[Reader-list] Please, set Kashmir free

Sun Aug 24 21:10:42 IST 2008

Only such psudo-Hindus like Malvika were responsible for partition of India and they want further mutilation of our motherland and nation.If partition is the only solution then let us divide the entire nation why Kashmir only? The partition of 1947 itself was incorrect.This is an era of integration not division.What will anybody get after division? Are Muslims happy in Pakistan? If yes,why they try to infilter into India? If they want to infilter and stay in India what was the need of partition? If they wanted a partition and a separate nation named as Pakistan why at all they chose to stay in India? If India belongs to everybody why can't they stay here with a sense of tolerance and brotherhood with other communities? Does Muslim mean Pakistani only not Indian? In a vast democratic nation like India there may be numerous points of difference among different communities which have to be solved amicably but saparatism is not an answer at all and whoever
takes this line is anti-national punishable under the law of land.Freedom of expression does not mean that one can go anti-national.This needs to be checked immediately.
Prabhakar

----- Original Message ----
From: Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
To: sarai list <reader-list at sarai.net>; Shivam Vij शिवम् विज् <mail at shivamvij.com>
Cc: s_malavika at dnaindia.net
Sent: Sunday, 24 August, 2008 7:27:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Please, set Kashmir free

I would not like to make statements without being a hundred percent certain. I am not a hundred percent certain about what I will be suggesting. So, I will use the device of journalists to ask questions even though such questions might suggest allegations.

- Is it not true that Malavika has never lived in Kashmir as a resident of Kashmir for any extended period of time? If so, what would Malavika know of the realities of Kashmir? 

- Is it not true that Malavika's family who left Srinagar as she herself says in the immediacy of "Partition", were/are familiar primarily only with the Pre-Partition days of Maharajah's Rule? If so, what would Malavika's family too know about the realities of Post-Partition Kashmir?

- Is it not true when Malavika visited Srinagar "throughout her childhood" she was there for a couple of months at the most every year, if she did visit every year? If so, would it be fair to say that she was there as a tourist? If so what would Malavika understand about the realities of Kashmir especially if she had never been a resident of Kashmir for any extended period of time?

- All else apart, Malavika says her ancestral house was in Wazir Bagh. Is it not true that Wazir Bagh was one of the elitist (read moneyed) residential areas of Srinagar? Would it not be fair to say that people from such elitist (read moneyed) areas of Srinagar would in any case have little understanding of the realities of Kashmir?  

- Malavika says that when she visited Srinagar in her childhood, her family would stay with Muslim friends. Is it not true that when Malavika visited Srinagar in her "childhood" there was no strife in Kashmir? If so, what would be the basis of Malavika saying that the Muslim family friends "..were losing it (Kashmir) everyday, living there, witnessing its destruction."? What was that "destruction"? 

Or, is it Malavaka's suggestion that the Muslim family friends were nostalgic about and felt a sense of "losing" of the Pre-Partition Mahrajah's Rule days? 

- Is it possible that Malavika has juggled around facts quite a bit and is basically using some nostalgia her mother Usha Khanna (who must be in her 80s now) might have about the Kashmir of the Pre-Partition Mahrajah's Rule days? (I forget if Malavika's father too was from Kashmir)

If the allegations suggested in my questions are valid, could one then say that Malavika's piece which might at a first read suggest itself as 'Oh! So touching! So Heart rending!'  is actually dishonest writing of devious design? 

Was Malavika perhaps driven to write on this topic and in this tone by the thought "Arundhati has written on it. I too must write on it"?

Kshmendra 

--- On Sun, 8/24/08, Shivam Vij शिवम् <mail at shivamvij.com> wrote:

From: Shivam Vij शिवम् <mail at shivamvij.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] Please, set Kashmir free
To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Sunday, August 24, 2008, 4:48 PM

Please, set Kashmir free

by Malavika Sangghvi
Saturday, August 23, 2008  21:56 IST
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1185295&pageid=0

As the daughter of a Kashmiri Hindu, whose family left its ancestral
home in Srinagar during the turmoil  that followed Partition, I would
like  to express a sentiment that I still haven't heard in the
rhetoric about Kashmir.

I speak for those for whom Kashmir is not a symbol of one-upman ship
with Pakistan, not a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that is intrinsic to the
sovereignty of India  and not a football to be kicked around by
cynical politicians, but as the daughter of a family in whose very
lifeblood Kashmir courses every moment.

Cut our hearts open and you will see Kashmir, put your ear to our
sighs, and you will hear our yearning for the land where our family
spent its last days intact and happy before Partition scattered us to
the winds, rendering us refugees.

Growing up dislocated in Mumbai, as a child, it never failed to
surprise me when people who often  hadn't so far stepped out of their
suburb, would say:"Kashmir is ours! We will never give it up! Let them
try and take Kashmir from us!"

Even at that early age, when I could have mistaken their jingoism for
kindred sentiment, I realised that their virulence had nothing to do
with my family's  love for Kashmir, but was misguided machismo.

And I would find myself seething with rage at the audacity of their
presumption. "But Kashmir was never yours," I'd say in my mind.
And
sometimes, when more provoked: "You don't deserve Kashmir!" And
then
I'd go home to my mother, whose ever present, unshed tears for her
homeland, were a leitmotif of our life in Mumbai.

Throughout my childhood, my family would go back to Srinagar (the
ancestral home in Vazir Baugh had to be sold when my widower
grandfather became too old to live alone) to stay with Muslim friends,
with whom we shared a poignant empathy: we had lost Kashmir because we
had moved away; they were losing it everyday, living there, witnessing
its destruction. Over kawha, we would watch as the elders of our
family weep for what had been.

Like a woman too beautiful for her own good, Kashmir was a tragedy
even then. It produced an ache in our hearts when we heard its name
and thought of its ill fate: and then, because you cannot sit weeping
over lost Valleys all your life,  when we returned home we put Kashmir
on the backburner.

And on that backburner, Kashmir fermented Sheikh Abdullah, a man whose
commitment to India was unquestionable, was humiliated, jailed,
alienated. The most unimaginable genocide was committed on the
people. Entire generations of its sons were mowed down by an army
whose presence was as large as it was unpopular. And in its knee-jerk,
misguided, ill-conceived approach to Kashmir the Indian polity
revealed its shallowness.

But through this all, intrinsically, those of us who have Kashmir in
our bloods, know that the Kashmiri Pandits who have been driven out of
their homeland are not enemies of the Kashmiri Muslims, in fact they
are both victims of the historic blundering of the Indian government's
Kashmir policy.

Take away Delhi's political brinkmanship, take away the Hindutva
sentiment that has played so neatly into the hands of Pakistan and its
fishing-in-troubled-waters game and you may be surprised at how
harmoniously Kashmir's Hindus and Muslims can live.

So, on behalf of my mother, my family, and all those who have loved
and lost Kashmir, I beg:  Please. We have done enough damage to and
in Kashmir. Enough to last many lifetimes. The chinars are tinged with
too much  blood. We have failed Kashmir and we don't deserve her
anymore. Leave Kashmir alone. Set her free.

Email: s_malavika at dnaindia.net
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