Where there is no vision people suffer

I would like to remove some of the haze that has been covering my blog for some time now. Although It's been great to see people visiting my blog and debating, I would have really appreciated had the debate not resorted to personal attacks and name calling. It just emphasizes the fact that the more writers pour out their thoughts for all to read and judge, the more debate there is and that way people can decide for themselves. Otherwise, in the abscence of counter arguments and where there is a vacuum of opposing voices, people tend to be easily swayed away with a stroke of a pen (See comments ….). I am thankful to my fellow blogger Koshur who used some good words for me.

Right now every one is concerned or rather looks concerned about the Chief Minister, they call him an Indian stooge, and if that’s not enough they say his chair was already decided even before elections were held. 

It reminds me of one of the comments by some one who said in my earlier post that, "Tanvir You have written a couple of hundred thousand people participated in the anti- India protests. What a hypocrate you are. You must be a staunch Pro- Indian stooge. You are trying to keep your bosses in a good humour. Whole world knows that people came out in millions not in thousands”.  Even if it were a million odd people and even if I go by his theory why cant any one convince me that out of 10 million population of Kashmir valley 60 % voted in the recent election, then how can it be farcical and how can the hurriyat be the real representatives of Kashmiris. Haven’t the separatist lost the battle or may be people like koshur (http://kashmir-truth-be-told.blogspot.com), Kashmir crisis, Kashmir centre are still hoping that they can ruin Kashmir a little more . I don’t know but may be they need a yanky yelling at them “Hey dude people voted and boycott guys lost, so just chill”.

I do not intend to be one sided but I see a prosperous Kashmir if we remain a fully autonomous state with India. Granted there have been excesses committed by certain forces within India and Kashmiris have been suffering gravely for the past many decades. The other alternatives to autonomy are too laden with risk to gamble our future for. We have a special place and we deserve to be autonomous. There are forces within India who wish to undermine our special status but there are also many reasonable and moderate voices who genuinely understand the Kashmir issues better. 

Hypocrisy

I had been awfully busy with both my professional as well as my personal life and that’s precisely the reason for not writing a piece for long time now…

I was reading a blog written by one of our fellow bloggers “Koshur” (http://kashmir-truth-be-told.blogspot.com), according to him we should observe 5th January as a Self determination day. See what my friend had to write … 

“Dear Fellow Kashmiris,
Please join your fellow countrymen in observing January 5th 2009 as Self-Determination Day. We can show our solidarity with the freedom movement by wearing black ribbons or black scarves on our wrists, or vehicle-antennas.
No farcical elections can substitute our right to self-determination. That is real democracy.”

After going through his earlier posts I came to the conclusion that he is more concerned about what Omar Ab. wears, eats, stays, blogs...Etc etc then helping the kashmiri cause. Every write up contains some element of personal onslaught. 

I will not drag this topic for I am constrained by my need for conciseness, but just to make a point here, few months back when a couple of hundred thousand people came on roads for the Amarnath issue,the whole media went into frenzy calling it a referendum, but in the recent held election people participation was more then 60%, and yet we declare it as a farcical election, isn’t this HYPOCRISY 

You may differ on various subjects and may be not agree with Omar as a person but for all of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of youth, reason and justice must be keenly aware how important it is for the nation to see Omar Abdullah as the Chief Minister.