Peace Watch » Archive
Report Just Meant For Trashcan
For the past couple of days a strong sense of penitence has overtaken me. This sense sharpened, after the GoI publicized report prepared by its three appointees. I confess before my readers. ‘In 1972, as a student of Kashmir University with all my skepticism about the role played by Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah at the crucial junctures of our history like many other boys, I was also his supporter, not an ardent one. In 1973, the Plebiscite … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Leadership Paradox: You have Right To Disagree
In eighties, I was swayed!So where hundreds of thousands on watching the documentary hosted by Orson Welles, ‘The Man Who Saw Tomorrow’ based on the predictions by sixteenth century French astrologer Michel de Nostredame, Nostradamus. The man is ‘credited with having’ predicted many major events in the world. The film projecting Nostradamus as seer and sage with immense power that enabled him to foresee and predict had a slant, as someone has said, ‘rather slanted to the projection that affect the United States and its allies directly at the time of the films inception.’ Somehow, word had travelled across the valley that the film predicts the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. People copied cassette of the film, circulated from home to home, and watched in groups and batches. The viewers identified … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Street Child Rembers Legendaries
Turbaned Legendary Looking back is not being weirdo-it is not being crazy. It is cathartic. Allow me the liberty, to say nostalgia is an ‘elixir that heals the hearts’ and soothes the fatigued nerves. It is loveable. Passing through the lanes that cradled us is loveable even today. They resonate with lullabies and sing songs of love, “That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude.” The skyline of my birth burg makes me tizzy and tipsy. If you ask me why, I will fumble for an answer-, it is inexplicable. The shimmering golden spires of the minarets sometimes make me trance and mysteriously take me on a spiritual voyage and everything around in rapture sings hymns like “whirling Dervishes” of Egypt. On every visit the quartet minarets of Jamia Masjid, open up for me … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Abdul Majid Zargar has a viewpoint
The Supreme Court judgment in Pathribal fake encounter case constitutes a severe assault on the right to life of common people living in conflict areas like Kashmir. Following Chittisinghpora massacre of Sikhs in the year 2000, five innocent civilians were virtually dragged from their beds and killed in cold blood by personnel of 7 Rashtriya Rifles. The victims were labeled as LET mercenaries responsible behind the chittisinghpora incident. Even the then Union Home Minster, Lal Krishen Advani flew from New-Delhi to shower praises on the Army unit responsible for the Act. When the identity of five men became known as innocent civilians, protests intensified across Anantnag, forcing the government to order a judicial inquiry. On April 3, 2000, the protesters marched towards the Deputy Commissioner’s office. Nine of them were … Read entire article »
Filed under: Kashmir-Talk
Hurriyat Conference’s Battle Within
It was a storm in teacup. That is how I looked at the ripples caused within a faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHCM) by the statement of its former Chairman Abdul Gani Bhat. He had stated that the United Nations resolutions on Kashmir ‘were not practically applicable in the present time’. He also asked the multi-party forum to join hands with the National Conference and the PDP and drafting a common minimum program … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Untold Tales of Kashmir
It was time of change. As, I was leaving my mother’s lap, that warm hug, where evil could not harm me and learning to waddle with watangour- walker, toddling and stumbling at every step, lots of changes were taking place– changes that were bringing down the towers of Ilium, hubris and hegemony. It was a period of paradoxes and power. I do not know if these changes could be compared to the changes during the Victorian period for criss-crossing of ideologies, politics, duality and duplicity. It was a period of what social scientists would call as ‘paradigmatic change in the socio-economic structure.’ Panting for breaths the centuries old order and practices was dying – feudalism was dying, the brutal institution of moneylenders was gasping for breaths, and peasantry was discovering … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take
Kashmir Muslim Society New Challanges
I want to have a frank talk with ‘the pulpit’. My belief is that I will not be committing any blasphemy in stating my mind to the preachers and sermonizers in my part of the world. Like overwhelming majority, I am born, and brought up in a Muslim family and have not received any formal education in Deen. I have not been a student of any seminary or theological school. Conscious of my limitations and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured