History – Past and Present

By K.N. Pandit
 
Unprecedented changes have occurred in the world during past three decades. These are conspicuously visible in international relations, geo- political strategies, economic recession and social churning.

Nevertheless, simultaneously great leaps forward in technological and scientific advancement have abridged distances, shrunk time, and opened exciting opportunities of economic progress. The quality of life has improved considerably. While developing countries had to re-fashion their socio-economic set up to accommodate and even absorb imperatives of rapid development, technologically advanced countries with strong economies thrust much faster innovative options on them.  As a result, developing societies are feeling the pressure of transition to modernism. In such a prospect many irritants are likely to surface. In particular, there is growing demand for social justice and economic parity.
 
It is curious that economic progress and economic deprivation, though contradictory in essence, have both contributed to the activation of dormant as well as wakeful social aspirations among underprivileged segments of developing societies. Recognition of identity is an urge and an aspiration.

The most eloquent expression of this phenomenon is to be understood in the Islamic revolution of Iran under theocratic dispensation in 1979.  Commentators are still debating why of all the Muslim countries Iran should have chosen to go theocratic when she had come so close to the fringe of modernism. We should not forget that Iran’s urge for recognition of her identity was articulated, albeit unsuccessfully, way back in 1950s. Did not that failure suggest that Iranian civil society recognized national identity not necessarily conditional to modernism? It was clear that Iran would look for new and effective options to realize her urge for identity? And the option was seized even if it came belatedly and perhaps erratically in a sense – after nearly four decades.   Continue Reading…

… to remember the real history …

Letter by Dr. K.N. Pandita, General Secretary of ASIAN-EURASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM AEHRF, Delhi

to

Mr. L.K. Advani, Hon’ble Deputy Prime Minister & Home Minister of India, New Delhi

Published on Kashmir Herald on the web, Volume 3, No. 6 – November 2003

Sir,

In the first week of September 2003, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a reputed Delhi-based NGO organized a 2-day seminar in New Delhi on the theme ‘Kashmiri Pandits: Problems and Prospects’. Many senior leaders, public figures and opinion makers were present at its deliberations. It is understood that the NGO in question would be deputing a delegation to apprise you of the shades of opinion that have emerged on the subject of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Kashmir.

We know of your concern about the return and rehabilitation of the members of Pandit minority of Kashmir who have been visibly and invisibly forced out of their ancestral homeland over half a century in the past. Of these, the largest chunk numbering about 300,000 was forced out of the valley in 1990 with the outbreak of Islamist terrorism. Ever since, most of them are living in refugee camps or at other places in the country.  Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandit

Nine Muslim organizations held a protest in the capital recently slamming Congress for victimizing Muslims who they claim are innocent. This protest was evoked by Delhi police investigations into this month’s Delhi bomb blasts.

The phenomenon of protesting against security forces and police conducting enquiries in the light of clues obtained through investigating agencies is being increasingly communalized and politicized at various levels. The trend was first set two decades ago by Kashmir Islamic insurgency in which case people came out in multitudes to protest the arrest of a suspected collaborator with insurgents or their conduit. The media would jump into the fray and click shots that highlighted so-called victimization.

In the case of Jamia Nagar investigations and rounding up of two students of the Jamia Millia, no less a person than the Vice Chancellor has come out in open support of the inmates of the institution alleged to have links with the Delhi bombers. He has offered financial support towards the legal defence of the arrested students.

Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

Mr. Jagmohan’s write – up (Kashmir’s new danger April 12, 2007) asks for some vital clarifications. A letter will not do, hence a full write-up.

Shri Jagmohan is one most outstanding authority on contemporary Kashmir essentially first by virtue of being an astute scholar, and secondly having headed the J&K State twice, once in normal times and the next at a crucial time when armed insurgency broke out. Notwithstanding these unique qualifications, some basics of Kashmir history and psyche appear to have remained obscure to his searching eye.

In the first place it is a big fallacy to think that Kashmir had a tolerant Islam. It was never so. Muslim historians, pseudo-secular Hindus and some self-styled visionaries manipulated it. Works of Kashmiri Persian histories like Baharistan-i-Shahi (A.D. 1622) and Tohfatu’l-Ahbab (closing years of 16th century) and Tarikh-i-Kashmir of Peerzada Ghulam Hasan have remained inaccessible to most of Kashmir commentators including perhaps Jagmohan. These and other casual Persian histories give an insight into atrocities perpetrated on the Kashmiri Hindus from A.D 1339 to the end of the Pathan rule in circa A.D. 1797. For a long period of over four hundred years, Kashmiri Hindus have borne untold atrocities, forced conversion and circumcision and persecution at the hands of the local Muslim satraps, warlords and their engines of oppression. Never did a single Kashmri Muslim stand up to the tyrannical and bigoted rulers and goons demanding justice to the Hindu population.

Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

The roots of Shia-Sunni jihad bedevilling Pakistan’s Punjabi dominated regions in general and more recently the Kurram Agency of FATA in particular, have to be traced in the deep – seated conflict and contradiction existing in traditional ideologues of the Shia and the Sunni sects of Islam ever since the tragic happenings in Kerbala in 7th century A.D. After the Arab conquest, Iran became predominantly Shia for several reasons. Her centuries old pre-Islamic monarchical mindset harking back to the days of great Achaemenian and Sassanian Empires, her dislike for Arab domination resulting in several anti- Arab revolts and uprisings, her rich and ennobling cultural heritage and national pride, her agriculture-oriented economy and entrenched feudalism, her organized and structured society as against a tribal and a nomadic way of life are some of the factors, which prompted Iranians to carve out their Shia (literally meaning weaning away from mainstream) identity and reinforce it through exceptionally studious, accurate and reasoned scholarship.

Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

Congress has its patent antics of making scapegoats and passing the buck on.

Buta Singh has been a Congress activist for the whole of his life. How can one become Mr. non-partisan over night more so when the same party had catapulted him into the seat of the Governor to which he owed allegiance and which was in power at the centre?

His functioning has been controversial nay partial from the very outset of his tenure as Governor. In fact he found his counterfoil in Mr. Sibte Rizvi who had been censured by the President for misuse of his high office in somewhat similar manner. Why Buta Singh refused to learn something by that episode is intriguing. There can be only one explanation that Congress is too arrogant a party to run the country in strict adherence to the demands of democracy.

Continue Reading…

Found in The National Security’s Archive NSARCHIVE Oct. 18: Saddam’s Iron Grip, Intelligence Reports on Saddam Hussein’s Reign.

Washington D.C. October 18, 2005 – The National Security Archive today posted a series of declassified U.S. intelligence documents and other U.S. agency reports on Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses, one of which is the subject of the first trial of Saddam which begins tomorrow in Iraq.
Continue Reading…

Found in the National Security Archive, Washington DC, the following article: Declassified Documents from the Bush I and Clinton Administrations, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 164, Edited by Robert A. Wampler – 202/994-7000. – Washington D.C. August 23, 2005 –
Continue Reading…

Letter to the editor by K.N.Pandita. This is with reference to ‘Beyond Muslim condemnation of terrorism’ by Louay Safi (AT 5 August 2005). Some Muslim organizations have reacted against the brutality of London bombing. Continue Reading…

The Tribune, Only jehadis have gained, by G. Parthasarathy

WHEN Saudi Arabia’s ruler King Fahd died after a prolonged illness on August 1, his last rites were performed according to strict and austere Wahabi traditions. But one person who reacted as though his beloved uncle had died and mourned publicly, was Pakistan’s General Musharraf, who promptly declared one week’s state mourning
Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita,
A less expressed view in some knowledgeable Iranian circles is that the new President’s hard-line posture is an exception rather than the rule There are other more baffling issues that must fill the priority list of the President. Un-remitted social and economic baggage, groupism in civilian and military establishments and a restructured relationship with the west should be among his priorities. Continue Reading…

K.N. Pandita, Recently terrorists were holed up in Mecca and Medina, the two historic and holy cites of the Saudi Kingdom. Saudi police found them activists of Al-Qaeda, the crusaders of the 18th century puritanical Sunni ideology of Abdu’l-Wahhab. Continue Reading…

Letter to the Editor, by K.N.Pandita – Dear Sir, The Supreme Court of India, the highest institution of justice in the country has delivered its judgement in the case of terrorist attack on the parliament. One of the accused has been given death sentence and the other one served ten years of rigorous imprisonment.
Continue Reading…

Found in Asia Times, August 6, 2005, by Sergei Blagov, MOSCOW – Russia’s unprecedented joint war games with China can be viewed as a dual message to the United States and the Central Asian republics of the extent to which Beijing and Moscow are prepared to go to protect their interests.
Continue Reading…

Found in Asia Times of 6th August, 2005, by Adam Wolfe, Russia and China delivered a one-two punch to Washington’s ambitions in Central Asia on the eve of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit with a joint statement on “international order” followed by a
Continue Reading…

Letter to the Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, India, by K.N. Pandita, Jammu 01.08.05,

Sir – This refers to ‘The metamorphosis of Al-Qaeda’ by Rajeev Sharma (August 1, 2005). A comprehensive subject like terrorism and al-Qaeda demands an elaborate and specialised analysis. The fact is that the Islamic society (ummah) is beset with deep contradictions within. Some of these were
Continue Reading…

The Tribune, Chandigarh, India, 01 August 2005,

ANALYSIS, by Rajeev Sharma, New Delhi, July 31 – The world of jihad is undergoing a never-before churning process which is set to throw up significant new trends in international terrorism in the months to come.
Continue Reading…

Asia Times-online publishes on 27 july 2005 the following article by Syed Saleem Shahzad:

KARACHI – Sophisticated terror attacks using the minimum possible resources to target civilians are the issue of the day, whether it be in Egypt, the United Kingdom or Spain.
Continue Reading…

The Osimi Cultural Center is a non-profit organization that was registered on April of 2002 in Denver, USA. The main goal is the promotion of cultural and scientific collaboration between intellectuals for cultural and scientific communications. The Centers library prepares to present in the Internet different aspects of scientific and cultural heritages of Central Asia and Iran and its modern achievements. Take a look at this center.

Found in Asia Times, 19 July 2005, by William Fisher, NEW YORK – Today’s media have all but forgotten that the emergence of Afghanistan’s Taliban
Continue Reading…

Found in Asian Times, July 9, 2005, by Chalmers Johnson,

Note from Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch: The World Monuments Fund has placed Iraq on its list of the Earth’s 100 most endangered sites, the first time that a whole
Continue Reading…

By K.N. Pandita

The history of a nation is usually interspersed with moments of passivity as well as of activity: it is seldom smooth and even. How the nation reacts to the upheavls or how it conducts itself during the interrugnums of peace and turmoil is the interesting chapter of its social history.

Kashmir is passing through an unprecedented period of turmoil. This nation of fairly substantial antiquity has seen through the millennia, short or long, periods of chaos and confusion as well as of placid peace and prosperity.
Continue Reading…