This daughter of Kashmir equipped with far-reaching, far-seeing intellectual prowess, beautifully presents her memoirs pearled in "the tiger ladies". The lady adds flavor by decorating her carefully selected vocabulary with phrases like “unmoving symmetrical breasts, phallic symbols, prostitutes etc.” to generate interest and keep both Indian and western reader in good stead.
Sudha ji being a product of learned caste Brahmins did not have to convert to Islam because she belonged to the elite group of administrators. All other Pandits reverted with the Buddhist King Rinchen en-masse reducing the majority to a minuscule minority, and that is beside the point.
One is moved to see the close relationship the author has with ‘Izmat’ and this feeling for each other irrespective of religious differences is what is required for "most of us to carry on hoping for the best, or sometimes even the impossible, a resolution to everyone’s satisfaction." But then the huge task is to find a solution to please all concerned and maintaining a status-quo that suits a small minority cannot be a viable solution.
Sudha Ji is fortunate to be part of the pack that has always been in the limelight, be it Maharaja Hari Singh’s Prime Minister Ram Chand Kak, Maharaja’s before or later or under respective imposed governments on Kashmir by India. This selected few later spread from Delhi to Kanyakumari to infiltrate and occupy the key and important posts and the departments. "I was appointed lecturer at women’s college. I have become the first Kashmiri women to be selected to the Indian Administrative Service at the age of 25". Having Boab jis, Papa jis , Kotrus, Kouls and Dhars at the helm, it would rather be easy to facilitate entry into any institution or sit for any competitive examination to get through and get selected, all done and dusted. How many Mohammedus, Habibas or Psoriasis-ravaged head farmers were provided with the opportunity to have IAS assisted though now they are spread round the world doing wonderfully well as Doctors, Engineers, Scientists and Economists, even excelling in new subjects like nanotechnology?
Ms Koul prefers the name tiger as she is fundamentally, emotionally attached and fancies the Tiger deity, goddess Durga. perhaps inadvertently brackets the first leader of Kashmiris Sheikh Abdullah as Tiger of Kashmir, though till 1982 he was popularly known as the "Lion of Kashmir" and will be a Lion to historians for all times to come. Kashmiris cannot produce another Sheikh Abdullah for the next one thousand years. The historical blunder of trust he reposed in Pandit Nehru tarnished his image and blemished his name that would, otherwise, be written in gold letters
Where on earth, other than Kashmir, would one enjoy luxuries provided by these"Psoriasis-ravaged head farmers, with bits of mud caked on toes" to fill the granaries that too for a "cup of tea and local bagels served by Muslim servants". It is only in Kashmir that "Mohammedu, at night, could bring a terra-cota basin of salted hot water, wash and pumice the feet of young girls before retiring to their beds, to prevent chilblains". The statement "My grandfather was not a wealthy man, but he lived a rich life." quite befitting reveals volumes.
"Hindus (pandits) habitually garnish their food with asafetida [asafoetida], which many believe comes from pig's feet." Basically this herb has some religious connotations as it is believed to be the food of the gods and is also known as the devil’s dung. Muslims, on the contrary, use garlic for this purpose and is believed to have an aphrodisiac effect which causes the arousal of the mood of sexual desire
"Pakistan has sent the raiders to Kashmir, Kabailis (Pathan tribesmen, angles of doom) are strangers as they do not understand our language and they are foreigners to us. We call Sheikh Abdullah "The Tiger of Kashmir. The Tiger does not really care for Pakistan and joins free India." Ms Sudha’s Tiger was no where in the picture and joining ‘free India’ was a conspiracy hatched by Nehru, Patel and this British-Indian groomed bureaucrat V.P.Menon with the blessings of Lord Mountbatten to coerce, intimidate and threaten Maharaja Hari Singh to sign the instrument of accession and that too when he (Maharaja) had fled to Jammu. It is on record that after getting the paper signed from Maharaja, V.P.Menon returns to Delhi on October 26, 1947 and flashes out the paper before a gathering saying "the b*****d has signed the paper and now Kashmir is ours."Kashmiris as a whole have nothing in common with Indians. It would be interesting to know if Sudha Ji considers Indians as foreigners as well, as they do not understand our language or culture.
"Afghan frontiers-men penetrated the valley....we talked about how in 1947 the Indian army was called in to repel the Afghans." Pakistani’s Kabailis (Pathans) suddenly become Afghans and she goes on to add that "We sent the marauding Afghan tribesmen back in 1947. They had all come to liberate Kashmir from infidel rule, preaching abhorrence of saints and shrine worship, beauty and art, music and love poems, all of which were mother’s milk [maji dodh] to us Hindus and Muslims." While stressing the word "We" she does not mince the words and frankly says "Being Indian is a habit we cannot seem to shake off".
Sudha Ji cannot see Muslims anything other than a Mohammedu, Habiba, Psoriasis-ravaged head farmers or Tangawallas (Tanga in literal English means a frilled bikini) and she prefers to use Tanga as she knows this word has sinister connotations and avoids the name Tonga as this could easily be understood by her target readers of Hindu India and the English speaking Western world.
"The students only want Muslim professors. They threatened us Hindu staff members with dire consequences if we did not resign immediately. Amarnath says, some Muslim men have been arrested because they found a young Hindu boy in the lane next to ours with his stomach slit open and his guts pulled out. The poor fellow was returning home from college and his books lay scattered all over the street. Through the centuries Kashmiri Pandits have undergone several Diasporas to other parts of India because of intolerant foreign Muslim rulers. All Hindu homes are a prime target for destruction by burning, looting and desecration. One fateful day the valley bursts apart at the seams. Frenzied crowds and neighbors have pulled Kashmiri pandits out of their homes and then systematically raped the women in front of their husbands and children, brutally killed all the pandits who were left in the neighborhood, as they tried to take cover."
The above being a concoction, fabrication and figment of imagination, Sudha Ji fails to recognize the fact that over one hundred thousand Muslims stand butchered, hundreds of women raped, hundreds of localities turned into a mound of rubble and then humiliation, torture, loot and plunder, by more than one million strong Indian army, thrown as a bonus in Kashmiri Muslims lot. She also would plead ignorance for the fact that all criminal elements in the State prisons were let loose on local Muslim population, trained in counter-insurgency, equipped with Kalashnikovs and terrorize people to malign and defame militants fighting Indian army, this being plan B of this intriguer, Jagmohan.
"My daughter woke me up to say Mrs. Gandhi has been assassinated and later Rajiv Gandhi, only to be annihilated by a terrorist bomb." She very carefully and discreetly maintains silence by not telling the reader how these mother and son were assassinated as she realized that she will have to talk a lot more about Khalistan and Tamil Eelam "terrorists" and very conveniently manages to confuse the reader by throwing these assassinations in the Kashmir kitty.
"The government of India comes down ruthlessly but unsuccessfully on the militancy. It is letting everything go from bad to worse, and the hatred of the masses for Indian troops and their tactics multiplies. It is true, the talk of rebel Muslim boys being tortured, shot and then thrown into the lakes by government troops. ....Tip of the iceberg......They say that even at the worst of times, Mujahedeen leaders delivered Shivratri supplies to Pandits still living in Kashmir. Some say Muslim neighbors begged the Hindus not to leave but they had to. The self-determination that had been promised to Kashmiris by Nehru can longer be swept under the carpet"
Sudha Koul joins the bandwagon of Muslim Bashers:
Visiting her website, one cannot miss the link "terror in a Distant valley". Anyone interested would hit the link and what one comes across is this "littérateur" ‘Rushdie and his master pieces‘. Sudha ji in a very crafty manner talks about "satanic verses" etc giving an impression that she is overwhelmed with Rushdie’s ‘outstanding literary feats‘ and thinks she could inflict further pain to hit Muslims to derive sadistic pleasure. Again she has failed to realize that Muslims no longer feel this pain as they have understood the game plan and then these Muslim bashers have also understood that it has backfired resulting in more and more people accepting Islam. Sudha Ji has not been honest and fair for the services rendered by these Mohammedus, Habibas, Fatas or the hand of friendship extended by Izmat. One would simply wish Sudha Ji to come out of that cozy American environment and do something positive and create conducive atmosphere to help her hapless poor pundits go back to their respective homes and live comfortably with their Muslim brothers as before. Everyone wants this alien force out of Kashmir and that would and could be the only practical acceptable solution.
Kashmiri PanditsTHE TIGER LADY
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