Indian "Liberals" and the plight of Hindu and secular Muslim Kashmiris
I run a small consulting company based in New Delhi, India with clients in India, United States, China, Japan, and Western Europe. My operations require me to sometimes travel to my client locations. I enjoy these travels, not only because they allow me to meet old friends of mine living in these countries, but also because these trips also allow me to accomplish an additional purpose: observing various cultures worldwide and picking up insights into how the world works and how things are changing that we Indians may benefit from.On a recent trip to the United States I was in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco for about a week each. I met several old friends in all three areas. In New York I saw a lot of good-looking young white American girls with clipboards and flyers were standing on busy street intersections and cheerily accosting passing strangers saying "Hi ! How are you doing ?"
I observed and talked to quite a few of them to find out what they were doing. It seems that most of them are school-going or college-going kids working this job in the summer for extra pocket-money.
When they accost people, about one-third of the people don't even respond and just walk by impassively.
The other 66% smile back. Then the girl says, again with a big smile on her face, "Do you have a minute for the Environment ?"
The question is carefully designed (by the charity that employs her) to make you feel guilty. If you say no, you'll have to admit that you are so selfish that you can't even spare a minute for something so important as the environment.
These same charities also employ good-looking girls because they know you would be more likely to pay her money (to look unselfish and environmentally-conscious and good and liberal and progressive and all things nice) than to some 6 foot tatooed long-haired and baggy-clothed dude, or to a fat middle-aged sorry-looking guy.
Also, note that she is not really asking for just a minute. She wants more than just a minute of your time. What she wants is more like $10 or $20 in donations for whatever environmental group has employed her as as street-side fund-raiser.
At the busy New York intersection, where she finds a new person walking in her direction that she chooses to greet (judging to be someone likely to donate) every 20 seconds, if she can get a third of them to give her only $20 each after spending even as much as five long minutes telling them about "global warming", she would collect about $240 every hour for her employers. Not a small amount of money at all.
Anyway, back to the story; we had got to the point where the girl said, with a big smile on her face, "Do you have a minute for the Environment ?"
At this point about half of these people, or 33% overall, admit that they are selfish enough not to have even one minute to spare for the environment, excuse themselves, and move on. The remaining half, or 33% overall, stop and pick up flyers on climate change, sign up for the charity's email newsletters, and quite a few of them make small (usually $10 to $20) cash donations on the spot.
I asked some of my Indian-American friends what they thought about this phenomenon.
Quite a few passionately supported this environmental initiative. These were usually people who identified themselves with the Democratic Party, and considered themselves "liberal" or "progressive", having been brought up on a lifetime of leftist (socialist or communist) propaganda spoon-fed to them from birth in the form of Indian school textbooks.
I asked them why they were so concerned about the environment. They responded that they had seen news reports every day about how "global warming" was "melting the Arctic and Antartic ice" and causing "rising sea levels" which (they think) will soon lead to submergence of coastal areas of various continents under the ocean waters.
I asked them if all this information was obtained from the news reports only, or if any of them had spent any time reading any scientific articles on this subject. A small minority had, and the vast majority had not.
Tomorrow if the media stops talking about "global warming" and talks more about the "impending deadly bird flu pandemic" instead, presumably most of them will switch from worrying about "rising sea waters" to worrying about bird flu.
A small minority was sceptical about this whole environmental hulla-bulloo. These were mostly people who used to believe in global warming purely because of everyday media coverage, but had later spared some time to actually study less popular and more scientific sources like articles in Science, Nature, and other major scientific journals. From these studies they had come to the conclusion that there was no definite proof that human beings were responsible for heating up of the earth (as opposed to natural causes that come in cycles that cause Ice Ages to come and go), and that while ice always breaks off into icebergs from the edges of the Arctic and Antarctic ice blocks (and more ice forms at other parts of these ice blocks through deposition), there was no definite proof that more ice was melting than was being formed. And that there was no proof that sea waters had risen at all in the last 50 years or more.
I asked people in the first group whether they were at all concerned about the plight of the Kashmiri Hindus Pandits who had been evicted from their ancestral homeland in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani terrorists who have carried out an armed terrorist campaign of murder, rape, kidnapping, and torture against them since 1989, causing 300,000 of these Kashmiri Pandits to be forced to live in refugee camps (tents without proper toilets, with no job opportunities for the refugees, or schools for their children) in Delhi and Jammu.
The people in the first group (environmentalists or liberals or progressives) said that they were more concerned about global warming than about Kashmiri Pandits. They justified this saying that if global warming causes rise in sea water levels, then far more people might die due to flooding of coastal areas or major continents, far more than 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits.
I found this a ridiculous argument.
If global warming leads to rise in sea water levels, then a lot of people will suffer. True.
But there is no evidence of this happening yet. Even if it does happen, it will take a lot of time for something of that magnitude to happen. The oceans are REALY big. It will take a LOT OF ICE, many trillions of tonnes of ice, to melt before sea levels can rise even by a millimetre.
Nobody knows if this is happening at all. Nobody knows how many CENTURIES will be gone before sea levels rise by even one millimetre, if they do so at all.
Worrying about this hypothetical problem that MAY HAPPEN at some indeterminate point in the future seems a neat trick to avoid having to concern oneself about more IMMEDIATE problems that HAVE ALREADY HAPPENED, like the 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits who have been living with their wives and kids in tents outside Delhi for the last 17 years, with no jobs and no schools for their kids.
And the 100,000 more Kashmiri Hindus and moderate, non-fundamentalist, peace-loving and secular Kashmiri Muslims loyal to India who have died in Jammu and Kashmir already in 17 years of Pakistani terrorism since 1989.
An entire culture is being WIPED OUT.
And the liberals and progressives don't have time to worry about it, because they have more important things to worry about.
Like Climate Change, and the Environment.
I have nothing against American liberals choosing to focus on climate change rather than care about the plight of Hindu and secular Muslims in Kashmir. Americans are justified in not caring about what happens to victims of Islamic terrorism in South Asia.
The purpose of this article is to expose the Indian (including Indian-American) "liberals". They have no excuse for ignoring the real and immediate tragedy in Kashmir today and clamouring about a HYPOTHETICAL danger that global warming MAY cause to our environment sometime in the next several centuries.
Environment my foot. They are simply using it as an excuse to avoid having to confess that they don't care a damn about the humanitarian disaster that has been wreaked upon the Kashmiri Pandits and on the secular and moderate pro-India Kashmiri Muslims by Islamic terrorists trained in and directly armed and oherwise supported by the terrorist state Pakistan.
These self-proclaimed "liberals" and "progressives" are not liberal or progressive at all. They are directly aiding and abetting Islamic fundamentalism that if unchecked, will pose a danger fo Humanity far larger than that ever posed by Nazism.
They are thus clearly acting against secular, moderate, liberal, and progressive interests.
They are hypocrites of the worst kind.
They call themselves "liberal" and "progressive", but they are actally allies of Al Qaeda. We should expose them for what they are, not let them hide themselves under fancy labels they have given themselves.
I came up with a neat trick to counter these hypocrites. As I walked down the busy sidewalks of New York periodically being accosted by the good-looking white college-girls who want to talk to me about the environment as their summer job to earn some extra pocket-money, I respond in a way none of them ever expected.
When they smile and say "Hi !", I smile back. When they ask "Do you have a minute for the Environment ?"
They think I will feel too guilty to say I don't. Instead, I ask "Do you have a minute for Kashmiri and Bangladeshi Hindus ?"
I have started doing the same with my self-proclaimed "liberal" and "progressive" hypocrite friends. When they tell me about their pet leftist charities that raise money for Pakistan earthquake relief, or for communist charities that run libraries carrying Marxist and Maoist propaganda in Indian villages, I respond right back asking them to contribute to a relief fund for Kashmiri Hindus.
None of them have ever donated a single paisa or a single cent for any Hindu relief cause, such as in Jammu and Kashmir and Bangladesh.
They never will. They are too "secular" and "liberal" and "progressive" to do so.
As we know now, they are nothing but allies of Al Qaeda, either on purpose or not. They are the Quislings of the new century.
posted by Harsh Vardhan @ 3:58 pm
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1 Comments:
you are wonderful . May God bless you
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