FJ Kashmir

inam ul rehman    If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires Kashmir is the graveyard of reputations. The latest example of this is the Jamaat-i-Islami . From violently taking on the Indian state from 1990 to 2019 to its final meltdown, or the National Conference challenging the rule of the Indian state on Kashmir to finally acceding to it, Kashmir has seen many others crumbling under their own inflated weight.    As the present “panel head” of the banned Jamaat-i-Islami finally said publicly his party is ready to contest elections, adding it never issued boycott calls. One wonders why this politico-religious party lies so much? Officially the party endorsed election boycott calls throughout the 90s well upto 2014 ( https://kashmirlife.net/ jamaat-e-islami-supports- geelanis-poll-boycott-call- 48486/ ). (If the Jamaat hadn’t pulled out its website one could have easily show them their past statements. But there is still a vast digital repository where one can find...

    i nam ul rehman                                      Book: Those who stayed: the Sikhs of Kashmir   Author: Bupinder Singh Bali Publisher: Manjul India   Pages: 285   While reading Siddharth Gigoo’s latest book “ A long season of Ashes ” it came to my mind: why haven’t Kashmiri Sikhs written a book on their survival? Kashmiri Muslims have written on the conflict, so have Pandits. But Kashmiri Sikhs? No way.    As I finished Siddharth’s engaging book, I surfed the net to explore my curiosity, and fortunately “Those who stayed: the Sikhs of Kashmir” came up. Written by a 35-year-old Sikh youth, who returned to Kashmir as a PM package employee in 2011, this candid book is a part memoir, and part historical. It is almost written in the same vein as Siddharth Gigoo’s.   Bupinder Singh Bali starts the book from a phone call he receives on October 7,...

Book: Love Jihad and Other Fictions: Simple Facts to Counter Viral Falsehoods Authors: Sreenivasan Jain, Mariyam Alavi, Supriya Sharma   Publisher: Aleph Book Company Pages: 205 inam ul rehman Whenever I hear “love jihad” I often laugh at this oxymoron term used by Hindutva groups in India . A Muslim man or a woman is forbidden to enter into any relationship before marriage. So, there cannot exist any “love jihad”. However, no matter how much you drill this point the Hindutva groups will not relent in using this terminology.     The Hindutva people ascribe everything wrong in India to Muslim conspiracy. The Congress party for long has been described as “appeasing Muslims” while as the fact is that Muslims, which constitute 14 percent of Indian population are marginalised in every sector.  The Congress party other than offering lip service didn’t do anything for Muslims. Muslim percentage in government jobs is abysmal, their representation in state assembli...

  Book: Echoes of experience   Author     : Dr Arshad Hussain Khuroo   Publisher: BlueRose One   Pages: 186  inam ul rehman   “Our kids,” writes Dr Arshad Hussain Khuroo in his self-help book “learn more from the internet than from us.” On the same page he trenchantly writes, “ More likes on a Lie , is considered as a Truth in social media.”    Once a while one must read a self-help book to reinvigorate oneself. It is not that we don’t know or haven’t experienced what is written in these self-help books, but it is to refocus our energies on important things rather than on clutter. Dr Arshad, born in Sopore , has been working as a leading scientist in India’s largest pharmaceutical industry, Sun pharmaceutical industries limited , for the past 25 years.  Here he leads “a team of 275 scientists scattered across different functions and the globe”.    “When one person in the team makes his or her individual goals more imp...

inam ul rehman     On teachers’ day (it is not a universal teacher’s day, different countries celebrate it on different dates) it is normal to see write-ups about teachers, without naming them, or if someone names them s/he makes sure that the teacher has retired. What is the fun of writing such banal stuff. By not naming our teachers (who are still teaching) who inspired us, or taught us in a diligent way we are giving free rein to bad teachers or those who slam down students making them fearful to question or argue anything.     Our writing should remind those bad teachers that you would not get away with your awful teaching. You will be called out.   Our writing should also help good teachers to improve upon and pat them even if their contemporaries try to put them down.        But, how do you say a particular teacher impressed, or inspired you? Myriad reasons, but no particular answers.  In our educational career, only a f...