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suvarnarekha · 10 days

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How can one even publish an article on a topic and not talk about that headline at all in the content? Be it an opinion piece or a researched original article–elaboration ought to be done. Biased or not.

Also, framing your mindset based on opinion pieces? Well, you do you, anon.

And since when is voicing out concerns regarding Hindus and Sikhs denouncing Muslims? If you want to actively voice out Kashmiri Muslims' plight—by all means, go ahead. This is not a competition, anon. Grow up.

Anonymous asked:

hey, its a really tense situation in kashmir, my heart goes out to ALL the residents kashmir bc they are all caught up in this violence. you talk like you only care about kashmiri hindus/sikhs as if muslims are the cause of violence/ are not being killed too. yes there have been migrant killings of kashmiri hindus/sikhs and india has stated that pakistan supported this armed rebellion in kashmir. my heart truly goes out to the people of kashmir, especially kashmiri hindus. appeals have been made from srinagar mosques to muslims to stand in solidarity of the hindus/sikhs. but your talk erases the violence against kashmiri muslims too, a lot of hindus just like you only start worrying about violence when its against hindus, (read the prev article ive linked fully) but have you forgotten the oppression of muslims in the rest of india? hinduphobia exists in pakistan and bangladesh and is truly abhorrent, as hindus are a minority there, but hindus arent oppressed in india, rather they are a privileged majority. after the bjp came to power with their majoritarian rule and policies (CAA, the beef ban, love jihad etc etc.) there have been muslim lynchings where muslims are beaten (sometimes till death) by hindu extremists (the rss and others) the majority (hindus, especially hindus of the upper castes) are privileged in india. india, pakistan and bangladesh are all majoritarian, flawed democracies with policies that oppress their minorities. hinduphobia exists in pakistan and bangladesh and it is truly abhorrent we must raise our voices against this, but im talking about india here. hinduphobia doesnt exist in mainland india. islamophobia does.hindutva is equally shitty and wrong as much as extremist jihaad. any religious extremism is bad for the society. being anti hindutva isnt anti hinduism. hinduism is a religion while hindutva is an oppressive, majoritarian political agenda. your privilege as the majority has made you ignorant. stop being narrow minded and read the links i have linked in the text. they're long reads ofc but please do read it instead of spewing out your opinions on this situation when you arent educated about this. or you ignore this/misunderstand what i said bc you have no reading comprehension as usual and still talk your talk.

The second article is from The Wire

The Indian State Took Away the Very Kashmiri Voices It Now Expects Will Speak Out

While the first article from Al-jazeera passed as a decent primary source, this next article is an opinion piece by one Apoorvanand who "teaches at Delhi University".

Anon cited this article backing the claim in their ask that "appeals have been made from srinagar mosques to muslims to stand in solidarity of the hindus/sikhs". I'll have everyone know, that this is merely the first line of that article. There is no further discussion on these "appeals" in the article. I'm not denying these "appeals", I'm just saying that citing an article that doesn't really talk about them, as proof, is an example of poor academic skills.

I went hunting for a source that actually would give me something about these mosques and these appeals in question and conveniently enough, the only other piece of reportage on it, is again by The Wire, published by one Shakir Mir, a "Srinagar based journalist", on the same date as the article by Apoorvanand.

The Wire was able to locate both mosques. While one of them is in Naqashpora area in Srinagar, the other one is located near Sathu Barbarshah and is associated with ahl-e-hadeeth, an orthodox Islamic school. “These people are our brothers and have been living here for decades,” said Riyaz Bhat, the priest at the mosque who had made the announcement. “We are concerned that any mischief at this point would create fear and we do not want that.” Bhat ascribed the decision to make the announcement to his religion. “My religious values teach me justice and humanity. I did just that. I told the people to become the muhafiz (protectors) of the people, especially those belonging to the aqliyat (minority).”

The essence of the second article cited by anon is that talking about the killings of "Pandits and Outsiders" somehow translates to downplaying or denying the crimes against "Muslims of the valley". I'm not going to sit here and accuse an opinion piece, out of all, for being biased, so my response to this and many other write-ups like this is, "okay, whatever".

However, I had promised myself that I would not make any remarks attacking the anon's intellect or reading or academic abilities (something they did to me, in this ask that they sent), but I have to respectfully point out that backing a claim by citing an article (read: informally written opinion of one person) where said claim is only the first line of said article, is very poor and lazy academic work.

I've attached the link to the article that should have been cited (doing half your work, smh). Anon dearest, if you do find this post, please click on the link that I have for you.

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suvarnarekha · 13 days

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IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN Y'ALL!

Anonymous asked:

hey, its a really tense situation in kashmir, my heart goes out to ALL the residents kashmir bc they are all caught up in this violence. you talk like you only care about kashmiri hindus/sikhs as if muslims are the cause of violence/ are not being killed too. yes there have been migrant killings of kashmiri hindus/sikhs and india has stated that pakistan supported this armed rebellion in kashmir. my heart truly goes out to the people of kashmir, especially kashmiri hindus. appeals have been made from srinagar mosques to muslims to stand in solidarity of the hindus/sikhs. but your talk erases the violence against kashmiri muslims too, a lot of hindus just like you only start worrying about violence when its against hindus, (read the prev article ive linked fully) but have you forgotten the oppression of muslims in the rest of india? hinduphobia exists in pakistan and bangladesh and is truly abhorrent, as hindus are a minority there, but hindus arent oppressed in india, rather they are a privileged majority. after the bjp came to power with their majoritarian rule and policies (CAA, the beef ban, love jihad etc etc.) there have been muslim lynchings where muslims are beaten (sometimes till death) by hindu extremists (the rss and others) the majority (hindus, especially hindus of the upper castes) are privileged in india. india, pakistan and bangladesh are all majoritarian, flawed democracies with policies that oppress their minorities. hinduphobia exists in pakistan and bangladesh and it is truly abhorrent we must raise our voices against this, but im talking about india here. hinduphobia doesnt exist in mainland india. islamophobia does. hindutva is equally shitty and wrong as much as extremist jihaad. any religious extremism is bad for the society. being anti hindutva isnt anti hinduism. hinduism is a religion while hindutva is an oppressive, majoritarian political agenda. your privilege as the majority has made you ignorant. stop being narrow minded and read the links i have linked in the text. they're long reads ofc but please do read it instead of spewing out your opinions on this situation when you arent educated about this. or you ignore this/misunderstand what i said bc you have no reading comprehension as usual and still talk your talk.

As I was going through your ask, I saw that you have apprehensions about me not reading the articles you've linked, completely.

So I'm first going to be responding to each article one by one and then give an overall summing response to your ask.

The first article is from Aljazeera

"Killings trigger fear, memory of dark past among Kashmiri Hindus

Widespread unease among disputed region’s Hindu minority, locally known as Pandits, following a spate of targeted attacks."

The spate of killings has led to widespread unease, particularly among Indian-administered Kashmir’s religious minority Hindus, locally known as Pandits, an estimated 200,000 of whom fled the region after an anti-India rebellion erupted in 1989

I want you to look at the phrases I've highlighted.

i. Phrases like "Indian administered Kashmir" or "Indian occupied Kashmir" spread the notion that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed area. Which it is not. It is an integral part of the Indian Union.

ii. Phrases like "fled the region" or "migrated" downplay what actually happened with the Kashmiri Pandits - genocide or ethnic cleansing. You don't like it when "rape" is called molestation or violation, isn't it? You call it sharply what it is.

Tickoo, who like the chemist and some 800 other Pandit families had chosen to stay behind to live with their Muslim neighbours, and other prominent Hindus were swiftly relocated to secured accommodations.

Have you heard of the different types of responses to dangers - fight, flight or freeze? This is not a jolly choice they made to stay behind. This is a freeze response, and it produces as uncertain an outcome as a flight response. It is not easy to migrate. Migrating doesn't make them any less of a target. Migration doesn't promise the end of this.

No one "chooses" to stay behind in a strife-torn region. They are held back. By financial problems, by sentimental problems, by threats, by trauma, etc.

Fearing more such attacks, authorities offered leave to nearly 4,000 Hindu employees who had returned to the region after 2010 as part of a government resettlement plan that provided them jobs and housing.

After 2010? You know why 2010 is used? Because one immediately associates it with "before Modi government". Even though, by "after 2010", they actually mean "after 2019", when Article 370 and Article 35-A was declared null and void, by the Modi led BJP government. The same articles that gave the wrong impression to international media that Kashmir is a disputed piece of land.

Police blamed rebel group The Resistance Front, or TRF, for the killings. The region’s top police officer Dilbag Singh described the attacks as a “conspiracy to create terror and communal rift”.

Again, words like "militant groups" or "rebel groups" make them sound like they cause minor ruckuses here and there, and not blatant terrorism. They downplay the gravity of the situation.

Also, let's talk about TRF, shall we?

Since you've cited Aljazeera, I'm fairly certain you're a reader or at least a supporter of The Quint.

The Quint has an article talking about TRF and this is the headline:

"The Resistance Front: The Invisible, LeT-Backed Outfit Terrorising Kashmir There are several ways in which The Resistance Front is distinct from other terrorist groups operating in Kashmir."

You know what Lashkar-e-Taiba is the most infamous for, in India? The 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

You know what's the first name that comes to mind when we think of these Mumbai attacks? Ajmal Kasab.

Photojournalist Sebastian D' Souza had managed to click this sensational picture on that horrific day.

If all had gone according to plan that day, Ajmal Kasab was supposed to die with that red string around his wrist (clear in the picture); he was supposed to die a Hindu. They would've found an identity card on his person that read: "Samir Dinesh Chaudhari, student of Arunodaya Degree and P.G. College, Vedre Complex, Dilkhushnagar, Hyderabad, 500060, resident of 254, Teachers Colony, Nagarabhavi, Bengaluru."

The Quint quotes the South Asia Terrorism Portal and tells its readers that TRF is a Pakistani / ISI effort "to give terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) an ‘indigenous’ face, and to provide Pakistan’s deep state, an alibi.

The Quint tells us that TRF emerged as a terrorist outlet, soon after the Modi led BJP government had abrogated Articles 370 and 35-A.

TRF is different from groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen and has its distinguishing characteristics pointed out by The Quint as well.

While the other terror groups have names openly declaring that they're Islamic in nature, TRF has no reference to jihad, Islam or any other religion.

The Quint quotes The Hindu, as a police officer explains that “the name TRF was an attempt to secularize the idea of jihad to present the Kashmir insurgency as a political cause rather than a religious war.

In a statement on social media, TRF claimed the group was going after those working for Indian authorities and was not picking people based on faith. The rebel group’s statement could not be independently verified.

Those shot dead included 21 local Muslims, four local Hindus and a local Sikh, along with five non-local Hindus and one non-local Muslim, according to police records.

Siddiq Wahid, a historian and former vice-chancellor of Islamic University of Science and Technology in Kashmir, said the recent killings gained attention only in the context of sectarian concerns, even as people of all religions were killed, and noted that the subsequent debate has focused on statistics rather than the loss of lives.

A TRF spokesman, in a statement issued online, said, “Shaheed Gazi Squad carried out the attack. These teachers had on August 15 harassed and warned parents with dire consequences if any student did not attend the August 15 function. We want to make it crystal clear that outsider domicile holders, stooges and collaborators, whatsoever their religion, won’t be spared”. ~ The Hindu

There is this very common saying - "to lose the battle, but win the war". The killing of muslims along with a certain number of hindus and sikhs is important to keep the narrative of "not picking people based on faith" and "people of all religions were killed" afloat. If the killings by TRF get too targeted, they can no longer claim the non-religious nature of their organization, even on paper. For them, sacrificing a few of their own faith is essential for their much greater goals.

They detach the religious element from their motives on paper, while continuing to carry out their activities in the name of religion and "righteousness".

Another thing that distinguishes TRF from forces like its parent, LeT, is that this group "justifies" its killings on social media, while the other, openly Islamic outlets only take accountability and pride in their shares of killings.

So because they were only going after Indian authorities, and were not picking people based on faith, does it justify their killing? Because they sure think it does.

Renewed tensions after Modi’s win

In Kashmir, Hindus lived mostly peacefully alongside Muslims for centuries in villages and towns as landowners, farmers and government officials across the Himalayan region.

Even after it has been established that TRF is a branch off of the LeT, Aljazeera tries to do exactly what TRF is doing - present the tensions to be of a political nature, instead of what it actually is - a religious impetus simply on the down low.

Only in India do we get this absolute rubbish taught to us that Hindus and Muslims lived peacefully alongside each other for "centuries" and that before the partition of 1947, there were no tensions between these communities.

As if the hindus and jains and buddhists of this land weren't actually subjected to a religiously driven expansionist invasion.

As if hindu women were not raped because they didn't "cover" themselves up fully.

As if our places of worship were not destroyed and idols desecrated, so that these intruders could build their symbols of oppression right on those ruins.

As if, when they collected religious taxes from us, they didn't sit on an elevated seat while we, the kuffars, were supposed to stand. As if they didn't spit into our palms to remind us what they viewed us as.

As if they entered our houses and killed our families, but we welcomed them with open arms, because peace™.

There is a gigantic difference between cultural mingling and cultural expansion powered by feelings of cultural supremacy, via cultural erasure.

Most of the region’s Muslims, long resentful of Indian rule, deny that Hindus were systematically attacked, and say India moved them out in order to cast Kashmir’s freedom struggle as “Islamic extremism”.

Kashmir's "freedom struggle"? Freedom from? The natives of the land? They call it freedom "struggle" because jihad literally means "struggle".

"Indian rule", "India moved them out" - do you realize that this language makes Kashmir appear as an entity separate from India and makes India appear as an intruder in the land of Kashmir?

If the Indian State had indeed moved the Kashmiri Hindus out, they would've not been killed they way that they were. The central government in 1990 promised that the Kashmiri Hindus did not have to flee and that the army was on its way. It has been 32 years. The displaced Kashmiri Hindus are still waiting on the army.

“We don’t know who the killers are. Even if I knew, do you think I can talk freely?” said Sikh leader Jagmohan Singh Raina.

Sir. Sir. Are you for real? The terrorists themselves take full responsibility. They openly state that they are doing it all in the name of religion and still have apologists who say that terrorism has no religion.

These tensions were renewed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, and as the Indian government pursued a plan to house returning migrant Kashmiri Hindus in new townships.

Muslim leaders described such plans as a conspiracy to create communal division by separating the region’s population along religious lines, particularly after India stripped the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019 and removed inherited protections on land and jobs amid a months-long lockdown and a communication blockade.

Authorities have since passed many new laws, which critics and Kashmiris fear could change the region’s demographics.

Okay so bringing Kashmiris, back to Kashmir, could change Kashmir's demographics? Got it. Makes perfect sense.

"Separating the region's population along religious lines" is something that has been done (and is still being done) with the systematic and targeted genocide of Kashmiri Hindus.

If the problem (Kashmiri Hindu genocide) has a religious foundation, the solution (Kashmiri Hindu resettlement) must also be based on religion.

"Stripped the region's semi-autonomy", "removed inherited protections on land and jobs" - I think you mean "treated Jammu and Kashmir as just another Indian state where any Indian national could buy land and engage in occupational activities because it is not a separate entity from India itself or a princess of a state that requires special treatment".

Ominous Signs

These fears became more pronounced in early September when authorities launched an online portal for migrant Hindus to register complaints of distress sales and encroachments onto their properties, an overwhelming majority of which have changed hands in the last 30 years. According to official figures, 700 complaints were received in the first three weeks.

Thousands of Muslim families who bought properties from Hindus were left angered. Authorities even asked some Muslim families to vacate the properties.

“The online portal seems to be a major trigger for the killings,” said Tickoo, the activist.

Right so anything but the actual triggers of the guns that shot at the Kashmiri Hindus has triggered their killings. Makes perfect sense once again.

"Muslim families who bought properties from Hindus" - this transaction is not a happy one. The article clearly talks about distress sales, meaning that the Kashmiri Hindus had to vacate their ancestral homes to save their lives and make do with whatever price they could get for them.

The Kashmiri Hindus were kicked out of their homes and in their place many more Muslims came to reside, but no one is going to talk about how this is an example of the real "change in the region's demographics".

Among the region’s minorities, Sikhs have lived relatively at ease with their Muslim neighbours and have emerged as the largest minority after the Hindu migration. But they too have faced systematic killings.

"Too"? So you agree? That the killings against the Hindus have been systematic and driven by a rather particular religious impetus? Because if you agree, you are contradicting TRF, the Kashmiri Muslims and Siddiq Wahid - every single one of them who said, and you have quoted them saying so, that people of all religions were killed and that there has been no systematic attack on the Hindus in Kashmir, it is all just a ruse by the Modi-led government.

You did so well throughout, Aljazeera. Or rather, Aijaz Hussain of the Associated Press did really well and was very consistent with how he wrote this article. But alas, your Freudian slip, although a very minute one, gives you away, not to mention, almost at the end of your article.

It's like looking at a glorious house of cards come crashing down.

Anyway, dear anon, here is the debunking of the first of the six articles you have attached. I don't know how you will find this, but I hope you do.

#welcome back didi <3 #this post was the stepping stone of a new renaissance

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