My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

Jammu and Kashmir Politics : A Troubled History By  Deepak Parvatiyar October 30, 2014 elections.in The  Jammu & Kashmir elections  are all about the Abdullah family; the politics of (now defunct) Jamat-e-Islami; boycott calls by separatist bodies, and terrorism! Frequent low to average turnouts in the Valley following terror threats by Pakistan-sponsored militant outfits, and allegations of rigging are the two other prominent features of elections. Early J&K Politics (1950s-1970s) – dominated by Sheikh Abdullah Political parties in J&K allege that the Centre has always sought to control the politics of the state by proxy. In 1953, the legendary Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed as Wazir-e-Azam (Prime Minister) of Jammu and Kashmir by the then Sadar-e-Riyasat (Head of the State) Dr Karan Singh (son of the erstwhile ruler of the state, Hari Singh) and arrested following charges of collaborating with Pakistani to overthrow the Government wi...

FREEDOM FROM VIOLENCE: UN is the only hope By Deepak Parvatiyar* (This article was published in October 2014 issue of People And UN journal) W Averell Harriman, a prominent American diplomat and politician, wrote in his introduction of The Twentieth Century –An Almanac: “Ours is the most hopeful and most fearful of centuries. Individual determination took explorers to the North and South Poles in the first decade; collective ingenuity took Americans to the moon before the seventh ended.But in between those great moments of daring and faith, political savagery brought the deaths of millions upon millions of soldiers in two world wars and millions upon millions more civilians in Hitler’s camps and Stalin’s, in Guernica and Coventry, in Dresden and Hiroshima, in Ottomon Turkey, Indonesia, Burundi, Biafra, Cambodia. Medicine conquered the worst diseases – measles, smallpox, malaria, polio,tuberculosis – that had ravaged earlier generations, but man remained seeming...