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People should know that the Muslim extremists in Kashmir killed thousands of Hindus (the original inhabitants) and chased away 500,000 Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists in the 80's and 90's.

Another thing to note: More than 40 % of the peaceful Kashmiri Muslims want to be a part of India. The rest live in Paksitani or terrorist occupied areas where free UN-observed elections can't happen.

India has Muslim billionaires, Bollywood stars and secular Muslim political leaders.

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Led Zeppelin.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfR_HWMzgyc

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Imperialism sucks.

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Looks like lots of people are cheering on India.....Go India! Go!

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One people's freedom struggle is another's militant terrorism. Outcome is inevitably a sticky situation.
But absolutely no excuse for responding to stone-throwing (which is actually a form of expression) protestors with live ammunition.
The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act has to be thrown out and replaced by rule of law, providing a peaceful and timely recourse to those hundreds alleging Indian police and army excesses.
And Pakistan needs to concentrate on fixing its own problems before taking on more.

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I had been to Kashmir last month and that place has HUGE tourist potential. A beautiful place indeed.
http://arnoldlayne123.imgur.com/kashmir
[ not only it is beautiful, but it has wild weed all over the place :) ]
People want peace, but they can't carry out business in an ordinary way, thanks to the Islamic movement. The business gets hit very badly every year, thanks to the shutdowns and strikes.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Protestors-in-Kashmir-face-stones-their-own-bitter-pill/articleshow/6420878.cms
The protests are motivated by the stinking rich fundamentalists who encourage pelting stones while they live luxuriously in their huge bunglows. Here is a similar story where a leader forcefully shuts down schools and colleges while she is trying to send her son abroad for studies.
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4298476
Also, kashmir had a sizeable hindu population of kashmiri pundits before the militancy and the islamic movement started. If these people stop stoking religious hatred, Kashmir has the potential to be one of the world's major tourist destination.

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To people who have no clue what the dispute is about-

Ranbir Singh's grandson Hari Singh, who had ascended the throne of Kashmir in 1925, was the reigning monarch in 1947 at the conclusion of British rule of the subcontinent and the subsequent partition of the British Indian Empire into the newly independent Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. As parties to the partition process, both countries had agreed that the rulers of princely states would be given the right to opt for either Pakistan or India or—in special cases—to remain independent. Kashmir's population was overall 77 per cent Muslim but with internal areas of non-Muslim majority. It shared a boundary with both India and Pakistan. Pakistan anticipated that the Maharaja would accede to Pakistan, when the British paramountcy ended on 14–15 August. When he hesitated to do this, Pakistan launched a guerrilla infiltration of Pashtun tribals meant to frighten its ruler into submission.[29] Instead the Maharaja appealed to Mountbatten[30] for assistance, and the Governor-General agreed on the condition that the ruler accede to India."[31] Once the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession, "Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state. The United Nations was then invited to mediate the quarrel. The UN mission insisted that the opinion of Kashmiris must be ascertained, while India insisted that no referendum could occur until all of the state had been cleared of irregulars."[31]
In the last days of 1948, a ceasefire was agreed under UN auspices; however, since the plebiscite demanded by the UN was never conducted, relations between India and Pakistan soured,[31] and eventually led to two more wars over Kashmir in 1965 and 1999. India has control of about half the area of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir; Pakistan controls a third of the region, the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir before the 1947 partition and its economic, cultural, and geographic contiguity with the Muslim-majority area of the Punjab (in Pakistan) could be convincingly demonstrated, the political developments during and after the partition resulted in a division of the region. Pakistan was left with territory that, although basically Muslim in character, was thinly populated, relatively inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim group, situated in the Valey of Kashmir and estimated to number more than half the population of the entire region, lay in Indian-administered territory, with its former outlets via the Jhelum valley route blocked."
The UN Security Council on 20 January 1948 passed Resolution 39, establishing a special commission to investigate the conflict. Pursuant to the commission's recommendation, the Security Council ordered in its Resolution 47, passed on 21 April 1948, that the invading Pakistani army retreat from Jammu & Kashmir and that the accession of Kashmir to either India or Pakistan be determined in accordance with a plebiscite to be supervised by the UN. With Pakistan not forgoing its occupation from what it later termed as Azad Kashmir, none of the resolutions of UNSC could come to force.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir

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Honestly, I don't know who's to blame. But I do know a Kashmiri non muslim who's ancestoral home was burnt down by muslims. For no reason at all.

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These pictures are breathtaking. The photographer did a great job of capturing the emotions of the people he was taking pictures of.

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