Complaint filed against Aijaz Ashraf and Caravan magazine for writing article on the castes of Pulwama martyrs

A complaint has been filed in the SC/ST Commission against Aijaz Ashraf, the author who published the nauseating article on castes of Pulwama martyrs in Caravan magazine. The Complaint has been filed against the publisher as well.

The complainant has maintained that article authored by Aijaz Ashraf published in Caravan magazine has “outraged SC/ST sentiments through irresponsible journalism as well as method employed to get the information.”

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Just a few days back, in an utterly shameful manner, The Caravan Magazine, a left-liberal mouthpiece, called up families of Pulwama martyrs to find out their castes and wrote a bigoted article giving a caste angle to the whole incident. The entire article is nothing but propaganda against the upper castes and moreover with the national integrity of India.

In an atrocious attack on the unity of Armed Forces, the article mentioned, “Underlying the feverish display of nationalism by the urban middle-class, comprised predominantly of upper-caste Indians, is an irony that few have paid attention to—the lower-caste poor account for most of the deaths”. However, while writing the article, the author forgot that the condolences and sympathy for the soldiers are coming from every section of society.

The complainant has said that “article attempts to analyze the caste of martyrs’ of Pulwama terror attack and brands some of them as coming from castes that exploit other castes.”

The complaint further said, “The author has made public caste related information of every martyr with an article that points to caste discrimination. It even refers to some families as victims of caste discrimination. By doing this he has ensured that these families are martyrs of caste based hatred even after this period is over. Certain families will be considered as seeking caste based benefits even during such tragic times. The article has permanently wounded the families.” It went to add, “Most importantly, the article is based on false allegations. As per mathematical tests on data that is available in public domain, there is absolutely no difference in categories of martyrs compared to their population proportions in India.”

“Every community has contributed to sacrificing for nation as Indian without caste considerations. The article has spread caste hatred and insulted SC community by trying to show they have sacrificed less in these attacks.” The complainant demanded an FIR be registered against the author and publisher under the SC/ST Atrocity Act. Also the article be removed immediately.

Earlier Deputy Inspector General of the CRPF, Moses Dhinakaran, also slammed the Caravan magazine. He had said, “This pathetic divisiveness of caste, color, and religion doesn’t exist in our blood. You should strictly refrain from insulting all the martyrs. They are not statistics for your demeaning and meaningless write-up”.

However, it is not new for these propaganda peddlers to give a communal and caste colour to every incident and gain political mileage out of it. This seems to be another shot of the liberal establishment towards shifting the focus from the abhorrent attack in Pulwama. The cabal is trying every trick in their book to do so. In order to shift focus from the Pulwama attack, the first one was liberal invented imaginary attacks on Kashmiris all over India and later resorted to the Barkha Dutt’s episode on Twitter. However, so far the nefarious propaganda spread by the cabal only resulted in increasing the feeling of nationalism among compatriots.