Religious freedom in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka

A Summary of Religious Freedom concerns in South Asia.   

Friday, March 9, 2018 –Washington, D.C., The South Asia working group’s initial report to the International Religious Freedom Round-table.

There is a dire need to address the violations of religious and political freedoms in South Asia comprising the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

A critical note – when a reference is made to the Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, India, Russia or others, it is not “all” people of that faith or country.  It is usually a small percent of disaffected people from among the majority who feel threatened about their future and their way of life.

The Center for Pluralism offers a solution to counter that – We need to reassure each other in conflict, particularly those who may be troubled by the changing paradigms and demographics of the society that we are committed to safeguarding the way of life for everyone.  As Citizens of a given nation, we uphold, protect, defend and celebrate the values of liberty and freedom enshrined in the Constitution. We acknowledge that not all constitutions have the element of freedom embedded in it – an example would be the rights of Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan and rights of Arab Israelis.

There are pending issues that are simmering and may boil over one day. We hope to understand these issues and do our share of reporting them to the International Religious Freedom Round Table, an informal group.

This group will identify problems and offer recommendations and possible solutions, and they are;

1. Monitoring to ensure the individual rights of people are protected.
2. Facilitate democratic values and hoping for stable political and economic climate
3. Secure our long-term interests of the safety of Americans and their investments

Governor Sam Brownback, the newly appointed Ambassador for religious freedom, said in the inaugural reception.  The essence of which was -if you want a nation to have peace, give the people their freedom, but if you push them to the corner, their anger will morph into extremism, and everyone will lose in the end.

Here is a summary; a detailed report is in the making and will be produced upon a request.

There is no doubt a lot of good things are happening, but our focus is how to identify exceptional violations of human rights and religious freedom.

India:

The commissioners of USCRIF have been the denied visa to India to investigate, among other things; Sikh Genocide, Massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, the plight of Hindu Pundits and the caster system that mistreats the Dalits who are shamefully called untouchables. Most of the Hindu American organizations have an affiliation with the ruling party in India; we need them to stand up for the religious rights of the people and work on getting the Visas to the commissioners for an honest evaluation of the situation.

The policies of the government will lead to mass suicides by the farmers. The Farmers raise the cattle to sell and eke out a living.  Now, they are afraid to sell the cattle for fear of being killed by the vigilantes and the Government does nothing.  The Cows have gone astray and are eating the farmer’s crops and eating trash on the streets – the cows are treated with disrespect and left on their own, its gross violation of animal rights.

In India currently, you do not have the freedom to eat, drink, wear or believe in the pursuit of your happiness.

A Dalit* groom rode a horse on his wedding Baraat (Procession) in the state of Uttar Pradesh last month; the upper caste Hindus could not stomach the “neech –i.e., the low caste untouchable” ride above them and they ended beat him up. Last week an Adivasi (Tribal) Girl was burnt alive. The upper caste Hindus feel entitled to the Dalit women for their pleasures.  It is an endless agony for the Dalits. They cannot even convert to other faiths to escape these attitudes due to enforced anti-conversion laws.

Here is a report from the Dalit Leaders in India.

“The many millenia old caste systems and the ‘unparalleled social abuse of untouchability (A.J.Toynbee)’ are based on religious doctrines of Brahminical Hinduism. Thus, caste based violations of human rights in India are expressions of the utter lack of religious freedom.

This perilous situation is aggravated by anti-conversion laws that have been passed in many states of India. Their purpose is to prevent Dalits from converting to other religions where they would not be considered untouchable’.https://www.loc.gov/law/help/anti-conversion-laws/india.php

The inferior status that Hinduism accords to Dalits, in spite of the equalities guaranteed by the constitution of the country, reflects in severe social, economic, and educational inequalities.

Dalits continue to suffer extreme prejudice and deprivation, apart from institutional harassment. Violence against Dalits – public shaming, beatings, rape, murder – is a daily occurrence. The law enforcement agencies, police and the judiciary, largely remain mute spectators, if not actively conniving in the violence.

Statistics show that violence against Dalits has only increased in recent years. Religious freedom and equality thus remain a mirage for 200 million Dalits in India. ”

The Muslims are lynched and killed for doubt of possessing beef; fake encounters is common practice to trap the young Muslim boys; RSS (political Hindus in the guise of culture) set the bomb blasts in Mumbai and other places and blamed Muslims.  Muzaffarnagar and other riots were created to pit Hindus against Indians.

Christian Nuns are raped; pastors are chased and beat up in the public. The Christians Churches are burned, and the couples are constantly harassed on Valentine’s Day and Christmas Day. The Dalits are forced to convert back to Hinduism.

Justice to Sikhs is not done yet; mothers are still waiting for their unaccounted children from the Sikh Genocide of 84 where in three days, the extremists among Hindus butchered about 3000 Sikhs.

Blatant discrimination births frustration leading to violent expressions, when that happens the foreign investors will pull out, who wants to invest in a place where their investments are not secure.  It’s happened in India in the mid-60’s, mid 70’s and it has happened in South Africa. The consequences do not bring goodwill.

There is a significant crisis brewing in India, and the Supreme Court will render a judgment about the disputed land and authority to build or not build a Hindu temple, where a 500-year-old Muslim Mosque was razed to the ground.

The Supreme Court of India would review the documents if that Mosque were built razing a temple.  The internationally famed Guru of Art of Living, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has sowed the seeds of discontentment.  Instead of suggesting the public to respect the Supreme Court’s decision, he has predicted civil war if the Court decides one way or the other. He has shown disrespect to the average Hindu and average Muslim who have demonstrated respect to the decisions of the Apex Court, several times in the recent past.

We pray that the Modi government and the State Government will offer strong safety protections to the public at least for a few months after December 5, 2018, the new date of the verdict.

Pakistan

Harassment of all minorities continues unabated. Ahmadiyya Muslims are denied their right to call themselves Muslims. There are numerous billboards that proclaim that it is legitimate to kill Ahmadiyya. The Hindu population is steadily declining as a percentage of the overall population with forced conversions. Christians are targeted with blasphemy and apostasy laws; these are the fake encounters. The Apostasy and Blasphemy laws were created to appease the tyrant kings and have no basis in the religion of Islam, and both are tools of oppression.

Bangladesh

The Atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, and Ahmadiyya Muslims live in apprehension; the Atheist bloggers have been killed.  There is a deficiency of law and order.

Sri Lanka

The ethnic violence continues between the Buddhists and Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims. Sri Lanka’s president declared a state of emergency Tuesday amid fears that anti-Muslim attacks in several central hill towns could spread. The emergency announcement came after Buddhist mobs swept through the cities outside Kandy, burning at least 11 Muslim-owned shops and homes. The attacks followed reports that a group of Muslims had killed a Buddhist man. Police fired tear gas into the crowds, and later announced a curfew in the town. The government will “act sternly against groups that are inciting religious hatred,” Cabinet minister Rauff Hakeem said after a meeting with the president.

Nepal

It seems this nation is free from religious strife at this time, as it has undergone tumultuous political conflicts including a change in the form of Government from Monarchy to a democratic Republic.

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A full report will be made available upon request.

Mike Ghouse
IRF Roundtable – South Asia working group.
Mike@CenterforPluralism.com
(214) 325-1916

Tandoori Chicken - the family that invented it

This is a good story about the food, in this blog, there is the story of Biryani also.  My first taste of Tandoori Chicken was at a small restaurant on Church Road behind Deccan Herald office in Bangalore, Church Road runs parallel to MG Road. As I recall, that was the first restaurant in Bangalore that served Tandoori Roti and Tandoori Chicken, I believe it was around 1972-73. Bangalore was a small town then, Hotel Ashoka was the first and only five star hotel in the early 70's. If someone has better information, please share. 

http://MikeGhouseforIndia.blogspot.com 

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The secrets to making two of India’s most famous dishes, from the family that invented them

Courtesy- Washington Post, Jan 30, 2018
by By Andreas Viestad

No one knows how many Indian restaurants exist worldwide; reportedly there are more than 5,000 in the United States alone. The exact number depends on how you define “Indian” and “restaurant.”

And most of them — from a little mom-and-pop shop on the corner to the Michelin-starred Junoon in New York City — serve many of the same dishes, the standard repertoire that diners have come to expect. The menu just isn’t complete unless it contains skewered chicken tandoori in all its chile-hot, bright red glory, and butter chicken with its rich sauce in which to dip your naan.

[Think recipes from an Indian restaurant’s cookbook will be too hard? ‘Rasika’ proves otherwise.]

“My grandfather invented both,” says Monish Gujral, 52, sitting in his family’s flagship restaurant, Moti Mahal, in the middle of India’s capital, Delhi. “In fact, I often think that it is hard to imagine Indian food today without my grandfather’s inventions.” He sounds proud and thoughtful more than boasting.

Most dishes develop gradually, through a combination of natural conditions, slow adaptation of tradition and the occasional innovative twist. You’d be hard- pressed to say when the dishes we today know as boeuf bourguignon and spaghetti Bolognese were invented; they just gradually came to be, as regional dishes promoted by a collective of home cooks.

But according to Gujral — and millions of Indians who have grown up with this story — tandoori chicken was invented in one sudden flash of inspiration by Gujral’s grandfather Kundan Lal.

Lal grew up in a poor family in what is today Pakistan. He managed to work his way up from kitchen help to the senior cook at a restaurant in Peshawar in the years before independence. One day, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, he was asked to invent a dish that was a little lighter than the traditional, heavy regional specialties that were normally served at parties and other functions and celebrations.

[The recipe that might convince you to make Indian food at home]

His stroke of genius was this: How about using the tandoor? The cylindrical oven was common in the region, but it was normally used only for breads. “He marinated the chicken in yogurt, lime and spices and baked it in the tandoor. What came out was different than what anyone had ever tasted,” Gujral says.

The dish was a success that made Lal famous far outside his community, and after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, he moved to Delhi and opened Moti Mahal, where tandoori chicken is the signature dish.

To say that the restaurant is an institution is somewhat of an understatement. When the Shah of Iran visited India in the 1950s, he was told that to visit Delhi without eating at Moti Mahal was like visiting Agra without seeing the Taj Mahal. Since then, the place has only grown in significance with the increased interest in Indian food, domestically and globally.

Tandoori Chicken; see the recipe below. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

As the inventor of the most popular dish from one of the world’s most populous countries, Lal could just lean back and enjoy the fame, fortune and popularity his invention had brought him and his restaurant. But it was not enough, according to family legend. He also invented what might very well be the second-most-popular Indian dish.

[Make the recipe: Tandoori Chicken]

“It was a direct consequence of the chicken tandoori,” Gujral says. “At that time, refrigeration was a big problem. The chicken had to be cooked the moment it arrived from the market. And if it was not eaten immediately, it could get terribly dry.”

So Lal invented a generous sauce, with spices, tomato, butter and cream, into which he placed pieces of tandoori chicken. “And that was the birth of butter chicken,” Gujral says, as both dishes arrive at our table, bright red and aromatic.

And thereby the circle was closed. What started as a request for a lighter, more fresh-tasting dish in a kitchen of many heavy stews became the heaviest and mightiest of them all.

The story of the sudden invention of such an iconic dish seems almost too much to be true. But according to Anubhav Sapra, street food explorer and founder of Delhi Food Walks and an expert on Delhi cooking, there is very little that contradicts it.

“Every mention of cooking chicken in a tandoor that I have seen comes from Peshawar and the North West Frontier Province, which is where Kundan Lal developed his recipe. And I have never seen a mention of tandoori chicken from the time before Kundan Lal. So it is quite probable that he actually invented it.”

Lal is unique in the importance that his culinary invention has had on Indian cuisine. But he was a part of a wider phenomenon, in which cooks from rural regions in what is today Pakistan came to Delhi and brought with them different cuisines, both traditional dishes and their own inventions.

Butter Chicken; see the recipe below. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

“Take chole bhature — fried bread and chickpeas — a breakfast and lunch dish that is almost as popular as butter chicken, that also comes from Pakistan. But in that case we do not know the name of the person who brought it here,” Sapra says.

And that makes all the difference.

[Make the recipe: Butter Chicken]

Today, Gujral is the custodian of the family tradition. He knows he will never be able to stop other restaurants from copying his grandfather’s recipes. Instead he has become an ambassador of Indian cuisine at large, with frequent TV appearances and several cookbooks, including “On the Butter Chicken Trail” and “Moti Mahal’s Tandoori Trail.” The Moti Mahal brand has grown to include more than 120 restaurants in India, plus franchises in the Middle East, Africa and New Zealand. The first U.S. restaurant is due to open in Boston in 2018 or 2019.

When Gujral learned that I did not have a tandoor, he offered to give me one; modern-day versions are made from old oil drums clad with clay on the inside; not terribly expensive, but cumbersome to bring home without challenging the airline’s baggage allowance.

Luckily, Gujral feels strongly that the lack of a tandoor should not stop anyone from making tandoori chicken at home. He recommends cooking the chicken at 500 degrees, to achieve some — albeit not all — of the browning and intense heat normally associated with the tandoor (in which the temperature can reach well over 800).

“If you have a decent domestic oven and follow my recipe, the result will be almost as good as the original, and much better than many of the copies you get at other restaurants,” he says.

Making it at home some weeks later, I could not agree more. I only wished I had remembered to turn on the kitchen fan.

Viestad is a farmer, writer and host of PBS’s “New Scandinavian Cooking.” He lives in Oslo.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Kundan Lal’s name.

Cooking Tandoori Chicken

Recipes:

Tandoori Chicken

4 to 6 servings

Serve with rice or naan, raita and a good-quality Indian chutney.

Kashmiri chile powder is bright- ­tasting and lends a beautiful color to this dish; you can find it at Indian markets and at Bazaar Spices in the District’s Union Market or substitute a blend of paprika and cayenne pepper.

MAKE AHEAD: The chicken needs to marinate for 1 hour, and then for 3 hours (in the refrigerator).

Recipes adapted from India restaurateur Monish Gujral.

Ingredients

1½ pounds boneless skinless chicken, cut into 1½ -inch chunks (light and dark meat; see headnote)

1½ tablespoons fresh lime juice

1½ teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon Kashmiri chile powder (or substitute ½ teaspoon each paprika and cayenne pepper; see headnote)

6 tablespoons plain, full-fat yogurt

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon peeled, minced fresh ginger root

2 teaspoons garam masala, or more as needed

½ teaspoon ground fenugreek, or more as needed

Vegetable oil, for basting

Steps

Use a sharp knife to make shallow cuts in the thickest part of the chicken.

Combine the lime juice and salt in a bowl large enough to hold all the chicken pieces; add the chicken and toss to coat evenly. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Uncover; add the chile powder, yogurt, garlic, ginger, garam masala and fenugreek, tossing well to coat and distribute evenly. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Thread the chicken pieces onto skewers, season with a little more garam masala or fenugreek, if desired. Roast (middle rack) for 5 to 6 minutes. Baste with a little oil and continue roasting for 3 to 4 minutes.

Check if the chicken is done by cutting into one of the larger pieces. If it is still pink in the middle, roast for another 3 to 5 minutes and check again.

Nutrition | Per serving (based on 6, using half white and dark meat and 1 tablespoons canola oil): 190 calories, 25 g protein, 2 g carbohydrates, 9 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 85 mg cholesterol, 370 mg sodium, 0 g dietary fiber, 0 g sugar

Recipe tested by Anne DiGiulio; email questions to food@washpost.com

Butter Chicken

4 to 6 servings (makes 4 cups)

Serve with finely chopped cilantro, chopped green chile peppers, naan, rice and a good Indian chutney.

MAKE AHEAD: The dish tastes even better after a day’s refrigeration; you may need to add a little cream or water to thin the sauce, which will thicken when it’s chilled.

Ingredients

For the chicken

1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken (white and/or dark meat), cut into 
1½ -inch chunks

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 teaspoon chili powder

2 teaspoons garam masala

1½ teaspoons salt

¼ cup plain, full-fat yogurt

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon finely minced fresh ginger root

For the sauce

2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

1 yellow onion, finely chopped

4 medium tomatoes, hulled and chopped

1 teaspoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons peeled minced fresh ginger root

1 tablespoon Kashmiri chile powder (may substitute a combination of 2 teaspoons paprika and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper)

1 tablespoon garam masala

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons salted butter

⅓ cup heavy cream

Steps

For the chicken: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a rimmed baking sheet with cooking oil spray.

Combine the chicken meat with lime juice, chili powder, garam masala, salt, yogurt, garlic and ginger in a mixing bowl, then spread evenly over the baking sheet. Roast (middle rack) for 15 to 18 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked through.

Meanwhile, make the sauce: Heat the oil in a pot over medium heat. Once the oil shimmers, add the onion and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, until softened. Stir in the tomato; cook for 10 to 12 minutes.

Use a spatula to press the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer back into the pot, or puree with an immersion (stick) blender right in the pot. Stir in the garlic, ginger, chile powder, garam masala and cumin until well blended, then add the chicken, stirring to coat it with sauce. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, just until heated through.

Just before serving, add the butter. Once it has melted, stir in the cream, until well incorporated. Immediately remove from the heat; serve warm.

Nutrition | Per serving (based on 6, using white meat): 300 calories, 27 g protein, 7 g carbohydrates, 17 g fat, 7 g saturated fat, 110 mg cholesterol, 630 mg sodium, 2 g dietary fiber, 4 g sugar

Recipe tested by Anne Midgette; email questions to food@washpost.com

Persecution of Christians in India, Pakistan, Egypt…..

The US International Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is holding a meeting tomorrow at the National Press Club about Persecution of Christians around the world. This agency does its work honestly and reports on just about every religious persecution around the world.

It may come as a surprise to many, but it is a fact; on the list are India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Egypt and a few other countries. The ultimate religious freedom comes to each one if we stand up for people of other faiths including Atheists and LGBT community.

Would you support me in making an effort to stop the persecution of Christians in this instance and all people in general? It requires you to take a stand or sign a petition if needed. I want my Hindu friends in particular to join the effort.

If you are an Indian or a Hindu, you don’t need to be embarrassed, it is not you and I, it is the radicals among us who are doing this. If we don’t stand up, everyone will suffer at the end. The least we can do is loudly say that it is not Indians nor Hindus or Hinduism, it is the misled innocent men and women by the politicians and we will do our share to bring common sense to India, we will make an effort to see that every Indian lives his life freely and respects other persons right to believe, worship, wear, drink and eat whatever he or she wants.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrjU0KULv-Y

The Open Doors organization shares this information in the following four paragraphs;

“As many as 410 incidents of attacks, harassment, and threats on Christians were reported in India in the first six months of 2017, the highest ever since the country’s independence, generally from or influenced by groups associated with the governing Hindu according to figures compiled by partners of Open Doors. Attackers are a nationalist party.

The first quarter of 2017 saw 248 incidents of persecution, and by June-end, the number grew to 410, a report by Open Doors said, noting that a total of 441 incidents were reported in all of 2016.

“When the Christians are beaten by the extremists, they receive injuries mostly on their heads or their vital body parts,” a local partner of Open Doors was quoted as saying in the

report. “The assaulters do not care if the person dies in the attack. They know that they will not be punished because the government (and hence the judiciary) will take their side. In most of the cases, the assaulters go unpunished.”

In one case, Hindu nationalists beat an evangelist with chains, stripped him and forced him to drink urine, according to another recent report. In a separate incident, a Christian cemetery was desecrated and skeletons dug up and strewn across the graveyard. “

Apart from physical attacks, Open Doors’ partners recorded 37 incidents where Christians were socially boycotted and 34 incidents where Christians were forced to leave their homes.

Mike Ghouse www.StandingupforOthers.com 

Pakistan's Sikh Legacy - Amardeep uses Pluralistic Language

I was moved by the language of this article, it is reconciliatory and bridge building in nature. I loved the description where he let the "mitti" slip from his hand for what it would remind him of, it went against his sentiments of watan ki mitti, but he did the right thing to let it go.

What happened during partition was sad. What is shameful is, those who endured the pain on all sides, continue to pass on that hatred to their offspring, do they really want to dump their misery onto their children? If we are 'sincere', I mean 'sincere' peace makers, we should give hope to the next generation and not mess them up with our problems.

When I read an occasional stray note from a Indian or a Pakistani about their hate for the other, it saddens me.  If they don't claim to be religious, it is fine, but when they call themselves Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, they are betraying their own religion.  None of the religions teach you to hate, but the politicians and guardians of religions and a few hateful men mess up the lives of future generations.

The bottom line is we have to leave a better world for our kids, we have learn to understand the past but build the future where they can spend their time in finding means to enjoy rather than spend their time in ill-will towards the other.

INTERFAITH CONFERENCE IN KARACHI

I am organizing an interfaith conference in Karachi, if you have an interest to join or to speak, the speech will be checked by me before hand, it has to build bridges.  You can text me at (214) 325-1916 – The event will be in September, and we have every faith except Buddhism is represented, we are looking for Buddhist, connect us with on, particularly a Pakistani Buddhist, but any Buddhist for that matter. 

This is a good piece worth reading

Mike Ghouse
All about me at www.MikeGhouse.net 
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Pakistan's Sikh Legacy -  

Courtesy - Times of India 

“If you could visit any place in Pakistan, where would you go?” asks Amardeep Singh whenever he gives a talk to introduce his recently published travelogue Lost Heritage – The Sikh Legacy In Pakistan.

The question, aimed primarily at Sikh members of the audience, invariably elicits two answers: Sikh holy places. Their ancestral village.

It was the same in Boston on June 18, 2016 at the E-5 Center where Amardeep Singh gave his 42nd such talk. He understands the response all too well. After all, he too once had the same “myopic” reasons, as he says, for wanting to go to Pakistan, which he considers his “homeland”, being the land of his ancestors and also where Sikhdom’s holiest sites are located, like Nanankana Sahib, birth place of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru.

But when Singh did finally fulfill his dream to visit the country in October 2014, he had an epiphany halfway through his solitary trip that changed the meaning of his travels. It also changed the course of his life. He realised that reducing Pakistan to religion was doing a disservice to the country, its people and the larger cause of humanity.

The process may have begun earlier, when Singh applied for a visa at the Pakistan embassy in Singapore, where he has lived for the past 16 years. When the visa officer handed him back his passport, Singh refused to take it.

“I am going to my homeland for the first time,” said Singh, who was born in Gorakhpur, India, in 1966. “And you want to restrict me to ten days?”

The officer laughed and said he would increase the visa duration to 30 days. Emboldened, Singh pushed further. He wanted a visa for the entire country, not just two or three cities, and he wanted it to include “Pakistan Administered Kashmir” – the term that he prefers to use rather than the loaded “Pakistan occupied Kashmir” or “Azad Kashmir”. He suggests using such neutral language, also for “Indian Administered Kashmir” in an attempt to convey an acceptance of the reality that Pakistan or India manage the region, plus “it allows us to balance and focus on the core message of the book”.

Singh is “deeply grateful” to the Pakistan government for granting him a 30-day, non-police reporting country (rather than city-specific) visa – facilities normally denied most Indian / and Indian-origin travellers and vice versa.

But perhaps the story of the metamorphosis of a corporate banker into a photographer/travel writer starts even earlier. Singh was never a “corporate junkie”, even while working with American Express first in Hong Kong and then Singapore as head of revenue management.

He undertook many solitary trekking holidays in remote, far flung areas in India, Tibet and other places throughout his 25-year banking career. Then there was his love for history and travel that led him to devour travelogues like British era explorers like William Mooncroft (1819) and Alexander Burns (1831), and later accounts like Alice Albania’s ‘Empires of the Indus’.

Those experiences — travel with no access to the outside world, reading historical accounts and travelogues, photography, writing — he feels, were “God’s way” of preparing him. The dots joined organically. The Pakistan ‘pilgrimage’ that he initially started with, his life’s pursuit, became not the culmination of a dream but the starting point of another journey powered by secular, universal ideals.

Historical traumas like the cataclysmic 1947 Partition of India with its ensuing bloodshed produces a first generation that doesn’t talk, observes Amardeep. The second is lost. The third, to which he belongs, goes in pursuit of the stories.

His father was born in Muzaffarabad, in the western-most frontier of the former princely state of Kashmir that both India and Pakistan lay claim to and which in turn claims independence. Amardeep turned up to try and find his roots in Pakistan in 2013 like a wanderer on a pilgrimage, carrying three pairs of clothes, his camera, and the contacts of a couple of Facebook friends. “A madman in love” is how one audience member describes him.
In Pakistan, Singh says that he met and connected with 14 Pakistanis who were on a similar pursuit, to discover their common heritage. And all of them were Muslim. Singh realized that the legacy that they shared could not be easily compartmentalised into “Muslim” or “Sikh”.

The “Sikh Empire” touted in the history narrated by the British colonists and their successors, was actually deeply secular. The distortion of history has meant other, more dangerous falsehoods being perpetrated, like the basis-less rumour that Sikhs converted the Badshahi mosque in Lahore into a stable for horses. On the contrary, Ranjit Singh in fact gave financial grants to the Badshahi Masjid.

In the pre-partition era, Sikhs had invested heavily in creating the Khalsa schools and colleges, which imparted excellent education to students of all faiths. Abandoned by the departed community, these today operate as Islamia schools and colleges.

He also came across many non turban-wearing followers of the Sikh Guru Nanak in Pakistan, all of Pashtun origin and from the Khyber area.

These realisations – about the secular or syncretic nature of what he had assumed was a “Sikh” heritage — pushed Singh beyond his original limited goal of taking a fistful of earth back from Muzaffarbad as a momento for his family. It stopped him in his tracks as he picked up some riverbank soil at the site of a bloody massacre of Sikhs soon after Partition.

The place is known as “Domel”, where the Jhelum River meets the Neelum River. (“We even ascribe religion to our natural resources,” comments Singh, referring to the Muslim name, Neelum, for the waters known as Kishan Ganga on the Indian-administered side).

On October 21, 1947, a war cry arose over the hills that the local non-Muslims were ill-prepared to counter: Loot the Hindus, behead the Sikhs. Armed marauders herded some 300 Sikhs to the bridge on “Domel”. Shots rang out. Among the bodies that toppled into the river were the grandparents (Nana and Nani) of Amardeep Singh’s wife.

Also killed were both parents of five-year old Jaswanti. A Muslim neighbour the next morning found the little girl scrambling along the riverbank looking for her father and mother. He took her into his own home, renamed her Noori, and brought her up as his daughter.

Jaswanti/ Noor is Amardeep’s distant “bua” (aunt) related to his father. In his book he relates the stranger-than-fiction story of how she was found in 1998 and connected to her to the Sikh side of her family. At 73 years, today she continues to live in Pakistan as a Muslim.

Amardeep recounts how, looking at the bridge over the river, he let the soil fall back to the earth from his hands at “Domel”. It was what he had come for. But he realised that the lesson he wanted to impart to his children was different. This souvenir could remind them forever of hatred and bloodshed.

“I went to get soil but came back with a book,” he says. The soil would have been just for his daughters. The book however is a reference for coming generations of future traveler and history lovers.

In the two weeks he had spent so far in Pakistan, Amardeep had realised that the “Sikh legacy” of this land went far beyond gurudwaras and ancestral homes, and was in fact not limited to adherents of the Sikh faith. The legacy lived on in human interactions, experiences, memories, music, poetry, spirituality and other aspects of a shared history that belongs not just to Sikhs but also to Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others. For example, others too lay claim to rituals, poetry and music that Sikhs consider to be “theirs” This legacy, he stresses, is secular in nature.

Throughout his journey, Amardeep used the lens, not of a pilgrim, but of a traveler chronicling socio-historical aspects.

An important aspect of this lens is to place the contemporary reality of gurudwaras and havelis built and owned by Sikhs into a historical context without blame or judgment. Many of these buildings are being used as police stations, libraries or people’s homes. The mass cross-border exodus left these buildings abandoned, and those who came to this land were bound to fill the vacuum for their own survival.

Putting things in context also means being able to see the positive aspects, like the fact that the Pakistan government has since 1980s been looking after the holy places of non-Muslims. With the mass exodus of an entire community, the government can’t possibly maintain every aspect of the heritage but clearly the intent is there, as Amardeep stresses. The number of functional gurudwaras in the Punjab has increased from one to twenty-three over the past decades. Several Hindu temples has also been revived. People of all faiths must support and encourage these moves even though they may be, as Singh “the tip of the iceberg” given the magnitude of the issue.

Amardeep also holds responsible for the neglect those who have kept silent rather than being vocal in demanding that this heritage be preserved. Sikhs who visit Pakistan don’t even ask to visit the Lahore Museum, he observes. Due to the lack of demand the Museum’s Sikh Gallery has been closed as Amardeep discovered when he tried to see it.

Pakistani Sikhs, he observes, are in general too poor and focused on their own survival to pay attention to such higher pursuits. It is up to the diaspora — increasing numbers of whom now visit Pakistan for religious reasons — to push for these demands beyond religion.
After Partition, practically the only Sikhs left in Pakistan were those living in the Pashtun areas bordering Afghanistan. Post 9/11 Taliban inroads into the region, accompanied by attacks on religious minorities forced large numbers to flee to the Punjab. Many Sikhs took refuge in the Gurdwara Punja Sahib at Hassan Abdal, says Singh. He notes that Pakistan has for years been combating militancy while also reviving the historical religious sites belonging to religious minorities.

All in all, Amardeep Singh’s message is clearly not limited to Sikhs and Punjab or Pakistan. It is about the need to go beyond surface identities and labels to an interconnected, secular past, and universal values. This is not just about the past but the way to a more harmonious way forward.

This article was first published in Himal Southasian. Amardeep Singh’s “Lost Heritage – The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan” is a monumental 504-page book, weighing 3 kg, with 507 photos complementing the story line. It can be ordered here.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Why awarding Jagmohan a Padma is merely rubbing salt in the wounds of Kashmiri Pandits

Why Awarding Jagmohan a Padma | http://MikeGhouseforIndia.blogspot.com 

Kudos to Ajay Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit who makes films for writing about the Kashmir issue. He gives hope to millions of Indians who are concerned about Kashmir and its cohesion. Raina chose not to jump on the bandwagon of blaming one or the other; instead he was truthful to his own voice in search of the solution. 

When we say Satyameva Jayate, they are not merely words to be recited gleefully, but meant to be actions that would bring peace to individuals and communities in conflict. Raina does not aggravate the conflict but mitigates it. His piece is for people who think and want to find solutions, and not those who seek revenge and have nothing to lose but watch people (one or the other) suffer by egging on blame and revenge business ending in chaos for every one. This is a very painful and thoughtful writing who is genuinely concerned about finding solutions.

Had he blamed the Muslims instead of individuals, like some do, he would have messed up the situation further.  He rightly blamed where blame must be placed; Governor Jagmohan, Farooq Abdullah and Mufti Syeed, the individuals who made bad decisions and created the mess for the Pandits.

The right things do was to hold these three accountable, digging in to their motivations for bad decisions with the intention of acknowledging to the people of Kashmir (all) an acceptable truth.  Forgive them, even if they are unwilling to apologize with guarantees of no punishment. The men involved in raping and pillaging the Kashmiris (all) need to be held accountable as well. The excesses of our military must be investigated. The Kashmiri people will ultimately forgive, if the truth is told and there is hope and a road map for living in peace from now on.

The Kashmiri Pandits must come back home to live in peace with their neighbors, and the Muslim majority of Kashimiris always have lived with them as brothers and sisters and would welcome them with open arms.

Whoever made the recommendation to Government of India, has doubled down the problem by honoring Jagmohan, as Raina points out, it is rubbing salt on the wounds. It is not too late to acknowledge the mistake for the sake of peace in Kashmir. 

Mike Ghouse
Text or Talk at (214) 325-1916
MikeGhouseforIndia.blogspot.com

Dr. Mike Ghouse is a community consultant, social scientist, thinker, writer, news maker, and a speaker on Pluralism, Interfaith, Islam, politics, terrorism, human rights, India, Israel-Palestine and foreign policy. He is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. Visit him in 63 links at www.MikeGhouse.net for his writings at TheGhousediary.com and several blogs listed there in

The former governor is a living symbol of the Indian state’s controversial record in Jammu and Kashmir.

Courtesy Scroll.In 

Ajay Raina  · Feb 06, 2016 · 03:30 pm

Photo Credit: via Youtube

In the winter of 2000, when I went home for the first time after the exodus, it was to make a film about why my family and my community had left Kashmir. It was still smoldering from the fires of an insurgency that had yet not been completely smothered. This was almost 11 years after the exodus of my family and my community in 1990. Though it was still thought a dangerous time to be back, yet I wouldn’t claim to be the first Kashmiri Pandit to have done so.

Many exiles, including my dear departed father and family friends, had travelled to Kashmir on many occasions earlier, incognito or with the knowledge of only a few Kashmiri friends they could trust. They would certainly not have had dared to venture into the capriciously volatile valley unprotected and with a camera crew in tow. I did not want to shoot my film under the shadow of an Indian soldier’s gun or in the company of local fixers. Though unnerving and fraught with risk to self and my crew, it was not entirely a very unrewarding lesson in fear.

A violent past

In 1990, when the exodus happened, I was not in Kashmir. I was not a direct eyewitness to the violence, killings, fear, feelings of anger, persecution and the various developments that may have led thousands of Kashmiri young men into joining the insurgency and more than 60,000 Kashmiri Pandit families to leave their hearths and homes, jobs, businesses, farms, cattle and orchards behind. I only know it second-hand that when the immediate members of my family left our newly constructed home in Kashmir, they did not even leave together. Till the day – and after traversing through the homes of many relatives and searching for various options for survival in Jammu and Delhi – they all assembled at my hostel room door in Pune, I was not even aware that they had left Kashmir forever.

Before 1990, I was a migrant by choice. Like any other small-town Indian wanting to pursue my ambitions in the big city, I had left Kashmir a few years earlier. At that time, I was sure that even if I would not want to return permanently, Kashmir would always be home. But now, 26 years later, I am still a refugee.

Following the government of India announcement last month that Jagmohan, the erstwhile Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, would be awarded the Padma Vibhushan, I was not so much surprised that the Muslims of Kashmir saw it as adding insult to their injuries, but indeed more shocked to hear that a large number of the self-styled spokespersons of Kashmiri Pandits go to town, hailing it as recognition of his role as their saviour.

Fixing the blame

Like any Kashmiri, I am nearly certain today about whom to blame for my exile, but I am not sure if there is anybody I can claim as a saviour of my community or for that matter of any Kashmiri in those trying days. It was not only the Kashmiri people, who in general failed each other miserably, but also the states and the institutions of India and Pakistan.

It is difficult to forget that at the time Kashmir burst into flames, Farooq Abdullah, the chief minister, abnegated his responsibility to his people by resigning from his post in a huff and running away to the UK.

It is important to remember that Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the first Kashmiri Home Minister in the VP Singh government, the person with a leading role in the decision-making process in the Government of India, was the one who may have decided to parachute governor Jagmohan to fire-fight the insurgency in Kashmir. Moreover, it was the same Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who in silently acquiescing to the Indian state’s surrender before the secessionist militants of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, in letting them go free in exchange of his hostage daughter, not only expediently reneged his oath to the constitution, but in doing so became instrumentally responsible for adding fuel to the fire of Kashmir insurgency.

But if Kashmir continues to smolder today, it is not only for not holding Farooq Abdullah and Mufti Sayeed accountable for willful dereliction of their constitutional responsibilities to the people, but also for what they could not do as chief ministers of the state after returning to rule later.

Searching for answers

While most Muslim Kashmiris still remain terribly wedged between India and Pakistan with their heart-breaking, unreasonable craving for a freedom laced in utopian Islamist dialectal, the Pandits on the other hand, even after making leaping strides in their middle-class station, have still continued to nurse a hemorrhaging grievance not only against the Muslims of Kashmir but also against both Pakistan and the secular representatives of Indian state. Therefore, it needs be asked: What did Jagmohan do to earn scorn from one section of Kashmiri community and approbation from the other? What great work earned him the nation’s prestigious honour, while his legacy remains mired in great controversy?

Besides a multitude of abusive allusions in Kashmir to his dubiously alleged role in facilitating the exodus of my community and a few massacres, there has not been much objective, definite and serious evaluation about Jagmohan’s failings during the five-month period when he was the governor of J&K in his second stint. Considering the magnitude and significance of the deaths and destruction that Kashmir has witnessed, we continue to remain in the dark about who stands responsible for those crucial decisions in the third week of January of 1990 that changed the course of Kashmir’s history.

There have been countless other comprehensive histories, in-depth analyses, or detailed personal memoirs, in books, articles, documentary films and works of fiction about those dark days in Kashmir, but remarkably not much concrete evidence has surfaced about his suspected – dark or benevolent – role in the turbulent first few months of Kashmir’s insurgency. There is, of course, his self-authored tome, My Frozen Turbulence, in which he offers his own one-sided bland explanations of all the good he did and the bad he attempted to nip in the bud, but the official narratives, typically, remain obtuse about his decision-making processes and methods.

Reading My Frozen Turbulence again, however, has also renewed some of my old questions and frustrations about Kashmir. How much sense can we really make or what justification can we provide of the Indian state’s knee-jerk and counter-productive, counter-violent response to the unwieldy and violent separatist movement of Kashmir?

The desire and the impossibility to untangle the complicated history of Jagmohan’s brief second stint as the Governor of J&K state not only takes me deeper into the maelstrom of Kashmir’s entangled and conflicted present, but also makes me suspect my own subjectivity even as I try to make sense of our heavily mythologised recent past. Can we truly overcome our biased truths, limited understanding, vague recollections and sociopolitical prejudices to have any kind of constructive or meaningful discussion about it today? I am sceptical.

Turning the tide

I have met him once, when he presented me my "college honours" at our college annual day function. I think it was just a few days after he had toppled the Farooq Abdullah government. It was his first stint as the governor of J&K (1984-1989). Like many ordinary Kashmiris, I vaguely picture the image of Jagmohan as a haughty, controversial and divisive character. He was much touted as a man of action, an able administrator, a doer and the one who got things done. He is said to have earned many admirers in his first stint as a builder of roads, bridges and temple Shrine Boards and also a few detractors for many ruffled feathers in high and in low places.

But more crucially, as the iconic representation of Indian state’s repression in Kashmir, Jagmohan stands on the top of my list as one among so many other characters from that turbulent era, who impinges upon my memory like the dark shadow from a nightmare named Kashmir. So, writing about him is also an exercise in exorcism of at least a part of that nightmarish past.

When Jagmohan was hastily summoned for his second stint as governor and air-dropped on Kashmir on January 19, 1990, his task was to reclaim Kashmir for India. Admittedly, it was not going to be easy to salvage a lost political situation from the ashes of Farooq Abdullah’s deliberate or genuine blunderings, but he had seemed among a few no-nonsense people who had a very precise idea what the separatist movement was all about. Immediately, he had set forth curbing its infectious momentum with prolonged curfews and massive search operations in downtown Srinagar. It may be an unintended consequence, but the fact remains, and it reflects entirely to the discredit of Jagmohan that this resulted in countless massacres of peaceful processions of Kashmiris, at Gow Kadal, Zakura, Tengpura, Handwara and Hawal.

In effect, what Jagmohan thought would stem the tide, actually helped turn a very serious insurgency, supported and financed by Pakistan, into a full-blown people’s movement. Looking back in hindsight, it is plainly obvious that what we see in Kashmir today is more a consequence of the continued heavy-handed mishandling of the situation that Jagmohan started as a means of last resort and his successors followed as a policy. The massacres of unarmed protesting civilians by the soldiers and of the cowering minorities by the militants had continued even under the democratically elected reigns of Farooq Abdullah and Mufti Sayeed. That Jagmohan, in fact, managed to turn a bad situation into worse in the few months of his second stint as governor (we are not discussing the role of other leaders and governors here) must certainly have clouded the reason of the government that awarded him the great honour of a Padma Vibhushan.

Moral culpability

That the few months of Governor Jagmohan’s stint in J&K also coincided with the near-absolute emptying out of the Pandit community from the valley of Kashmir does not also recommend awarding a high national honour to the very person in whose wake this catastrophic event happened. He may perhaps not have been in any position to stop the exodus, but as the administrative head of the state, as the authority figure of India in Kashmir in those turbulent times, he shares the moral burden of letting it happen just as much if not more than the rag-tag band of militants who deliberately targeted the Pandits to scare them away.

Perhaps an equivalence of his moral culpability may be seen in how the Sikhs of Delhi or the Muslims of Gujarat would look at Rajiv Gandhi or Narendra Modi after they let the anti-Sikh and the post-Godhra carnages happen in their wake, and what they could have done but did not do in their positions as the prime minister of India and the chief minister of Gujarat to prevent them happening.

That these two leaders earned resounding mandates from the people following the carnages in their wake cannot obfuscate the fact of their moral culpability in failing the very people they were constitutionally and by their office bound to protect. But in the case of Jagmohan, even if not wished for, his actions or blunders contributed to long-term failure of Indian state on both fronts it had intended to resolve: The Muslims remain alienated from India and the Pandits have yet to return home. But it was not a one-off failure considering his complicated and controversial history.

This was the same man who previously, in the dark days of Emergency, as Vice Chairman of the, Delhi Development Authority, and as an active minion of Sanjay Gandhi’s Five Point Programme implementation brigade, rose to infamy as the mastermind of the Turkman Gate Massacre. This was the same man, who ten years later, in his first stint as the governor of J&K state (1984-1989) dismissed an elected government and replaced it with Gulshah curfew puppet-regime supported by Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party and 13 National Conference deserters.

It was in his wake, after his ill-thought insistence on meat ban on certain auspicious days for Hindus that the first anti-Pandit riots in South Kashmir happened. There is much discussion about the role of Mufti Sayeed, the then Mirwaiz of Anantnag and Shabbir Shah in those riots, but for now let us confine ourselves to Jagmohan. Again, though it is Farooq Abdullah who is rightly blamed for the rigging of the 1987 state elections that changed the course of Kashmir’s history, we cannot forget that it happened when Jagmohan was at the helm as its Governor.

Inconclusive answers

There is, however, the very serious allegation often levelled at Jagmohan and directly at Kashmiri Pandits, not only by many Kashmir experts and leaders but also the ordinary people in Kashmir that the exodus was a conspiracy masterminded by Jagmohan in cahoots with the Pandit leadership. Their contention remains that Pandits were, in fact, asked to take a vacation to Delhi or Jammu for a short while till the Muslim insurgency in Kashmir could be sorted out – with mass killings, or carpet bombing of Kashmir’s towns and villages, if necessary.

This is, of course, still in the realm of hearsay and refuted by all Kashmiri Pandits in exile with such morally forceful vigour that it could put any Holocaust denier in shame. But if the Kashmiris remain unmoved and wish to persist in their conspiracy theories about the exodus and a few other incidents that cast a bad light on the azaadi movement without furnishing any definite proofs, then justifiably, they must also be willing then to look at every other event that casts India and its army in evil light with similar conspiracy-tinted glasses. If we must be party to doubting or casting aspersions on the sufferings of the Pandit community with unproven allegations of their own complicity in their suffering, how can the pain and suffering of the majority community then be expected to be believed or even respected?

I did try to confront this allegation or conspiracy theory head-on in my documentary film,Tell Them, The Tree They Had Planted Has Now Grown (2011) on a couple of occasions. Once, at the headquarters of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, the militant organisation responsible for most of the minority killings, when I asked Javed Mir, one of the four top leaders of JKLF in the initial years of the insurgency, if Jagmohan was responsible for the exodus, he answered, “It was our mistake. Some of our boys are still in jail for the [Pandit] killings.”

On the second occasion, when, in presence of a Pandit who had not migrated, I confronted a local journalist about the Pandit exodus, he did allude to Jagmohan vaguely, but couldn’t provide any valid justification except hearsay. It was the Pandit, who refusing to concur with his assertion, blamed the capricious times instead. In all my work in Kashmir since my first film, I have yet to come across a single story or an incident that could come close to validating what the majority community believes as an act of faith.

Over many years, contrary to what is expected after the fatigue of unresolved disputes and confrontations set in, the picture of Kashmir, instead of becoming clearer as the time passes, looks murkier today. A noteworthy aspect of the irresolution of the conflict of Kashmir is its entangled theme of victimhood, guilt and shame. In the many years since 1990, under a continuous onslaught of viciously mounted ideological campaigns and societal stresses, the people have turned on one another even within. In many stories and memories about the events of 1990, various narrators from either side, typically continue to portray themselves as hapless, innocent victims or defiant resisters and the absent other as the perfect enemy.

Having said so, it is therefore, not my intention or desire to pass judgment or paint any community, or people, or just one single person, as the villains of Kashmir. There are countless others, too, in high and low places. Though I do not wish to judge, it is certainly within my right to question why someone like Jagmohan, who as a living symbol of the Indian state’s dubious and controversial record in the affairs of Kashmir, instead of having been held accountable for the mess that Kashmir is in till today, is recommended for a national honour that rubs salt on many unhealed wounds. Here, I only speak for myself. I ask for my constitutional right and that of many peaceful Kashmiris to justice, dignity and honour, to be better governed, to be protected and taken care of as a law-abiding citizen.

Ajay Raina is a filmmaker, co-founder of www.kashmiroralhistory.org and co-curator of Kashmir Before Our Eyes film festival.

This article was first published on the Cafe Dissensus blog. 

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