Dear Pakistan,
Beautiful Kashmir. I met a lot of wonderful people when on my many trips there. I asked so many whose families were divided by Pakistani occupied Kashmir, how they feel? And each one would tell me India provides so much more money to them in Kashmir, than Pakistan do in the occupied territory where their families are, where like Israel in its occupied territories have evicted natives by flooding it with those from Pakistan.
India is a miracle of religious diversity. No other country in the world has such religious diversity. None. Yet it's secular by constitution. Not a theocracy or religious republic, which would not be surprising if it were - certainly for this part of the world.
All minorities rely on the goodwill of the majority. Hindus world over know that only too well. Including in the Britain.
Old maps show India or 'Hindoostan' as it's been known for centuries with no occupied territories. Academics even call it 'Greater India' to describe the regions to Cambodia and Laos.
It can't be wiped out. We are in the engravings in the walls. You can blow up the statues, but we are in your food, in your thoughts.
That Pakistan, a religious Republic, today thinks it can comment on the Indian Constitution, shows the extraordinary arrogance of the nation and the total lack of gratitude.
If it were not for the ‘Hindu Nationalists’ it decries today, then the Hindu Nationalists of yesteryear were the ones thanks to whom Pakistan came to existence. Pakistan was not a gift of Britain. It did not exist, unlike India, unlike Hindustan, unlike Bharat, before 1947.
The Indian has the right to say, before all of you this land was mine. By lineage this is my land. I claim it by birthright. This is my land. To those squatting upon the land of my Fathers. I claim it. By precedence this is my land. I claim it. Shame on you to desecrate the consecrated. My Gods live on this land. For the ashes of my Fathers and the temples of my Gods I claim it. All of us everywhere in the world who have suffered at the end of an invading sword or imperial pen, we are all Hindustani Kashmiris. All of us, whose ancestors faced the choice, to convert or die, we are all Kashmiris.
And Britain which fights ISIS in Iraq and Syria, knows too, it has the spirit of Hindustani Kashmiris – not to bow down at the end of a sword.
I am reminded of my trip a few years ago to India after visiting the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistani Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the Wagha border with Pakistan in Amritsar. ‘Here, in this place, they call it Hindustan, they call it Bharat’ I thought to myself as I approached the Indian border with Pakistan at the Wagah crossing to see the daily parade. Soldiers stomped their feat, Vanda Mataram blasted through the loud speakers, as young girls ran with billowing Indian flags larger than themselves and the families shouted ‘Jai Hind’. I must have stood ten feet tall.
In Bharat there is no line of control. In Bharat we look at the Himalayas of Kashmir and know for 5000 years without dispute, they are a part of Bharat. Governments invaders imperialists come and go but Hindustan is eternal. As Kennedy said 'ich bin ein Berliner' (I am a Berliner) so we say 'I am a Kashmiri' .
