So I Just Found This Out About Shiv Charcha. So "charcha" Here Doesn't Just Mean Discussion. It Could

I have always been a Liberal. Even with the India-Pakistan war, I have always scoffed at the people that tried to say that Islam is the problem and not just the extremist, terror cells in Pakistan. I wasn't excited about the idea of a war, but I saw it as the result of literally nothing else working out. I heard about Kashmiri Pandits, but I thought what happened to them was because of the militant groups coming in. I was sure that they'll be helped to go back home in time.

Now the Hindus in West Bengal are being slaughtered.

West Bengal has been one of the leading forces of the freedom struggle in our country. We have had brilliant philosophers, artists, dancers, poets, singers, screen play writers, writers everything from West Bengal. It is a state that produces brilliant intellectuals every year. Liberals and socialists. I don't know if you've ever talked to a Bengali, but they're the most capable, well spoken, talented people you will ever come across. It's the stronghold of the Shaktism sect in India. Ma Durga is revered the most in that land.

And now our people are being slaughtered. Hindus are being driven out of their land by the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and certain extremist Muslims. It's like watching the Kashmiri Pandit exodus in real time. For centuries they've coexisted together with no issues, enriching the culture of Bengal, and suddenly brother has turned to foe. Houses and businesses are being burnt. They're looting people and issuing rape threats to women. People are being killed. They're throwing around bombs. They're attacking the police forces.

This is a land that has embraced refugees and shared everything with them. There was no reason to attack these people.

People had to cross rivers in boats to escape. 500 people had to leave their homes overnight because of the sudden extremists. Only Muslims were spared.

Locals say this has been going on since 2020.

Please, I'm begging with folded hands, keep the Bengali Hindus in your mind. Look at what they're facing. This is scary. If even the Liberal and safe Bengal can be turned overnight, no place is safe. What tf are people supposed to do?

framing hindus as colonizers vs muslims/arabs has to be even dumber than saying jews are not indigenous to the levant.

…do you know how old hinduism is?

“colonizers framing themselves as the oppressed so they don’t have to atone for their crimes told me the actual oppressed are oppressors so i’m just going to believe it without question.”

get a grip 😂 the earth is flat too, right?

people who know history: so arab colonization—

morons on the internet:

The amount of मटका-s and सुराही-s I've broken as a kid and as a teen in summers is insane. I don't know how my parents found the courage to forgive me each time. We used to buy it in UP during summer vacation but never were able to carry it to Mumbai. All thanks to me.

सुराही-s have those intricate details and my mother is fond of such pottery. And I've broken multiple. It's the American equivalent of breaking your mother's favourite vase or favourite china dish

matke ka paani has no right to be so goddamn delicious!

Wow how well manufactured this is smh

Nearly ten days after the Pahalgam attack, watching the various responses to said attack...part of me is shocked, and another confused. Yet another thinks that something like this is inevitable.

Too many people reacted to what is undoubtedly a terrorist attack by channelling their rage and grief into persecuting innocent people because the terrorists asked those they killed to recite the kalma, undoubtedly being Islamic in their origin.

Yes, they were Muslim. Does that mean there should be violence against innocent Kashmiri students because 'Hindu khatre mein hain"? No. Do you know why? Because a large part of why such Islamic organisations sway local sympathies towards them is by the catchphrase "Islamiyat khatre mein hain." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Why wouldn't it? We've heard an alternate religion version of it over TV channels and so-called "news" and "leaders of the free world" screaming Hindu khatre mein hain, khatre mein hain, after all.

So many of us believe it, too.

Why, some of us may ask, shouldn't we believe so? We are Hindus, and we aren't safe even in our own land, our own country. Perhaps we should look deeper into the 'why' of it. So much of violence against us is by ourselves, for daring to be different. Lynching, beating, far more for far too less. So what if someone eats meat? They aren't stopping you from living your life. Why should you put an end to theirs?

But, then, as people who hold power today ask, what about the invaders who invaded India 1000 years ago, 1200 years ago? People whose descendants divide the country today, covet its assets for themselves? Including Kashmir, the jewel of India?

To that is my answer: If that is what you believe, then we should all leave this land. Most of us, at least. None of us are indigenous to the land we live in, except perhaps the tribes in Sentinel island. Other than that, all of us, except for the populations that are tribal/adivasis, probably migrated from somewhere else, simply some time longer ago than 1200 years.

But then, argue some, what about religious texts that speak to tens and thousands of years of ancestry? The Mahabharata, the Itihasas, the Puranas?

In that case, well, might I remind you that Sanskrit is not the single sole classical language that speaks of thousands of years of history? There is the matter of at least one other culture and language that exists alongside. The Sangam literature too speaks of thousands of years. Three whole Sangams, might I mention.

Almost every single ancient culture claims grandiose descent. We do not know how much credence should be given to any of these claims, but, if we are giving credence to one claim, why leave the others behind? Give equal credence, why don't you?

Coming back to 1200 years of "slave mentality" and "coveting territory" I will be paraphrasing words written nearly a 100 years ago by a man who identified as Kashmiri, if not perhaps Hindu, though he rather did admire the title Pandit. He very famously preferred to be known for his scientific temper, possibly a reason why today's rulers loathe this man.

He said, and I paraphrase, that those rulers are not considered foreign rule because there was marital intermixing of races and blood relations, because whatever money was made was spent inside India, because it did not go to another country (Ghori and Ghazni aside, the temple was rebuilt within 50 years, though the 'collective trauma' was first heard of in the British parliament sometime in the 19th century)

People have a beautiful tendency to syncretise, to meld with each other, to form cultures of harmony. Look at each state of India, the cultural plurality (that a homogenous overarching 'desi' identity cannot and will not encapsulate, but this discussion is for another post) especially Kashmir. There is amazing cultural syncretism in their literature, art, architecture, even notions of Kashmiri identity.

There is a unity in diversity. When is this threatened? When a section of the population felt trampled on by the 'high-handed' handling of things (in their own words) by the 'elected' powers (there is widespread allegation of electoral rigging over the years in Kashmir)

In the '80's and '90's it comes in the form of 'Islamiyat khatre mein hain' because at that point, they felt they weren't given the opportunities they should by the Indian Government. There was liberal support from external organisations, and insurgency flourished. The Kashmiri Hindu exodus takes place in these decades, and there is an element of "Hindu khatre mein hain" which is fanned by the government. The following two to three passages are from a report by Human Rights Watch in 1992, during said exodus.

A number of Hindu refugees from Kashmir have subsequently denounced the government for encouraging them to leave under false pretenses. In a letter to the editor of Alsafa in October 1990, some 20 Pandit refugees alleged that: There can be no dispute about the fact the Kashmiri Pandit community was made a scapegoat by Jagmohan, some self-styled leaders of our community and other vested interests ... [T]he plan was to make the K.P.'s [Kashmiri Pandits] migrate from the valley so that the mass uprising against occupation forces could be painted as a communal flare up.... Some self-styled leaders of the Pandit community... begged the Pandits to migrate from the valley. We were told that our migration was very vital for preserving and protecting 'Dharm' [religious integrity] and the unity and the integrity of India. We were told that our migration would pave the way for realizing the dream of Akhand Bharat [undivided India].... We were made to believe that our migration was very important for Hinduism and for keeping India together.... We were fooled and we were more than willing to become fools.205

At the same time, it is clear that many Hindus were made the targets of threats and acts of violence by militant organizations and that this wave of killing and harassment motivated many to leave the valley. Such threats and violence constitute violations of the laws of war, and Asia Watch was able to document many specific cases. • On September 20, 1989, O.N. Sharma, a 47-year-old travel agent from Srinagar found a letter written in Urdu in his mailbox, signed by the JKLF. Sharma told Asia Watch that the letter was addressed to him by name and it referred to him as an "Indian dog." The letter told Sharma to leave the valley by September 27, or he and his family would be killed. At the time, Sharma was living with his wife, two children and his mother.

Again paraphrasing words written very soon after Indian independence. "Minority communities should feel secure in their rights as Indian citizens and that is the part of the majority to ensure. Communalism in all forms is the greatest danger to Indian sovereignty as a whole."

Even today, Kashmiri rights are not ensured. The Indian Army and militant/terrorist bodies have both behaved horribly with Kashmiri women over the years with multiple documented cases of rape still pending action (Human Rights Watch has multiple reports on such cases) and so...such boiling over feels inevitable, on some counts.

The Kashmiri people deserve a voice in their own fate.

@scribblesbyavi bhaiyya, you may like to read this.

ध्यायामि शीतलां देवीं, रासभस्थां दिगम्बराम् ।

मार्जनी-कलशोपेतां शूर्पालङ्कृत-मस्तकाम् ॥

already pakistan and its terrorist supporters have tried to mediaplay themselves as the victims of india when time and time again pakistani homegrown terrorists have attacked indians and hindus particularly. they show up in crowds of thousands for funerals of terrorists. their own celebrities are pushing terrorist propaganda on social media and threatening to shoot any indian.

what it comes down to is an innate hatred of hindus, the same hatred that fueled pahalgam. that is why pakistani armed forces once again killed innocent indians in J&K today - they don't give a fuck about kashmiris they just want their land and power to grow more terrorists. the same country that gave osama bin laden a home denies 24x7 that they do not harbor any terrorists when multiple sources including UN and USA have identified hundreds. the mumbai attack perpetrators still roam freely in pakistan. balochistan everyday is fighting back against them. they have killed hundreds of afghani children and women. they have wiped out sikh and hindu minorities from pakistani controlled lands. anyone who supports their cowardice and fuels islamic rhetoric against hindus and india is disgusting. they are not the victims but the perpetrators of violence.

How brainwashed do you have to be to not see the truth.

Fellas what were those terrorists looking for when they asked the men to pull down their pants? The Aadhar Card?

सीता नवमी

मैथिली जानकी सीता वैदेही जनकात्मजा ।

कृपापीयूषजलधिः प्रियार्हा रामवल्लभा ॥

There's this sohar for Sita Janam that you guys should listen to. It is in Awadhi.

Ik how it might have come across.

But look at it this way —

Muslims must have come along with the Mughal and turks and persians and settled in India. How? By years of massacred hindus and stole their lands. And yet their crimes are to be somehow made invisible and they are given a minority status. And they continue to commit those crimes. They continue to benefit from the crimes their ancestors committed.

Upper caste in India have committed the crime of casteism. We hold them accountable for it. There are caste based reservations to help the lower castes.

Muslims in Kashmir kicked out Kashmiri Pandits. Is that justified because they are upper caste? Do the Muslims deserve the minority status and the special rights? After all the crimes they've committed.

We don't say "not all muslims" even though they all benefit from the crimes some of them commit. They still deny us from our religious lands. They still occupy stolen lands.

Don't blame all Kashmiris and Indian Muslims for terrorism. Okay ji.

But blaming all UCs for 5000 years of history is alright? Building a system which denies equal opportunities for ordinary general category Indians citizens is also acceptable?

How does that work?

You've read Middlemarch? No one in my friend circle has. And no one would given how long it is.

U know the book is good when you start the review like this.