The Gandhian-Congress approach and it's flaws.

M. K. Gandhi is deemed the father of Nation and many people very readily accept this. And many people in utter naivete identify as Gandhians too. But, isn't this the result of a very simplistic reading of history and our freedom struggle? At a time when people are free to think what they want, they should make sure that they don't make reason and logic suffer in the guise of freedom of speech. No, doubt we are all free to speak our minds, but this doesn't mean that we don't be fair to the truth. And of what I make of history, Gandhi is simply overrated. Although I find a major portion of his philosophy quite kaput, but there are two aspects I'm very particularly critical of, those are his role in the freedom struggle and his theory of 'non-violence'.

The Generation Jump

Generation gap (noun); a difference of attitudes between people of different generations, leading to a lack of understanding.

It’s natural that two people of different major age groups have a difference in their ways, whether it be their spirit, aptitude, reaction, attitude, calm and almost every aspect of one’s personality. There weren’t enough of repercussions of the generation gap as serious as are nowadays, so this term was never of as much importance as it’s of today.

Despite the fact that we lag behind a generation or two from the western world when it comes to social life, individualism and individual autonomy, nowadays the youth are exposed to the kind of lifestyle the people in west practice, through movies, songs, books, media and all. There is a major cultural exchange underway. These sources offer a great insight to the western world, and the thoughts of individual’s freedom of deciding his own future, the liberty to do whatever one feels like to do, to live independently without any interference from elders and family and many other liberties which aren’t prevalent in majority of the South Asian societies, find a great sense of acceptance amongst the youth and affect their thoughts and attitude majorly.

Once these thoughts get instilled in the mind of young people, they are excited to redeem the same for them from their backgrounds as well, now a point worth mentioning is that most of the people in their families are not familiar to these thoughts at par and are hence reactive. This is the point where the problem really starts.

Kashmir; A Local Account

In almost last two months nearly about 100 citizens have lost their lives at the hands of the security forces, agitating the encounter of the slain Hizb militant Burhan Muzaffar Wani. Here in Jammu, just another part of the same state the popular reaction is diagonally opposite, to the people here and almost throughout rest of India he was a terrorist but to the people of Kashmir he was a militant and a freedom fighter but a terrorist, here a mark of confusion is more literal in sense than that of narrative, maybe these two words  “Terrorist” and “Militant” have quite same resemblance but actually have totally different meanings, A Militant is a person who has taken up arms for some purpose, can be good as well as bad but at the other hand Terrorist means a person who terrorises others for eg; to a school going kid a bully is a terrorist or to an innocent farmer a land grabber is a terrorist, So the point here is about  the difference in characters of the same actors in respect to different  audiences.

Birth of a Revolutionary

"My life has been dedicated to the noblest cause, that of the freedom of the country. Therefore, there is no rest or worldly desire that can lure me now", these were his words in his letter to his parents.

His father and uncles were members of the Ghadar Party, led by Kartar Singh Sarabha and Har Dayal. His uncle was forced into exile due to pending court cases against him while Swaran Singh died at home in Lahore in 1910 following his release from jail. Born into a family of patriots he was destined to lay down his life for the noble cause whenever needed, but he made his span of 24 specifically marked and admired.

Jammu and Kashmir; A strange union.

 Jammu Division

     

It all started in 1846 i.e. when the erstwhile princely state of  Jammu & Kashmir was founded by the then ruler of the state, Maharaja Gulab Singh. With the decline of the Sikh empire, the Dogras started enjoying more autonomy over the Jammu region  and slowly got complete hold of the Jammu region and then adding to the expansion of the newly found kingdom many areas were annexed to its geographical boundaries, such as Gilgit and Baltistan and Kashmir, and hence the Princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was formed.