MINORITY-FREE KASHMIR

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Subj: Article on Kashmir

3/13/02 1:45:52 PM Pacific Standard Time

ramn

 

Kashmir has been in the news for quite some time.

NEW YORK RESIDENT is a weekly published from New York City. This

article on Kashmir published in its January 22, 2002 issue gives a

pithy account of what it's all about that Americans need to know.

 

The article should be made available to all thinking Americans - US

and State lawmakers, State Governors, US national and regional

media, US and State officials and as many US citizens as possible -

in fact, all your friends in the United States. Ram Narayanan

 

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?

pnpid=344&show=archivedetails&ArchiveID=703319&om=1

 

NEW YORK RESIDENT, JANUARY 22, 2002

 

FUNDAMENTALISTS WANT MINORITY-FREE KASHMIR TO FORCE THEIR RELIGION

ON THE PEOPLE

 

The Indian province of Kashmir is the current source of the bloody

conflict between India and Pakistan. India has a population of 1.03

billion people, of whom 81.3 percent are Hindu, 12 percent are

Muslim, 2.3 percent are Christian, 1.9 percent are Sikh and 2.5

percent are Buddhists, Jains, Parsi, etc. The nearly 124 million

Muslims in India reside alongside the overwhelming majority of 837

million Hindus and about 70 million people of the minority

religions.

 

The Hindus and Muslims of India existed in relative harmony until

the 13th century -- when Islam became the majority religion in

Kashmir -- because the people of the Indian subcontinent were of

similar ethnicity, and the Sufi-Islamic way of life that Muslims

followed in Kashmir complemented the Rishi tradition of Kashmiri

Pandits (Hindus). Theirs was a syncretic culture (i.e., combining

different forms of belief or practice) in which Hindus and Muslims

prayed at the same shrines and venerated the same local saints.

 

Nevertheless, even during those relatively tranquil times, there

were occasionally local Islamic rulers who were strict in their

interpretation of the Koran and subjected the Hindu minority to

cruelty and discrimination.

 

The current armed secessionist movement in Kashmir is mainly the

result of the 1947 separation of the Muslim region of Pakistan from

India. Contrary to current propaganda, India did not "annex"

Kashmir.

 

At the time of independence from British rule in 1947 and the

ensuing partition into secular India and theocratic Pakistan, the

Hindu Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir had the option of joining either

India or Pakistan or remaining independent. He considered

independence, but after Pakistan invaded Kashmir to prevent this, he

joined India.

 

Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, the head of the National Conference, the

largest political party representing the Muslim majority, ratified

his decision. Abdullah thought that the interests of Kashmiri

Muslims would be best served under the protection of the Indian

constitution. However, from its inception in 1947, Islamic Pakistan

never truly accepted Indias new province as a reality and began to

ferment and finance a separatist movement.

 

Since about 1985, Islamic fundamentalists, mainly from Pakistan,

began resorting to terrorist tactics, targeting Hindus, Sikhs and

secular Muslims. By the late '80s they had planned and carried out a

program of secessionist terrorism that brutalized Kashmir.

Systematic efforts have been made to destroy Kashmir's harmonious

cultural traditions and heritage through an orgy of senseless

violence fueled by religious fervor and fanaticism, supplied with

money and arms from the Arabic and Islamic world beyond India's

borders.

 

Since 1990, with the training and support of Pakistan, the heartless

terrorists have engaged in a subversive war against India in their

effort to establish a Muslim theocracy in Kashmir. They have taken

the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children. The

brutal terrorists have engaged in wanton acts of abduction, rape,

murder, arson, extortion and looting. They have indiscriminately

engaged in the kidnapping, torture and murder of government

officials, political leaders, members of the judiciary, prominent

citizens and even the media. Draconian religious codes of conduct

have been imposed on the ordinary people, and there has been large-

scale destruction of public and private property, including more

than 400 secular state schools.

 

To further their twisted cause, these terrorists have forced native

Hindus from their homes at gunpoint and completed a program

of "ethnic cleansing," expelling about 400,000 people of the

minority community who had to flee and now live as refugees in other

parts of the country.

 

These are the so-called accomplishments of the Islamic

fundamentalists' war in Kashmir. The objective of their genocide is

to create a minority-free Kashmir so that Islamization can be easily

imposed on the populace. This is the true face of aggressive,

fundamentalist Islam. India may not a perfect democracy, but more

than a billion souls there are making great efforts to live side by

side in tranquillity. Ask yourself on which side America belongs:

India's or Pakistan's?

 

 

Don Winter is co-publisher of New York Resident. E-mail responses to

editor in chief Mark Rifkin at markr.