lalitkaul

The Irrelevance of Article 370 and the UN Resolution                                                                                                   Lalit K Kaul The Genesis: The erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state was a princely state at the time of the independence of India and emergence of Pakistan, in the year 1947. All the princely states (around 547 in number) were given the option of choosing to 1) accede to India, 2) accede to Pakistan and 3) remain an independent and sovereign state. While nearly all decided to accede to the India Union, the ruler of erstwhile princely state of J&K, Maharaja Hari Singh, remained indecisive insofar as accession to India or Pakistan was concerned, as he was more inclined to have it as an independent sovereign state. While he was yet to decide firmly on one of the three options, a savagely and barbarous act was unleashed by Pakistan on October 22, 1947 when Pakistan's Pashtun tribal militias crossed the border of the state l

What are my coordinates? With due apologies to all the Indians and with all the courage at my command , I, A Kashmir Pandit, has been trying to figure out my nationality since 1990. Can somebody clarify to me as to Why I should consider myself an Indian? I , a Kashmiri Pandit , lived through all the hardships economic and emotional ; deprived of my religious places. I was never a burden on the Indian ex chequer because I never asked ( or was offered) any special favours; I studied on my own; did business on my own; rose to discharge highest responsibilities in India; if I was a beggar I was / am on my own ; If a millionaire , yet on my own. Yet I was transformed in to a slum dweller overnight at the mercy of footpaths and crowded temples. Nobody , no political party, no justice yielding mechanism cared for me. Even the SC of India kicked me out of the domain of justice. I survived, but I would have survived anywhere in t

Statehood versus Union Territory (The Veterans of Political Chicanery are at it once again) Lalit K Kaul For some, politics is only about sloganeering and keeping the society on the boil for reasons that are an antithesis to the well being and progress of the constituencies these kinds of politicians claim to represent. Kashmiri politicians fall in this category. Exploiting Emotions on False Issues: It should be an art of very high calibre to keep a dead horse alive only to keep the pot of emotions of the locals boiling and to perpetually keep the accession of J&K to India as questionable. They all swore by Article 370 all the years of their existence and threatened a huge uprising of the masses if the Article was tempered with. If Article 370 was a political agreement between the erstwhile J&K state and the Union of India, then it ceased to exist in 1

The Right to Self Determination (Is Nobody’s Exclusive Right)                                                                                                                                Lalit K Kaul A heterogeneous society like the one that existed in the erstwhile J&K state/ now exists in the UT of J&K, is a collage comprising multiple ethnicities, religious affiliations and cultural diversities. For sheer reasons of making livelihoods (the base level) people with different religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds interact amongst themselves and that binds them in an inalienable relationship transcending all the differences that may exist between them in other dimensions of life. It may be just a need based relationship that may not have any emotional content in it, but a civilized existence demands space for each and every socio ethnic religious group else, it remains devastated. Political aspirations/affiliations, despite all bonhomie between different section

Life without conditions: Unrealizable dream                                                                                                                                                                Lalit K Kaul When parameters like truth, justice, morality, ethics, extravagance, falsehood etcetera are brought in, then no ‘life’ is without conditions because these define the boundaries of freedom that are not to be violated. These may be defined by a society living in inaccessible regions of Amazon forests or desert peaks of Ladakh; that is, the societies that have total disconnect with the modern world and its belief and value system. Even if there are no institutionalized definitions of all the said parameters, yet within every human being there is something that without conscious control allows or disallows him/her a particular type of conduct. That ‘something’ is conscience which is undeniably a very dominant attribute of an individual and which differentiates one from

...... And the Car Overturns !!!!! .. Act of Providence !!!! Late Sri Ram Jethmalani was the defence counsel for Santa Singh and Beant Singh , the alleged assassins of the then PM Smt. Indira Gandhi. He asked a set of five questions to determine who was the mastermind behind the conspiracy of assassinating the then PM. Two of the 5 questions are relevant to Vikas Dubey case: 1. Why Santa & Beant were shot at, when they had surrendered their arms post assassination ? 2. Who told the assassins that the then PM would not be wearing the bullet proof jacket on that fateful morning ? The questions have remained unanswered till date while the accused were hanged on a fastest justice yielding track. If one can find the answers to the above 2 questions, one can understand the politician-criminal-police nexus. Vikas Dubey case is no different. If anybody just anybody of the 130 crore people thought that Vikas Dubey would reach Kanpur while in police custody then he/

BJP is on the Rise in Kashmir Valley Lalit K Kaul No body kills an innocuous being. If one smells a threat from the other, either it leads to an offer for talks or straight attempt at elimination of the other. From a position of 'ZERO' presence three decades ago to a position of being recognized as a political adversary is a huge leap forward. The effect of metamorphosing from a 2 MP party in the Parliament in to an absolute majority ruling party, on the Valley politics (that had anyway degenerated to abysmal depths of political chicanery) had to be there more so for the reasons that the NDA government at the Center has either delivered upon its promises or is in the process of doing so. Political 'Touch -me- Not' branded communal even though there is/was no record or evidence of it having engineered any communal riot; has come a long way and grown up to be a pol