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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (5919)	10/3/2001 1:48:31 PM
From: blue_lotus	Respond to of 27666

>Do you have a sense of the situation on the ground in J&K? ... do you know to what extent the violence is generated internally, and to what extent externally ... is there cultural mingling and intermarriage ... probably not eh ... do muslims and hindus live in separate areas, separate villages, etc ... are muslims or hindus richer, or is there a difference .... what do you think should happen with these provinces? .... cheers Sorry for the relatively late reply. There is no way I can keep up with this thread...I won't even try :-) I have never been to J&K. Actually; I haven't stayed in India for a majority of my life. But I can tell you that things in J&K are pretty bad... both on the Indian controlled side as well as the Pakistan controlled side. On the Indian side, there is both internal and external elements performing terrorist activities. There are some militant groups with officers from the Pakistani Military too. In the recent Kargil war (/incursion), there were various Pakistani soldiers killed who were given formal Military burial back in Pakistan while the Pakistani government denied its involvement. I am sure that the Indian Army in the State of J&K also has a bad human rights record. They justify it with the same old arguments that it is very difficult to maintain security and civil liberties. In the past years I have read of a lot of Afghan Militants coming into the state and creating problems. The one incident that comes to mind first is their declaration earlier in the year that "Any women found not covering her hair in public will have acid thrown on her face" Though I can not overlook Indian Army human rights violations, the Militants seem to be really bad. One has to remember that the J&K State government is a democratically elected body. The Chief Minister and most of his cabinet are from J&K and are Muslim. Also, J&K has a special position among Indian states (like Texas in U.S.A). When Kashmir formally decided to became a part of India, the Maharaja of Kashmir (Hindu) and the Populist Leader (Muslim) asked the first Prime Minister of India, Nehru (also a Kashmiri Hindu) to put a special status clause in there that basically prevents any other Indian from becoming a resident of Kashmir. Thus, only Kashmiris can own land in Kashmir. This ensures that the population dynamics can never shift in this state by inter-state relocation of people, thereby ensuring that it always continues to be a Muslim majority state. Given the above I don't see why the Kashmiri Muslims can not acheive their goals by working through the democratic system.