doordarshan's programmes
because everyone there is a militant... The
bullet is the only solution for Kashmir. Unless
the militants are fully wiped out, normalcy can't
return to the Valley."10 It was in early 1990,
during Jagmohan's few months as India's appointed
governor - and, some say, with his active
encouragement - that most of the community of
140,00011 Kashmiri Hindus left the Valley.
Jagmohan had originally been made governor of
Kashmir in 1984 by Indira Gandhi in order to
dismiss Kashmir's elected government; he had
served for five turbulent years during which his
aggressively pro-Hindu policies further alienated
Muslims in the Valley from India. His limited
comprehension of the insurgency - as simply a
limited law-and-order problem that could be
swiftly contained - is apparent in his memoir
about his time as governor of Kashmir. Many
Kashmiris believe that he wanted the Hindus
safely out of the way while he dealt with the
Muslim guerrillas.12
There is more evidence to suggest Jagmohan's role
in the exodus. Senior Jammu-based journalist and
human rights activist Balraj Puri writes in
Kashmir: Towards Insurgency:
"The Jagmohan regime witnessed the exodus of
almost the entire small but vital Kashmir Pandit
community from the valley. Padma Vibhushan Inder
Mohan (later he renounced the title) and I
[Balraj Puri] were the first public men to visit
Kashmir in the second week of March 1990 after
the new phase of repression had started. Though
the Kashmiri Muslims were in an angry mood, they
heard us with respect and narrated their tales of
woe. At scores of the meetings to which we were
invited during our short but hectic visit,
Kashmiri Muslims expressed a genuine feeling of
regret over the migration of Kashmiri Pandits
(KP) and urged us to stop and reverse it.
Encouraged by the popular mood, we formed a joint
committee of the two communities with the former
chief justice of the high court Mufti Bahauddin
Farooqi as president, the Kashmiri Pandit leader
HN Jatto as vice-president and a leading advocate
Ghulam Nabi Hagroo as general secretary, in order
to allay the apprehensions of the Kashmiri
Pandits. Jatto recalled that the Pandits had
reversed their decision to migrate in 1986 after
the success of the goodwill mission led by me. He
expressed the hope that my new initiative would
meet with similar success. A number of Muslim
leaders and parties, including militant outfits,
also appealed to the Pandits not to leave their
homes; Jatto welcomed and endorsed their appeals,
but soon migrated to Jammu himself. He told me
that soon after the joint committee was set up,
the governor [Jagmohan] sent a DSP to him with an
air ticket for Jammu, a jeep to take him to the
airport, an offer of accommodation at Jammu and
an advice to leave Kashmir immediately. Obviously
the governor did not believe that the effort at
restoring inter-community understanding and
confidence was worth a trial.
The experiment came under crossfire. The official
attitude was far from cooperative. The rise of
new militant groups, some warnings in anonymous
posters and some unexplained killings of innocent
members of the community contributed to an
atmosphere of insecurity for the Kashmiri
Pandits. A thorough, independent enquiry alone
can show whether this exodus of Pandits, the
largest in their long history, was entirely
unavoidable."
There was an obvious bid to use the theory of
Hindu victims suffering at the hands of Muslim
guerrillas and their exodus, which the Hindu
right wing called 'forced exile', as a political
tool to demonise the movement for independence
through a systematic war of propaganda unleashed
by the government, the Hindu right wing and the
elite Kashmiri Pandits. The displacement of
Pandits from the Valley has been the prime tool
of Indian officials, politicians and media in the
propaganda war over Kashmir since 1990.13 There
were two distinct kinds of displacement from the
Valley. Those who were well off, mostly in
government jobs, retained the rights to their
salaries and looked for better career
opportunities in Jammu or elsewhere in the
country. And about 5,000 of those who left lived
in shabby camps in the scorching heat of Jammu or
Delhi. As the latter were left to their fate,
there was a growing feeling that the community
leadership, mainly the elite class, had betrayed
their interests for the sake of vote-bank
politics.
Pankaj Mishra writes about a Hindu, Gautam, whom
he met in a camp. He had left his apple orchards
near Baramulla in the north of the Valley in 1990
with sixty-five rupees in his pocket to come
here. There had been no water for eight days and
the plastic buckets used for storage had begun to
run dry. He said bitterly, "We are like a zoo,
people come to watch and then go away." He felt
betrayed by Jagmohan and the other politicians,
especially the Hindu nationalists, who had held
up the community as victims of Muslim guerrillas
in order to get more Hindu votes, and had then
done very little to resettle them, find jobs for
the adults and schools for the young. He had been
back to the Valley just once: he had been
persuaded to do so by his Muslim neighbour who
personally came to the refugee camp to escort him
back to his village. The warmth between the Hindu
and Muslim communities of the Valley - so alike
in many ways for the outsider, so hard to tell
apart - had remained intact, and had acquired a
kind of poignancy after such a long separation.
There may be some stories - of neighbours
occupying homes of Pandits - but conversely there
are also stories of how Muslim neighbours have
looked after the property of Pandit friends and
neighbours. In Tulamulla, it was a Muslim family
that lit the lamps at a famous temple shrine
considered sacred by the Pandits. In some cases
there are stories of flight necessitated by the
threats Pandits received in the initial years of
militancy because envious Muslim neighbours
wanted to grab their property. But equally, there
are also cases of a Muslim neighbour grabbing the
property of a Muslim or a Pandit neighbour
grabbing the property of a Pandit. A middle-aged
Pandit in a Kashmiri camp on the outskirts of
Jammu I met a year ago, Krishan Lal mentioned how
he had been persuaded by a relative, also a
neighbour, in his village in Tangmarg in North
Kashmir, to shift out. They had planned to leave
together but the neighbour backed out at the last
moment. His son was killed in militancy related
violence some years later. Krishan Lal said, "We
heard he was involved with some group." His Hindu
neighbour continues to live in their ancestral
village 14 years after Krishan Lal's flight.
Krishan Lal's house and small restaurant are
today in the neighbour's possession, who visits
Jammu occasionally to tell him that his property
is in safe custody but his own return may not be
safe. Visit the migrant camps or visit rural
Kashmir, villages where Pandits had a substantial
presence, and one hears stories with wide ranging
reasons on why Kashmiri Hindus fled or how they
managed to stay put due to the efforts of good
old neighbours. A senior journalist in Kashmir
talked of one Pandit family near Tangmarg who
decided to stay on till 1991, when the few other
Hindu families in their village also shifted out.
They decided to follow suit but were stopped by
Muslim neighbours. The neighbour's son, in the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, assured them of protection.
They continue to stay there till date.
The exodus itself may not have damaged the bonds
of Kashmiriyat as much if the propaganda
machinery on Islamic jehad started by the State
and the Hindu right wing, which was becoming a
force to reckon with in the '80s, had not roped
the displaced Kashmiri Hindus into their fold.
Several Pandit organisations that were floated
during or after the exodus and several elitist
Pandits became a pliable tool in the hands of
such propagandist tactics. The bitterness on the
other side was a reaction. The timing coincided
with the gradual decline of the Jammu and Kashmir
Liberation Front after the arrest or killing of
its top brass and Pakistan's conscious decision
to strengthen the hands of the Jamaat-e-Islami
backed Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM). Pakistan wanted
more control in Kashmir politics and the JKLF's
independent approach could have been detrimental
to its interests as compared to the HM's
pro-Pakistan agenda.
But first came the propaganda with its
exaggerated statistics of Pandit killings and the
number of those displaced. Statistics show that
there couldn't have been more than 160,000
Pandits in the Valley at the time of the exodus.
But figures were inflated to 4 lakhs as many of
those already settled outside the Valley also
began to register themselves as displaced.
Kashmiri Muslims resented the growing propaganda
against them all over India, and which they saw
Kashmiri Pandits as being party to. Pakistan's
plan in replacing the JKLF with the HM at this
juncture may not have succeeded so well had the
gulf between the two communities not widened so
much. For even today the sympathies and
aspirations of most Muslims in the Valley still
lie with the independence ideology. The shift
from secular Islam to jehadi Islam may not have
triggered the large-scale displacements of Hindus
from Kashmir but the latter may have played a
part in popularising the jehadi groups during the
early '90s. Kashmiri Pandits did not figure in
the HM's game plan to Islamise the Valley. Most
Pandits had fled by the time the HM entered the
picture as a dominant group in separatist
politics. But its warning - 'Kashmiri Pandits
responsible for duress against Muslims should
leave the Valley within two days' - published in
the Urdu daily Alsafa on April 14, 1990, was
critical in triggering a fresh exodus.
Subsequently, it warned the Pandits against
returning to the Valley because they had joined
hands against the enemy forces, referring to
India. The HM declared that Pandits would be
allowed to return only after they had proved
themselves to be part and parcel of the movement.
The essentially Hindutva-centric approach on
Kashmir in India, especially during the '80s when
the BJP and its allies were becoming a power to
reckon with, was being complemented by a jehadi
Islamic approach from Pakistan. Kashmir was the
chessboard and the victims on both sides, swayed
by the burden of their prejudiced histories,
were, but naturally, the Kashmiris - be it the
Hindu or the Muslim.
Both New Delhi and Islamabad's intentions to reap
the harvest of engineered divisions on communal
and ethnic lines did not stop at the Valley,
which had become a successful experiment for both
sides. In the early '90s it continued in the Doda
region, where, unlike the Valley in 1989-91,
militant groups carried out massacres on a purely
selective basis. While the militant operations
were designed to create communal polarisation
between the Hindus and Muslims, the State's role
complemented these designs by scuttling all
efforts at joint community initiatives. Instead,
armed village defence committees were created to
provide arms training and .303 rifles mainly to
Hindus. The army crackdowns in Doda also created
further divisions. In the first half of the '90s,
army crackdowns to trace militants in Doda, which
has a 55 per cent Muslim and 45 per cent Hindu
population, followed a deliberate pattern. People
were asked to come out of their houses and the
soldiers asked them to identify themselves. The
Hindus were asked to form a separate queue and
sent back after just a dose of abuse. The Muslims
were often also beaten up. Thankfully, despite
much provocation, Doda did not go the Kashmir
way. But the bid to play politics of division
amidst the conflict continues, now in the twin
border districts of Rajouri-Poonch, where active
militancy surfaced in the second half of the '90s
though the two districts were popular routes of
infiltration for militants in the first phase.
The divisions here, unlike in the Valley and
Doda, are not so much religious but mainly on
ethnic lines. Rajouri-Poonch has an interesting
demographic pattern. While the districts have a
majority of 80 per cent Muslims, in the two major
towns of Rajouri and Poonch the Muslims form a
minuscule minority of 20 per cent. Most of the
Hindus in these two districts have settled in the
towns. Much of the militancy here is concentrated
in the rural areas. The forces thus play on the
Gujjar Muslim versus Pahari Muslim divide,
projecting the former as a 'patriotic' victim and
the latter as perpetrator at the behest of
Pakistan. In recent years several village defence
committees formed in these two districts have an
overwhelming Gujjar domination. Such engineered
divides boded ill for the Valley. If this carries
on unchecked, Rajouri and Poonch may fast slip
into the same mould. And, as in the Valley, the
damage will then be irreversible.
On a personal level, in most cases, traditional
bonds of Kashmiriyat between neighbours and
friends still exist as they did even in the
initial period of militancy, and even though in
the collective memory there is bitterness on both
sides. But it is difficult to keep building on
the hopes imbued by such personal bonds; bonds
demonstrated for instance when Kashmiri Pandits
visit the Valley every year during the famous
Khir Bhawani festival at a Hindu shrine. Let down
by their community leaders, many Pandits living
in relief camps avow that they still maintain
good relations with their old Muslim friends and
neighbours, who also occasionally visit them from
Kashmir. But as one such camp inhabitant, a man
in his forties, Gopi Krishan says, "We know them,
but do we know their children, they have not
grown up amongst us. Who knows what is on their
minds?" His words echo the fears of those on
either side of the divide.
(Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal is executive editor, Kashmir Times).
Notes
1Navnit Chadha Behera, State Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.
2PS Verma, Jammu and Kashmir at political crossroads, New Delhi 1994.
3Alastair Lamb, Incomplete Partition: The Genesis
of the Kashmir Dispute 1947-1948, Roxford 1997.
4Ian Stephens, Pakistan, New York 1963.
5Public lecture, 'Partition of 1947, some
memoirs' by Ved Bhasin, organised by SAFHR, Jammu
University, September 2003.
6India, District Census Handbook, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu District, 1961.
7Public lecture, Ved Bhasin.
8Pankaj Mishra, Kashmir: The Unending War.
9Cost of Conflict between India and Pakistan,
Report, International Centre for Peace
Initiatives.
10Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India,
Pakistan and The Unending War, New York 2000.
11Estimate of population of Hindus in Kashmir Valley in 1990:
The 1981 census in the Kashmir Valley records
125,000 Hindus (1981 Jammu and Kashmir Census
Report). Taking the 30 per cent increase in the
total population over the period 1971-1981 and
extrapolating it to the period 1981-1990, we get
an estimated total Hindu population of the Valley
in 1990 as 162,500.
12Pankaj Mishra, Kashmir: The Unending War.
13Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflicts, Paths To Peace.
______
[2]
Newsline
January 2005
SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR
HAVING CROSSED THE LOC TO TRAIN FOR THE JIHAD, A
NUMBER OF DISILLUSIONED DROPOUTS LANGUISH IN
MUZAFFARABAD.
From Zafar Meraj in Muzaffarabad
Divided by the over 700 kilometer long border
known as the Line of Control (LoC), the two
halves of Jammu and Kashmir state, one called
Azad Kashmir, under the control of Pakistan, and
the other known as Jammu and Kashmir, under
Indian administration, have a lot in common. In
both parts of the state there is an overwhelming
desire for azadi and a return to peace.
Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad
Kashmir, is a small place compared to its
counterpart on the Indian side, Srinagar.
However, what is similar between the two is the
lush green landscape, defined by rivers and
mountains.
When I reached Muzaffarabad as part
of a journalists' delegation from the Indian side
of Kashmir on November 22, I virtually forgot
that I was in a 'foreign' country and had to
undergo the cumbersome process of obtaining a
visa and special permission to visit Azad
Kashmir. The people, the surroundings, the
atmosphere were no different from home.
Had it not been a visit organised by
SAFMA, however, I would have had to undergo a
long wait before getting clearance to enter 'Azad
territory.' There are people on both sides ,who
have been waiting for decades to cross the LoC to
meet their kith and kin, but their desire remains
unfulfilled.
As I was checking into Sangam, said to
be the best hotel in Muzaffarabad, someone called
out to me "Zafar sahib, remember me, I am Fayaz
(name changed), from the old Srinagar locality of
Zainakadal. My elder brother was your classfellow
and I have met you with him." It took me a moment
to recognise Fayaz, who had aged visibly. Fayaz
was part of a 20-member group of youth from
Srinagar, who crossed the 'khooni lakeer' or LoC
in the mid '60s for arms training in Azad Kashmir.
Like the others, Fayaz was inspired
by the desire to liberate his homeland from the
clutches of the Indian army. However, he seemed
disillusioned. "I rue the day I crossed the Line
of Control (LoC). I had big dreams of freedom for
my motherland, Kashmir. But soon after I landed
in Muzaffarabad, after giving the slip to Indian
soldiers guarding the LoC, it dawned upon me that
I and hundreds like me had fallen victim to the
designs of some vested interests. They wanted to
ensure every advantage for themselves in the name
of jihad and were not interested in the wellbeing
of the people at large," said Fayaz, tears
welling up in his eyes.
Fayaz complained that he and his
colleagues were ill-treated because they believed
in Kashmir's freedom from both India and Pakistan
and did not support the idea of a merger with
Pakistan, as "our masters here wanted." In less
than three months they left the camp and have
been wandering around Azad Kashmir since.
At the hotel, Fayaz was joined by
other young men, all from the Indian side of
Kashmir, with a similar story to tell. For them,
journalists from Indian Kashmir were something
special. "We are meeting someone from there
(Kashmir) after many years," they said. Local
authorities, on hearing about the presence of the
'rebels,' swung into action and tried to prevent
the boys from meeting us as a group. Their
repeated requests for a formal meeting with their
Kashmiri brothers was turned down. Eventually,
the police were called in to prevent them from
entering the hotel. Even visiting journalists
were asked to verify their identity at the
entrance of the hotel all the time we were in
Muzaffarabad.
However, the boys somehow managed to
meet us in twos and threes to narrate their tale
of woe. Dejected by their experience in Azad
Kashmir and homesick, they wanted to return as
soon as possible. However, they realised that
crossing the LoC had become almost impossible.
"We are ready to face interrogation if we are
allowed to go back," said Idrees Ahmed (name
changed). When asked whether he would go as a
militant, he shot back, "No, not at all, gone are
those days, we want to live a peaceful life." His
colleague, Jameel Ahmed, echoed his views and
added, "(President) Musharraf is making friends
with India to seek a solution to the Kashmir
issue, why should we go as militants."
A senior officer of the Azad Kashmir
government confirmed that any movement across the
LoC was completely forbidden. "We stand committed
to put a stop to the cross-border movement and,
moreover, we know for sure that if these boys are
permitted to go back, they will be shot dead by
Indian soldiers."
Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sikandar
Hayat Khan has offered "every possible
assistance" to the Kashmiri youth to help them
settle down, but the situation on the ground is
far from encouraging. Many of these boys are
engaged in small time jobs, selling fruit and
readymade garments on the roadside to support
themselves. The authorities pay them an allowance
of just 750 rupees a month. "Giving us 25 rupees
a day is a cruel joke," said Mukhtar Ahmad (name
changed), an engineer by profession who comes
from a village in the south of Kashmir. He too
was lured by the slogan of jihad and left his job
in 1993 to join the 'mujahideen.' "I was the only
person in my village who owned a Maruti car in
the early nineties. I come from a well-to-do
farmer's family and we have a big orchard that
brings in revenue of over four lakh rupees a
year," he said. "Here I am living a faqir's life".
Like Fayaz, Mukhtar too was keen to
return to his home to lead a normal life. He was
fully aware of the fact that once he crossed the
LoC , he would be apprehended by the Indian
soldiers. Even if he did not fall victim to their
firing, he would definitely land in jail. " I
know this well, but I still want to go back to my
home and live with my family. At least I will not
have to line up every month, like a beggar, to
receive 750 rupees."
"I have to pay 3000 rupees rent and
another thousand for electricity and other
essential services. We are not even registered as
refugees. I make ends meet with great
difficulty," complains Imtiaz who works as a
roadside vendor.
Having left the training camps, these
young men are now virtually stranded in
Muzaffarabad, living outside the camps set up by
the authorities for refugees coming from the
Indian side of Kashmir, mostly from the border
areas of Karnah, Gurez and Keran.
The refugees have been provided with
small hutments in Manakpayeen and some other
areas of Muzaffarabad, and are given basic
facilities like free rations, free electricity
and education. On the other hand, says Shoukat,
who hails from Srinagar city. "We are living a
miserable life. We have no status at all. We are
not mohajirs (refugees) nor can we claim to be
citizens of Azad Kashmir. We are suffering from
an identity crisis." Khalid Hussain Bukhari, now
in his mid-thirties, was too young to know what
'azadi' meant, when he crossed the LoC along with
50 other boys as a JKLF trainee. "I soon gave up
and now want to return home," he said. His
parents live in Zainakote, a locality on the
outskirts of Srinagar. "Meri sarzameen ko salam
kehna, (Salute my native land)," he said when we
left the Azad Kashmir University campus. Bukhari
said that many of his compatriots from the Valley
are depressed and homesick.
However, he does not regret joining
the militant movement, saying that it was the
need of the time. "We had to make India accept
that Kashmir is a disputed area and the people of
the state have the right to decide their future,"
he said, adding, "things have changed a lot since
then. Today everyone talks about peace and I too
want that peace should be given a chance." He was
of the view that those who claimed to lead the
"freedom movement" were not sincere. "When we
arrived here, we were received with open arms. We
were provided with good food, comfortable shelter
and everything else but then the mood changed and
we have been left in the lurch," Bukhari said.
Some of the young men got married in
Azad Kashmir but it is difficult for them to
provide for their families. "Even our wives are
ready to go back to Kashmir with us," said Ali
Mohammad, who hails from Patan village in north
Kashmir. He wanted us to plead their case with
the government in Srinagar to gain permission to
return and "live a peaceful life."
The majority of the boys were highly
critical of the militant leadership based in
Pakistan, saying that the top commanders and
senior militants enjoyed all the luxuries of
life. "Their children are settled here. They have
expensive cars to ride and palatial bungalows to
live in," said Hanif Haider of the Refugee
Welfare Organisation. Haider, who runs the Jammu
and Kashmir Human Rights Movement, said that a
few years back the government snapped the power
supply to their camps. "When we protested we were
lathi-charged," he says
However, a government official
dismissed the allegation saying, "there was some
internal feud leading to the police action."
Haider said that the NGO Siddique
Welfare Trust has helped them from time to time.
Surrounded by a dozen frustrated youth, he asked,
"Who is responsible for making their lives
miserable'? We need to fix the responsibility."
He added that the Kashmir problem needs to be
resolved in consultation with the people from all
the five regions which existed on August 14,
1947. "We will not surrender our right to
freedom," he asserted.
Altaf Ahmed, Assistant Relief
Commissioner in the Azad Kashmir government,
maintains that the Kashmiri youth preferred to
live outside the refugee camps. "They don't like
to live in these conditions," he said.
During a visit to the Manakpayeen
camp set up along the banks of the river Jhelum,
refugees told visiting journalists about the
"atrocities and brutalities" inflicted on them
back in Kashmir that forced them to flee their
homes. "It was impossible to live there," claimed
Raja Izhar Khan, coming from a border village in
Keran sector with a population of six thousand
people. "We want to go back but our homes stand
destroyed and we may not be able to return till
azadi," he said.
Muhammad Ashraf Khan, a police officer
at Keran, spent six months in army custody,
charged with murder. "Actually, the murder was
committed by Indian soldiers and as a policeman I
tried to discharge my duty but they held me
responsible for the murder," he alleged.
According to Altaf, there were as many as 15
refugee camps in 'Azad Kashmir' where 4, 350
families live. Nine of these are at and around
Muzaffarabad and every registered refugee is
being looked after, he says.
______
[3]
GUJARAT CRYING AND DYING FOR PRESIDENT'S RULE
I.K. Shukla
Law and order - wise Bihar may not be the model
state. Which Indian state is? True, all of them
can really use a lot of law and order, not noise,
but the norm. And, not only to remove Rashtriya
Janata Dal government from power, but long after
that, on a permanent basis. Bihar governments
before Rabri Devi's were no less corrupt and
criminal-infested. Those seeking to replace it
have proved their eligibility through humongous
corruption and brutal oppression.
But the racket piercing the sky now about law and
order having gone haywire in Bihar is both
obscene and abjectly opportunistic. Take Atal
Bihari Vajpayee. He becomes a huge cutout of a
joker
calling for the President's rule in Bihar. And,
why is his moral ire stirred so vigorously?
Because of kidnappings of children? Vajpayee,
unless pitiably in the grip of irreversible
dementia, euphemistically now called alzheimer's
disease, could care less for the kidnapped
children. Does he care for the statistics on
kidnappings? He need not, because it would
confirm him as somnolent and certify him as
amnesiac. Delhi and other states leave Bihar far
behind. But it would not deter our prime
poetaster nor make any dent in his sensibility as
a human or as an Indian citizen. The moment one
swears allegiance to RSS one becomes lesser
Indian, least human.
He showed no such compassion in the case of
Gujarat where hundreds of Muslim boys and girls
were torched alive in 2002 holocaust, infants
speared and tossed in fire. He was not moved by
gangrapes of Muslim women in hundreds followed by
their murders and bonfires . He did not allow his
moral sensitivity to squeak, nor his concern for
law and order bleat even once. He stood strong
not by the victims of the carnage unleashed by
Hindu fascists, but by the killers and criminals
with his silent acquiescence and solid approval
(his Goa fulmination against Muslims not being
singular). In Dangs he had chastised the nuns for
failing to remove shards of window panes broken
by Hindu fascists. He expressed no sympathy for
the Christian victims of saffronazis.
He did not call for President's Rule for Gujarat
then, nor has he ever done since, even as the
criminals there remain unpunished, the victims
remain still persecuted, and even as law and
order remains a sham and a big scandal there. For
him to cry wolf in respect of Bihar is
disingenuous, to say the least. What he could not
achieve then,viz., dismissal of Bihar government
of Lalu Prasad Yadav, he pines and whines to
achieve now. Yadav has a point when he attributes
the kidnappings to his political rivals. There
are many ways to settle political scores.
Lalu Prasad and his RJD have earned the eternal
wrath of BJP and its gang of HinduTaliban for
pre-empting Advani's mischief in Bihar. Yadav had
showed pluck and determination by disallowing
Advani's Blood Yatra entering Bihar and blazing a
trail of death and destruction. It was Lalu
Prasad who opted to respect and abide by the
Constitution by guaranteeing safety of the
citizens of the country, in this instance, the
minorities in general, and Muslims in particular.
Thus Bihar remained unscarred by BJP's crimes
nation-wide. When BJP proved its antecedents and
credentials as India's enemy, RJD proved its
patriotism by upholding the Constitution against
its avowed violators.
Atal is part of the conspiratorial vendetta
against Yadav relentlesly pursued by the
saffronazis ever since. He sounds hollow, he
looks ever more like a pipsqueak, and ever more
like a ventriloquist's stuffed dummy. Vajpayee
showed no respect for the Constitution itself, or
he would have recommended President's Rule for
Gujarat. He proved pathetically and ignobly
enough to be RSS's PM, not India's PM. He
deserves to be impeached for this deliberate
lapse and dereliction of duty. He miserably
failed and shamed the nation. He outdid Narasimha
Rao (collusion in Babri's demolition) by going
one better in quietly watching Gujarat drenched
in blood, charred in fire. Rao escaped ignominy
of impeachment by his death betimes. No such
lucky windfall or escape hatch needs to be
allowed to Atal.
The other vocal crusader for law and order in
Bihar now is George Fernandes. He who became
famous, among other deeds, for his declaration in
parliament that rape is not an outrage since it
has been always happening. This moral
perspicacity, he believes, makes him especially
qualified to howl holy horror at law and order in
Bihar. Setting himself above both Constitutional
and political norms, he pontificates that Bihar
is fit for President's Rule. Bihar may be fit for
President's Rule. But not for George's reasons.
He knows, without BJP (his NDA partner) in power,
he would be reduced to a big nullity. And, people
may start asking where does he get all the money
from?
Atal excels his own clowning. Now he wants UP
also under President's rule. The unstated reason
is that Mulayam Singh has not surrendered to
saffronazis either as a criminal partner or as a
surrogate. Had he been helpful to BJP, as the
late J.P.Narayan was, or as the ex-CM Mayawati
was in the recent past, he could be suffered. Not
otherwise. Not in UP, with Ayodhya, and even with
Uttaranchal sliced out of it for BJP's benefit.
UP is too big to be lost. It can still make or
mar the political fortunes of the parties at the
centre. Hence, control of the state by the BJP in
partnership with communal fascists overt and
covert is a dream it cannot live without.
Demographically, BJP's constituency in UP is
small in terms of caste and communal equations.
But Dalits and minorities can be roped in via
bribery and intimidation. Thus a minority (BJP)
rule can be foisted on UP as majority rule.
Mulayam Singh Yadav is in the way. He can be
removed by President's rule.
To benefit the saffronazis, Congress as partner or cheering from the sidelines.
Unfortunately, the Congress in its pique at
Mulayam Singh for his past perfidy of betrayal
(handing over the Central government to BJP at
George's instigation and thus promoting the
communal polarisation in the nation), has,
shortsightedly and vindictively, joined BJP in
demanding the ouster of Mulayam Singh government
by President's rule. This is puerile, and peevish.
Congress is again falling in the rut of helping
Hindu fascism forge ahead with this ill
considered move. Indira Gandhi had done it and
the bitter harvest was Bhindranwale and Blue
Star. Rajiv did it in the case of Ayodhya
(providing the HinduTaliban with an perennial
item on their fascist agenda and thus aggravating
the communal divide) and against V.P. Singh
(Mandal agitation with its immolations and
casteist configurations coalescing in BJP's
favor).
Congress did not call for President's Rule in
Gujarat in 2002 nor afterwards even in the face
of glaring and constant violations of law and
order, suborning of justice, and criminalisation
of polity, communalisation of bureaucracy and
police there. It would be highly reprehensible
for it to pretend law and order in Gujarat is
hunky dory calling for no intervention by the
center in the form of its dismissal and
installation there of President's rule, but it is
precarious in UP and Bihar.
This myopia will cost Congress dear, both in the
short and long runs. Let it wake up if not with
any ideological pretensions, at least with the
facts on the ground. It should not drift to its
own extinction, helping BJP. It should avoid this
kiss of death.
29 Jan. 05
_______
[4]
30 Jan 2005
ENTRIES INVITED FOR THIRD ANNUAL GENDER IN JOURNALISM AWARDS
Entries are invited for third annual Gender in Journalism Awards 2005 for
two Pakistani print media journalists. The awards have been instituted by
the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) with the support of The United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Islamabad.
Articles published between January 31, 2004 and December 31, 2004 are
eligible for the awards. The last date for the receipt of entries is
February 28, 2005. The awards will be announced on May 3, 2005.
One award will be for excellence in gender sensitive reporting and will be
open to both male and female journalists. This award will recognise models
for excellence and best practices in coverage of gender related issues. The
second award will be for outstanding coverage of any issue by a female
journalist. This award will recognise the competence and contributions of
women to journalism who are role models for women entering or planning to
enter the profession.
News, columns, articles, and features publishers in Pakistani print media
during 2004 will be eligible for the Rs. 25, 000 Gender in Journalism
Awards. Journalists and writers may nominate their own work, or editors and
others may nominate writings they feel promote the objectives if the awards.
English or Urdu translations must be attached to the entries that are in
other languages. A panel of eight media professionals will judge the
entries. The entries should be sent to:
Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)
Press Centre,
Shahrah Kamal Ataturk
Pakistan
Tel.: (92-21) 263-3215, 263-1123
Fax: (92-21) 221-7069
Emails: genderawards at pakistanpressfoundation.org
ppf at cyber.net.pk
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