Principal Supinder (Satinder) Kour’s final rites were carried out by grieving family, friends, and community members on Friday. She was among the civilians gunned down by terrorists, and the only woman, and Sikh to be targeted. The school principal was shot dead in cold blood on October 7, along with another teacher Deepak Chand, a Kashmiri Pandit.

The Valley’s Sikh community had assembled at Kour’s residence in Aloochi Bagh area, carrying her mortal remains out in a march that also marked their protest at the targeting of innocents. According to news reports, the march grew as it covered a large distance – Aloochi Bagh to Jehangir Chowk – raising slogans demanding justice for the victims. The protesters also held a silent sit-in at the Civil Secretariat, the seat of the Jammu and Kashmir government. Later, Kour’s mortal remains were taken to the cremation grounds for the final rites.

“My father Makhan Lal Bindroo a Kashmiri Pandit will never die. You can just kill the body and he will be alive in the spirit,” says Dr Shraddha Bindroo. #srinagar #Kashmir pic.twitter.com/Ai938ty2wP

— Parvaiz Ahmad Qadri (@Parvaiz_Qadri) October 6, 2021

Adding to the tragedy were images of the last rites of Virendar Paswan, who hailed from Bhagalpur in Bihar, who had just come to the Union Territory to earn a living and worked as street food vendor in Srinagar.  According to reports, his funeral was held at Srinagar because his family couldn’t afford taking the body back home. Killed by terrorists because he was an “outsider”, Paswan’s mortal remains ironically became one with the elements in Srinagar itself.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) also held a protest in Srinagar in the wake of terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and demanded that Lieutenant Governor (LG) Manoj Sinha resign from his post. The PDP Spokesperson Syed Suhail Bukhari said, “We strongly condemn and demand that Governor Manoj Sinha should give resignation as he totally failed to handle the situation. We ask the Government of India why it happened if militancy is over and the situation is normal. Since the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, the home ministry is monitoring the situation then why these incidents happened. So, it is clear the Government of India, security agencies totally failed to control the situation.”

The terror attacks on members of the minority Kashmiri Pandit and Sikh communities are being viewed as an intention to divide people on the lines of religion yet again. The PDP appealed to the people of Jammu and Kashmir to be “united to defeat vested interests of people, who are trying to disturb peace and damage communal harmony.” The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Forum also staged a protest in Jammu against Pakistan over the killings.   

According to a report in the Greater Kashmir, Jagmohan Singh Raina, the chairman of All Parties Sikh Coordination Committee (APSCC) said the Sikh community was cautious not to allow “any vested interests to vitiate the cordial relation of communal brotherhood,” adding that “the Sikh minority for the last 30 years has ensured that there is communal harmony and brotherhood in Kashmir. We have never allowed the peaceful communal harmony be disturbed and won’t let it happen. There is a need for firm brotherhood even today”. Raina too asked that the LG-led administration ensure that the situation is not allowed to “go out of control”, stated the news report.

Kashmiri Pandit leader Sanjay Tickoo told Sabrangindia that repeated pleas with LG Manoj Sinha to enhance security for Pandit families had gone unanswered. “Where is the security for KP families in the Valley?” he had asked as the nightmare of 1990 appears to be repeating itself. Now, SabrangIndia’s sister organisation Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) has joined the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti to petition the LG to provide adequate security to minorities. The petition may be signed here.

Meanwhile, a section of the right wing is busy fuelling communal fire with hate filled posts such as this:

This video must be shared widely amongst NRI Sikh community so that they know who is their real enemy instead of collaborating with Jehadis. https://t.co/Q63pDNiQbX

— Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) October 8, 2021

Related:

Killing three civilians, terrorists send a bloody message across Jammu and 
Jammu and Kashmir: Press Council of India to investigate intimidation of journalists 
Will events following Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s death impact Kashmir politics?

The post Srinagar: Grief envelopes Valley as Supinder (Satinder) Kour’s last rites are performed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The rising unrest in the valley played a role in the increase, activists said, specifically pointing to the use of pellet guns for crowd control.

 
Jammu & Kashmir is the only state yet to implement a 2016 law that recognises 21 disabilities–up from the earlier seven–suggesting that actual numbers could be even higher.
 
Infrastructure in the state is not disabled-friendly, activists said, especially in public offices and educational institutions.
 
In six years to 2017, Kupwara district registered the most people with disabilities (10,825), followed by Anantnag (8,638), Baramulla (7,274) and Pulwama (5,461).

 
In 2011, the state had a disabled population of 361,153–56.7% male and 43.2% female–and up 19.3% from 302,670 in 2001, according to Census 2011. Hearing disability was the most prevalent (21%), data show.
 
Conflict led to rise in disabled population
 
As of 2014, more than 100,000 disabilities were due to conflict, according to a November 2015 study published in the Journal of Business Management and Social Sciences Research (JBM & SSR). Post 2016, the use of pellet guns has increased the number of disabilities, according to Srinagar-based human rights activist Khurram Parvez.
 
Since 2016, 1,314 eyes of 1,253 people were impaired after being hit by pellets, and the chances of recovery are poor, Greater Kashmir, a local daily, reported on April 8, 2018. Blindness accounted for 68.9% of disabilities in the state compared to 44.5% nationwide, according to the JBM & SSR study quoted above.
 
“The government has no policy to help these victims,” separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told IndiaSpend. “Since it is their responsibility to rehabilitate them, they are the one(s) who should come formed and help them, but the government has completely failed to rehabilitate them.”
 
“According to official figures, 17 people were killed by shotgun pellets between July 2016 and August 2017, and 6,221 people were injured by the metal pellets between 2016 and March 2017,” according to the first ever United Nations Human Rights report on Kashmir, released on June 14, 2018.
 
The Centre criticised the report, with an external affairs ministry spokesperson describing it as “fallacious, tendentious and motivated”, violating Indian sovereignty and “a selective compilation of largely unverified information … overtly prejudiced and seeks to build a false narrative”.
 
The pending Act
 
In December 2016, parliament passed the Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2016, thereby replacing the 21-year-old Persons with Disability Act, 1995. The new law increased the number of recognised disabilities from seven to 21, suggested penalties for discrimination, and hiked the reservation for persons with disability–for education and government jobs–from 3% to 4%.
 
More than eighteen months since, all these are yet to be implemented in Jammu & Kashmir.
 
Under Article 370 of the Constitution, parliament has power to make laws only on defence, external affairs and communication-related matters of Jammu & Kashmir. So, a legislation has to be passed in the state’s assembly for bills passed by the parliament to come into effect in the state.
 
“This is not happening with us for the first time,” said Javid Ahmad Tak, an activist who advocates for the rights of the disabled. “When the Disability Act was first passed in 1995, it was implemented in Kashmir in 1998–a gap of three years in which thousands could have got jobs, access to education and other facilities.”
 
“The Act is yet to be passed and it is in process and it will be done very soon,” Waheed Para, youth president of the PDP, had told IndiaSpend before the BJP-PDP coalition parted ways on June 19, 2018.
 
“Disability is a larger concern for J&K, it’s a very human issue,” Para said. “We have established a separate department for disabled people for the first time under the social welfare department.”
 
With the state now under governor’s rule, Tak said he was optimistic. “The chances of implementing this law are better now, as we have already held meetings with governor N. N. Vohra,” Tak said. “He is sensitive about this issue and we hope that he will pass an ordinance  soon.”
 
State’s infrastructure not disabled-friendly
 
Most public offices in the state are inaccessible to the disabled because they do not have ramps, said Parvez. When a disabled person steps out of his home, they face obstacles at every level, said Tak. The footpaths are not disabled-friendly.
 
There are only 15 disability care institutes–each with a capacity of 40 people–in the state, according to this research by Department of Economics, Annamalai University, India. Only 0.05% of the state’s disabled population has access to education, while others are out of the range of basic necessities such as education.
 

Students at the Zaiba Aapa Institute Of Inclusive Education, Bijbehara, Anantnag district. The school is run by disabled-rights activist Javid Ahmad Tak. Most schools in the valley are not disabled-friendly, with no ramps for wheelchairs, and no special educators trained to teach disabled students.
 
Children with low vision or blindness require to be taught in braille, but most schools lack such facilities. School toilets in schools are not disabled-friendly, Tak added.
 
“I have seen a lot of difference here as far as education is concerned,” said Nookaraju Bendukurthi, a professor of media studies at the Central University of Kashmir who previously taught at the University of Hyderabad. “There is lack of accessibility in all educational institutions in terms of ramps for the physically disabled people, and libraries are not accessible to people who are visually impaired.”
 
Most schools in the valley do not have special educators trained to teach people with disabilities, said Abdul Rashid Bhat, president of J&K Handicapped Association. “This affects the communication between the teacher and the student, often leading to dropouts,” Bhat added.
 
“There is no system to teach using braille in our school, the washrooms are not disabled-friendly,” said Malik Farzana Showkat, a dropout from a government school in Bijbehara in Anantnag district. “If anyone was disabled, it was those teachers who were not able to teach me.”
 
“The government is identifying such people (dropouts) but they don’t focus on the second step which is to identify the needs of these disable people,” said Bhat. “If someone would require a wheelchair, they would fail to provide it and even if they do, the wheelchairs are substandard.”
 
(Wasif is a Srinagar-based freelance journalist.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post In Kashmir Valley, 74% More People Certified Disabled During PDP-BJP Rule appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Kargil has quite naturally dominated the Indian media’s attention ever since intruders from Pakistan were discovered on its glaciated peaks. Every aspect of the situation has been analysed form every possible angle by experts from every discipline. But I have yet not come across any mention of the impact of the event on the minds of the Muslims in Ladakh, in Kashmir and Jammu, on Buddhist–Muslim relations in Kargil, and Muslim–Hindu relations in the other two regions which have important implications for the future of the state.

While writing in the present context, many experts have re–examined the lessons of earlier experiences of Indo–Pak wars, from diplomatic, strategic and other angles, viz., terms of cease fire agreements, territories gained or lost. But again, no one has made any mention of the relationship between external involvement and the local mood of the people, and the impact of war on them.

The present tilt of international opinion against Pakistan is being variously explained as the achievement of able diplomacy of the BJP government, realisation on the part of America of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, which has become powerful in Pakistan, or the importance that India has acquired as a market and an investment avenue.

These explanations may be true to some extent. But the fact that is being completely ignored is that international opinion is also influenced by the merit of a case. The package is important but not more than the material it covers. Every nation watches its national interest but that concern must also include its influence and image among the rest of the nations.

That India did not get much international support against Pakistan during the decade–long insurgency in Kashmir was due to the fact that, inter alia, people of the Valley, rightly or wrongly, supported it. Kashmiri youth used to cross the LoC and get arms and training and return as militants for the cause of ‘Azadi’. The ruthless manner in which the insurgency was sought to be suppressed in the initial phase invited universal ondemnation.

In contrast, today it is essentially an operation of the Pakistan army with the support of specially recruited and specially indoctrinated Mujahids in an area where there is no freedom movement. Of course, India’s restraint in dealing with the situation has also paid diplomatic dividends. 

But why did Pakistan change its position as a champion of the rights of Kashmiris to that of an aggressor? The BJP blames the Congress Party for defeating its government, which tempted Pakistan to exploit the consequent political instability in the country. The Congress blames the naivete and gullibility of the Prime Minister who was mesmerised into complacency due to the euphoria created by his bus diplomacy.
More objective experts offer a number of strategic theories for the gamble that Pakistan played in Kargil, viz., it wanted to do a Siachen on India, or to open an alternative route of infiltration to the Kashmir valley.

In short, all debate on Kargil that dominates the national agenda is based on the presumption that the entire conflict between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir is based on the title over real estate. This approach errs in ignoring the fact that Pakistan’s behaviour is influenced by the political mood of the people and that it has political motives also. In other words, it means a ref usal to accept the vital fact thatpeople of the state also matter. 

If the way the situation was developing or drifting within the state in the recent period was watched  carefully, any observer could not have missed the writing on its political wall regarding what has happened in Kargil.
A further confirmation would have been available if turmoil across the LoC, too, had been noticed. For understanding Kargil, an understanding of the wider ethno-cultural milieu of which it is a part is necessary. But that requires much more rigorous homework which is beyond our tribe of Kashmir experts.

Let me recount some of the evidence that gave an indication of the shape of things to come. Pakistan was under a compulsion to convert the Kashmiri movement for Azadi into a Muslim movement for Pakistan.
For, Kashmiri nationalism was a double–edged weapon. India used it against Pakistan from 1947 to 1953 and from 1975 to the mid–eighties. The ideological gap between the Kashmir movement and Pakistan could be a political threat to the latter. Thus Pakistan wriggled out of its commitment to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, the pioneer of militancy in Kashmir, for Azadi. Pakistan gradually reduced and then withdrew all support to it. Instead, it sponsored pro–Pakistan and Islamic fundamentalist groups of militants. The leadership of its  verground political wing, under the banner of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, too, shifted accordingly.

Meanwhile the J and K chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, shifted his allegiance from the Left–supported United Front to the BJP and issued a certificate of patriotism to the RSS. The effective political choice for the people of Kashmir was thus confined to a pro–RSS face of India and a pro-Pakistan Jamaat–led Hurriyat Conference. But to close their options, Jammu and Ladakh needed to be communalised. Hence the Muslim pockets within them became a target of the militants.

Their task was facilitated by the communal polarisation of Jammu between the National Conference and BJP, and of Ladakh between the former and the Ladakh Buddhist Association. The voting in the parliamentary election of 1998 was a neat reflection of this polarisation. It suited the National Conference rulers if the perennial regional discontent in Jammu and Ladakh was divided along communal lines.
Thus as a reaction to some voices for separate statehood of Jammu and Union Territory status for Ladakh, the National Conference started a campaign for separation of Muslim majority parts from their respective regions. In April 1999, the state government formally proposed re–demarcation of these regions on communal basis, of course for public discussion.

By this time, fresh initiatives came from America–based think tanks for the solution of the Kashmir problem on the basis of traditional official American thinking that the problem must be resolved “accordingly to the wishes of the people, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists”. This simplistic thinking completely ignores the ethnic identities and their aspirations. 

Reflecting the same thinking, the US–based and influential Kashmir Study Group recommended that “the state be reconstituted through an internationally supervised ascertainment of the wishes of the people on either side of the Line of Control”. This portion be constituted “as a sovereign entity (but without an international personality)”. Two Indian representatives who had participated in the meeting which made
this recommendation later clarified that it meant the reconstituted state should be within Indian sovereignty. But obviously they did not object to reconstitution.

Pakistan came nearer to this position when its foreign minister proposed a district–wise plebiscite to determine the future of the state; thus limiting its claim to, besides the Kashmir Valley, to the Muslim majority districts of Rajouri, Poonch and Doda in Jammu region and the district of Kargil in Ladakh. After extending militant activity to the former area, Kargil appeared to be its natural target. It may merely have been more encouraged by internal developments and external proposals on the subject.

The Pakistan government had not properly taken into account the lack of response of the Muslims of Kargil, the formidable military challenge of the Indian armed forces and hostile international reaction to its action. But India’s decisive victory would depend on how far it can meet the political fall–out of Kargil. Can it help Kargil to feel a secure and proud part of a secular Ladakhi identity, which requires restoration of traditional friendly and cordial relations between Buddhists and Muslims? Can a part of the solidarity and sympathy that the whole nation is expressing for valiant soldiers and their families be extended to the patriotic people of Kargil and about 30,000 homeless, famished refugees?

Again, how would India meet the international pressure, which would turn on it after Kargil crisis is over, to solve the Kashmir problem with some semblance of popular satisfaction? Can India satisfy the urge for identity, democracy and good administration of the people of Kashmir and help them to have friendly relations with peoples of the other two regions of the state?

There are some lessons of Kargil for the nation as a whole, too. While it has generated sentiments of patriotism, sacrifice and fellow feeling, a few reactions exceed legitimate limits of patriotism and, in fact, undermine its moral and psychological basis. The government ban on PTV is, for instance, a reflection on the patriotism of an average citizen which is supposed to be so fragile that it cannot stand a hostile propaganda. If Pakistan can continue its confrontation with India in Kargil, and if India has fought earlier four wars without a ban on the foreign media, why should the present government presume that Indians have become less mature now.

What makes the ban silly is the fact that it is totally unimple-mentable in Kashmir and on the entire Indo–Pak border. Moreover, PTV’s non–news programmes, particularly its plays, are very popular in many parts of India. Why should even the entertainment offered by PTV be banned? Another display of misplaced patriotism is the plea by veteran cricketer Kapil Dev to snap all sports relations with Pakistan. It is true that Indo–Pak matches often arouse jingoist sentiments in both countries and, on this ground, a case could be made to suspend them till tempers cool down. But to argue a sort of sport boycott of Pakistan for its action in Kargil is a case of over–reaction. Does Kapil suspect that every sportsman and sportswoman or sports lover in Pakistan is involved in sponsoring intrusion in Kargil and is an enemy of India? In the past persons belonging to the fields of sports, culture, literature and music have in the worst of times, been messengers of peace and friendship
between the two neighbours. We have to draw a distinction between the people of Pakistan and their rulers. Among the former there has always been an India- friendly constituency which, in our own interest, we
should not let down.

There are some voices demanding of some eminent Muslims that they prove their patriotism, or advocating a ‘final solution’ to the centuries–old aggression upon India from Mohammad Bin Kasim to Mian Nawaz
(Bal Thackerey and the RSS weekly, Panchajanya, respectively. These are too absurd to be discussed; but if such views gather more support, that would pose a greater threat to the existence of a united and civil
India than the military, political, ideological and diplomatic threat ever posed by Pakistan.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 1999, Year 6  No. 51, Cover Story 1

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