India proposes segregated Hindu settlements in Kashmir

Srinagar protest vs Hindu resettlement (REUTERS:Danish Ismail) May 30 2016

A few days ago I posted this photo of a recent protest in Srinagar against India’s plan to resettle thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, known as Pandits, in Kashmir.

The flight of 60,000 Pandit families in 1990 (about a year after the Indian military occupation of Kashmir in 1989) is frequently used by Indian nationalists to discredit the Kashmiri struggle, including in discussions on my wall.

I had not studied the Pandit issue & tried to correct that but my sources were inadequate. I should have discussed better sources with my Kashmiri friends on FB to get an understanding but regrettably did not. Just as Israel, the US, & media portray Palestinians as terrorists, India portrays Kashmiri Muslims as terrorists to justify the occupation. Many sources portray the flight of Pandits as a result of Muslim extremists or even as an ethnic cleansing but if you think about it, that explanation makes very little sense in the context of India’s massive military occupation of Kashmir.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ultra-conservative government with close ties to Hindu nationalist groups has proposed resettling Pandits in separate colonies. Activists oppose segregated settlements dividing Kashmiris by religion. Although a minority in Kashmir, Pandits were/are socially integrated & mingled with Muslims for decades. So Pandit-only settlements are clearly a divisive tactic to create conflict & as a weapon of Hindu nationalism.

This is an important issue & clarity about it cannot wait until my research catches up. So it would be invaluable for Kashmiri activists to explain the issue to us. Please don’t take umbrage at our ignorance. We’re working on it.

(Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

Got called a Manichean today for criticizing the Dalai Lama’s Islamophobia & xenophobia. It’s been awhile since I was au courant on the different heresies so I had to look it up. It says Manicheans see things in black & white rather than contextualizing. Does contextualizing mean writing at great length & using big words to parse the rubbish coming out of the Dalai Lama’s mouth?

Don’t ask me to contextualize. It takes too long & bores me silly. Most of us detest equivocation. It’s easier to take sides with the oppressed & leave the mumbo-jumbo & apologetics to others. So you can call me Manichean but I’m betting the heresy is overcrowded. Either you stand with the oppressed or you blither on the sidelines contextualizing out of both sides of your ass. Most of us prefer justice.

The xenophobia & shameful Islamophobia of the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is worshipped as a demigod & addressed as “Your Holiness.” When he speaks of kindness & compassion & the oneness of all living creatures, his acolytes around the world swoon in harmony because they think he means it. Very much like the acolytes of Bernie Sanders. But there comes a time when hero worship falls apart. Or should. A time when abstract pieties & empty rhetoric don’t cut it.

In the era of genocide & sweatshops everybody has to make an accounting to political realities. What the Holiness guy is spouting about refugees in Europe can hardly be called abstract pieties. He told German media “there are too many refugees in Europe”; that “Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab country”; & that “From a moral point of view…the refugees should only be admitted temporarily.”

His Holiness is stroking nationalism, white supremacy, xenophobia & the most racist & backward forces in European society. He doesn’t even come close to compassion, let alone international law governing refugee rights to asylum. He’s not just a feudal avatar. He’s a defender of barbarism. But he does it with such finesse. Drawing on the immortalized, cliched empathy of Bill Clinton, His Holiness said, “When we look into the face of every single refugee, especially the children & women, we can feel their suffering.” That must be so comforting to them that he feels their pain while lobbying for their deportation.

His Holiness, my ass! Beware of false idols. A guy who admires George Bush, kisses the hand of Shimon Peres, & campaigns against refugee rights doesn’t know compassion from horse manure.

The Dalai Lama joins the left messiah Slavoj Zizek, who rants similar views on refugees & calls it Marxism, & Bernie Sanders who says undocumented immigrants ‘threaten the foundations of the nation-state’ & calls it a political revolution. And so another one bites the dust.

(Photo is Dalai Lama in his Mother Teresa pose)