[Reader-list] "From Amarnath to Shopian----Kashmiris Entangle Themselves in a Web of Lies"

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Sharing this piece, seeing the conversation between Sonia Jabbar and Sanjay Kak.
 
Antecedents of the author are not know to me but I did not read anything shockingly irrational.
 
Except that the author deduces from his analysis that Sir Walter Lawrence was right when "in his seminal 19th century work on Kashmir had written about the propensity of the Kashmiri race to lie through its teeth". 
 
And of course, whatever be one's disagreements with the newspaper "Greater Kashmir", to generalise a dismissal on the basis of renaming it "Greater Lies" is not on. It is not ethical. 
 
Kshmendra
 
 
"From Amarnath to Shopian----Kashmiris Entangle Themselves in a Web of Lies"
Parvez Raina
2/23/2010 
 
The cartoon in a Jammu Daily put it all very well. It depicted a bewildered police post facing a rather angry stone throwing mob in Kashmir, with a police man saying: "First, they were stoning us for a Reported Rape; now they are stoning us for a Rape Not Reported!" 

The ponderous wheels of justice have finally started to move with a hearing on 13 Feb. 2010 about the charge sheeted persons, who incidentally all succeeded in getting bail. 
 
What the CBI has, however, established in the Shopian "Rape" case is not that there was no rape, but the extent to which Kashmiris can stoop to establish one to implicate 'Indian dogs'. So the doctors don't first conduct post mortems. And when they are forced to conduct one, they take heart samples and report they were lung tissues, not full of water, thereby ruling out drowning. When swabs are sent to the forensic labs, they are from everywhere (including from the doctors!) than from the victims. Lawyers and politicians coach "witnesses" to claim how they heard victims shrieking from a vehicle belonging to Army/paramilitary/police (in that order of preference, please). And when all this is nailed by the CBI, the entire Kashmir is up in arms, wanting azadi, autonomy, self-rule, whatever a weak-kneed India can agree to. 

What exactly is the reason? Is a section of J&K press so corrupted or so communal that it is no longer interested in finding the truth? Sitting in Delhi, I used to be similarly bewildered when the Kashmir press in 2008 summer used to claim that Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) had been handed over thousands of acres of land in Baltal, when the truth was that it had only about 40 hectares that was agreed to be 'diverted' for yatra purposes, that in any case was traditionally occupied by security forces, ponywallas, tent wallas, and langars since ages. But what about the thousands of trees to be cut in the process? Again the truth: not a single tree exists on this patch of land nor can anything grow there at that altitude. So the money to the tune of Rs. 2.50 crores demanded by the Forest Dept for 'compensatory afforestation' was to be used somewhere else! 

Hey, but what about the pollution caused by so many unwashed yatries? 'Greater Lies' (which is what should be the name of this Kashmiri paper I'm referring to) caught hold of a Muslim glaciologist who readily agreed to be quoted that the 4 lakh pilgrims going up would definitely destroy all the glaciers of Kashmir thereby flooding the entire valley.
 
So folks, don't just blame Dr. Pachauri and the IPCC. But seriously, as the then much reviled CEO-SASB used to plead, look at the ridiculous logic. 4 lakh Hindus in 2 months cause more pollution that 50 lakh Kashmiris who live in the Valley for 12 months? At this rate, we will soon be blaming these wretched yatris for killing the Dal and Wular lakes as well. What kind of bad science and maths are we espousing? Thank God no one said that India is trying to solve the Kashmir problem by flooding the valley and letting the Kashmiris float down the Jhelum to Pakistan! 

Lest we be accused of overreacting about an odd or two "honest" mistakes, let's focus on this typically Kashmiri trend of reporting 'news', without categorizing them as 'views' or even wishful, politically motivated thinking. No, but as 'Rising Lies'(which is what should be the name of this other Kashmiri paper I'm referring to) told us most conspiratorially, SASB was busy making an Amarnath Nagar at 14,000 ft so that the demographic complexion of the valley changes. Such an outrageous observation doesn't need a defence because it can only come from sources that have changed the demographic composition so often in Kashmir with their own murderous blood-stained hands. But what any one as a professional would want to know is whether the concerned reporter accessed any official documents, contacted SASB/Govt. or did anything that is taught in any School of Journalism before planting such a preposterous lie? We can only commend the fertile imagination of the
 reporter who came up with the name and concept of Amarnath Nagar and confer on him the Best Liar award. 

Then one can refer to the Kashmiri influence on Prem Shankar Jha's very confused article "It's The Moneybags Who Lost In Amarnath" that was printed in the 15 Sept 2008 issue of Outlook. His thesis was, and still is, that SASB's request for land was motivated by pure commercial considerations. If that be so, then the Azad Govt's orders which allotted land on May 26, 2008 and revoked it after a week on July 1, didn't serve any purpose because it permitted the installation of only "temporary structures" (and no hotels or resorts please). And if commercial interests were really involved, why Mr. Jha is not able to mention the name of even one foolhardy party willing to invest on the Amarnath route or quote one official document to establish this assertion? And why Jha in the next breath claimed that actually SASB "cannot …. own any land". That is, of course incorrect because Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, which works under a similar Act, owns more than
 one lakh Kanal of forest land, despite Article 370, in the same state of J&K? 

Then you can trust Muzamil Jaleel of Indian Express to come up with a really "zaleel" article "Raj Bhawan to Lal Chowk: Yatra to the Valley mess" that was printed/posted online on 18 Sept. 2008. The piece as usual is full of falsehoods and half truths presenting Muzamil's standard Talibanised views with a secular veneer. I don't know why it is so difficult for apologists like Muzamil to admit that Kashmiris could be so easily instigated to explode against either the Amarnath land allotment or the Shopian "Rape" case, because they are now brazenly communal, period. Otherwise, if they can tolerate land allotment to the Railways, Army, CPWD, Islamic University, even Airtel and Reliance, then why not to a State Govt. created Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB)? 

In the same piece, Muzamil is, a little later, found objecting to the request for developing a new authority for the Amarnath route, when there are more than two dozen such authorities in J&K, including one each at Pahalgam and Sonemarg, the base camps for Amarnath. It is crystal clear that Muzamil agrees with Mufti's plans that since the Katra Development Authority to look after the other famous shrine of the state remained on paper, so should be the Amarnath Development Authority. Again the basic mindset--we can have authorities everywhere to look after the needs of tourists, who come strictly for tourism, but not if they come for pilgrimage and chant "Jai Mata Di" or "Bam Bam Bhole". When out of 85 lakhs visitors who came to J&K last year, 80 lakhs came to Vaishno Devi, 4 lakhs to Amarnath and 50,000 only each to Kashmir and Ladakh, where do you need more Tourist development authorities, you decide. 

When Sir Walter Lawrence in his seminal 19th century work on Kashmir had written about the propensity of the Kashmiri race to lie through its teeth, we had all squirmed and protested about such a colonial, paternalistic kind of an attitude. On the other hand, when Mahatma Gandhi saw a ray of light coming only out of Kashmir, in the communal holocaust of 1947 that had engulfed the whole of India, our chests had swelled with pride. 

By espousing sick, communal lies of the kind that we discussed above has only proved Lawrence right and Gandhi wrong. 

writerswithoutborders at hotmail.com
 
http://www.thenorthlines.com/newsdet.aspx?q=29447