‘It Is Never Over, Never Escaped’

Obviously Newsweek has a one dimensional perspective on Kashmir, Kashmiris and their heritage. Its to endorse Muslim hatred and that Islam and its followers are the Bogey men. Ms Singh my heart bleeds for your anguish and perhaps you should seek therapy which should not be difficult in your new country. After all there is endorsed as "collateral damage". just like that suffered by the innocents in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Gaza (760 unarmed civilians DEAD only)... oh yes and just think Ms Singh...all Musllim majority states. However if this is the kind of material that is considered quality journalism that is balanced and fair then Mewsweek's management have their heads up the proverbial nether space and its disgusting! I say this as a former Executive Editor of a national daily. Its a pity to see Newsweek's qualiity plummet to such lamentable proportions, showing bias and unbelievable ignorance of fact. But you got into print and it was Newsweek no less... enjoy your 5 mins of fame!

However this is an example of just how American media functions now... on received point of view rather than verified facts and figures. As for Mr. Salim, perhaps he needs to look up what Kashmiris are fighting for and why. It can be googled and spare us his ignorance. Kashmiris may number in a majority as Muslims but they have a right to self determination, protection from 700,000 Indian troops who beat, molest, rape and torture but who have yet to break the Kashmiri spirit. Get real People and especially the anti-Islam lobby....if you don't understand the faith, learn and then argue and not all Muslims are terrorists, fundos, beards or shrieking banshees. They are first and foremost human and with the same needs as Americans, Israelis or others who need to live decently, be employed and with hope for a better life rather than be enmeshed in poverty and deprevation because of the greed of their humiliators.

DONT TRY TO SELL PAIN.......!!!!!!!!
IT HAS BECOME ROUTINE "ROOTS IN KASHMIR, PANUN KASHMIR, HINDU RIGHTWING" BUSINESS.......
GROW UP.......DONT BE BLIND TO MULTIPLE REALITIES...................!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May God Bless us all........

Kashmiri Muslims are fighting for freedom.
From whom and for whom? Is this freedom is for all Indian Muslims or only for Kashmiri Muslims? If 15 Crore Muslims are staying in India with all freedom then what is the issue with 60Lakh Kashmiri Muslims? What freedom they want? They have everything with them. Let me ensure you guys that this freedom has nothing to do with Kashmiri Muslims and their welfare. But actually a game of some politicians who want power for themselves. They are flaming this issue since 1947 and after 1987 Pakistan gave bullet in their hand for his own interests. What is the idea of freedom in Kashmir? Will they give choice to everyone? To every area, every town, every village, every mohalla? To Ladakh, Jammu also? How about minorities still remaining in Kashmir? Will they allow them to have a independent states in Kashmir? Let say there are 100 Hindu mohallas in all over Kashmir, will independence supports allow them to create 100 independent Hindu states in Kashmir?
It is time to integrate my friends not to disintegrate. Open eyes and understand politician???s game. What Kashmir need is development, employment which these politicians are not letting happen. Mainstream politicians are getting money from central govt and pocketing that. Separatists are getting money from Pakistan and Arabs and pocketing that. It all is happening at the cost of normal Kashmiri who is blind enough to be lured by separatist slogans and main streams party???s promises. But no, normal Kashmiri will not open his eyes. Basically fooling Muslims is quit easy just give a loud shout about Islam is in danger and you won.

This is again an interesting debate. As usual Muslims are portraying themselves as victims and accusing Hindu India for that. Same Hindu India where 15 Crores of Muslims (3rd largest Muslim population in World) are leaving without any problem and with all the rights. Hindu India, quite funny, isn???t it? What ever is happening in Kashmir is very bed specially my country India, which I love most. YES I AM MUSLIM but luckily not blind one but with eyes fully open under fully functioning brain.
There seems to be following points been presented by Muslims debaters:
1. Jagmohan who engineered KPs mass migration.
2. Migration was a boon for KPs.
3. Indian Soldiers screaming for blood descends from the house. Unarmed Kashmiri Muslim protesters were killed by India State in Kashmir.
4. Kashmiri Muslims are fighting for freedom.
5. 500 Kashmiri Muslims have been run over by Indian army trucks.

Let analyze them one by one.
The theory of Jagamohan engineered KPs mass migration.
Don???t go by theory spread by politicians and media as one of the theory about 2008 Amarnath land row demonstrations is someone from Hurriyat only got Hurriyat leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz killed and blamed security force just to entice public. People start pelting and forces uses baton and teargas, in all this drama some political activists fire upon security forces. And in response security force open fire and innocent people got killed but who cares. Politicians are getting mileage.

Migration was a boon for KPs.
If migration was boon for KPs then who is stopping you to also have same boon. Go out and use that boon. I know lot of Muslim people from different places including Kashmir who came from far away places and holding high positions in private companies. So for Allah sake you also go and enjoy the boon KPs are enjoying.

Indian Soldiers screaming for blood descends from the house. Unarmed Kashmiri Muslim protesters were killed by India State in Kashmir.
I was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be in Srinagar during 2008 demonstrations and what I saw from windows is people throwing stone from roof on the security men and their vehicles. What you will call this? People in compound of hospital pelting on security forces and next newspapers are talking of security forces didn???t even spare ambulances. So some gentlemen believe security forces are just for pelting practices like improve your aiming skills. This is not to deny that security forces are being very hard and there are so many accesses but what is said is also true.


500 Kashmiri Muslims have been run over by Indian army trucks.
Is it a figure for a day? This can???t, right? Otherwise whole J&K would have been nomen land long back. Is it for a year? Then just have a look at this, in 2003 total 85998 people died on roads in India. Who did this? Indian army?
Also I???ll believe you that all of 500 were Muslims because army vehicles will first ask the religion and then only will overrun its victim.

I am ashamed of what the lumpen elements in the disguise of Jihadis did to a 209 Kashmiri Hindus or Kashmiri Pandits or KPs. But at the same time I would like to share with Arti Singh???s readers that it was Jagmohan who engineered their mass migration by telling the community leaders that they will be brought back the moment the ???terrorists??? are wiped out. It was basically part of his sinister design to suppress the uprising in Kashmir that was initially all secular in nature as it had leaders like HN Wanchoo and many of his likes leading processions to local UN office with memoranda seeking early implementation of UN Resolutions on Kashmir. The world was watching the situation in Kashmir very keenly and India was under tremendous pressure to afford freedom to Kashmiris. This is evident from the offers made by Rajiv Gandhi, PV Narsimha Rao to Kashmiris. When Delhi saw Kashmir slipping out of her hands she dispatched Jagmohan to Srinagar as Governor with clear blue print to suppress the uprising. Mufti Sayed the then Indian Home Minister knew his co patriots in Kashmir and accordingly advised his mentors to go for the kill. He was basically interested in easing out Dr Farooq Abdullah with whom he had his own scores to settle. And Jagmohan proved a red rag to Abdullah who quit the job at the spur of the moment leaving the field free to the former. And KPs were there a stumbling block for Jagmohan???s plans. So he engineered their migration to Jammu and other places in India. The community suffered till Jagmohan???s co workers in Saffron parties, home ministry joined hands to create facilities for the community. In fact the migration proved to be a god-send opportunity to the community. It transformed their life. They got what they couldn???t dream of staying home. Today more than fifty percent of seats in professional colleges of Maharashtra state reserved for migrant KPs are de-reserved and put to competition under open merit category once there are no takers. Most of the migrant KPs got jobs. Those who were in Government employment took up jobs outside while enjoying full pay benefits from the State Government. Then they are exempted from income tax and other taxes. Yes it was the rural KP community that got condemned to migrant camps. These guys couldn???t find jobs like their townsmen got. They were mostly illiterate and that only compounded problems for them. Intriguingly some of the educated KPs seeing the windfall that the migration had brought them used every method to scuttle moves aimed at re-settling them in Kashmir.

Hi Mifune, there is no point in responding to those who are hypocrites, who can't see and feel pain of others but want to scream about their pain in all world forums.
These are people who find fault in Aarti's description, not because that is wrong but because it is not showing their pain but someone else's.

Hi Mifune, there is no point in responding to those who are hypocrites, who can't see and feel pain of others but want to scream about their pain in all world forums.
These are people who find fault in Aarti's description, not because that is wrong but because it is not showing their pain but someone else's.

being a Kashmiri I can tell that in the entire article only half a line is correct that the Indian troops who arti tikoo singh mentions as "security forces" are killing people and raping woman is correct

I continue to see a steadfast determination of kashmiri muslims to deny the Pandit narrative. "Oh the numbers were small". "oh its nothing compared to what happened to us" "oh it was orchestrated by Jagmohan" "oh they were just cowards who ran away".

No doubt all this nonsense is easier for kashmiri muslims to believe than to accept that the terrorists they support terrorized a minority. There are many Indians saying they are ashamed of what happened in Gujrat and in 1984 and to Kashmiris, that they are ashamed of the RSS and its supporters. But I have never met a single kashmiri muslim who is willing to do any such introspection, who is willing to admit ffeeling ashamed that the militants targetted KPs.

Kashmiri muslims are hypocrites. they scream about their rights and about human rights violations, but they deny the KPs the same thing.

I hope that Kashmiri Muslims do not get anything that they desire until they give back to the Kashmiri Pandits what the terrorists snatched from them.

first congratulation for aarti tikoo for the write up. But after reading the article it seems since eleven years of age aarti has blindfolded herself not to see the reality and brutality of the conflict in kashmir. being a pandit from kashmir and having lived through the armed conflict in the Valley, i doubt the very credibility of the write up. There have been more killings of inocent kashmiris at the hands of indian troops than by the militants.
kilings of few hundreds pandits is know genocide when you compare it with milliions of kashmiris killed, thousands of women who were widowed and thousands of children who were orphaned.
journalists like aarti should try to see the reality rather than trying to play with the pandits' sentiment. through her article she has demoralized the very hindu muslim brotherhood of kashmir.
the reality of kashmir conflict is and will remain that the kashmiris are being killed for demanding their just right. aarti should try to see the reality because CLOSING ONES' EYES DOES NOT CHANGE THE REALITY.

Routine Pandit propaganda. No doubt tragedy befell Pandits back in early 1990, but the causes of their migration still remain shrouded and unclear with perspectives of being driven out to tacit coaxing by Jagmohan for the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Muslims and return in a fortnight, being equally robust. While Arti Tikoo is at least comforatble in the new environs of her safe haven, I still jump any time I am outside Kashmir and there is loud thud of even a door being shut somewhere.
For me it is time to come back home whenever it is 6 pm no matter where I am. I may be in the US or the UK, whenever it is dark the cycle in me has it that I rush back home because that is the time to be in. Life for Kashmiris has been at least squeazed by half taking away many possible productive years off them. The loss is colossal and the hoax cries of genocide have no real strength. We know and they know whose ethnic cleansing was attempted like Israel knows who is the prepetrator of the imbroglio there. Arti Tickoo has passingly mentioned the rapes by the so called security forces meant to protect and secure the populace here but she has conveniently stopped short of blaming these too on the militants. Her style of writing is indeed eye catching but the substance of her content is far from the base realities.

Routine Pandit propaganda. No doubt tragedy befell Pandits back in early 1990, but the causes of their migration still remain shrouded and unclear with perspectives of being driven out to tacit coaxing by Jagmohan for the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Muslims and return in a fortnight, being equally robust. While Arti Tikoo is at least comforatble in the new environs of her safe haven, I still jump any time I am outside Kashmir and there is loud thud of even a door being shut somewhere. For me it is time to come back home whenever it is 6 pm no matter where I am. I may be in the US or the UK, whenever it is dark the cycle in me has it that I rush back home because that is the time to be in. Life for Kashmiris has been at least squeazed by half taking away many possible productive years off them. The loss is colossal and the hoax cries of genocide have no real strength. We know and they know whose ethnic cleansing was attempted like Israel knows who is the prepetrator of the imbroglio there. Arti Tickoo has passingly mentioned the rapes by the so called security forces meant to protect and secure the populace here but she has conveniently stopped short of blaming these too on the militants. Her style of writing is indeed eye catching but the substance of her content is far from the base realities.
PK

Javed, I mostly stop writing comments on blogs and stories when the language is abusive. You should first take out words like ???Hell??? from your discussion.

Whatever be the history what my eyes saw, what I experienced is what I will feel throughout my life. And like Aarti I experienced terror, I found excesses done and started from KP's. They were few in number and ya easy targets.

Indian forces as well as these terrorists who are acting as freedom fighters may have taken toll in Kashmir but I will come to same point.
Wasn't militancy started with erasing and terrorizing KP's? You can say no to that point if you wish but facts are facts and only loss of memory washes them away.

I don???t understand why you got so fumed on Aarti's experience, that???s her exp and she has felt so. If you also feel something no one will stop you from writing it. Don't undermine pain Javed and that???s what I wrote in last comment also.

Some say that KP's didn???t bid them good bye before leaving, where was trust? Where was time? I remember how my family left Srinagar, perhaps we were last to leave in our mohalla. It was when terrorists killed 6 KP family members in BhanMohalla that we left.
That time was horrific, wasn???t terrorizing KP's the first agenda? Wasn't it achieved very easily and in no time since we all left in that exodus as our priority was not getting killed but to be safe in whatever way.

Ofcourse, while first agenda of erasing us was over Army had started coming there. Since then we know what happens in Kashmir, we know how much turnout happened in Kashmir in recent election though June 2008 to August 2008 was most crucial time period in later years.

By the way why you feel people don???t see excesses done on you by Army or Terrorists, we know that but issue here is that Terrorizing KP???s was perhaps first step of getting freedom. Getting freedom from different culture.

By the way can plebiscite be done today? It has been more than 60 years that you guys are participating in elections which shows that you have confidence in India, you shouldn???t have participated from 1948 itself after those kaballis were gone. I think then may be your case for so called Freedom would have been strong.

I am a Muslim and live in Kashmir. I am surprised by the futility of the debate that follows this article. We can blame the author as much for having nightmares as we can blame a Muslim for not saving the killing and persecution of Kashmiri Pandits. I remember, as a 14 year old, those days we all were equally afraid and insecure and those memories are etched in my mind and will remain so forever. I remember my father taken hostage by militants because he could not pay them money; I remember an army major humiliating me and my father and with a gun pointed at my chest saying he wished he could shoot us all.
So many of my Hindu friends fled even without saying goodbye and lived like Bedouins. A bomb blast killed a Muslim friend. A grenade wounded and handicapped for life another one.
If after going through the last 20 years we Muslims and Pandits have only learnt to accuse each other, we deserved this torment. One can only reap what one toils about; it holds true for both the parties.

Also, it should be noted that 20 years after the violence started, the story has become a story of the brutality of the INdian forces in Kashmir, the numbers of people killed, tortured, vanished.

But 20 years ago, when this violence started, before India responded in any major way, when the hopes of the Kashmiri muslims were high, and the brutality of the Indian forces hadn't yet gathered force, the so called freedom fighters had started setting off bombs and killing civillians. The targetting of the Kashmiri Pandits happened in those early days, when Kashmiris had not yet faced the full force of the Indian forces and had not yet faced the horror of war.

Now that they have, their story has changed from one of political disenfranchisement in 1989 to one of military brutality in 2009. and in 2009, it is very important for Kashmiri muslims to deny that back in the "good' days, it was their leaders who started the killings, that those militant leaders targeted the KPs for a number of reasons (easy non muslim targets, symbols within kashmir of Hindu India, easy targets for grabbing homes and property, resentments against KPs that echoed the ant-jewish sentiments in pre WWII europe).

The KP story does not undermine the story of Kashmiri muslims. But it is a story that reflects poorly on Kashmiri Muslims and the actions of their freedom fighters in the early days. No wonder they are desperate to bury the KP story or discredit it.

You accuse Kashmiri Pandits of "having nothing but venom running through their veins". Firstly, if you have such attitudes towards a community, you have no business expecting anybody else to be any more considerate towards your own community.

This is not about the numbers of how many died, but about the principle. I don't see Muslims saying that the killing of 6 million jews in Germany amounts to a far far greater tragedy, based on the numbers, than what has happened to Kashmiris or Palestinians.

THe fact is, its not about the numbers, but about the principle. KPs were a very small community and what was done to them was real. I have seen the homes of KPs in Kashmir burned down. It is a FACT that KPs were targetted by the killers of the JKLF and others. It is a FACT that Kashmiri muslims were pleased to grab the homes and properties of Kashmir Pandits. I find it funny that Kashmiri muslims dismiss the "official" figures of how many have died in Kashmir, but quickly resort to the "official" figures when it comes to KPs.

Telling the story of the Kashmir Pandits does not undermine or devalue the story of the Kashmiri muslims. But for Kashmiri muslims to denegrate, deny, undermine the story of the Kashmiri Pandits is disgraceful.

If you want your story heard, you should be happy to let the story of the Kashmiri Pandits also be heard.

But you can't. Because while you are justifiably screaming about what the Indian forces have done, you can't bring yourself to accept or admit the villainy and evil that has been perpetrated by your own side. That evil you are only to eager to dismiss by denigrating its victims or by claiming that it was really very small and doesn't count.

Do you expect the world to believe that that likes of JKLF, Lashkar, Jaish, Harkat, Hizbul, and others have only ever engaged Indian soldiers and have never terrorized civilians? Forget it. These terrorists groups have killed civilians, innocent men women and children of every stripe, not just hindus and KPs but also Kashmiri muslims.

Its amazing that people like you keep quiet when terrorists throw grenades at schools and political rallies, but get so angry when a KP talks about what happened to her family.

Mifune we don't look for sympathy. We have been resisting a nation of a billion people, there are 700, 000 indian soldiers occupying our land, killing us, murdering us, humiliating us, looting our resources. Kashmiri muslims have suffered because they have been secularists and followers of sufism. Had they been Taliban-type (I wish they were), they would not have suffered so much. There are 8000 Kashmiri Hindu families still living in Kashmir. By aarti's account they should have fled to Andaman by now. Kashmiri muslims do their last rites if they die, they decorate their homes for weddings. We don't look for sympathy, we look toward world to know our truth. We are proud of our Hindu past (for your knowledge we were Hindus 400 years back) and our syncretism. We have sympathies for Kashmiri Pandits, even though they have nothing but venom running through their veins. And more than sympathy, pity

The second paragraph of Aarti Tikoo???s piece, recounting her childhood days in Kashmir, would read so much like my own story ( too many to recount here; if only NEWSWEEK gives space to that, too)---except that ???militants??? would replace the ???Indian soldiers???, and ???religious terror??? would replace ???state terror??? in my story. So my sentence would read like:??????the sound of Indian Soldiers screaming for blood descends from the house.??? And the line, ???For those who have lived through religious terror, it is never over, never escaped???, in my piece will read: ???For those who have lived through STATE TERROR, it is never over???. And the last paragraph of Aarti???s piece will need small, but some necessary changes in my story: ???I continue to have nightmares. Now that I am in my home, I thought it is only Kashmir that brought the constant reminder of Indian state terror???s presence in my life. Aarti???s piece changed that.??? For Aarti, who now lives in US, ???It was only a nightmare???, but for me and thousands of Muslim youth of Kashmir, who grew up and still live in Kashmir, there???s only one nightmare that has become an everyday reality for us: Indian occupation. That???s the only truth in Kashmir. And it never seems to end, and it is very cruel.

I live in Srinagar, Kashmir.