Khalistan Calling newsletter dated September 18, 2002.

The following KHALISTAN CALLING newsletter has been published in the leading Punjabi-English newspaper of the Sikh diaspora, Surrey Canada-based CHARHDI KALA,- Issue of September 18-24, 2002 : Vol. 18 : No. 38. Last week's Khalistan Calling is available at http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/Main/K_Calling/kc09112002.htm <) It was also published in the third week of September, 2002, in the Vancouver-based PUNJAB GUARDIAN, and Akal Guardian, Toronto-based SANJH SAVERA, Calgary-based SIKH VIRSA and numerous other Punjabi/English weekly and monthly publications which cater to the three million strong Sikh diaspora in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The Overseas Sikhs, unlike their 20 million compatriots captive in India, are free and prosperous and they are determined - as they believe it is their destiny and pray for it every day; Raj Karay Ga Khalsa; Sikhs will rule - to carve a sovereign, democratic, egalitarian Sikh buffer state of KHALISTAN in South Asia, stretching from the Jumna river on the East, to the Pakistan border on the West, China on the Northeast and Kashmir on the North.

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Washington DC: September 18, 2002: An on-the-spot report by New York Times correspondent, Amy Waldmen, in today's issue of that prestigious American newspaper graphically describes the current 'state-elections' - really a sham in our opinion - in 23 (out of a total of 87) constituencies of Indian-occupied Kashmir in the following words, and we quote verbatim:- "The men walked to the polls as grimly as if they were being marched to prison. They had been ordered to vote, they said, by Indian soldiers who had rousted them from their village homes. It was not an auspicious image for State Assembly elections that India had promised would be free and fair, and that the international community had hoped would help set Kashmir on a path toward peace." End quote!

The New York Times correspondent goes on to describe the scene in Kashmir by reporting that: "In many towns, the boycott was almost total sometimes because of anti-Indian sentiment, sometimes because of threats issued by anti-Indian militants. Significantly, considering the carefully planned attacks that punctuated the campaign period, there was no substantial violence today. Thanks to the use of electronic voting machines, there appeared to be fewer allegations of rigging than in the past."

The New York Times correspondent, Amy Waldmen, repeated the Indian Election Commission's phony announcement that the turnout, in the 23 constituencies that voted today, was 44 percent but she also pointed out - to her eternal credit - and we quote verbatim from the New York Times, that, "The turnout figure, however, masked the wide disparity in polling from place to place, as a daylong drive circling north from the capital, Srinigar, showed. In Maidan Chogal, by 8:10 a.m., more than an hour after the polls had opened, not a single vote had been cast, and residents vowed that none would be." Our sources, inside Indian occupied Kashmir, corroborate the New York Times correspondent's observation.

The usually alert New York Times correspondent, however failed to mention that there were about a thousand Sikh 'observors/technicians' also who had been imported, from Indian occupied Punjab, to assist in the polling booths with the electronic voting machines being used for the first time in Indian-occupied Kashmir. She also did not mention a large Sikh minority community in Kashmir which though publicly neutral - but sympathetic to the Kashmiri insurgents and their cause - was watching everything including the forced voting.

According to our numerous sources in Kashmir, (where there has been a Sikh community for over three centuries and whose forefathers under Maharajah Ranjit Singh the great and just Sikh warrior/kimg ruled Kashmir for three decades in the 19th century) the turnout figure, in the current phase of the sham elections, is no more than 14% which figure has been conveniently changed to 44% by the Election Commission and its minions to impress the world community in general and the US Administration in particular. One unfortunate 'imported' Sikh 'technician/observor', working in a poll booth was even poisened by the authorities when he objected, and threatened to go to the media, to expose the manipulation of the electronic voting machines by the Election Commission. The Indian media had the audacity to report that the 35-year old muscular and healthy Sikh technition had suddenly died of a 'heart attack'.

The BJP rulers did the same thing with the usually sacrosanct figures of a national census last year. This column had the honour and priviledge of exposing their modus operandi, way back on May 23, 2001, in a column headlined, "American Sikhs prick the 'bubble' of 1.6 million Asian 'Indians' in the US and India's false census figure of 65.3 national literacy rate," which showed how a 56% literacy rate figure was changed to 65%. See our May 23, 2001, column, Khalistan Calling by clicking on the following link: > http://www.khalistan-affairs.org/Main/K_Calling/kc05232001.htm <

In the above-mentioned May 23, 2001, Khalistan Calling we wrote: "The Indian Census Bureau instead of correcting a typographical error in the national % rate of literacy figure, is continuing to trumpet the false national literacy figures of 65.3% for India under the assumption that repetition will transform a lie into a truth and hide the fact that the world's largest dystopia - and Castocracy - has over half a billion (yes half a billion) illiterates - more than the rest of the world combined. According to the "Provisional population Totals-Census 2001" released by the Indian Census Bureau which can be viewed on its web site ( > http://www.censusindia.net/results/statedata.html <) the population of India is shown as over one billion - 1,027,015,247 persons to be precise. The 'Absolute Literates' are shown, on the same site (as well as other Census of India-2001 sites) as totaling over five hundred and sixty six million males and females; 566,714,995 literate persons to be exact... Any kindergarten student can see that the later figure makes a percentage of 56% of the population as literate, and not 65%, as is being trumpeted by the Indian leadership and shown by the above and other Indian Census Bureau web sites. Obviously a typographical error was made by a clerk/typist and 65.3% was typed instead of 56.3%. The crafty BJP rulers have grabbed the false 'doctored' national literacy figure of 65.3% and are bouncing it around...Some census! Some increase! Some shameless audacity! Some delusion! Some Indian 'democracy'!

In marked contrast to the New York Times correspondent, Amy Waldmen, who was rushing from booth to election booth in Kashmir to cover the current 'elections', the Washington correspondent of India's leading English daily newspaper, The Times of India, one Chidanand Rajghatta - who is also a senior editor in rank - in his dispatch today, pontificated, from a distance of 12,000 miles, that, "The relatively impressive turnout in the first phase of the state elections in Kashmir appears to have validated the widespread view, backed by both Washington and New Delhi, that people in the state are sickened by terrorism and want a return to normalcy." "U.S. and Indian officials agreed", Rajghatta pompously wrote, "that a 44 per cent turnout - more than the returns in US presidential election -- is excellent under the circumstances." This would be true indeed, if the 44% turnout figure was correct which it is not! See Rajghatta's dezinformatsiya in todays Times of India, on the internet at: > http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_Id=22453748 <

As a comparison to the above Rajghatta fairy tale in the Times of India the correspondent of the most prestigious newspaper in the world, THE TIMES, London, Catherine Philp, reporting from Indian occupied Kashmir, in a despatch, headlined, " Kashmiris forced to defy poll boycott," published today, concludes her graphic report, and we quote verbatim, with the following taunter:- "How accurate that figure (44%) turns out to be remains to be seen. In the 1996 elections officials claimed a turnout of 54 per cent. Independent observers put the figure at between 5 and 8 per cent." End quote. ( Please see > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-417933,00.html <)

Our initial reading of the Kashmir situation is that the completion of the first phase of the sham elections in Kashmir has come as a setback to India and shows the permanent divide betwen the angry subjugated Kashmiris and the fascist 'chicken-hawk' Hinduvta rulers in New Delhi who will now try to paint 'black as white' and keep repeating 'lies as truth' in the controlled Indian media eg. 14% turnout in the Kashmir elections will be read as 44%, just as a year ago India's national literacy rate was trumpeted, as 65.3%, instead of 56.3%, after the India-census-2000 when a Census Bureau typist made a typing mistake.

The danger is that chairborne Hinduvta 'chicken-hawks' in Delhi might believe their own lies and rhetoric about Kashmir, as they usually do, and raise the 'temprature' in their confrontation with Pakistan. Any miscalculation of Pakistani political will, will inevitably lead to war - possibly a nuclear one - which will effect the well-being and safety of Sikh Punjab, its holy shrines and its wonderful people as the Sikh homeland is situated right in the middle of the two warring countries.

Our sources in Kashmir are reporting something else which could lead to war in South Asia in that Indian engineers are trying to 'manipulate/divert/store' the tributories of the Chenab river alloted to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Waters treaty. India is using the 'umbrella' of the under-construction Baghliar Hydro-electric project on the River Chenab, in Indian-occupied Jummu, a la the Pandoh project in Himachal Pradesh which has been covertly syphoning the waters of the Beas river into the Bhakra Nangal dam for the past umpteen years without the knowledge and permission of the Sikhs. The Pandoh project benefits only non-riparian Hindu-majority Rajasthan and Haryana states, via the Sutlej river, and is contributing to the desertification of Sikh Punjab.

Surveying, engineering and tunneling activity by Indian engineers in Jummu's Doda district observed by our sources, near the northern slopes of point 14241 near the villages of Thalol and Bhadarwah could become a cassus belli (cause for war) with Pakistan if Islamabad were to react as robustly as lower riparian Israel has done this week against upper-riparian Lebanon. See BBC report, headlined, "Israel warns of war over water" on the internet at:> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2249599.stm < and see Sept. 15, 2002, Jerusalem Post story headlined, "US team to check diversion of Lebanon border river," at > http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1031666181029 < ) Israeli Prime minister, General Ariel Sharon, a no-nonsense legendary former Tank commander, has threatened Lebanon with war over a small stream - the Hasabani - in Lebanon from which the Lebanese government wants to pipe drinking water for six small villages in parched South Lebanon.

What happens if this strong Israeli reaction were to steel nuclear Pakistan's spine about the covert attempt by India to divert the waters of the mighty Chenab river (in contravention of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty) without which Pakistan will face a water-famine in its most productive agricltural areas like Sialkot, Wazirabad, Gujranwala, Chiniot and Faisalbad formerly Lyallpur etc.?

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