>India's Crown
>
>Dr Chithra Karunakaran
>
>Dear Rising Kashmir Editor,
>
>This is in response to the article, ‘India has lost Kashmir by Mehdi Siddique.
>
>Kashmir has been an integral part of the world's largest democracy, even before India became a democracy. Kashmir has been an integral, indivisible and inalienable part of India since 1586.
>
>In 1586, one of the world's greatest-ever rulers, the greatest Mughal, India's foremost secularist, Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar, Akbar the Great, sent two loyal Hindu Rajput generals to Jammu and the Valley to overthrow the Turki (Muslim) upstart ruler.
>
>Akbar, the pre-eminent nation-builder, taught Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and every Mughal subject, about secularism.
>
>Akbar annexed Kashmir and Kashmir became part of Mughal India.
>
>Since then, no matter who ruled it after that -Turks, Afghans, Sikhs, Dogras, Rajputs, Jats, Marathas, British-Kashmir has remained a proud part of India.
>
>Kashmir is India's crown. India stretches from Kashmir in the North to Kanyakumari in the South, from Indian Ocean in the East to Indian Ocean in the West. That is India immemorial and Akbar made it real.
>
>If you know your own history you can think freely, critically, knowledgeably, independently, logically based on proof, evidence, fact, not opinion or belief, then no politician or fanatic can fool you.
>
>Dr Chithra KarunaKaran
>City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
>KarunaKaran.Chithra@gmail.com
>
