Children's Day

Short hours of
Light, long nights of
Winter dark of
Nordic latitudes continent

Hordes from sunlit deserts
Swarm up, exploding the
Peace and bliss of
City of Joy,
Quiet efforts of
City of Lights, to
Lighten the dark cold winter

Hordes swarm up from sunlit deserts
Exploding the stoic peace, quiet endurance
Aims they include in their agenda of death, reducing
World to ashes, spreading desert

Their flag is green, colour of life,
Life, they hate!

They have tried, repeatedly, to extinguish the land of
Light, and failed, hating the failure, breaking it up,
Turning pieces into opposite,
Over and over, attempting to extinguish the
Light, piece by piece, photon by photon,
Photons grow, and forces of dark are
Desperate,
Biting the hands that fed them through their centuries of despair,
They hope to conquer
Light and hope and life, joy and
Peace!

Bose - and idiots who equate him with abominable

Another internet post brings rather surprising equations and comparisons forth. A simplistic mind runs rather stupidly equating Bose with the people whose help he sought to struggle for independence of his nation.

Gandhi cooperated with British, unlike the fighters of 1857 or subsequent Bhagat Singh and others; does not mean he was in accord with Dyer or Macaulay; allies included USSR, emphatically does not mean Roosevelt was anything like Stalin. You are being simplistic to the point of abhorrent stupidity in comparing Netaji SubhashChandra Bose with the German leaders of that time whom he wrote of his disapproval of what was wrong in their regime that he could see.

Much of what they did wrong was not apparent until the allies invaded, for that matter, and allies discredited Jewish reports arriving, and refrained from bombing the railway lines that were used to take Jews to camps - this makes allies not like those who were running the camps and executing Jews, either.

Spectrum in Time

Dawn begins from
Deep Blue Gold Heaven
Held gently secure in it's cocoon
Until ready to burst forth
On the pre dawn
Starlit blue waiting in a silvery sheen
Dawn lights up
Eastern horizon in its hues
Red and Gold, Pink and Peach and Apricot

Dawn brings reds and pinks and golds and
Colours of life to
Life on earth, and
Earth responds
Blossoms of all hues on carpets of grass and trees and forests
Green of life glows.
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Spectrum of Light
Somewhere in the spectrum of all wavelengths of existence
Somewhere held in spectrum of Light
Colour spectrum as known to life, humanity, us,
While on Earth

Reds favoured by babies, toddlers -
And they are quite capable of fighting for their beloved
Scarletts and Reds, Apples and all
Crimson hues of dawn of
Life on Earth
So easily found by the babies' little eyes searching for colour
And so, favourite -

While their moms prefer gentle blossoms on sunlit grass
A happy garden for the child's life
Visible on the child's attire
Mother's wishes and blessings from deepest of her
Heart that is now the child's for ever.

And so the babe wins
As long as the mother pays attention
To the whims of child -
Reds it is as long as the baby insists.
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Somewhere later comes a liking for
Gardens of mothers
Blossoms on carpets of brilliant sunlit greens
Life wanted by her for her heart's brood

Somewhere then comes
Soft grey of clouds
While brilliant green grass is shaded
Under tall deep green trees
A grey of thought, of mind and more
While deep green of
Life
Struggles to grow,
Wanting sunshine and
Shade of grey
All at the same time -

Deep green of shade of tall trees
Soft grey of clouds heavy with
Life giving rains
So needed in the early burning heat of morning
And it continues if one is lucky
Until forenoon sees a descending sun
Heat now on its last brilliance
Western horizons about to be lit up
With sunset brilliant hues of
Reds and golds that
Autumn echoes on earth.


Now the skies are clear
Brilliant sapphire blue
Just as they were on eastern shores of an
Early morn

Only, now the heat is already a
Welcome warmth
No longer in need of the ocean breezes

But the ocean awaits
Off western shores - just as it gave one
A shore to climb out of waves
A lifetime ago
East in the morning.

Blues of heavens now echo the
Blues of the ocean
One reflects other and
Who knows which is reflecting, which the real primordial
Light refracted from all that
Earth receives every moment -
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Blues with white flowers large
A cherished gift once
Mother wrapped around one, now remodeled into a suit that
Already seems thoughtless
Oh, one ought to leave alone
Heaven's gifts of
Love.

May not be too late -
Maybe the  heaven would wrap one again in
Soft blue with large white flowers
Until then one waits, breathes in


Hoping one sees the loved ones in the
Blue that one is cloaked in -
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India, World, Culture, .... Seen Through Prism Of Western (And Colonial) Caste -

Reading various books by Khushwant Singh, so far collections of his short pieces published during his life and his autobiography, began with a doubtful mind for good reason - and the reasons seem more than justified, albeit reading it is not harmful unless waste of time is a serious criteria, and that it is. But perhaps reading this author began with a question of whether one was being influenced by prejudices due to his writing one read in periodicals decades ago, and whether one was missing an author worth only due to prejudices. He has name and fame and more, awards and titles and acquaintance with hoi polloi of his time in various spheres, and one wondered if the former was for good reasons and latter makes it worth going through his work.

So far, the latter is partly true.
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If it were limited to what he wrote as short pieces that are collected in various books, it would be a questionably good read, most of the part anyway - he does have some sort of germ in his head so to speak in language familiar to him, in that he is not happy giving intelligent commentary and rare beautiful descriptions of people and places; he absolutely must disgust the reader in general, possibly delighting a few, by copious and explicit references either to nether parts of his own or other people; or worse, explicit description leaving the reader in no uncertainty how he viewed the other half of humanity only as a package to contain those parts.

In this he is far from content to merely insult all people with higher sensibilities or all women, including his own family. In a forward to one such collection by one of the many the young protegies of his who met him some time when she was young and he far from that, she mentions how he spoke explicitly humiliating a Nobel prize winning much revered poet of his nation and how he delighted in insulting and provoking a whole people, and one can only surmise from his copious references to various other poets from parts that separated from the motherland depriving him of home he had to forever hanker after, that this was his revenge on the motherland that gave him refuge, revenge for having been deprived of his home by those that threw out all other communities that they could not live with and demanded a separate nation via breaking up the motherland with threats of massacre executed before and during the partition.

His own parents lived in the capital, and his bringing up was in many places including the capital, but he was in tears when visiting his childhood village where he spent his early years with his grandmother, and where he is very aware of the community that surrounded them was always keeping away from them, no matter how friendly he or his community or even those in majority in the nation as a whole were, then or since. And his response is to be friendly with them, visit them, regret how they are not responding generally, and insult those that gave him not merely home but positions and honour despite not quite proven merit.

The pieces themselves are readable, no more and no less, in most part. If one misses them it is no big deal. And this can be said about all such collections of pieces by this author, perhaps even by all that he wrote.
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That is even more true about


Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles
by Khushwant Singh,


judging by the very first piece that provides the title for the book.

Emergency was a traumatic period of history in India post independence, and that is saying something about a nation that was beset by various problems and is only now emerging a little out but not by far. There had been famines before that, riots provoked by those that thrived politically only due to lack of harmony in communal scenario and depended on vote bank politics, and wars due to attacks by nations across the borders. Emergency was traumatic, and that was not merely for the western educated upper and middle class and political elite, or intelligentsia alone - if that were so it would hardly provide a wavelet in a nation that survived a millennium of various marauders and invaders and colonial rules.

Emergency was traumatic to the nation as a whole, because democracy was and is seriously ingrained in the very fabric of the nation where even faith is a matter of personal choice and family, community fabric, not enforced with threats of hell. This, apart from diversity of every other sort - languages, dress, food, cuisine, not to mention the geographical and climatic diversity, is essential to the nation's  very soul.

Emergency was imposed when a high court ruled that the election of the then prime minister was illegal due to a person in administrative office being used in political work - not that this is unusual, it was only that it was carelessly done in that it could be proved in court. Various political persona and intelligentsia suspected of freedom of thought and likelihood of not complying and obeying the ruling party diktats were summarily thrown in jail, and some suffered great deal due to health and age. This author was not one of them, and was free to support it for stupid reasons as many then did.

One wishes his reasons were some profound secrets now exposed, so one could sympathise at the very least. But no, the reasons were simple - a matter of law and order, which he says is more paramount than question of security and liberty of individuals that was suspended during the time, which the nation was uncertain for how long, or whether it was going to be forever, with democracy forever gone.

There were many others who spoke in accord with this sentiment about preferring law and order, and this is very reminiscent of those that praised Germany during pre WWII era, for trains running on time. This author went part of the way to support it for those reasons and describes how his publication was suspended for a few weeks, until it was pointed out that the ruling dictatorship could not care less, when he began publication. Perhaps that is to win back approval.

Yes, it is important to maintain law and order, to have trains run on time and streets clean. But at the expense of life and liberty of populace as a whole, no it is not. When people had their homes bulldozed summarily and young people lost chance to have a family without their consent to the process, people simmered with disapproval, and India was fortunate enough in being able to exercise her democratic rights and show the world and the stunned prime minister and her party that the people did care, and used their rights to protect, for democracy.

This author on the other hand had during those years gone on to praise not only the dictator and her action but did - and in various pieces included in various collections - praise the younger son who was, it is believed across India for credible reasons, responsible for the emergency and various actions that wreaked havoc during the time. He however did not limit himself to that, and went ridiculously further.

Now one finds why - his own background is responsible for some part of that. He came from roots that were built on much wealth and much much more bestowed on people due to favours from rulers, rather than achievements of one's own in academic and other fields, and this favoured status brought forth not merely wealth and title and upper class life with all the other privileges that one can see naturally going with it - social connections with other upper class and political persona and hoi polloi generally, including various foreign diplomats and others - but also grants and positions that more deserving candidates ought to have had, and would have done more justice to.

So naturally he saw nothing amiss with praising in national publications young people who had power to back them up in whatever they wished to do and very little qualifications - and if he had praised them in a judicious manner being familiar with them personally, that would be excusable, but no, he had to cross limits of ridiculous where it became apparent it was a court jester perhaps doing a clown act for fear of life and liberty and more, of his wealth and titles and future.

One would see that as the reason and excuse him as India does anyone helpless with fear for family welfare, but here he goes and includes the first piece that mentions law and order as the reason for disapproval of freedom of individuals and democracy in general, and even more, goes on to say he disapproved of a person whose life and work followed that of the so called father of the nation, in opposing a dictatorial rule in peaceful ways of civil disobedience.

Of course, his own privileged and bestowed status being due to bestowal by the colonial rulers who were questionably worse, and his love for the people who broke up the nation and his forever hankering after that broken off piece and the people who were with those that massacred innocents, at cost of insulting and humiliating people of high culture and more, is all in accord with the justification of emergency and praise for the young in power who had done little in way of achievement.

But none of that can be called fair or just or anything remotely of that sort. Then again, he gave up his career in law, had never done well academically, and frankly states that he took up writing about his community as a means to make a career by specialising in something. In that too, he began by translating prayers of his faith, and then went on to denounce all religions and spirituality in general and those that he was not afraid to attack in particular. Attacking Bengal is not as expensive as attacking those across the Northwest border post partition, and their culture or faith. He refrained from indulging in this. It all comes to childhood taboos in his case, and caste as practised everywhere other than India.
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Civilisations, Marauders, Wolves, .... Choices We Make -

Recently there is an outcry about someone making a short film based on, and expounding a little on, a free verse poem titled My Choice. That this poem and this film was a response to the spate of rapes in recent years has been ignored completely by those criticising it for advocating western lifestyle, short clothes, et al; and most retorts consist of male choice for rape being equally valid.

Ever since the rapes began to proliferate one had to wonder if the rapes were not merely the inability of the males involved in finding any women to consort with except by assault and force, however pathetic that is - after all the country has been short of women in significant numbers since people realised economic benefits to small families in doing away with daughters, a policy in fact adopted by the government decades ago to curb population that backfired majorly on humanitarian arena on several levels - but something far more sinister and demonic.

Is it an ever looking to west and north copying action of the illiterate or nominally literate, to try to prove they are not short of taliban like control of the land in general and the women specifically, to try and push them back in homes for servitude in kitchen and bed and general slavery?

For that is a common reaction to any such events by the cowards and the weak amongst men and civilisations, telling women not to go out, give up jobs, not be ambitious, not think of themselves. Having dreams counts as negative if you are a woman, and a woman without dreams declares so proudly, or having had them but not realised any states so anyway, meant to be explicitly derogatory towards - and an example set to - a woman who might have suffered a great deal due to having dreams at all, and worked for them.

So the thinking is, better not dream, have no ambitions, better not go work except if your family is starving and your man incapable and if possible not even then, avoid achievements and personal identity, give up your self, sacrifice it to all men and their demands first and general women next, and be happy if you are not raped.
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But it could be worse.

What if this is not merely a publicity seeking populace's effort to have their acts if not names in papers via the cheapest act possible, rape? What if there is an organised systematic effort behind it all?

Could it be that throwing bombs and general terrorist efforts are no longer enough to satisfy those that would destroy a nation with ancient civilisation still alive and flourishing, neither converted nor finished and dead like others? 

What if it is a conspiracy from those that are not satisfied killing hundreds of innocent civilians and wish to do worse, by pushing women of India indoors due to terror created by repeated rapes of women that step out?

What if this is a move to destroy all progress and more of India by the simple method of attacking her daughters and mothers, via rape and murder, so education and work and careers of women are the first casualty, and civilisation of India the final? For, no civilisations, no marauders have prospered ever, if their mothers are kept illiterate in slavery and ignorance, barefoot and pregnant as the western phrase goes, or KKK as the forties German diktat by the infamous leader.

What if this is a fascist conspiracy, via taliban, using the publicity hungry ignoramus part of the general populace, of those that cannot achieve but want to see their names up there in print and their faces on television? It might no longer be enough for them to try and get on a camera, whether news or someone's wedding or a film shoot, by forcing their face into the camera?

What if this is the new weapon of terrorist attack, more insidious than pamphlets for false propaganda and more deadly than any nuclear weapons?

Ancient India had women who were not merely free to go about and choose their own consorts, but more - they were learned, experts in their work as equal partners in family, and too, able to use debates and win them in public. Then came a thousand years of colonisation by marauders who invaded and massacred, looted, raped and more. This pushed the women indoors, and effects thereof are still visible in the difference between north India and other parts, culturally in every little detail every day.

It is a horror to envision loss of all India regained in a relatively short time thereafter, by reverting to her own soul. 

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Someone has said, civilisations begin with swords and end in violins. This is not an exact quote, because trying to find it rather than going with memory and gist is not worth the effort, but it is true enough. There was a lot more he could have said, but he belonged to a civilisation that was still proud of past swords and not quite there yet with violins, so he did not.

What he did not say is that while achievements are superior to destruction of others achievements, lesser people take solace in doing the latter since they are plagued by jealousy and either unsure of matching them or sure of achieving nothing else whatsoever.

Rape is not very different from massacre of civilisations. Any male confident of finding plenty of attractive mates without lifting a finger will strut along like a peacock, rarely deigning to look at the crowd following him, while those jealous of him and full of hatred for women who would not look at them are the ones that will try to force those women in every way possible - telling them what to do and what not to do, telling other men to control the women, physically assaulting them, raping, and blaming everything on the victims of their crimes.

While all along the fact is the so called men are not qualified for the epithet - for their biggest qualification for the title of loser is their inability to control their own selves. Their lower selves, lower in every way, are controlling them, and their minds and hearts are taken over by the lower instincts of killing others who might be superior while their bodies are dominated by the nether parts.
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The short film gone viral is attacked from all sides - on television and internet alike - post the first stunned shock of "wow!", with most people finding a word here or a shot there to attack conveniently. They claim it is all about wearing less clothes and being sexually not quite what any society approves of, and freedom should be about education and choices should be about being an astronaut.

Those are better, superior options, yes. Why don't most men make those choices, since they have all the choices?

And therein lies the whole point. They have the choices, and make what choices they can. Women are told to make only those choices everyone else will be ok with, which rather makes it a lack of choices and freedom, lack of personhood.

If society, men, women, granted personhood to women, who will take up the slavery without compensations that women's lives largely consist of?

Hence the quaking of the society with fear - for if she today can wear what she likes and make other choices that she wants, and realises this, tomorrow no one is going to be around to pick up after him, to serve him, to take up the slack in providing for his family including him and his parents and siblings and friends and colleagues and other social connections for any amount of time of his and their choice, no one is going to be available to him and his to take out their frustrations on, whether by physical assault or starvation or forbidding her to meet her people and do anything she likes, or by murder when the frustration goes too far.

And there are no repercussions while she does not matter because she is less valuable than a pet that has been paid for, since she in fact paid for the privilege of this slavery, with her life and mind given over and if she is finished off society will not even shed a crocodile tear, but will offer more women with dowries who are more than willing (or those that are offering them are willing to offer them) in taking the place of one murdered.

A male in mid seventies who has beaten his wife to death with an interim of a time when she suffered the same injuries US footballers do with the same consequences, has all the society to help him celebrate his wedding to a willing partner as young as he can get, usually a couple of decades younger if not more, as long as he is willing to allow it. A woman in early twenties is told she would find no one unless she settles, and fast, into a life of lifelong servitude without escape, and far worse if she is not well behaved about it.

And if she persists, in going out and choosing education and work and self reliance, there is always rape and murder.
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The video is attacked on the same basis rape is excused - she was exciting males, wearing short clothes, culturally improper in behaviour, and basically, asking for it. But then a woman covered from neck down to ankles is not safe nor is one too old or too young - infants have been raped as have been old women. Old, not as in fifties, but as old as eighties. Patients in hospitals unable to move or speak have been raped, as have in fact dead bodies.

When does society awake and tell males, it is rape that is evil? When do males inculcate their sons in the real secrets of humanity, so far taught women but left as a choice to take up or not as far as males go?

When does society realise there is no excuse for rape and assault, physical or verbal or emotional, and it merely exposes inferiority of the assaulter, not their superior physical power?
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When wolves begin attacking farms, a farmer might try to find better guard dogs, electric fences, locks and so on. Lock up his fowl in secure airy housing and penning up his sheep in secure pens with guard dogs. What the farmer, or average householder, does not do is to lock up the babies and children - he gets a shotgun and hunts down the threat, and if not by himself then by collecting the village.

For locking up the children is not the answer - the wolf that can get them in your garden can very well enter through the window and get them in their beds, and humans do not lock up their own in secure cages.

When women are being assaulted, they are told explicit;y or implicitly to no longer go out without adequate male protection, no longer seek education or work or enjoyment, but stay at home and serve their lords and masters the males, and if they are kidnapped from home then serve the new lords and masters the kidnappers or buyers. In whatever way the lords and masters choose to demand.

When is it going to be clear that in this the women are being treated more like live property to serve alive or dead, and less like humans that they are? What else is slavery but tolerating this attitude?

What after all is adequate protection, if those that attack are precisely those that one is counting on as one's fellow humans, relatives, friends, partners, colleagues, protectors?

And seriously, which total moron is going to state on penalty of his own life that no woman was ever attacked, raped, murdered, in her own home while she presented herself as completely dressed as possible, from neck down to ankles, or even more, having one's face covered as well?

Anyone who is so foolish as to claim this, is free to swear it on bible and all other holy books, and on all possible gods, on pain of his own blood.
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The film is built on words of a poem and has 99 women who are shot to make up the video footage, and talks about choices. It is not about demanding approval or about telling everyone what to do. It IS about a woman who has a mind and a soul, and every right to make her own choices, right or wrong, and freedom to do so. And that is every woman.

Reducing it to convenient labels of short clothes and immoral behaviour is merely a convenient way to victimise those that assert the freedom, the rights, the right to make choices, the equality of souls and minds.

And that is no different from those that defend rapes with assertions of men being men or boys being boys, or comparing the situation to meat and dogs, or asserting that women who behave properly don't get raped. They do, but then they are conveniently forgotten.

It is only humans that do this to their own females. Every other species alive protects its females. Are humans on top rung of evolution, in attempting to finish of the females of the species one way or another? Is this about extinction being a need of humans?
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Everyone familiar with evolution is aware that apes are further along in evolution than the equines, but few bother to think it over and realise the implications, else they would not brag about nether equipment and difference vis a vis females of the species. For gorillas lack what donkeys routinely, publicly display - donkeys have not only excellent equipment, it borders on two forelegs and a hind tripod when in heat.

This should be a further argument for those that do not realise the relevance, the significance of one's head and heart being far up above the nether end of the torso, and not as connected to the heart as a woman's body in its internal structure - a woman carries a baby under her heart, connected to her whole being, and it is only a male that can conveniently disclaim his own nether parts as if they were not his own sole and exclusive responsibility, but that of every woman on the planet.

But a bank robber is not excused for robbing a bank even though the premises are meant for business of money, nor is a hungry man excused for robbing a place that sells food, much less a home or another person's wallet.

Being unable to control one's own nether parts, for whatever reasons, is no excuse for assaulting another person, however hot or provocative, either physically or verbally or in other twisted ways. Nor is it a justification for any crime.
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Civilisations that vanished due to onslaught of other civilisations were more advanced, not less, and the marauders more primitive, albeit unable to see it, and hence the assaults. Humanity as a whole needs to evolve to where wolves are not given free range while evolved humans are caged in homes or concentration camps and reservations and reduced land areas while wolves keep migrating out from designated forests and into human civilisations and cities.

It is time for farmers to take up shotguns and nets to trap wolves, and push them back, It is time humanity evolved to where it grows into light, rather than allowing humanity to sink back to primitive with fangs bared and babies caged for safety.

If the latter comes to pass, forget beauty and grace, forget music and all other achievements and blessings from above. The only defence for women who do not escape assault and rape even in home in complete accord with all norms prescribed would be to turn around, wear beards and moustaches and even horns, use horrible stinking sprays or even poisonous ones, and if that is not enough, carry weapons of assault - always available in black market or in kitchens of one's homes - and use them when felt threatened.

Or if none of it works and women are still assaulted, nature will let women perish and thereby let humanity go extinct, for humanity that does not defend its own women on par with other half and designates them to servitude does not deserve to survive.
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When Homeland Is in Question - Life's Quandary

A recently read book,

Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits; by Rahul Pandita,

brought forth much anguish and horror of events that are comparatively recent past, which seems to repeat a dark period of recent history, of Europe before WWII and not merely Europe at that. There were horrors in Europe, but there were famines in India and Ireland that were due to armies being fed with harvest taken away from populace, with millions dead. This was done in Ukraine and generally USSR too, with many many more millions dead.

And all this apart from the massacres, the people driven away from homes, the theft of their properties, and more.

These events ought to have stopped post WWII but did not - in fact, it seems people copy such horrors, perpetrate them, and worse. What is more those perpetrators go about with propaganda in force about how they are victims of discrimination and humanitarian rights being violated, by precisely those that they themselves are perpetrating horrors against. What is all the more incredible is, they seem to get away with it.

This book is about one such spot in time and place, Kashmir, and the atrocities perpetrated against Hindus in Kashmir, by outsiders with consent or silence of their neighbours the majority, and it is a history at once personal and universal. The author describes his own and his family's life and story, and others he knew or otherwise, along with a brief description of illustrious history of Hindu populace of Kashmir that faced onslaught, terror, massacres, and worse, for centuries, from invaders who did it in name of their faith but in reality intended only to steal land and other property and kill and rape and loot.

This whole episode that is recent is framed very well in context of the history and geography of such atrocities, committed by these same terrorists and other similar people in the name of this so called faith, through history in Kashmir (and needless to say throughout rest of India as it was before "partition" to give away parts of India to the fanatics), as well as atrocities perpetrated throughout west and central Asia around the same time as they were happening in events focused on in this book.

Kashmir is the northernmost state of India whether before or since the partition, and its proximity to central Asia makes it perhaps more vulnerable. This whole region of central and west Asia has been swept across by various militaries seeking world domination, from Attila the Hun and other Mongols and in between by Arab and Turkic and other invaders. There was a short period in history when the locals were comparatively dormant and European empires were in control, and there was a small chance to establish peace that was missed.

Once it was a political play between various empires, England and Russia and Turkey and France, to control what they variously named Near East, Levant, or otherwise. The objective of the so called Great Game was to control the landmass from Mediterranean to India - that is, India as it had always been understood since antiquity  until 1947, before it was "partitioned" to suit "religious" fanatics who could not live with "others" but insisted anyway on occupying others' lands and then killing them.

This was especially important to England for not losing the so called Jewel in the Crown that was India. So they played it better than others, divided the various lands, and India too before they had to leave. This last bit meant creating a new "nation" that was in no way different from India except it was given over to the fanatics who would kill thousands in name of faith, with really the lust for killing and theft driving them more than anything else, by carving up India and thereby encouraging the killings. India the new, truncated land found it hard to come together but she did, and the thorns or bullets were various pieces dominated by the fanatics either because a ruler was of them (even if majority in that state was not), or else because a good proportion but not necessarily majority was of them (those states where majority were of them were already given to the new carved out portion, whether they wished or not, for example the Frontier Province, now renamed Waziristan, as most parts in the carved out piece are often redivided and at the very least renamed, just so no one could without confusion refer to them).

And this became an immediate danger to newly independent India, what with so called "tribals" revolt in Kashmir, which in reality was nothing but tribals from outside Kashmir - from the newly carved piece of India - being sent along with military support, to destabilise India in every way, beginning with attacks on Hindu populace to continue, after a million or so killed so more could be induced to leave and the new "nation" was limited to one religion.

Kashmir however had a monarch who saw finally the wisdom of accepting India instead of his wish to be separate as a nation, and once accession was signed Indian military could protect Kashmir. This, the new nation of Pakistan understood, could only be changed by the usual tactics of old since a millennia - attack, lie, propaganda, massacres, deny attacks - rather than the new civil ways of UN and appeals.

Kashmir had been at the receiving end of attacks and massacres by muslims from north and west as long as rest of India had, and populations had been massacred and converted at sword point for that millennia and more. And now the case for "majority" of population in Kashmir was made by Pakistan, with no thought to the question of what if India used the same thinking and insisted only majority live in India.

This book is the documented tale of the most recent decades and the horrors suffered by Hindu populations in Kashmir at hands of terrorists, armed with money and weapons provided freely by US that were meant for throwing out USSR from Afghanistan (never mind the reality of the invitation to USSR by the then Afghan ruler to help him control just such Islamic terror in his nation), with false propaganda and more. False, because most Hindus of the northwest and north, or east, were thrown out and had to relocate to India as refugees, only due to massacres they suffered at hands of such terrorists who changed locals, their neighbours and friends, into beasts of horror more often than humanitarian helpers (yes, the latter happened too, and this author acknowledges it as much as any other Indian, including refugees who had to flee for life). If not for such horrors, not only Kashmir but both Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be as devoid of people of other religions as they now are. India has people of more religions than perhaps even the rest of the world and so would have been both these pieces carved out of India.

The horrors faced by Kashmiri Hindus match those of Germany during and before WWII in every way, and the only difference apparent is of organisation - Germans were more organised than anyone else as they always are at everything material; and the terrorists entering Kashmir whether locals converted via sojourn into pakistan for the purpose of terror indoctrination or total strangers from as far as Levant and Africa arriving to wreak havoc on hapless peaceful intellectuals, farmers and people of other such occupations, these terrorists were all too primitive and without any shame about their main purpose being kill, rape, loot.

Importance of this work is of documentation, of these horrors they faced in their homeland in Kashmir, at hands of neighbours and strangers, and also of documentation of the superb history of the Hindu populace of Kashmir and their achievements in realms of knowledge and more.

What is also a horror is how these people's travails were ignored for the two decades that saw propaganda against Hindus in another part of India, and against persecution of muslims of Bosnia. It is as if Hindu were of least importance, not only in an era when US became supreme and Russia lost the great game finally on world stage, but also in their own homeland.

That India is secular is merely due to precisely this characteristic being an integral part of Hindu religion where any path to Divine is considered as good as any other, and conversion an unnecessary idiocy. Fact remains that even if India is officially secular and the only officially Hindu nation is the tiny Nepal, over a billion Hindus of India and diaspora across the world has no other homeland other than India. So this second class citizenship in one's own homeland politically, in fact albeit not de jure, via the rule of past decades and due media falling in step with powers behind on world stage, only makes it a subdued horror for the whole populace on a level that Kashmir Hindus suffered for a long time on a far more open level.

One ought to thank whatever powers made it possible for the author to document this tale, if one cares about such matters as truth, over and above the propaganda and powers and swords dangling at throats if one so cares.