The Young India

Ananth Venkatesh
(written in August)

Kashmir of India has been under a state of belligerence over the last two months, which is heartrending. A segment of the Kashmiri remonstrators, inevitably hostile to India, has fierily invaded the lanes of pretty Kashmir, in the company of children. The national security personnel along with the provincial police have been the targets of the rage of these remonstrators. The mercilessness of these protestors is evident in their transportation of impressionable children to the Kashmiri boulevards in order to …

Kartikey Sehgal

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The respondent is unconcerned about the topic. She is unaware of discussions on casteism and racism in the media. She tells me that there are many like her; they have belief in dharma and don’t bother about what allegations others put on their way of living. Often I have to reconfirm what she says;  “there was lots of bloodshed between the brahmins and kshatriyas” where bloodshed means that the boy’s family didn’t accept the girl. But …

Kartikey Sehgal

I came upon this information during a conversation on casteism. The lady told me, “There has never been much caste problem in my home town [Jammu] )".

She continued:

“We recently discovered that a family belonging to the shudra caste is actually a brahmin family. The ____ (surname) were brahmins at one time and shifted to a lower caste probably to defend themselves.”

Here’s the backdrop; two families in Jammu have been friends for many decades thought they are from different castes. The …

Kartikey Sehgal

I had predicted problems for Omar Abdullah in my earlier story on Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) Chief Minister.
“Omar would be better because others would be worse. And that shall be the bane of being Omar Abdullah.”
[Read that story Here]

The Omar led government is now funding an organisation that aims to spread jihad; and cleanse non-Muslims from the state. Former J&K chief-minister and Omar’s grandfather Sheikh Abdullah had described the organisation as “the real source for spreading communal poison.” …

Kartikey Sehgal
Omar Abdullah could not become the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir through honest means. So Omar Abdullah went to the parliament and stated that he would fight for “every inch of Kashmir’s land” and “we will fight till we die.”

And Omar made the Muslims of the state feel that he is with them in fending off the ‘aggressive Hindus’.

Let us quickly relive that glorious period in Omar’s political career which redefined his status as protector of the Muslims.

Kartikey Sehgal
If you have read the articles on Jammu and Kashmir (here and here), then you’d know that the Kashmir land issue was political fabrication. While political parties were wasting time in preparing for elections in the state, and provoking people to kill, a bunch of people were preparing to plant some bombs in Delhi.

The politicians and the bomb planters achieved their aim.

The politicians succeeded in dividing people in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) along religious lines but the bomb planters united many religions on September 13 when the survivors and family of victims cursed terrorism despite any prior religious bias.

Kartikey Sehgal gives a step-by-step explanation to the ongoing situation in the state of J&K over the land transfer issue.

People from Jammu and Kashmir are being fooled. Not to mention countless people in India who are easily misled by passions and emotions.We meet people who think that Kashmiri’s are being selfish and not giving the land for the Amarnath pilgrimage, and then there are those who think that Jammu citizens are being selfish in taking land from Kashmir when they can do without it.

Nobody is being selfish, except the politicians, of course.

This is what I know. Hindus in Jammu and Muslims in Kashmir are protesting against the government. And people in Kashmir are asking for independence.

No. Not everyone in Kashmir is asking for freedom. It’s only a faction that supports secession of Kashmir from India.

Then what are people from Jammu and Kashmir fighting over?

Ananth Venkatesh
The protests in J & K over the issue of the revocation of the command of the state Government to transfer 100 acres of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board has brought to the fore the unpleasant divisiveness hidden underneath the superficially secular fabric of the state.