The Indo-Pak Summit, Kashmir and the Taj Mahal

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`` Sorry i forgot to see this till now

You have to just take meaning of Madarsah = SCHOOL``

Why a madrasah ? Why not your local secular school ? You have not told me the difference.

`` You know there is Military School ,Art School ,Medical school ``

All those are institutions of higher education. They do not relate to primary education. They do not admit 5 or 10 year olds.

`` The muslimmadarsah has ben primary schol in subcontinent fromAssam to Afghanisan

Unlike in Caste divided Hinduism..Every body is encouraged to STUDY ..``

Why is literacy for Muslims lower than Hindus in India ? Why is literacy in Pakistan and Bangladesh lower than India ? Does everybody include females ?

The AMU is not a madrasah. It is a secular Muslim educational institution.
I am sure the AMU does not admit 5 year olds into their institution. It is similar to Crescent Engineering College in Tamilnadu. AMU is one school. If AMU was in Pakistan who knows what shape it is in.

`` In madarsah and in AMU ..thoughediff ...is you do get urdu Islamiyat And arabic ..

But as industruialization and vocatio becomes compeling oppl,dont wase time learning Urdu ArabicPersian or religious islamyat any more than just AWARENESS...``

You learn Urdu, Arabic and Islamic studies. Tell us the utility of Urdu and Arabic languages in non-Hindi speaking states.

I will repeat what I said

``If I did become the CM of an Indian state I would take over the curriculum of madrassas (and for that matter all schools) and tell them to follow the state curriculum or face closure``

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Studebaker #136


you dodged the other two paras

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Madrassas are going to be judged by the quality of students they produce. Name one Pakistani who has studied in a madrasa and did an advanced degree in USA. The only students they have produced were road kill for the USAF guided weapons.

What is the exact difference between the reformed madrasa and Indian secular education ?

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Studebaker #132

`` Agreed ..my purpose was not that .My reason was that ``madarsah`` ``Jehad`` or certain look cannot be demonised by misschef makers if you want peace.b/c there is no end to pointing fingers rather than precisely as possible identifying correctly .Other wise what is the use of scoring 1600 sat or Gold Medal in University when we can accept whatever inaccurate meaning is tolerated in other areas.``

Madrassas are going to be judged by the quality of students they produce. Name one Pakistani who has studied in a madrasa and did an advanced degree in USA. The only students they have produced were road kill for the USAF guided weapons.

What is the exact difference between the reformed madrasa and Indian secular education ?

I have serious problems with teaching Arabic, Deobandi/Wahabi Islam and a warped view of history.

I hate to say this. If I did become the CM of an Indian state I would take over the curriculum of madrassas (and for that matter all schools) and tell them to follow the state curriculum or face closure.

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As expected, india got the israeli falcon radar cleared
as a result of concessions to pakistan. what else...

recently the army conducted the `biggest` operation
yet in kashmir, over 60 pakistanis killed in their
hideout deep in the mountains.

it took the commandos a week trekking to reach the place.

who informed the indians about this well-kept secret?

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``NEW DELHI, May 20: Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali said in remarks televised on Tuesday that an India-Pakistan rapprochement spurring them into a ``compact bloc``, was the surest way to fend off threats to their sovereignty of the kind that had befallen to Afghanistan and Iraq. ``(Dawn)

Jamali has been reading CHowk -- indeed Pakistan`s safety lies ONLY in `compacting` with India --

nobody else --

the nuclear capability of Pakistan -- called the ``Islamic Bomb``-- is the REMAINING thorn on the side of the Zionists-Christian Right Axis -- after Iraq.

after Iraq is done with -- this Axis of Evil will be hell bent on removing the Pakistani WMD bone from the Israeli Shish Kebob-- if not today definitely tomorrow -- hence the NEED for a solid `Compact Pact`.

Go for it Pakistan -- forget the past -- forget the acrimony -- shake both hands with India -- and save the bomb.

kurtey rahiye khezaaN meiN zikre bahaar
ek nu ek din bahar aye gee

what can I say -- kiye jaao koshish mayre dosto

Studebaker #114

`` The madrassah painted by Sangh Parivar as a ``hotbed`` of sedition`` have HUMBLED,government Schools by achieving excellent sresults in this year Middle School exam. The madrasah in Rajasthan have achieved 90 to 100 % results against 65 % results in government run schools .The budget allocated to 619 madrasahs recognized by the Rajasthan state govt. is 7.8 milion rs. There are estimated 5000 madrasahs in Rajasthan many surviving on charity .Despite these limitation s 60 % of madrasahs students have secured first division with disctinction as against 20% of the govt schools students Among successfull madrasahs girls students are 50% during the 90 random sampling of 537 madrasahs (502 were boys & 35 girls) Five of the girl madrasahs had students from u.s.,Canada,U.K.,France,South America,Bahamas,Zambia,Average salary of teacher is still 1500rs./per month.``(abridged from print) ``

Beating a Indian government school which is attended by lower class and poor students is not hard. Most of the elite, educated and middle class send their kids to private schools.

The lost tribe of India looks back in despair to its Kashmir home

By Peter Popham in Delhi

In the week that the Indian government decided to ``solve`` the Kashmir problem by throwing even more troops into a valley already saturated in khaki, the community with the deepest Kashmiri roots marked 10 years in exile.

The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, decided to raise ``specialised battalions`` of the paramilitary forces for ``waging counter-terrorist operations`` to defeat the ``proxy war`` in the state.

Commentators chastised the lack of imagination. ``Kashmir policy: old wine in new bottle,`` said the Times of India. The Hindu said that it showed ``the total exclusion of political solutions and political ideas``.

And this week the community whose sufferings are the starkest emblem of Kashmir`s running sore solemnly marked 10 years in exile with a silent demonstration in Delhi.

The Kashmiri Pandits are one of India`s most extraordinary communities. Claiming to be the aboriginals of Kashmir, with a calendar dating back 5,075 years, they also claim 100 per cent literacy: the word ``pundit`` - in Hindi either spelling is acceptable - entered English in recognition of their phenomenal learning.

``The Kashmir Pundits,`` wrote Sir Francis Younghusband, the British Resident in Kashmir, in 1908, ``are well known over India for their acuteness and subtlety of mind, their intelligence and quick-wittedness.

``They prefer priestly, literacy and clerical occupation, but ... many have had to take up agriculture, and become cooks, bakers, confectioners, and tailors, and indeed to follow any trade except ... cobbler, potter, corn-frier, porter, boatman, carpenter, mason, or fruit-seller.``

They reinforced their reputation for brains by providing India with its only political dynasty, the Nehru-Gandhis, three of whom, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, served as Prime Minister.

But for centuries, since an Afghan invasion in the 14th century, the Pandits have been intensely exposed as the only Hindus among an overwhelming majority of Muslims.

All Kashmir`s Hindus, except for the brahminical Pandits, were converted to Islam, mostly, it is said, by force. As a result, the Pandits were several times forced to flee the Kashmir Valley.

Each time, a benign ruler coaxed this avowedly pacifist community to return. But the events of January 1990 have left deep scars. As insurgency in the valley took hold, with militants fighting for Kashmir`s removal from the Indian state, the Pandits became an obvious target.

Already steps had been taken to erase signs of the Pandits` existence. The Hindu names of hundreds of villages were changed to Islamic names. Intellectuals, poets and writers of the community were killed or frightened into silence.

Mahesh Manvati, a refugee who has lived near Delhi since April 1990, said: ``The process culminated on 19 January when the clear call came that we should all leave.``

One refugee who did not want to be named said: ``Srinagar in January 1990 was a nightmare for the Pandits.Audio-cassettes were roaring about Islamic jihad in the mosques, calling for the liberation of the valley. The local press published warnings to the Pandits, asking them to leave the valley or face the consequences, posters were stuck up on poles and walls all over town with the same message.``

A Kashmiri Pandit housewife said: ``Day after day, the posters pasted on the walls in the city warned Kashmiri Pandits to leave. One morning we discovered that some of our close friends and relatives had fled without even whispering to anyone about it. At last our turn arrived. I left Srinagar by air and my husband followed by road.``

Nobody knows for sure how many fled Kashmir on 19 January and in subsequent weeks, but one exile group believes that 350,000 Pandits are living outside their homeland: 200,000 in cramped plastic shelters in camps around the city of Jammu, and another 100,000 dotted around Delhi.

One Delhi-based Pandit journalist, Omkar Razdan, estimates that there are now only 7,000 of his community left in the valley. One exile organisation, Panun Kashmir, claims that 5,000 Pandits have been killed in sectarian massacres in the past 10 years. Drowned out by the louder, more immediate horrors of Kashmir, the Pandits risk being forgotten by history. Yet they were an essential element in the traditional society of the Kashmir Valley, where Kashmiri identity outweighed any other factor or religion or caste. In 1947, when Hindus and Muslims were murdering each other in huge numbers after Partition, the Kashmir Valley remained peaceful.

But for the Kashmiri Pandits in exile, that is all ancient history. One Pandit in Delhi said: ``Islamic fundamentalism has turned Kashmiri society fanatical, a society which will not accept coexistence.`` Communal harmony of the old sort, exiled Pandits believe, is no longer possible.

A group called Panun Kashmir - Kashmir Homeland - is campaigning for a part of the valley to be designated their homeland, with special protection and status.

It is the sort of cause that you might expect to be dear to the heart of a government dominated by Hindu nationalists. But although Prime Minister Vajpayee received a delegation from the organisation on Wednesday, Panun Kashmir looks as if it is the lost tribe`s lost cause. ``We are too few,`` lamented one of the demonstrators. ``We don`t make a vote bank for any party. No parties are interested in us.``

Hindu minority refuses to bow out of Kashmir

By Sonia Jabbar

NEW DELHI - Adding to the complexity of the ``Kashmir Problem`` which has dogged India and Pakistan for more than 50 years has been the fate of the minority Hindu population of Kashmir, otherwise known as the Pandits.

If little is known about the 300,000 Pandits who fled the Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1991, at a time of popular support for militancy, to become refugees in India, less is known about the tiny number of 17,860 Pandits who chose not to leave.

The mass exodus of the Pandits is still shrouded in mystery. Why they left is a question still levelled at them by the Muslims of the valley.

``Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims have died either at the hands of security forces or militants, but we are still here,`` says Shafi, an artist in Anantnag whose group of friends was almost entirely Pandit before the exodus. That there was a real, palpable fear among the Pandits of being exterminated is a fact dismissed by Shafi. He feels, like most Muslims, betrayed by them. They left without saying goodbye.

In Delhi, an old man`s sense of betrayal is of equal intensity. He was a government servant in Kashmir who trusted his Muslim neighbors. He feels they gave him no choice once the killings of the Pandits started in 1989, that they did nothing to allay his fears, that they drove him out of his homeland. ``I asked my Muslim friend why did you throw us out, why? Did we murder you? Did we rob you? Did we rape your women?`` he shouted, ``we taught you to read and write, we taught you . . . `` His friend, he said, had no answer.

The Pandits of Kashmir are all Brahmins, and pride themselves on being the only caste to have resisted conversion when Islam was introduced peacefully to the Kashmir Valley in the 14th century by the Sufis of Central Asia. They held considerable power, as they were the only people who had a tradition of being highly educated. But this also meant that they bore the brunt of the tyranny unleashed by certain ruthless invaders, particularly during the Afghan occupation of Kashmir in the mid-eighteenth century.

Even though the Kashmiri Pandits have had greater sympathies and links with the Indian Union than their Muslim counterparts, they bore severe economic losses after the Maharaja of Kashmir acceded to India when, in 1949, Kashmir`s leader Sheikh Abdullah introduced land reform measures, redistributing land largely held by the Pandits to the Muslim tiller.

``We have suffered at the hands of tyrants through history,`` says Yuvraj Raina, a Panun Kashmir activist in New Delhi. ``There have been four migrations of Pandits. This is the fifth, and the last.`` Panun Kashmir is an organization of Kashmiri Pandits formed in 1991 which believes that the only solution to the problems faced by Kashmiri Pandits is a separate homeland carved non-violently out of the Kashmir Valley.

This portion of the Valley, called Panun Kashmir, would be a secular state autonomous of Srinagar, and would abide by the Indian Constitution. They feel this is the only way to safeguard the interests, values and culture of the Kashmiri Pandit.

``Look, we told those who remained behind, it`s just a matter of time before they get you,`` says Raina. ``The Muslim fundamentalists want to ensure a pan-Islamic State from the Middle East and Central Asia to Kashmir and the world keeps quiet.`` He recounts the recent killings of the Pandits in the Valley - five last month, one more a couple of weeks later. ``We told them it is either homeland or perish.``

But this is not a sentiment shared by the Pandits who choose to remain in the Valley. In Mattan, south Kashmir, a young school teacher, Jyoti, continues to live with her family and extended family amongst her Muslim neighbors. ``This is the only home I`ve known. These are the only friends and neighbors I have ever had and they`ve been very good to us - so why should we leave?`` she asks.

``Yes, we do feel scared sometimes,`` she concedes. ``You see, no one knows anymore who the killers are. It`s not like the old days where everyone knew who belonged to which militant outfit. Now they are nameless, faceless.``

About the Pandit exodus she says, ``We never knew they were leaving. No one told us anything. In the evening they`d be chatting with us quite normally, perhaps a little afraid, and then the next morning we`d find a big lock on their front doors.``

The exodus of the Pandits has also meant that it becomes increasingly difficult for someone like Jyoti to find a suitable husband. In Srinagar there is a sizeable concentration of Pandits, but in rural areas there are barely a few families among the larger Muslim population. ``I really don`t know what I will do. My parents don`t want me to marry into a family who lives in some isolated hamlet. They`d worry for my safety. I suppose they`ll marry me off to someone in Jammu and I`d be forced to leave the Valley,`` she says quietly.

In Srinagar, the Hindu Welfare Forum, founded in 1991 to protect the interests of the Pandits who chose to remain behind, are an angry lot. They are visibly upset by the recent killings of the Pandits and fear another migration. ``Neither the state government nor the government of India has done anything to protect us. Nobody even knows we even exist. Neither the Indian media nor the international media has bothered to see how we live, highlighted our problems. Even our own community in India and abroad calls us traitors because we refused to leave,`` said a Forum member.

Apart from the myriad problems faced by this tiny community, they are a determined lot. Says Wanchoo, a businessman and a member of the Forum: ``We will never leave Kashmir, and we don`t believe in a separate homeland.

``This is our homeland and we wish to live in peace here. As for the killings, well it`s a problem faced by all Kashmiris, not just the Hindus. Everyday you read that 8-10 people have been killed and they`re usually Muslims. But the militants must realize that they only get discredited when they kill the minorities.``

His wife, who has lived through these terrible 12 years, witnessing much of the violence, experiencing much of the pain, relates a recent experience which makes her smile with delight and hope. ``At a wedding recently a whole lot of us had gathered after a long, long time - Muslim women as well as Sikh and Pandit women - and we really had fun, singing and dancing late into the night just as we used to before the militancy started.

``As I was turning in to sleep I heard the Muslim women whispering among themselves in the kitchen. `After so long,` they said, `after so many years all of us have come together`.

``It`s true, isn`t it, that a garden is most beautiful when there is a profusion of many kinds of flowers.``