[Reader-list] Kashmir Fatigue - an article on www.chowk.com

[Mir Taqi Mir]

Kashmir Fatigue
by Ajay Raina

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Rejoinder to a poet who died before me..
At the top end corner of the famous Lal Chowk of Srinagar (named after the 
Moscow’s famous Red Square), stands Hotel Neelam, a well-identifiable 
landmark, strategically placed in the heart of Srinagar at the tri-junction 
of it’s most active thoroughfare. Looking straight ahead through the 
shattered glass panes of the hotel you will see the clock tower that never 
ever showed the correct time right from the day it came to be installed 
there after a fanfare inauguration by the Sher-I-Kashmir himself. Beyond the 
clock tower is the Residency road of the British Imperial times. This road 
was later named Shahid Sherwani Road after the Martyr who single-handedly 
stopped the Pakistani Tribal raiders from reaching Srinagar in 1948 for 
which he paid by his life – a tortuous and agonizing death; he was nailed to 
a cross. The road was later, re-named its original name. After 1990, every 
other known and unknown landmark of Srinagar that even remotely suggested of 
Kashmir’s association with Independent India was re-named or not re-re-named 
at all. To the left of Hotel Neelam are the now completely gutted Palladium 
Cinema and Hotel Lalla Rukh and beyond to Maisuma, Gow Kadal to Haba Kadal 
to Fateh Kadal and the infamous Downtown. To its right is the road that 
leads to the Amira Kadal, the first of the seven bridges of the ancient 
Srinagar city.


Inside Hotel Neelam, one sad evening on a cold December day, an old man in 
his mid seventies was warming himself beside a bukhari along with another 
young man. We were the only three guests in the restaurant of the hotel that 
late evening. The streets had already emptied out. There was no electricity, 
which is usual in Srinagar’s winters, because the waters freeze and there is 
not enough of it left to run the power plants. The locals, however, believe 
that most of the electricity generated in Kashmir is sold off to the 
neighbouring States in the plains of India, as part payment of unresolved 
debts of past. I was in Srinagar for the first time ever after the events of 
1990. I was scared because, it was the first night of my stay in Srinagar 
and I was alone. The old man asked me for a cigarette which I helpfully 
proferred. Before long, the old man started getting interested in me, he 
asked me where I was from, why I was in Srinagar and last of all he asked me 
my name…I told him my name was Ajay Kumar and than I added Raina to it as a 
afterthought. I was not really sure than, if I could announce my identity to 
any unknown person in Srinagar so soon; an identity that did not matter to 
me elsewhere, but in Srinagar, could have been a matter of life and death to 
me at anytime in the past 12 years.
He asked me my fathers name and I told him… I do not know if it was just the 
smoke of the Bukhari, but I saw a film of cloud come over his eyes, a mist 
of certain sadness, a tinge of remorse perhaps? He said he used to know my 
father well; they had been professional colleagues till the time he had to 
leave... we got talking and he told me of an incident more than 40 years 
old.


“It was the Autumn of 1958…I was with a group of friends, having tea in this 
same restaurant, about the same hour as now, the hour of the evening news 
bulletins from Radio Kashmir. (As All India Radio is known in Kashmir) The 
news announced the release of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah from one of his 
numerous incarcerations. There was an instantaneous jubilation all around. 
The shopkeepers downed their shutters and come out on the road and the 
people walking back home from office, old and young, all made up an 
impromptu procession that started from Lal Chowk and wended its euphoric way 
down the residency road, past hotel Lalla Rukh, past Biscoe school, past 
Partap Park towards Regal Chowk. It was a huge procession of people carrying 
lit candles, with thanksgiving songs on their lips. It was a huge mass of 
euphoria that turned into a mass frenzy in no time. At the Regal Chowk, 
someone from among the crowd, pointing to a house, started uttering the 
choicest Kashmiri abuses…in no time; a man (one of the cabinet minister or 
the party official -I don’t clearly remember which it was - of Bakshi Ghulam 
Mohammad’s then government) was dragged down from his apartment and roundly 
abused and beaten up by the mob. With the light of the lit candles in their 
hands, the mob set that badly mauled and almost lifeless man to a blaze. 
Over his burning body, writhing in death throes, they danced…and they sang 
songs of thanksgiving to the God for Sher-I-Kashmir’s release.”


“I was watching this gory celebration from the side pavement on Residency 
road near Regal Chowk,” he went on, “An old frightened man, a Kashmiri 
Pandit with his typical headdress and ‘tilak’ on his forehead, nudged me and 
asked me if I had a pen and some paper. I fished the same from my pocket and 
gave it to him…He wrote something on the paper and returned it to me with an 
urging, that I must preserve the paper and remember this mad moment…on the 
paper was written, “I may not be there when the same sight will repeat 
before your eyes, sometime in the near future. These very people who are 
singing the praises of their Sher-e-Kashmir today, will one day burn his 
effigy on these very streets of Srinagar. The person they revile now will in 
turn be visited at his grave with flowers by the same men.”


“In 1990, I saw the prediction of that Pandit come true. In the euphoria of 
‘azadi’ and mass frenzy, the people of Kashmir, who so revered their 
Sher-I-Kashmir, actually wanted to dig up the very bones of their very dear 
leader from his mausoleum. The grave of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, to this 
day remains guarded 24 hours of day and night by a posse of heavily armed 
security man. His son rules Kashmir now. He will in his own time anoint his 
own son as heir-apparent of Kashmir, in the same imperial fashion of Indian 
Maharajas, the way Sheikh Abdullah did more than 20 years ago when there was 
wide spread jubilation on the streets of Srinagar. On the other hand, the 
memory of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the Chief Minister replacement of Sheikh 
Abdullah in 1953 remains unsullied…”


“At that time, in 1990,” he went on, “in the spirit of the Old Pandits 
prediction, I had made my very own prediction about the future of Kashmir; 
‘These very people who have brought our land and the Pandits of Kashmir to 
their present misery will one day turn upon each other and tear each other 
apart.’ “This, my friend,” he concluded, “is the entire story of what has 
happened to Kashmir in the last 12 years since Kashmiri Pandits left because 
of a forced exodus.”


I never met him again after that…but subsequently, I have come to know, and 
read and hear that during those initial moments of Euphoria in 1990, the 
same kinds of forebodings and apprehensions had occurred to many older 
generation Kashmiris about the future of Kashmir. The waters of the many 
sacred springs and revered religious shrines of Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims 
had turned dark or had begun to overflow. The forebodings of imminent 
catastrophe in Kashmir are too numerous to recall, but magnitude of death 
and destruction that has visited upon Kashmir in the past decade, has 
permanently scarred the landscape of the valley and the psyche of its people 
within Kashmir and of those in exile in the plains of India.


In 1990, the Militants of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul 
Mujahideen dealt my sense of self and my identity as an Indian a 
humiliatingly serious blow. 12 years since, it is still hard for any of the 
people who belong to my community to consider going back home. When we cried 
for our people then – some shot in the head with a single bullet, some 
tortured to death, some hanged, some sawed off into a hundred body parts and 
some gang-raped to death, and when we cried for our homes, farms, orchards 
and a heritage of traditions and beliefs left behind - we were graciously 
enough provided ‘tents’ and a ‘migrant’ status within our own country, so we 
could be left on our own to wipe our tears and pick up the threads of life 
in exile. Nobody spoke up for us then, and not enough. The wounds of ‘forced 
exile’ of an entire community of Kashmiri Pandits have begun to fester and 
bleed again after the events of Godhra and Gujarat. My heart cries out for 
them but the tears have long dried up. How can I even defend what I have 
become?


But Yes, Gujarat affects me too. It affects me enough to remind me of my own 
secondary status as an ‘exile’ in my own country. When I see the images of 
death and destruction and read about the horror tales from Gujarat, I only 
see ‘Annihilation of my race in Kashmir’ re-re-revisited upon another 
hapless community of people who belong to a religion, in whose name, the 
hapless and non-violent minorities of Kashmir valley were forced into exile.


Some wise man has said, “Rebellions are normally started by the hopeful not 
the abject poor.” I am not sure if, when the people of Kashmir rose up in 
revolt against India, they were really hopeful of winning, or even if they 
were really sure about the real contours of ‘azadi’ they were seeking. The 
success of the ‘popular’ revolt that lasted only a few years – till the 
slaying of Professor. Mushir-ul-Haq, I was told - was due partly because of 
the frightening power of the gun over the local populace, and mostly because 
of the collapse of every organ of local governance and the abject surrender 
of will by the then inept Chief Minister of J&K, who ironically continues to 
rule even now. If Only if, they had refused to release the JKLF militants in 
exchange of Rubia Sayeed, if only if They had not started the sudden night 
time searches on January 19-20, reportedly on nobody’s orders because that 
day Farooq Abdullah had already resigned, if Only if the massacre at Gow 
Kadal had not taken place, if only if the procession carrying Moulvi 
Farooq’s Dead body had not been fired upon by panicked CRPF soldiers, 
perhaps the contours of the ‘militant-azadi’ movement that picked up as a 
consequence of these errors of judgment may have been different today and 
may have led us to the real reforms people of Kashmir genuinely sought. But 
these are the big If’s of ‘our’ folly and Faroukh Abdullah’s ‘manipulative’ 
hold over reigns of power.


The failure of the ‘azadi’ movement is much more stark in the 12 years of 
continuing violence, destruction and robbing of every charm of Kashmir. The 
fact is, the vale of Kashmir is a deafening Vail now, desperately looking 
for the bottom of the abyss into which it has sunk, into which all its blood 
flow pours. In Kashmir of 1989-90, all the dissenting voices against the 
violent movement were silenced by death or by forced silent acquisition, so 
it had appeared that the entire population was with the revolt. Only now, 
when the local militancy has almost dissipated and been replaced by a 
dangerous variety of pan-Islamic militancy, are more and more Kashmiri 
people coming out to speak against the Militants who started it all.


A well-known senior journalist in Srinagar said to me. “Before 1989, were we 
ever prevented from offering prayers in our mosques?” This is a sentiment 
almost echoed by a successful doctor in Srinagar, my classmate at school, 
who I met again after 12 years, “Who did ever stop us from practicing our 
religion here?”


Another young journalist, sounding bitter in retrospect about those 
‘euphoric days of revolt’ said to me, “The people who used to lead the 
‘azadi’ processions, wearing shrouds in defiance of death, are still alive 
today, while the people they led are long dead now.”


The Srinagar of today is a contrasting picture of destroyed old landmarks 
and burnt out structures and of new constructions in the downtown and newly 
sprung up suburbs. Comparing Srinagar and a metropolitan city like Delhi in 
terms of Population density ratios, I was surprised to know that there are 
more Maruti’s on Srinagar’s roads than in Delhi. Looking through my 
nostalgic eyes, I was certainly struck to note that Srinagar today is 
positively more affluent than it was in the days when Militancy started. How 
has this phenomenon come about in a land devastated by violent instability? 
“Those who only had a grass mat to cover their mud floors are today living 
in palatial houses.” This is a common bitter refrain by the affluent class 
of old, when they speak about Kashmir’s neo-rich, who started off as foot 
soldiers of the ‘militant’ movement. Of the many people I asked, “Why is 
militancy still continuing, when people are so fed up?” I was told again and 
again, “it is the people with the vested interests – the 
militants/politicians/surrendered militants/and neo-businessmen, the "the 5% 
of people" - who do not want the uncertainty to end, so that they can 
thrive.”


I recall a modern Kashmiri story, which to my knowledge best describes the 
‘the present mind’ of the Kashmiri collective mass in these times. The 
story, AN INFERNAL CREATURE by Amin Kamil, is about a village that used to 
be, but is no more. The village called Zeegyapathir had six mohallas and 
five graveyards on the borders between each mohalla. One day, the only son 
of an old woman, borne by her after several miscarriages, dies. The Dead son 
is buried after the performance of all the sacred Muslim rituals, but the 
Old woman, unable to bear the sudden loss of her only son, loses her mind. 
In the middle of the night at the graveyard of her son, she espies some dark 
mysterious figure up to some mischief…


The next day morning, her dead son’s grave is found dug up and the body is 
left without its shroud. The body is promptly covered in a fresh shroud and 
re-buried. The next night, the same deed is repeated and some other fresh 
graves are similarly found despoiled off their shroud. There is much hue and 
cry and commotion in the village. Every suspect is questioned. Every 
villager is suspected, but the shroud stealer is never found. The deed 
becomes a regular practice in the village. The villagers, at first curious 
and angry and perturbed, had slowly reconciled with the mystery of the 
shroud stealer. ‘In this way, when all the dead bodies of the Zeegyapathir, 
men and women alike without exception, got robbed of the shrouds, it by and 
by became a custom with them. Nobody got agitated on this, nor did anybody 
show any kind of fear. They got used to speaking and hearing of this for two 
decades.
“We were at the graveyard. Has he robbed it? It looks like that. Let the 
hell take him.”


These four sentences were at the tip of the tongue of everyone at 
Zeegyapathir. You would be greeted by these words correct to a syllable for 
it had assumed the form of a ritual like giving the last bath to the dead, 
and burying the body.”


Twenty years had passed so. One day a villager by the name of Ghani Mokul 
dies. In his last statement before death he confesses to being the self same 
mysterious shroud stealer. He is roundly cursed, but the piety of the 
villagers ultimately rescues him from any idea of an after death revenge. 
“The truth, however was that the soft-hearted people of Zeegyapathir did not 
like to go so far.” He is therefore properly buried. The villagers as a 
matter of habit continued to curse him but also felt relieved at having been 
rid at long last of a big calamity. However, the next day morning they find 
his grave not only despoiled of its shroud, but also “left exposed to the 
elements at the edge of the grave.” Which the first man – Ghani Mokul had 
never infact dared to do ever to any dead body. Ghani Mokul is however, re 
buried as had been the practice in the village.


And the morning after the next, they find him, and a few other fresh dead 
bodies too, again exposed at the edge of the grave in stark nudity. “It now 
dawned on the people that it was not simply a case of wreaking vengeance on 
Ghani Mokul – the original shroud stealer, but a new monster was on the 
rampage…Everybody at Zeegyapathir got scared and said to one another, “We 
can not find another man like Ghani Mokul. He no doubt divested the dead 
bodies of their shroud, but naked by no means did he leave them, this 
hellish creature is far worse than a brute.” Then onwards, the people 
showered blessings on the original shroud stealer and cursed the new monster 
with all the abominations of the hell.”


The collective mind of the mass of Kashmir is today resigned to the death 
and destruction they see happening around them in a similar way as the 
people of the fictional Zeegyapathir were resigned to the ritualistic 
robbing of their graveyards. The people of Kashmir are not only hopelessly 
resigned but also totally powerless before the Frankenstein’s, they 
themselves helped create and breed among them.


In TV discussions over our Satellite News & Entertainment Channels, the 
experts opine that, “what’s going on in Kashmir is a war of ‘attrition’, 
which nobody seems like winning or losing.” They say, "our sibling neighbour 
is ‘bleeding India by a thousand cuts’, but on the ground, there are people 
of flesh and blood – fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters 
and friends, the people of Kashmir and the soldiers of India - actually 
being killed and robbed of their human dignity. As you will be reading this 
– the rioting and the killings will be continuing in Gujarat…at the same 
time, in some remote hill village of Kashmir, a family of Hindus or Muslims 
will be yet again be massacred by a band of people fighting ‘jihad’ for the 
liberation of Muslim majority kashmir…On average about 10 -15 deaths are 
reported everyday. In the past 12 years of ‘militancy’ in Kashmir about 
62,000 people have already died. When is this killing ever going to stop?

When is this killing ever going to stop?
I asked of some in Kashmir:

A friend said, “In Kashmir, the right to natural death does not exist.”
My Driver said, “The only solution to Kashmir is an Atom Bomb.”
A young writer, who wants to work in Bombay films said, “Our ‘problem’ can 
only be settled by a war between India and Pakistan now. Whosoever wins, 
gets Kashmir.”
A human rights activist (he used to be a Launching Commander of Hizbul 
Mujahideen in the young days of revolt) said, “The killings will never stop, 
there will be a civil war here, as in Afghanistan.”
The waiter in my hotel said, “The gun is a source of money and power to 
those who wield it, how will they give it up easily.”

Over there in Kashmir, they call it ‘Gun Culture’. Over here in India, we 
prefer to cover our head in the sand, we say, “It is cross-border 
Terrorism.” – But, When are the killings ever going to stop?


In Srinagar, the job of a journalist these days is writing ‘obituaries’:

The independent Press of India (the one that lay prostrate before the forces 
of Emergency when it was only required to bend) championed the cause of the 
homegrown militants of Kashmir, because it felt the ‘revolt’ was an answer 
to the decay within Kashmir’s polity. True! Can’t be denied. But the 12 
years of militancy have not at all affected any change in the decay that 
was; the decay infact has decayed further. The political order remains the 
same. The ruling party is more hated now than it was before 1990, corruption 
has infact become a way of life and unemployment has increased many folds. 
The rich have become richer by addition to their ranks of another class of 
the neo-rich. There are more beggar women on the streets of Srinagar when 
there were none earlier. There is still no electricity. The villages are 
still without roads and safe drinking water. The only thing that has shown 
any remarkably real progress in Kashmir is ‘the proliferation ‘ of local 
newspapers advocating Human rights. I counted about 10 English and about 20 
Urdu newspapers but still none in Kashmiri language. The Indian press has by 
now lost all interest in the happenings of Kashmir unless there is something 
really horrendous to report, but what is the Independent Press in Kashmir 
championing now? Developmental issues? Azadi?


Almost 11 years to the day, when the Revolt erupted in Srinagar, there was a 
suicide bomber attack near the main entrance to Badami Bagh Army cantonment 
of Srinagar. I was visiting an acquaintance, from my college days in his 
newspaper office. He was busy trying to get the details of the attack. First 
he called up his sources in the Army and the Police for their official 
‘Death Figure’. They said one Army person and five ‘locals’ including the 
suicide bomber had died. He than called his local journalist friends one 
after the other, and about 10 of them - who must have similarly arrived at a 
consensual figure amongst ten others at their own end – collectively arrived 
at a figure, decidedly and purposely much higher than the official death 
toll. Their ostensible objective: to project – that the suicide mission was 
a ‘success’. A few days later, at the airport, I met a Junior Commissioned 
Officer (JCO) of the Madras regiment from the Indian Army. He was 
accompanying the coffin of a dead comrade to Chennai. It was the coffin of 
‘The’ Jawan who had stopped the suicide bomber at the Badami Bagh cantonment 
gate. The Subedar told me “only one soldier died, the newspapers always 
exaggerate. The terrorists always attack us when we are having our lunch, 
change of guard or when we are about to wake up in the morning.” He did not 
know, I may one day write about it, because I never thought I would. He also 
told me, “We burnt down the shopping complex opposite the gate. We thought 
there were terrorists there, but there were not any actually.”


The next day, based on the pictures of the bombed site taken by a stringer, 
and after making a few phone calls, my journalist friend wrote an 
‘eye-witness’ report, which was published in some of the National English 
language papers at Delhi.


In Kashmir, Along with the dead, they also bury the Truth everyday:
They bury the Truth in tomes of newsprint, poetry and propaganda. They 
announce its death at Human Rights Meets in Geneva and New York, where rival 
Human Rights activists, representing rival points of view, speak of deaths 
as ‘points’ -for and against- on a score sheet of victory and defeat. Javed 
Ahmed Mir, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, the freedom 
fighter of Kashmir who pioneered the ‘selective killings’ of ‘pro-Indians’ 
(mostly Kashmiri Pandits and National Conference workers – The leaders were 
spared) said, “ We started the killings only to draw the attention of the 
Western Press to our cause. CNN has come to visit us. BBC has come to visit 
us. Rabin Raphael also came and visited us here. Now we have announced 
unilateral ceasefire. We want to have a political dialogue. We want peace, 
but the martyrdom of our Freedom fighters cannot be forgotten. They call us 
terrorists, but they reward Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat with Nobel 
Peace Prize.” The JKLF now limits itself to street fights and bandhs and to 
exhibiting the photographs of their dead. I remember Javed Mir pointing out 
to me a particular photograph – of a few months old dead child – and making 
me feel guilty as if it was my own daughter I had allowed to be killed. As I 
write this, I hear on TV of a yet another suicide attack on an Army camp at 
Jammu. 12 children have been killed, among them a 3 month old child. Javed 
Ahmed Mir is silent in Srinagar yet. They have mastered to speak eloquently 
about ‘their’ pain and ‘their sacrifices’ to seek rewards in return. About 
the pain of others they speak with forked tongues, they say ‘it was a 
mistake’. They condemn India of its ‘Human Rights Violations’ and they 
overlook the rapes and vengeance killings by the freedom fighters within 
their own ranks. They speak of their own dead and forget to mourn the deaths 
they themselves caused, Innocents all:

Shakeela w/o Ali Mohammad Dar – abducted, gang raped and tortured to death. 
Mir Mustafa – A political leader, kidnapped, tortured and strangulated to 
death. Dolly Mohi-ud-Din – kidnapped, tortured, gang raped and shot dead. 
Sarla Bhatt, Staff Nurse at SKIMS - kidnapped, raped and shot dead. 
Prof.Mushir-ul-Haq – Kidnapped and shot dead. H.L. Khera – Kidnapped and 
shot dead. Sohan Lal Braro – Shot dead. Archana Braro – gang raped, tortured 
and shot dead. Bimla Braro – gang raped and shot dead. Mohammad Amin 
Cheentagar – beheaded. Tika Lal Taploo, Political leader – shot dead. M. K. 
Ganjoo, retired Judge – shot dead. Lassa Kaul, Station Director Doordarshan 
Srinagar – shot dead. Satish Bhan, social worker – shot dead. Ghulam Nabi 
Kullar, Communist – shot dead. Abdul Sattar Ranjoor, poet – shot 
dead.Maulana Masoodi, an intellectual &Freedom fighter – shot dead. Syed 
Ghulam Nabi, Government Official – shot dead. Moulvi Farooq, a religious 
leader – shot dead. The list is a long one and there are many more who still 
continue to die …not any of these died by police firing.

…and hundreds of pairs of shoes the mourners left behind, as they ran from 
the funeral, victims of the firing. From windows we hear grieving mothers, 
and snow begins to fall on us, like ash. Black on edges of flames, it cannot 
extinguish the neighborhoods, the homes set ablaze by midnight soldiers. 
Kashmir is burning: (Agha Shahid Ali)


Who killed Mir Mustafa? Who killed Dr. Gooru? Who killed Moulvi Farouk? Who 
killed Qazi Nisar? Who killed Abdul Ghani Lone? Kashmir is burning still, 
who lit the fire? Who burnt the Chrar-e-Sharif? Whose midnight soldiers?

In the Month of February in 1990, Kashmiris used to go in trucks and buses 
in processions to Chrar-e-Sharif shrine, to pray for ‘azadi’. They used to 
tie threads as promise in return for fulfillment of their dreams. In 1995, 
they stood silent as ‘Foreign Militants’ - representing a brand of Islam 
alien to the very ethos of Kashmir – lay siege to our prime shrine and let 
it be burnt down by a Must Gul, who escaped to a hero’s welcome in Pakistan.

…“All threads must be untied
before springtime. Ask all – Muslim and Brahmin - if their wish came true? 
He appears beside
me, cloaked in black: “Alas! Death has bent my back.
It is too late for threads at Chrar-e-Sharif.” …
(Agha Shahid Ali)


The threads are there no more now. Along with the Shrine, the hopes for that 
‘azadi’ also lie in ruins. Today they go to the burnt down shrine at Chrar 
and to their Sufi ‘Pirs’ not to pray for ‘azadi’ but for the return of 
sanity to Kashmir.


“Rehman Sahib is one faith healer in whom thousands of locals, especially 
women, believe. He lives in a mud house at Aalistang in the outskirts of 
Srinagar, where his sitting room is always full of mureeds (devotees). One 
after another, they come close and whisper their problems in his ear. 
“Please pray and stop my son. He wants to be a militant,” a mother from 
nearby Waheedpora village in Ganderbal requested the peer sahib (saint) one 
recent morning. Another woman sought help for an end to nocturnal raids by 
the security forces on her house. “I have two grown-up unmarried daughters. 
It is dangerous. Please help,” she begged, and started crying.” Muzamil 
Jaleel

But why does the fire that lit Chrar-e-Sharif consume us still?
Because they betrayed Nund Rishi by their silence and they allowed their 
temples to be desecrated and they lied about their betrayal of our Gods to 
the entire world.


Kashmir is burning: By that dazzling light we see men removing statues from 
temples. We beg them, “Who will protect us if you leave?” They don’t answer; 
they just disappear on the road to the plains, clutching the gods. (Agha 
Shahid Ali).


An obvious reference to the Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir, the 
above lines of a poem, by its implication and compounded and by its 
extraordinary formal brilliance suggests; that the Kashmiri Pandits left 
despite being stopped by their neighbours and that they came away carrying 
their temple gods along with them. In reality, nothing could be farther from 
the actual truth. In his poetic lament about the pain of Kashmir – often 
searing imagery…his voice unerringly eloquent in response to Kashmir’s 
agony”, as Edward Said writes in his praise on the back cover - Agha Shahid 
Ali can barely remember the agony faced by his Pandit friends in those 
euphoric days of near freedom, when it appeared as if the whole Muslim 
population of Srinagar had come out on the streets shouting “allah-o-akbar’, 
‘hum kya chahite – azadi’ and ‘death to Indian dogs’. He can barely 
remember, ‘the call to all Muslims of Kashmir to revolt’ which was announced 
- – from pre-recorded audiocassettes - through the loudspeakers of mosques 
all over Srinagar city. He can barely bring himself to imagine the panic of 
a miniscule community, faced with the impotence of an administration in 
Kashmir that had suddenly vanished…He can barely remember, that this 
miniscule community was looking in the face of a yet another forced 
migration, the fourth in the span of a few hundred years…
Your memory gets in the way of my memory…


Twelve years later, when I came to Kashmir, I chanced upon a temple at 
Rainawari. I opened the door, but Shahid, there was no god inside, it’s 
true.

It was all filth and ashes there, walls smeared with human refuse of many 
years: How could you not have seen them, stopped them – the kalashnikov 
people- from stealing my gods and burning your temples?


The fire consumes us still because we lit the fire ourself and do not know 
how to put it off. Because we have started to believe in our own propaganda 
as truth. Because we have not allowed the truth be told. Because we have 
lost faith in the leaders who took us to the fight and wouldn’t know how to 
bring us back.

I asked a Kashmiri Pandit friend, who is now settled in a far way land, to 
explain to me why Kashmiri Pandits chose to come away rather than stay back 
and fight. He wrote back to me, a long letter:


“You have seen the sober faces of the population there (12 years after) but 
what I have experienced cannot be put into words. It was a feeling of 
uncertainty and isolation with doubts about the sincerity of your closest 
associates. It was almost being enslaved with the tyrannical smile of the 
victor haunting you. It was the time to decide whether you would be able to 
accept the NIZAM-E-MUSTAFA (rule of the faithful), either willingly or after 
seeing your family dishonoured and massacred. Do remember that it was a well 
thought of plan to drive all kafirs away. The area commander of any area 
never was native of the same area and thus would not relate to you. His only 
aim was subjugation in the name of Allah. Killing in his name was justified 
as was revealed by Javed Mir in your documentary. Previously (Before 1990), 
our differences could be settled by a word for word or at the most a 
fistfight. Now it was the kalishnikov. Fathers would not dare to discuss the 
futility or viability of the actions. Brothers would not trust Brothers lest 
they would be killed. THE FEAR WAS TOTAL. The sane had no say and the insane 
were driven into frenzy by their masters. Chaos was total and administration 
had collapsed completely. It is too simplistic when I put it into words but 
just close your eyes and imagine the plight. There can be no proper 
description of the events in words. Finally it was our worldly wisdom, which 
made all of us to flee the place. When I migrated, I had to fend for family 
and myself. The options were either to organize a resistance OR to start 
afresh. I chose the latter.”


…If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn’t have happened in 
this world? I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me. My memory keeps 
getting in the way of your history. There is nothing to forgive. You won’t 
forgive me….
                                          (Agha Shahid Ali)

But there is lot to Forgive and ask Forgiveness for.
The first thing that has to be answered about Kashmir is about Kashmiri 
Pandits forced abandonment of their motherland, the land that belongs much 
more to them than to any Indian or Pakistani or Kashmiri. Who orchestrated 
their deaths, their feeling of persecution, and their fear? Who sent them 
the anonymous letters asking them to leave forthwith? Who sponsored those 
ads, those notices in leading local Dailies of Kashmir, threatening the 
Pandits of dire consequences, if they did not leave? It surely was not 
because Jagmohan, the then administrative head of J&K, facilitated the 
exodus, as so many people in Kashmir would like to say to others, but do not 
actually believe. To Kashmiri pandits, Jagmohan in his person represents the 
abject failure of the ‘state’ in not protecting, nor ensuring the safety of 
its ‘non-violent’ citizens, who remained true in their loyalty to India. Its 
true, and I am ashamed to admit, as most Pandits now are, that when they 
came as refugees to Jammu and Delhi, they went straight into the arms of 
“the Hindu Parties”. But tell me, what are a ‘traumatised’ people supposed 
to do, but hope for refuge in the camp of a party ‘supposedly their own’, 
when threatened by ‘Islamic forces’ and when betrayed by the secular forces 
of India? Which secular institution of India has spoken up for the trauma of 
Kashmiri Pandits yet?


And after Forgiveness, There is a dispute to settle.


The fact of the matter is, between Us and Them, Between India and Kashmir, 
between India and Pakistan there are many disputes to settle. Central to the 
resolution of all these disputes, is the dispute between India and Pakistan 
over Kashmir. The Genesis of these disputes has forever been prone to myriad 
interpretations and conflicting points of view - of the experts as well as 
the layperson - which no amount of logic, good sense and wars seem to 
unravel or resolve.


In the words of a Pakistani Writer:
“When India's Home Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel sent feelers about a 
possible give-and-take on Hyderabad and Kashmir, Ghulam Mohammed is said to 
have spurned this opportunity and carried on his lucrative dealings with 
Hyderabad Nizam. Pakistan also welcomed the accession of Junagadh and 
Manavadar, whereas an overwhelming majority in both states (as well as 
Hyderabad) was Hindu. In effect, Pakistan held three divergent positions on 
the question of accession—in favour of the Hyderabad Nizam's right to 
independence, Junagadh right to accede to Pakistan against the wish of the 
populace, and, in Kashmir, for the right to self determination. Double 
standard is a common enough practice in politics, but it invariably harms 
the actor who lacks the power to avert consequences. The Nawab of Junagadh 
tried to deliver his Hindu-majority state to Pakistan, which set the 
precedence for the Maharaja of Muslim-dominated Kashmir choosing India. 
Pakistan did not have the power to defend either the Nawab or the Nizam, nor 
the will to punish the Maharaja. So India, practising double standards in 
its turn, took it all. (Eqbal Ahmad)


That may well be the truth about J&K’s accession to India, to many 
Kashmiri’s, Pakistanis and even to some Indian’s, but there are also other 
truths. The truth about Sheikh Abdullah’s genuine liking for Indian 
secularism. The truth about his preferring to stay with India rather than 
with Pakistan. The truth about his not insisting on ‘azadi’ before or after 
1953. The truth about Sheikh Abdullah being a genuine and great leader of 
Kashmiri’s. The truth about Faroukh Abdullah being an inept inheritor of 
Sheikh Abdullah’s legacy. Problem with Truths is that it has not brought us, 
at any point of time, any closer to a resolution than it ever can, even 50 
or 100 years from now.


There is one another story by Amin Kamil, which expresses the nature of this 
dispute much plainly than any amount of explanation or writings have so far. 
The story WHAT MATTERS IS THE HEAD describes a dispute between two 
Thanedaars of adjacent police stations over a murdered corpse found lying at 
the boundary of their respective area jurisdiction. Before the culprit can 
be found or the murdered person identified, it is necessary to determine, in 
which Thanedaars jurisdiction the murdered person was found. The case is 
confounded by the fact that it is difficult to determine which side of the 
boundary the head of the deceased lay, because the Thanedaars have 
conflicting proofs. The respective Thanedaars, in order to prove their claim 
about the jurisdictional right over the corpse, wrangle in colourful 
language over the finer details, the technicalities and the forensic 
procedure, thus in fact relegating the dead corpse and its case to oblivion. 
Finally, the bewildered bystander watching the entire drama is exasperated 
by this jurisdictional drama to ask for a final resolution. He is told, 
“What matters really is for us to find, towards which side the head of the 
corpse lay. So long as this is not resolved, the matter will linger on as it 
is.”
“But what about the corpse, meanwhile?”
“Let it rot.” (Sadne do ji)


”India's policies have been no less riddled with blunders than Pakistan's. 
Its moral isolation on Kashmir is nearly total, and unlikely to be overcome 
by military means or political manipulation. New Delhi commands not a shred 
of legitimacy among Kashmiri Muslims. Ironically, even as India's standing 
in Kashmir appears increasingly untenable, Kashmiris today appear farther 
from the goal of liberation than they were in the years 1989 to 1992.”
                                                     (Eqbal Ahmad)


It is true; Kashmir’s problems are as a result of our country’s folly and 
blunders. Our Follies and blunders in Kashmir are compounded by the fact of 
Partition and by the existence of a dispute, as our permanent neighbour 
enemy continues to insist. Kashmir has been used to bleed to a cause, in 
which not many Kashmiris believe. The resolution of the historical dispute 
between India and Pakistan – through logic, diplomacy, wars, and terrorism 
or by Time - has defied a sane answer for last 55 years. Nor does it seem 
any likely that India and Pakistan can co-exist in Peace by any stratagem 
invented or discovered so far. Meanwhile, the Deaths and the Killings of the 
Innocents in Kashmir continues. We are as close to a war as at any time 
before. The headlines in Today’s paper read “ War clouds gather, BJP talks 
tough on Pak.” Army: We are ready to cross Loc.” Kashmir is caught in the 
crossfire of History. Kashmir was happy and prosperous once, when it had 
chosen not to be in the crossfire.

It’s almost a year since my last visit to Kashmir. The tumultuous events of 
the past year – September 11, December 13 Parliament Attack, The Fall of the 
Taliban in Afgahnistan, President of Pakistan’s famous January 12 speech 
denouncing Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism, and the most recent 
catastrophe of ‘state sponsored pogrom’ in Gujarat and the terrorist attack 
on children and women at a Army camp in Jammu, have completely altered my 
fundamental understanding of the nature of man and along with it, the 
perception about man’s sense of his morals…which allow him to justify one 
violent cause at one place as ‘just’ and to condemn another equally violent 
cause as ‘unacceptable’ to civilization. I have never felt so powerless 
before the ‘insane’ insistence by men - of presumably immeasurable human 
values and inestimable intellectual capabilities - of their personal dogmas 
and points of view and the catastrophic consequences thereof. I therefore 
repudiate every ideology that leads to violence.


And I want to ask my people in Kashmir, Isn’t it time that Kashmiri people 
resolved, once for and all, to give up the option of violence as a means to 
finding the solution to a historically vexed problem.


The above is an account of my first journey to Kashmir in 12 years since I 
was there last. I still have a home there and I am looking forward to my 
permanent return as soon as I can determine for myself that my life and 
freedom will not be at any more risk there as it is here. For more than a 
year now, I have found myself unable to express in words the desolation, the 
desperation, the hopelessness and the living death of Kashmir which I was 
witness to when I was last there. This account of my visit to my homeland 
last year is an attempt to express the pain, the bitterness and the anger I 
feel for being an Indian, a Kashmiri and a Kashmiri in Exile at a time when 
another minority in another border state of India undergoes a more brutal, a 
more heinous ‘pogrom’.


------------------------------------------------------------------
Ajay Raina is a film maker. His film about homecoming - "Tell Them, the tree 
they had planted has now grown" - has won the Golden Conch award at Mumbai 
Festival 2002 and the RAPA award.





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opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not 
necessarily the views of the staff and management of Chowk.

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>From: reader-list-request at sarai.net
>Reply-To: reader-list at sarai.net
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>Subject: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #578 - 3 msgs
>Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 06:25:44 +0200
>
>Send Reader-list mailing list submissions to
>	reader-list at sarai.net
>
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>or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>than "Re: Contents of Reader-list digest..."
>
>
>Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Right Stuff (Pradip Saha)
>    2. open source cola (Bauke Freiburg)
>    3. OPUS (Monica Narula)
>
>--__--__--
>
>Message: 1
>Reply-To: prosaha at hotmail.com
>From: "Pradip Saha" <prosaha at hotmail.com>
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 04:32:57 +0000
>Subject: [Reader-list] Right Stuff
>
>Just a bit of comic relief
>
>I found the following item in "JetMall", the in-flight mail order shopping
>catalogue distributed to Jet Air travellers.
>
>GANESHA: WORLDWIDE LIMITED EDITION
>Item code: 6112
>Price: Rs 28575/-
>
>Be the proud owner of one of 500 limited editions of Ganeshas. Crafted in
>92.5% sterling silver, studded with Swarovski, electro-lacquered for 
>lasting
>protection and exclusively designed for d'mart exclusif by Linea Argenti of
>Italy. Each figure comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.
>
>I shall post the image in picturepost, later today.
>
>Pradip
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
>http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
>
>
>--__--__--
>
>Message: 2
>Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 10:08:14 +0200 (CEST)
>From: "Bauke Freiburg" <bauke at freiburg.nl>
>To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
>Cc: <copyleft at newscientist.com>
>Reply-To: bauke at freiburg.nl
>Subject: [Reader-list] open source cola
>
>'OPUS' source cola...
>
>Read the article on: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13494.
>
>The Great Open Source Giveaway
>Graham Lawton, New Scientist
>July 1, 2002
>
>If you've been to a computer show in recent months you might have seen it:
>a shiny silver drink can with a ring-pull logo and the words "opencola" on
>the side. Inside is a fizzy drink that tastes very much like Coca-Cola. Or
>is it Pepsi?
>
>There's something else written on the can, though, which sets the drink
>apart. It says "check out the source at opencola.com." Go to that Web
>address and you'll see something that's not available on Coca-Cola's
>website, or Pepsi's -- the recipe for cola. For the first time ever, you
>can make the real thing in your own home.
>
>OpenCola is the world's first "open source" consumer product. By calling
>it open source, its manufacturer is saying that instructions for making it
>are freely available. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify
>and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, release their recipe into
>the public domain. As a way of doing business it's rather unusual -- the
>Coca-Cola Company doesn't make a habit of giving away precious commercial
>secrets. But that's the point.
>
>OpenCola is the most prominent sign yet that a long-running battle between
>rival philosophies in software development has spilt over into the rest of
>the world. What started as a technical debate over the best way to debug
>computer programs is developing into a political battle over the ownership
>of knowledge and how it is used, between those who put their faith in the
>free circulation of ideas and those who prefer to designate them
>"intellectual property." No one knows what the outcome will be. But in a
>world of growing opposition to corporate power, restrictive intellectual
>property rights and globalisation, open source is emerging as a possible
>alternative, a potentially potent means of fighting back. And you're
>helping to test its value right now.
>The open source movement originated in 1984 when computer scientist
>Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT and set up the Free Software
>Foundation. His aim was to create high-quality software that was freely
>available to everybody. Stallman's beef was with commercial companies that
>smother their software with patents and copyrights and keep the source
>code -- the original program, written in a computer language such as C++
>-- a closely guarded secret. Stallman saw this as damaging. It generated
>poor-quality, bug-ridden software. And worse, it choked off the free flow
>of ideas. Stallman fretted that if computer scientists could no longer
>learn from one another's code, the art of programming would stagnate (New
>Scientist, 12 December 1998, p 42).
>
>Stallman's move resonated round the computer science community and now
>there are thousands of similar projects. The star of the movement is
>Linux, an operating system created by Finnish student Linus Torvalds in
>the early 1990s and installed on around 18 million computers worldwide.
>What sets open source software apart from commercial software is the fact
>that it's free, in both the political and the economic sense. If you want
>to use a commercial product such as Windows XP or Mac OS X you have to pay
>a fee and agree to abide by a licence that stops you from modifying or
>sharing the software. But if you want to run Linux or another open source
>package, you can do so without paying a penny -- although several
>companies will sell you the software bundled with support services. You
>can also modify the software in any way you choose, copy it and share it
>without restrictions. This freedom acts as an open invitation -- some say
>challenge -- to its users to make improvements. As a result, thousands of
>volunteers are constantly working on Linux, adding new features and
>winkling out bugs. Their contributions are reviewed by a panel and the
>best ones are added to Linux. For programmers, the kudos of a successful
>contribution is its own reward. The result is a stable, powerful system
>that adapts rapidly to technological change. Linux is so successful that
>even IBM installs it on the computers it sells.
>
>To maintain this benign state of affairs, open source software is covered
>by a special legal instrument called the General Public License. Instead
>of restricting how the software can be used, as a standard software
>license does, the GPL -- often known as a "copyleft" -- grants as much
>freedom as possible (see www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html). Software released
>under the GPL (or a similar copyleft licence) can be copied, modified and
>distributed by anyone, as long as they, too, release it under a copyleft.
>That restriction is crucial, because it prevents the material from being
>co-opted into later proprietary products. It also makes open source
>software different from programs that are merely distributed free of
>charge. In FSF's words, the GPL "makes it free and guarantees it remains
>free."
>
>Open source has proved a very successful way of writing software. But it
>has also come to embody a political stand -- one that values freedom of
>expression, mistrusts corporate power, and is uncomfortable with private
>ownership of knowledge. It's "a broadly libertarian view of the proper
>relationship between individuals and institutions", according to open
>source guru Eric Raymond.
>
>But it's not just software companies that lock knowledge away and release
>it only to those prepared to pay. Every time you buy a CD, a book, a
>magazine, even a can of Coca-Cola, you're forking out for access to
>someone else's intellectual property. Your money buys you the right to
>listen to, read or consume the contents, but not to rework them, or make
>copies and redistribute them. No surprise, then, that people within the
>open source movement have asked whether their methods would work on other
>products. As yet no one's sure -- but plenty of people are trying it.
>Take OpenCola. Although originally intended as a promotional tool to
>explain open source software, the drink has taken on a life of its own.
>The Toronto-based OpenCola company has become better known for the drink
>than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company's
>senior strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big
>corporations and the "proprietary nature of almost everything." A website
>selling the stuff has shifted 150,000 cans. Politically minded students in
>the US have started mixing up the recipe for parties.
>
>OpenCola is a happy accident and poses no real threat to Coke or Pepsi,
>but elsewhere people are deliberately using the open source model to
>challenge entrenched interests. One popular target is the music industry.
>At the forefront of the attack is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
>San Francisco group set up to defend civil liberties in the digital
>society. In April of last year, the EFF published a model copyleft called
>the Open Audio License (OAL). The idea is to let musicians take advantage
>of digital music's properties -- ease of copying and distribution --
>rather than fighting against them. Musicians who release music under an
>OAL consent to their work being freely copied, performed, reworked and
>reissued, as long as these new products are released under the same
>licence. They can then rely on "viral distribution" to get heard. "If the
>people like the music, they will support the artist to ensure the artist
>can continue to make music," says Robin Gross of the EFF.
>
>It's a little early to judge whether the OAL will capture imaginations in
>the same way as OpenCola. But it's already clear that some of the
>strengths of open source software simply don't apply to music. In
>computing, the open source method lets users improve software by
>eliminating errors and inefficient bits of code, but it's not obvious how
>that might happen with music. In fact, the music is not really "open
>source" at all. The files posted on the OAL music website
>http://www.openmusicregistry.org so far are all MP3s and Ogg Vorbises --
>formats which allow you to listen but not to modify.
>
>It's also not clear why any mainstream artists would ever choose to
>release music under an OAL. Many bands objected to the way Napster members
>circulated their music behind their backs, so why would they now allow
>unrestricted distribution, or consent to strangers fiddling round with
>their music? Sure enough, you're unlikely to have heard of any of the 20
>bands that have posted music on the registry. It's hard to avoid the
>conclusion that Open Audio amounts to little more than an opportunity for
>obscure artists to put themselves in the shop window.
>
>The problems with open music, however, haven't put people off trying open
>source methods elsewhere. Encyclopedias, for example, look like fertile
>ground. Like software, they're collaborative and modular, need regular
>upgrading, and improve with peer review. But the first attempt, a free
>online reference called Nupedia, hasn't exactly taken off. Two years on,
>only 25 of its target 60,000 articles have been completed. "At the current
>rate it will never be a large encyclopedia," says editor-in-chief Larry
>Sanger. The main problem is that the experts Sanger wants to recruit to
>write articles have little incentive to participate. They don't score
>academic brownie points in the same way software engineers do for
>upgrading Linux, and Nupedia can't pay them.
>
>It's a problem that's inherent to most open source products: how do you
>get people to chip in? Sanger says he's exploring ways to make money out
>of Nupedia while preserving the freedom of its content. Banner adverts are
>a possibility. But his best hope is that academics start citing Nupedia
>articles so authors can earn academic credit.
>
>There's another possibility: trust the collective goodwill of the open
>source community. A year ago, frustrated by the treacle-like progress of
>Nupedia, Sanger started another encyclopedia named Wikipedia (the name is
>taken from open source Web software called WikiWiki that allows pages to
>be edited by anyone on the Web). It's a lot less formal than Nupedia:
>anyone can write or edit an article on any topic, which probably explains
>the entries on beer and Star Trek. But it also explains its success.
>Wikipedia already contains 19,000 articles and is acquiring several
>thousand more each month. "People like the idea that knowledge can and
>should be freely distributed and developed," says Sanger. Over time, he
>reckons, thousands of dabblers should gradually fix any errors and fill in
>any gaps in the articles until Wikipedia evolves into an authoritative
>encyclopedia with hundreds of thousands of entries.
>
>Another experiment that's proved its worth is the OpenLaw project at the
>Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Berkman
>lawyers specialise in cyberlaw -- hacking, copyright, encryption and so on
>-- and the centre has strong ties with the EFF and the open source
>software community. In 1998 faculty member Lawrence Lessig, now at
>Stanford Law School, was asked by online publisher Eldritch Press to mount
>a legal challenge to US copyright law. Eldritch takes books whose
>copyright has expired and publishes them on the Web, but new legislation
>to extend copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death was
>cutting off its supply of new material. Lessig invited law students at
>Harvard and elsewhere to help craft legal arguments challenging the new
>law on an online forum, which evolved into OpenLaw.
>
>Normal law firms write arguments the way commercial software companies
>write code. Lawyers discuss a case behind closed doors, and although their
>final product is released in court, the discussions or "source code" that
>produced it remain secret. In contrast, OpenLaw crafts its arguments in
>public and releases them under a copyleft. "We deliberately used free
>software as a model," says Wendy Selzer, who took over OpenLaw when Lessig
>moved to Stanford. Around 50 legal scholars now work on Eldritch's case,
>and OpenLaw has taken other cases, too.
>
>"The gains are much the same as for software," Selzer says. "Hundreds of
>people scrutinise the 'code' for bugs, and make suggestions how to fix it.
>And people will take underdeveloped parts of the argument, work on them,
>then patch them in." Armed with arguments crafted in this way, OpenLaw has
>taken Eldritch's case -- deemed unwinnable at the outset -- right through
>the system and is now seeking a hearing in the Supreme Court.
>
>There are drawbacks, though. The arguments are in the public domain right
>from the start, so OpenLaw can't spring a surprise in court. For the same
>reason, it can't take on cases where confidentiality is important. But
>where there's a strong public interest element, open sourcing has big
>advantages. Citizens' rights groups, for example, have taken parts of
>OpenLaw's legal arguments and used them elsewhere. "People use them on
>letters to Congress, or put them on flyers," Selzer says.
>
>The open content movement is still at an early stage and it's hard to
>predict how far it will spread. "I'm not sure there are other areas where
>open source would work," says Sanger. "If there were, we might have
>started it ourselves." Eric Raymond has also expressed doubts. In his
>much-quoted 1997 essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, he warned against
>applying open source methods to other products. "Music and most books are
>not like software, because they don't generally need to be debugged or
>maintained," he wrote. Without that need, the products gain little from
>others' scrutiny and reworking, so there's little benefit in open
>sourcing. "I do not want to weaken the winning argument for open sourcing
>software by tying it to a potential loser," he wrote.
>
>But Raymond's views have now shifted subtly. "I'm more willing to admit
>that I might talk about areas other than software someday," he told New
>Scientist. "But not now." The right time will be once open source software
>has won the battle of ideas, he says. He expects that to happen around
>2005.
>And so the experiment goes on. As a contribution to it, New Scientist and
>AlterNet have agreed to issue this article under a copyleft. That means
>you can copy it, redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and
>generally play around with it as long as you, too, release your version
>under a copyleft and abide by the other terms and conditions in the
>licence. We also ask that you inform us of any use you make of the
>article, by e-mailing copyleft at newscientist.com.
>
>One reason for doing so is that by releasing it under a copyleft, we can
>print the recipe for OpenCola without violating its copyleft. If nothing
>else, that demonstrates the power of the copyleft to spread itself. But
>there's another reason, too: to see what happens. To my knowledge this is
>the first magazine article published under a copyleft. Who knows what the
>outcome will be? Perhaps the article will disappear without a trace.
>Perhaps it will be photocopied, redistributed, re-edited, rewritten, cut
>and pasted onto websites, handbills and articles all over the world. I
>don't know -- but that's the point. It's not up to me any more. The
>decision belongs to all of us.
>
>THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
>and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science
>License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>--__--__--
>
>Message: 3
>Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 19:25:26 +0530
>To: reader-list at sarai.net
>From: Monica Narula <monica at sarai.net>
>Subject: [Reader-list] OPUS
>
>Dear List members and Friends,
>(please feel free to copy and redistribute)
>
>We are happy to announce the launch of OPUS, (Open Platform for
>Unlimited Signification) as an online
>adjunct to the documentary installation  - Co-Ordinates:
>28.28N/77.15E : : 2001/2002 - presented
>by us (Raqs Media Collective) at Documenta11, Kassel.
>Opus (Release Candidate) went public on the 8th of June, 2002,
>co-inciding with the opening of Documenta11.
>
>The URL for Opus is www.opuscommons.net
>
>What does Opus stand for?
>Opus is an acronym for "Open Platform for Unlimited Signification!".
>Most importantly, it is an online space for people, machines and
>codes to play and work together - to share, create and transform
>images, sounds, videos and texts. Opus is an attempt to create a
>digital commons in culture, based on the principle of sharing of
>work, while at the same time, retaining the possibility (if and when
>desired) of maintaining traces of individual authorship and identity.
>
>To read more about the principles and background of Opus, go to -
>http://www.opuscommons.net/templates/doc/record.html
>
>
>How Opus works (what can you do in Opus)
>
>Opus enables you to view, create and exhibit media objects (video,
>audio, still images, html and text) and make modifications on work
>done by others, in the spirit of collaboration and the sharing of
>creativity. Opus is an environment in which every viewer/user is also
>invited to be a producer, and a means for producers to work together
>to shape new content. You can view and download material, transform
>it and then upload the material worked on by you back to the Opus
>domain. Each media object archived, exhibited and made available for
>transformation within Opus carries with it data that can identify all
>those who have worked on it. This means that while Opus enables
>collaboration, it also preserves the identity of Authors/Creators (no
>matter how big or small their contribution may be) at each stage of a
>works evolution. In this way, we hope that Opus can be come a model
>for a practical realization of the idea of a Digital Commons of
>creative work on the Internet.
>
>To read a manual of OPUS  - go to -
>http://www.opuscommons.net/templates/doc/manual.html
>
>
>The Idea
>The basic ideas of the Opus project is to create a community of
>creative people from all over the world, who want to share and gift
>to each other the images, sounds and texts made by them for general
>public usage. Opus will give people the chance to collaborate and to
>present their work to an online community of practitioners and
>artists willing to work outside the increasing global domination of
>intellectual property regimes in cultural production.
>
>Once you have published your y in Opus, each act of uploading by you
>becomes an opportunity for others to take your work as a starting
>point for transformation, for a new rendition, for a rescension. Opus
>users will also be able to give their comments and reflections on
>your work through the discussion forums that will grow around each
>project within Opus.
>
>Opus is inspired by the free software movement and is an attempt to
>transpose the principles that govern the creation of free software on
>to general cultural production. Opus follows the same rules as those
>that operate in all free software communities - i.e. the freedom to
>view, to download, to modify and to redistribute. The source(code),
>in this case the video, image, sound or text - the contents of media
>objects uploaded on to Opus, is free to use, to edit and to
>redistribute. Needless to say the 'source-code' of the Opus software
>is also free to use, edit and redistribute. Opus users are governed
>by a license that protects them from their work being taken out of
>the commons and into the regimen of proprietary protocols.
>
>To read the license that frames Opus - go to -
>http://www.opuscommons.net/templates/doc/license.html
>
>OPUS : A brief history
>
>Work on Opus  began in September 2001 and the Beta version was
>uploaded in April 2002. Opus is launched
>into the public domain with the opening of Documenta11.
>
>When we (Raqs Collective) began to think through the ideas that
>gradually crystallized to form   Opus, we
>were searching for a platform that would enable inter-media and
>hybrid media practices to find fruition within a frame of open ended
>collaboration. We were interested in trying to evolve a way to
>combine our interests with video, our background in documentary film,
>photography and sound, and our growing engagement with
>hypertextuality and free software culture as a result of our work
>within the Sarai Initiative at the Centre for the Study of Developing
>Societies, Delhi.
>
>At an immediate  level, the ideas that were at the core of the Opus
>project developed out of our need to create an online context for a
>set of offline installations. (like , for instance, Co-ordinates :
>28.28N /77.15E : : 2001/2002, which is showing at Documenta11) which
>we wanted to open out to a wider community of creators, so as to
>enable instances of further collaboration; and out of our thoughts on
>the notion of the 'Digital Commons', from which arose a text A
>Concise Lexicon of/for the Digital Commons which contains many of the
>founding ideas of Opus.
>
>In the realization of the process of creating Opus we were joined by
>several others who made the Sarai Media Lab their home for many long
>days and nights along with us, sharing in the delight of discovering
>fragments of archiecture that worked, or a metaphor that made sense,
>and above all with the energy that they brought to every detail of
>the coding and design of Opus. Opus  would not be a reality without
>the active collaboration of all the people who worked on it, their
>skills and their imaginations.
>
>Many metaphors, images and ideas have made their way into the making
>of OPUS, from a biological laboratory,
>to a polyamourous matrix, to an understanding of the way in which
>parents relate to children, from kinship
>and lineage to the growth and evolution of epic narratives and
>ancient texts. The traces of all these remain in varying degrees.
>
>Sarai (www.sarai.net) provided the background of being an
>intellectually and creatively stimulating space
>while all of us worked on Opus.
>
>CREDITS
>Conception	- Raqs Media Collective
>
>Architecture - Monica Narula, Bauke Freiburg, Silvan Zurbruegg
>
>Coding - Silvan Zurbruegg, Pankaj Kaushal
>
>Interface Design - Joy Chatterjee
>
>Design Co-ordination - Monica Narula
>Design Acknowledgement - Rana Dasgupta
>Documentation - Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Monica Narula, Bauke Freiburg
>
>License -	Lawrence Liang, Jeebesh Bagchi
>
>Produced by - Raqs Media Collective
>at the Sarai Media Lab, Sarai/CSDS,
>Delhi, 2002
>
>
>Acknowledgements
>Knowbotic Research, Zurich
>Hochschule f¸r Gestaltung und Kunst, Zurich
>Dept. of New Media Studies, University of Amsterdam
>Society for Old & New Media, Amsterdam
>Documenta11, Kassel
>Everyone @ Sarai, Delhi
>
>We invite you to contribute, create and share in the further
>development of Opus. We believe that your
>participation in Opus will strengthen and revitalize the digital commons.
>
>If you have more enquiries about Opus - write to
>info at opuscommons.net
>raqs at sarai.net
>--
>Monica Narula
>Sarai:The New Media Initiative
>29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
>www.sarai.net
>
>
>
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