Farce of Stone Pelters of Kashmir
Kashmir and the situation there – all the way from how it is articulated to how it is portrayed and to how it is handled – is full of hypocrisy and wreaks of nauseating cliches with no basis in facts.
In all this drama, the facts and fiction (which are probably now in the ratio of 20:80 proportion) have been combined so well that all this nonsense is dished out as the complete facts.
A few months back, the entire social networking world was abuzz with the news of how – obviously the “unfortunate” – Kashmiri Muslim youth were fighting ONLY with stones against the – obviously – Dastardly Indian forces. And the latter were busy shooting them down. All the activists in India and outsides who run “Rent-an-Agenda” lifestyles to earn their living – like Arundhati Roy, Shuddhabrata Sengupta etc., were busy showing how their hearts bled for Kashmiris.. nay Kashmiri Muslims! For they were fine throwing the Pandits out of their venues anyway. (read Hypocrisy of the Kashmir Situation for more on that)
The corner stone of the New-Age Islamic invasion of Kashmir and acquisition of the Indian territory was the local school boy stone pelter. The stone pelter was supposed to be a naive, simple bumpkin who was simply asserting his/her rights against a tyrant army.
Well, truth is not as it was supposed to be laid out by the Pakistani agenda makers and the Indian “Rent-an-Agenda” enthusiasts. It now seems clear that these stone pelters had no “kashmiriyat’ at heart. Instead, they were being financed by the Hurriyat, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Needless to say the aim of these masters of stone pelters was clear. Just that the activist world, blind as it is just fell willingly in to their laps. Discretion and research not being their greatest strength anyway.
The money was coming via extortion of businesses in Kashmir itself! Every pelter got Rs 400 every Friday.
Jammu and Kashmir Police on Monday claimed to have unearthed a nexus between fruit dealers and saw mill owners, and the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference that funded stone-pelting in Sopore in north Kashmir. “Maximum chunk of this money came from the fruit mandi and the saw mills through extortion,” DIG, north Kashmir, Muneer Khan, said at a press conference in Sopore
And it is not a small operation that we are talking about. There were stone pelting cartels which got money ranging from Rs 5-8 lakhs and separate money was paid to groups who collected stones.
Several youths are also operating ‘stone pelting’ cartels funded by separatist organisations and some political parties, sources say, adding that business worth lakhs of rupees is usually generated through this activity.
Stone pelting was a economic or at best a religious act not a righteous one! And there is a difference between the two.
And under this entire facade an entire fidayeen attack was being planned as well, which was confirmed by the huge cache of arms recovered from those arrested.
One often wonders when and how will we get to a point in Kashmir when we can start talking sense?