For Daisy: Kashmir reading suggestions

Submitted by Swahili Dinaz (India), Jul 29, 2005 at 13:50

"For those of us who would like to learn more about Kashmir's plight, what could you direct us to read, Mr. Dinez?"
--Here's some for starters:
http://esamskriti.com/html/final_rmp-lavakare-f.pdf
http://esamskriti.com/html/new_inside.asp?cat_name=history&cid=314&sid=54
http://jammukashmir.nic.in/
http://members.rediff.com/zuva/realkashmir.htm
http://in.geocities.com/panun_kashmir/

The doctrine of Pan-Islamism and the Islamic Bomb was touted by Pakistani leaders and generals out of greed for petrodollars in the seventies, and abiding hatred for India. A classic case of delusions of grandeur...
This was further boosted by the war in Afghanistan in the nineties. Until the terrorist wave began in earnest, the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir was the crown jewel of Indian tourism. Kashmir had little to share with the dominant Wahabbi brand of violent Sunni Islam propagated by Pakistan. Its culture was a syncretic mix of Sufism and Hinduism, and often the same saints were venerated by the two groups. Moreover, the patron saint of Jammu and Kashmir is a mystic woman, called Yogini Lalleshwari by the Hindus, and Lal Dedh the Sufi, by Muslims! Even today, hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims undertake the rigorous pilgrim trek to the Himalayan shrine of Amarnath, braving avalanches and landslides, and to the temple of Vaishnodevi, both in J&K. Kashmir Shaivism is the finest flower of Yoga, with a growing number of nonsectarian adherents in the West. The names Kashmir, Srinagar --its capital (Abode of the Goddess), Anantnag, Sheeshnag and so on are of clear Hindu origin. All efforts to Islamise and Talibanise Kashmir have come a cropper in spite of intense propaganda by Pakistan-trained militant youth.
Nowhere has the doctrine of Pan-Islamism failed so completely as in Kashmir! In fact more pacifist Muslims have been killed by the terrorists than any other community in J&K. The tide against militancy in Kashmir is now sharply on the rise, after heinous attacks including the bombing of schools, and acid attacks to cripple and disfigure young school-going girls who refused to wear the veil! Just this last month, the hitherto secessonist Kashmiri Muslim All Party Hurriyat Conference members, visiting Pak-Occupied Kashmir and Pakistan on a diplomatic mission, pointed to the existing terrorist-training camps in Islamabad and Lahore. And on their return, they challenged the terrorist dictat by inviting the ousted Kashmiri Hindus to return home!
People in the West have not understood how Pakistani-backed international terrorists first used India to conduct test runs of later attacks against targets in the West. The Al-Ansar throat-slitting act started with the Norwegian and four kidnapped tourists in Kashmir in the mid-nineties. The hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, using nothing but knives and boxcutters on the eve of the new millennium, was followed by the 9/11 Attack Against America. Ransom money paid by a kidnapped shoe baron of Kolkata was wired to Mohammad Atta from Pakistan. The serial Mumbai bomb blasts were later repeated in Madrid and London. It is a tribute to the firm Indian resolve in the face of all odds, that has not only allowed it to face decades of terrorism on its soil in total isolation from the world community (given the Western geopolitical stakes in the rogue nation of Pakistan), without compromising on the values of democracy and secularism. In contrast, Pakistan today is a tinpot dictatorsip in the throes of violent fanaticism, harbouring crime, money-laundering rackets, drugs and dangerous weapons!

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