By Shaikh Tawheed Rehman
I always thought I have the potential of a good writer as my lengthy love letters always delivered good results just like Google. This thought of mine was further supported by my Master’s degree in Journalism but even after two years of the completion of my degree I haven’t written anything yet.
Yes, I cannot write but I stepped down. It’s not as though I can’t put words together and construct a good sentence, weave those sentences into paragraphs and come up with an eloquent written piece. It’s just that I cannot write objectively. Even if I try to, emotions always seem to creep in and take over the profession. So I just give up the idea of writing and keep myself happy in reading and learning.
What prompted me to write this time is out of frustration caused by my professional Gods – Newspapers. I was told during my degree that journalists should choose their words carefully as they never know who the reader might be. It took me two years to find one such word and unfortunately that one word appeared in a reputed newspaper of India, The Indian Express. The Editor in his editorial piece titled “The fires just don’t die down” dated August 13, 2008 available at their website http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEF20080813015151&Title=First+Editorial&rLink=0 describes the “100 acre” Kashmiri land as “inhospitable”. As it is quite evident that a piece of land cannot be inhospitable, the Editor means to say people in Kashmir are inhospitable. And I wonder how senior journalist approach to events and start generalizing things or events.
Conflict in Kashmir has its own context and there is no wrong in standing up and fighting for your rights. A lot of nations have done it. During India’s struggle for Independence from East India Company, people in India, regardless of their caste or religion, were united till the end unlike in Kashmir, where a community fled overnight.
Religion in this region has always been a root cause to all the problems. Majority of Muslims in Kashmir share their religious proximity with the neighboring country, Pakistan, and majority of Hindus with India. So, if Kashmirs are not comfortable with India there is no guarantee that Hindus in Jammu will find relative peace with Pakistan and this will continue. So the question of accession to Pakistan doesn’t exist anywhere.
By the way, we don’t want a partition of Jammu and Kashmir like India and Pakistan. A Kashmiri just wants freedom from such administration. We don’t want the administration to formulate heinous acts and implement them in Kashmir, we just don’t want our brothers being detained illegally and then tortured to death, we don’t want forced disappearances, we don’t want false media reports or tags, we don’t want being killed and tortured by our own Kashmiri police men, we don’t want any mothers tears, not any more…
We just want our freedom, our nation, and our rights. And if all this sums up to being “inhospitable”, we are proud for being so.
5 comments:
I agree that media certainly seems to present the picture in their own version with the color they want to paint it with. Objective journalism is history now and more of judgmental opinions are visible everywhere.
It is just one anti-Kashmiri opinion and I can have many pro-Kashmiri opinions also. Kashmir news is selling like hot cakes whatever it may be – the more provocative and biased the more famous.
well said...the media sells wat it knows will be bought more, and so is the case with kashmir news..
gr8 piece of observation.. well done !!
If plebiscite was offered, there is little doubt that J&K will be divided, because, as you say, it's religion that is at the root of it all. Had the fleeing community been stopped by the same politicians who today demand a separate nationhood for Kashmir (only Kashmir , not J&K) may be this would not be the case.
I don't wish to be finical, but the editorial in question describes the piece of land as 'barren and inhospitable'. Contrary to what you said, land can indeed be inhospitable (and barren), but people can't be both.
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