Month: January 2011

There have been some awkward developments in Kashmir in recent weeks. The APHC leader Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat has made some unusual statements recently saying that time had come to speak the truth. The learned Professor may agree that he has not made any disclosures in the real sense of the term; both, the informed elites as well as common masses in Kashmir know fairly well what has been going on in Kashmir for the past 21 years, who did what and why. Prof. Bhat should be knowing it fully well that in politics what is said is as important as when it is said, and even where. This is because political people understand things by their whole being, their faith, emotions, outlook, ideology, but they do things (speak out or any other action) on the basis of calculation.

Extremism has become a part of the modern day political vocabulary, but most often the word is used, rather misused for political purposes. It is because of this gross misuse of the word that the underlying concept is either totally misunderstood or least understood. Actually one would tend to disregard the need to understand the underlying concept, simply because there is nothing the word really stands for; it is simply the political motive of the user that determines the meaning of the word. For example, India would call anyone who calls it an occupier, or does something to force it out of Kashmir, an extremist, although there is no extremism involved here. As such, one might perhaps conclude that extremism is simply a label of convenience, and does not stand for anything definite in the real world. This, however, will be a hasty and erroneous conclusion.