From the President Desk December 1994 

Hriday Nath Nehru Ex-President Kashmir Samiti  

Dear Sister and Brothers,

Pakistan, as we all know, recently got a sound second beating at the U.N. by its own stick. India on its part persists in its incongruous pursuit of holding elections on Kashmir, shutting its eyes to the prevailing ground conditions.

Both developments have their significance. The first is very welcome; the second yet indeterminate.

But we as a community cannot afford just to keep watching these fruitless motions, waiting for the next sterile show.

We have a lot to think about and get down to work. We have to strive and step out of misfortunes surrounding us, and rise to our full stature as a modern progressive society. I have faith that that is our destiny.

A most pressing need is to do away with our corrosive social customs which seem to be increasingly taking a grip on some of us. For an example, I will talk here about the worst regressive and destructive among such customs--the dowry

The abiding relationships we, all of us in our own time, seek to establish is through matrimony. The knots we tie with divine benediction and sacred vows, bring two souls, and their families and relatives, close together, and project them with lofty aspirations for future generations. Yet the degrading commercial aspects. and vulgar display of wealth, we try to inject into it, takes away the joy and purposefulness of it all, sometimes while the excitement is still fresh. And thereby the love which is an experience of melting boundaries flowing into one another turns into hate and strife The urge of ostentation and vanity brings an untold chain of miseries all around..

In short what should have normally produced heights of family happiness is plagued by depths of moral and ethical aberration and societal pollution.

I do not claim to be saying anything new or original. The successive Yuva generations have always seen the evil in it and the more unfortunate have experienced it. Our thinkers and leaders of the past have campaigned against it. Yet today we find to our deep anguish a distressing slide into fierce matrimonial conflicts, separation, divorces, painful misadventures, deaths, ending up in healing wounds not only for the couples involved but their families and, worst of all, for their children. I promise you, that the Samiti cannot just afford to be a silent spectator to this scene.

We are a community overwhelmed by misfortunes of the making of our adversaries. Let us not add to it anything of our own making. May I call on our community members to join us in bringing about sanity. Our survival is at stake and plugging holes in our social life is also an important factor in our fight for survival.

The world has seen the emergence of great communities who were made up not of the inward-looking and self-seeking individuals but of visionaries and the valorous. They suppressed their narrow visions and egos, levelled themselves with the commonality and lifted all to greatness. I invite you to come forward and lend your helping hand to carve our new destiny.

Yours sincerely,

Hriday N Nehru

PS: I would welcome your ideas and suggestions to help our community improve itself and thus effectively fight the battle for our survival.

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Courtesy:  Hriday Nath Nehru Ex President Kashmir Samiti & December 1994 Koshur Samachar