Posted on 10/26/2005 7:10:55 AM PDT by milestogo
| Geoffrey Clarfield | |
| National Post |
On Oct. 10, just two days after an earthquake killed tens of thousands in South Asia, Islamist terrorists belonging to Hizb ul-Mujahideen and Lashkar e-Tolba killed 10 Hindu civilians in the Rajouri district of Indian-controlled Kashmir. The attacks were part of an orchestrated campaign designed to cleanse Kashmir of its indigenous Hindus and bring the area entirely under Muslim governance -- either through a union with Pakistan, or as an independent, Sharia-based Islamic state. Apparently, not even the massive devastation wrought by mother nature has slowed the terrorists' murderous campaign.
Kashmir is the only state of India -- there are 27 states and seven union territories in the nation -- where the majority of inhabitants are Muslim. Indian law prohibits migration of Indians from other states into Kashmir, in order to preserve its Muslim character. In 1947 and 1948, when Hindus and Muslims were slaughtering each other on either side of the Punjab, Kashmir was remarkably peaceful, its Hindu minority lived without fear and the Kashmiris welcomed the Indian army, which protected the population from invading Pakistani tribes.
How was this spirit of tolerance created? The answer lies in the nature of Kashmiri Islam.
Islam came to the Kashmir valley during the late middle ages. Some scholars argue that the slow and gradual conversion of the inhabitants was the result of an indigenous version of Islam promulgated by local mystics, or Sufis, called Rishis.
Rishis were celibate and pacifist mystics. Like the Kashmiri Yogis and Buddhists who may have been their models, they were tolerant of non-Islamic faiths such as that practised by the indigenous Hindus of Kashmir, the Pandits, whose most famous son, Jawaharlal Nehru, founded the modern state of India.
Rishis established centres of pilgrimage graced by beautiful buildings called Ziarat. Many of these places were honoured by Hindus, and many Rishi saints were venerated by Muslim and Hindu worshippers alike. Until the early 1980s, the Hindu Pandits of the Kashmir valley generally lived peaceably with their neighbours of the Muslim majority.
The basis of this mutual toleration is called Kashmiriat. Roughly translated into English, it means "the Kashmiri style or way of life." Unlike the Salafist or Wahhabi Islam of Osama Bin Laden and his followers, Kashmiriat versions of Islam tolerate dance and music. (The Kashmiri musical tradition has more than 180 local ragas and myriads of dances that local musicologists are trying to record and disseminate.) For those looking to reconcile Islam and democracy, Kashmiriat provides an example of how a tolerant Islamic religious and cultural tradition can lay the groundwork for secular democracy.
But during the 1980s, Kashmiriat was dealt a blow from which it may never recover. Moderate Kashmiri Muslims woke up to find that their mosques had new preachers, many of whom had been trained outside of the country. They preached against the old versions of Islam and insisted that their intolerant Wahhabi strain must be adopted by all Kashmiris. Women were to adopt the veil and music was proscribed.
They also preached that indigenous Hindus should be forced to leave, so that Kashmir could become a land reserved for Muslims. No doubt, they were inspired by the world's silence following the near total expulsion of the 50,000-strong Hindu community of Kabul after its conquest by the Taliban.
After a decade of preaching and fulmination, words led to action.
In 1990, the local Urdu-language press in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, published a press release from Hizb ul-Mujahideen demanding that the Pandits of Kashmir leave so that Kashmir could join Pakistan. A poster campaign followed demanding that Kashmiris obey an "Islamic" dress code and that video parlours and cinemas be banned.
Shops, businesses and homes of Kashmiri Pandits were marked out, and notices were placed on their doors demanding that they leave. In villages throughout the region, hit lists of Kashmiri Pandits were distributed. Within a short period, gangs of young men carrying Kalashnikovs began random and indiscriminate killings of Pandit families and any Kashmiri notable who opposed the terror.
The state government of Kashmir collapsed, the Chief Minister went into hiding, and both the regional and national security forces sat idle while a flood of Pandit Hindus were driven out. On Sept. 12, 2004, The Times of India put the case mildly when it ran a story under the headline "Hindu population in decline in Kashmir."
The American and British governments have confirmed that more than a quarter of a million Pandit refugees have been driven out of Kashmir into neighbouring states during the last 15 years. Yet the Indian government has yet to call these people what they are: victims of terror. As a matter of political convenience, it has labelled them "migrants." They languish in refugee camps, in squalor and disease -- people who were once famous for their pacifist version of Saivite Hinduism and who were once an inspiration to Mahatma Gandhi.
Meanwhile, the new Chief Minister of Kashmir has asked the Pandits to return. But each time such announcements are made, there is another terrorist attack against the remaining Hindu stragglers in Kashmir. The Oct. 10 attack was of this type.
Pakistan was created as an Islamic state. India was created as a secular democracy. Although Hindus outnumber Muslims in India by 10 to 1, the media and the government have always been fastidious in ensuring that their rights are honoured and protected. Allowing the expulsion of a quarter of a million indigenous Hindus from their ancestral homeland in Kashmir is not only a hateful, collective crime -- it is also a betrayal of the tolerant creed that has allowed Muslims themselves to prosper. Qudsia Shah, former president of the College for Women in Srinagar put it bluntly: "The exodus of Hindus is not good for Kashmir. We Muslims are the losers."
The Indian government must first recognize the Pandits as legitimate victims of terror in Kashmir. They must then give them back their stolen property and they must win the war on terror in Kashmir. By doing so, they will also allow the moderate Islam of Kashmir to return to that once fabled Himalayan paradise. Kashmiriat is good for democracy.
ping for paradise
Great article. Thanks for posting.
http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=41983
Lone Hindu quake survivor in Pakistani Kashmir hospital
By Muhammad Najeeb, Muzaffarabad:An old Hindu man who was rescued from the rubble of the devastating Oct 8 earthquake is being treated at a field hospital here in this capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The old man, Neeku Ram, appears to be in his mid-80s. He can barely murmur and the relief workers at the hospital have not been able to get any information about him.
"He was brought to our hospital by local rescuers on Oct 11 in a serious condition," Hafiz Suleman, a staff member at the hospital being run by the Jamaatud Dawa, told IANS.
He is probably the only Hindu who is being treated here. Suleman said that no one has come to ask for him.
"We have assumed from his name that he is a Hindu and may have lost all his relatives," Suleman said, showing the frail man's left arm where the name Neeku Ram is tattooed in Urdu.
Suleman said Neeku Ram was being properly cared for. "We have examined him and all his bones are okay... he is suffering from shock and will recover slowly because of his old age," he said.
A local working with the same hospital said that there were three or four Hindu families living in Muzaffarabad that bore the brunt of the quake that has killed over 50,000 people and left an estimated three million homeless.
However, the locals could not say if Neeku Ram belonged to Muzaffarabad or was from some other area. Another man said that there were several Hindu families in Garhi Habibullah, a small town in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province adjacent to Pakistani Kashmir.
Some people speculated that Neeku Ram might have come to Muzaffarabad on the day of earthquake.
Suleman said that they had given his name to the Hindu Punchayat, who had announced to work for rehabilitation of Hindus affected in the quake.
Don't forget the Sikhs, who were also slaughtered in vast numbers and forced to flee to the India side of Punjab, while the Muslems took over the Pak side of Punjab.
See this article for more info:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1509471/posts
Different article - Pakistan (read islam) stops India (read Hindu) from rebuilding rescue bridge.
"The American and British governments have confirmed that more than a quarter of a million Pandit refugees have been driven out of Kashmir into neighbouring states during the last 15 years. Yet the Indian government has yet to call these people what they are: victims of terror. As a matter of political convenience, it has labelled them "migrants." They languish in refugee camps, in squalor and disease -- people who were once famous for their pacifist version of Saivite Hinduism and who were once an inspiration to Mahatma Gandhi."
Is the P.R.O.P* racially/ethnically prejudiced?
Or do they simply hate all non-moslems equally?!
Who cares about the distinction, just J-DAM them back to the stone age...ohhh wait nevermind, they're still there!
What was I thinking?
The laughs and chuckles just keep coming as history repeats itself in India, boys and girls...didn't the arab muhammadans destroy enough temples, kill enough buddhists, hindus and sikhs - oh my! when they were last there in the 1200s?
Here's a thought for the mozzies...
Might not be terribly wise to PI$$ off a nation of nearly a billion people - many of whom are not moslems but studied their history well enough to know what happened before when your lot took over by force...
P.S. They're really close by, they have lots of Nukes, and they probably are not reluctant to use them.
The fun may be just beginning.
A.A.C.
"The Final Crusade has commenced!"
Probably for the first time I am seeing this kind of (pro- Hindu) article reported in the "western" press. I thought the "western" media was sold out to the Muslims.
A welcome change from the decades of slander campaign against India and the Hindus spearheaded by BBC and their ilk.
Good work National Post!
Must read ping!
My grandfather's family has to flee the genocide in Eastern Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during Partition. Few of my family members were killed by the Suhrawardy's Muslim League barbarians during the genocide. My grandfather and his family crossed over to India as paupers with only their clothes on them and had to spend days without food or water.
My Grandfather (died three years back) had first hand experiance of Muslim barbarity and he knew the "Muslim psyche" like no other. He would always say "NEVER EVER trust your Muslim neighbours no matter how good they are. Only one day they will turn on you....... and your women and childern."
He hated the Muslims till his last days.
Reading the history of Kashmir as in the above article is heart wrenching. Americans need to know this. People in the US are often very insular, and to them, Kashmir and Hindus are a tiny unimportant corner of the world peopled with unimportant non-Americans.
This is the character of Islam which wants to slaughter Hindus, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists. They won't stop until they are forcibly stopped.
What about Hindus under suppresion by Indonesia which the Hindus are unable to claim Bali as autonomous district while the local Islamists fear seperatism and Muslims continue to flow into Bali threatening the Hindus.
My grandfather's family has to flee the genocide in Eastern Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during Partition. Few of my family members were killed by the Suhrawardy's Muslim League barbarians during the genocide. My grandfather and his family crossed over to India as paupers with only their clothes on them and had to spend days without food or water.
My Grandfather (died three years back) had first hand experiance of Muslim barbarity and he knew the "Muslim psyche" like no other. He would always say "NEVER EVER trust your Muslim neighbours no matter how good they are. Only one day they will turn on you....... and your women and childern."
He hated the Muslims till his last days.
We are accustomed to the notion of political wars, and this is what we train and prepare for.
In a political war, our enemy is a particular regime, and it is sufficient simply to target the members of that regime, and to attack the institutions and infrastructure that allows it to function.
This makes for the kind of highly focused, relatively humane kind of war that we now expect.
This kind of war is the norm for us, and we have come to believe that it is what war is. Sadly, though, it is the exception rather than the rule. There is another kind of war, though, which is more common, and that is war between peoples. These are the most deadly, the most horrifying of wars, and these are the kinds of wars that lead to millions dead and entire countries laid waste. With this kind of war, the rules of war and the laws of war go out the window. What would be considered a war crime in a political war, ethnic cleansing for example, is the everyday reality in a war between peoples.
Indeed, in a war between peoples, ethnic cleansing is the whole point.
In a political war, it is usually sufficient to install a new regime, reform the legal system, suppress a political faction, and your work is done. Your enemy is in uniform and he knows who he is.
In a war between peoples, the only way it ends is to establish clear and defensible borders, and for the two peoples to separate to opposite sides of that border. That means the answer to barbaric ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing, humanely executed. And continued aggressive policing of the new border until the old generations have grown old and died away, and a new generation has come to power with no memory of the old hatreds.
Kali's dance is almost over. Kalki sits on the horizon checking his weapons awaiting the final darkness.
Interesting times you and I live in. The Avatar is here, but not yet manifested. This is fast approaching. The Kali age is almost over. I hope I live long enough to see it.
Very true. And yet the book that directs them to kill us all has just been added to the White House library. If only the President would read it.
Excellent informative piece.
Ballsy Hindus to be still hanging out in Kashmir.
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