Read way below for an account of the ‘Catch and Release’ from the WP.
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So this 38-year old Wing Commander of the Indian Air Force was let go by PM Imran in an unexpectedly nice gesture coming from a country that sends ‘nice’ very seldom.
God bless Mr Khan.
This said, I don’t know about you all, but from where I sit, this is the way I see it.
The Spot where The Great Sage Valmiki sat in a motionless state, to comprise the Epic known as Ramayanam, and the region where Pundit Nehru was born, and that has a Capital City named Sri Nagar, where Sri is the Hindu/Sanskrit word for God, belongs to India in its entirety.
Sure, when the Partition took place in 1947, on M Jinnah’s insistence and to the heartache of Mohandas, Kashmir had Absolute Majority Muslims. no argument there.
But that tells only a smidgen of the story. How it came to be this, Absolute Majority that is, is the Other Story.
It became that only because, one of the biggest invaders of all time, next perhaps only to Genghis Khan, Babr arrived in 900 something AD, galloping through the Khyber pass, and conquered the beautiful Jammu Valley that was inhabited by a peaceful group called the Pundits, and forcefully converted a whole bunch of locals by the sword, and marched further South to eventually cover the whole of South Asia.
And they never really left until his great, great, great, grandson Aurangzeb lost the ‘moghuldom’ by his sheer ineptitude.
And now conveniently ‘they’ claim it’s ‘theirs’. Oh, brother.
The most recent conflict was catalyzed when 40 Indian Army Personnel were killed in their own land, protecting their own territory.
While India has its huge share of mos-ues, pak has no Hindu Temples, and no Churches to speak of. And liberals see no problem with it.
Pakist– should, at the least, claim the Rohingyas and the Uighurs as their own, so that these groups can practice religion in their own religious habitat, and don’t have to claim discrimination and worse, by peaceful Buddhists, tolerant Hindus, and the not-so tolerant Chinese!
That’s all the Jews in Palestine, Hindus in India, and Buddhists in Myanmar are trying to do: safeguard a place where one can practice the indigenous religion without ‘new arrivals’ trying to upend it. They don’t go anywhere else, and infiltrate, dominate, proselytize and spread.
I can’t figure it out. if you do, let me know.
Whenever I talk like this, some of my ‘benefactors’ will point out how India has ‘changed’ in terms of religious tolerance. Perhaps so.
But the way I reminisce is, India is a country where I grew up in a strong Christian household and went to church less than a mile from our house, where I was baptized with a Christian name, went to a Christian school where daily classes started with a lesson from the Holy Bible, and where I was married according to Christian Rites. I mean, this counts for a lot.
As always, I’m willing to hear opposing views as long as you don’t yell at me, and call me whatever.
below is the WP piece.
It’s another snow day in Massachusetts. but it’s March so I’m marching forward…
mercy
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By 
Niha Masih March 1 at 9:21 AM
NEW DELHI — He parachuted out over enemy territory. Fired in the air to keep back angry locals. Jumped into a pond and then destroyed documents by eating them.
That’s what Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, an Indian fighter jet pilot, reportedly did after his plane crashed in Pakistan territory on Wednesday. He also may have helped defuse one of the worst crises between the two nuclear armed neighbors in decades.
The pilot was set to be handed over by Pakistan to Indian authorities on Friday. Varthaman will come home to a rousing reception at the Wagah border crossing between India and Pakistan in the state of Punjab. Hundreds of Indians waving the national flag and garlands are awaiting his arrival.
Varthaman’s plane was hit in the first aerial dogfight between India and Pakistan in nearly 50 years. He was subsequently captured by the Pakistani military in a particularly dramatic development to an already volatile conflict.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said the Indian pilot who was captured by Pakistani forces after his plane was shot down would be released on March 1. (Reuters)
In a scene that could have been out of a movie, Varthaman parachuted out of his flaming plane and then asked the gathering crowd where he was. Upon finding out he was in Pakistan, he ran backward, firing his pistol in the air to keep back the angry young locals.
When they got too close, he jumped into a pond and destroyed sensitive documents and maps by swallowing some and soaking others before he was captured.
After two tense days, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced Thursday that his country would return Varthaman as a “peace gesture.” The move lowered immediate tensions between the arch-rivals.
mercy's musings 