Assertive Prime Minister!

Did I hear it right! Assertive Prime Minister? Assertive Dr. Manmohan Singh? Ok.. let us first know what “assertiveness” means. As per the The Free Dictionary being “Assertive” means “Inclined to bold or confident assertion;aggressively self-assured”. So what was our dear Prime Minister “assertive” about. He was “assertive” about the thing that he can not “Shut up” his cabinet. So he is “confident” that he can not handle people who he claims to head.
On the Chinese front he says that “we” need to engage Pakistan because he has failed to counter China on Indian terms (Makes me feel once again that why are we Indians so docile, all the time.. everytime!). So our Prime Minister is “confident” that he can neither handle China nor Pakistan on Indian terms. Crux of the matter… our Prime minister is confident that he is capable of doing nothing. He has failed on Kashmir and he has failed on naxalism. In Delhi the Congress(Indira) Government says that the Naxalism is the biggest threat to national security while the cabinet minister Mamta Banerjee addresses people with PCPA (People’s Committee against Police Atrocities) “managing” the rally and the congress (Indira) “Prince” Rahul Gandhi addressing a rally in Orissa with Maoist supporters standing beside him.
I think Indians should stop getting themselves fooled by the “secular” talk of Congress(Indira), the party, whose leader, after assassination of Indira Gandhi justified the killings of Sikhs and in whose rule 5 Lakh Hindus were forced out of Kashmir. What can you expect from a party whose “assertive” Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh calls in and pleaded to Yasin Malik( a former terrorist and cadre of Jammu & Kashmir Liberation front) to break his fast during the Amarnath Land dispute.

Threatning letters of Kashmir

The NEWS channels are abuzz with the letters asking Sikhs in Kashmir to either join “aazidi” movement and embrace Islam or leave Kashmir. No one in India can resonate with the chilling fear these Sikhs would have felt but for Kashmiri Hindus who went through this trauma in 1989-90. I was around eight years old when the shrill voice of loudspeakers of every mosque in Kashmir asked Kashmiri Hindus to embrace Islam or leave valley. I had already left Kashmir when a letter had arrived at my maternal home announcing that every young member in the family would be butchered if they do not leave Kashmir.
Unfortunately for us (Kashmiri Hindus), there was no media to take up the issue of what was happening to Hindus in Kashmir. Doordarshan was busy in propagating “secular” politics of the Congress(Indira) kind. While minorities where being butchered, slaughtered, disgraced and forced to leave Kashmir from every corner, the conscience of India was fast asleep in secular slumber. Unfortunately for us, Kashmiriyat died a tragic death that year.
In the years to come I would hear a lot of hair raising and spine chilling tales of absolute brutishness committed by the majority on the largest minority in Kashmir. Like, when one Kashmiri Hindu youth was shot in the knees and elbows and left to bleed in the middle of road while the “majority” entertained themselves at the death of an unarmed man. The terrorists left the man bleeding and went to drink milk in the nearby dairy shop. The man wailed and criedfor help but no one bothered. He kept bleeding until the “aazidi” seeking Kashmiri youths finished their milk came back and pumped bullets into his body to finish of the work. Needless to say, there were no protests and no agitations. Nothing mattered, because only a “Pandit” had died.
The attempt of a Kashmiri Hindu man to conceal himself in a traditional rice drum failed when these mujaheddin pumped the bullets from their AK-47 right into the rice drum. When his wailing widow asked why were they leaving her alive, the chilling answer was – “So that you can mourn his death for life”.
How much will you understand the fear of a young mother who was ready to jump off the second floor of her home with her two little daughters just to save her family from being disgraced by a mob of mad aazidi seeking hooligans who were about to break into her home…
No one heard Kashmiri Hindus then… no one will ever hear us, because “unfortunately” we do not make a vote bank. Today, Kashmiri Hindus are branded as traitors by Muslims in Kashmir because we did not support the aazidi movement. Indians will do everything and will fight to seek justice for the victims of Gujarat and Kandhamal riots, but no one will ever bother about Kashmiri Hindus, because fighting for the justice of Hindus in India is outright communal. Fighting for Kashmiri Hindus means going against the “secular” Muslims in Kashmir. Those “seculars” whose cry always has been “jeeve jeeve Paskistan, nanga bhookha Hindustan”.
Today (21th August 2010), Times NOW called a popular Kashmiri Hindu activist Aditya Raj Kaul as a panelist debating threats to Kashmiri Sikhs. But from the word go gagged him. WHY? Just because no one wants to shatter the sweet dream of “Secular” Kashmir. A dream that has already died decades ago. If people want to live in dreams, they can… But the real hard fact is – The fight for Kashmir is deeply deeply communal. The communities in Kashmir are divided… Today’s Kashmir is Kashmir where the “majority” is brandishing unashamedly its brute power and the minority is lip locked in fear, while “secular” Indians are sleeping over their conscience.
Leave alone Kashmiriyat, even Insaaniyat has died a dog’s death in Kashmir.

VIM Part II – Basic Navigation and Editing

It has been a long time since I blogged about the how to get started with VIM. So without delay I should start with basic navigation and editing in VIM. Before that I just want to say that VIM is very case sensitive (in command mode). “A” is not same as “a”. So if I type “A” it means “A” and not “a”. There are a few different modes in VIM
  • Command Mode
  • Insert Mode
  • Search mode
When you start VIM, it will be in command mode. In command mode you can move cursor, delete text, search and replace text, navigate in the file. For inserting text you will have to use “insert” mode. You will not be able to insert text in command mode. Here are the keys for basic navigation: Move Right ==> l (Small L) Move Left ==> h (Small H) Move Up ==> k (Small K) Move Down ==> j (Small J) These shortcuts are for people who want to be as fast as fast possible while typing because you do not have to break the flow of your typing with the above navigations. For people who do not like this the normal Up, Down, Right and Left arrows on their keyboards will work as well :). For inserting the text you will have to press “i” (Small I) while in command mode. After hitting “i” you will no longer be in command mode and pressing “l”, “h”, “k” and “j” will actually print these letters. In insert mode you can type in the text as you do normally. To get out of “Insert” mode, press “Esc” key. Search mode is invoked by pressing “/” in command mode. After that type for whatever you want to and hit the Return key. Press “n” (Small N) to go to next searched item and “N” (Caps N) to go to previous search item. What makes VIM an editor of choice is its command mode and the way you can navigate within it without touching mouse. Here are some commands(which I know and use): gg ==> Go to first line in the document G ==> Go the last line nG ==> Go to line number “n”. 25G takes you to the 25th line in the document. c$ ==> Chage to the end of line cw ==> Change word dd ==> delete current line ndd ==> delete next n lines where n is any number yy ==> copy current line to buffer nyy ==> copy n lines to buffer P (small) ==> paste above the line where cursor is p (caps) ==> paste below the current line where cursor is o (small) ==> Add a new line below cursor position and invoke insert mode O (caps) ==> Add a new line above cursor position and invoke insert mode The “dd” puts the deleted lines in buffer so it can be also used as cut-paste in conjuction with “p” or “P” command.

VIM Part I – Get a basic VIM up and running

Recently, I “buzzed” that how much I love VIM. Then one friends thought of trying VIM. And by evening he had VIM un-installed from his system, terming it as an old tool in this age of bleeding edge GUI editors. This made me think that how many people dump VIM before even trying the features this editor has to give. So, here is my two cents to this editor.

I will try to write on how to setup this editor and then on we can go digging deeper. I use gvim on openSUSE 11.2 at home and on Windows XP at office. Barring a few different file names and file paths there is not much difference in the way gvim works in Linux and Windows. I will be specifying where ever and when ever required.

One thing, VIM is not an IDE, it is a simple (yet powerful) editor. It is not a replacement for Adobe Photoshop or anynthing like that. VIM is for people who like to “write down” their code. people who do not want to to take their hands off their keyboard. It is surely a blessing for LINUX/UNIX sys-admins. VIM is a VI like editor, VIM is VI Improved. And in addition to console editor, VIM also has a graphical front end GVIM, which brings the powe of VIM to the GUI. In all modern LINUX distros VIM is installed by default and you call only VIM when typing “vi” on the console, vi is aliased to vim. On windows you can download the EXE file from here. Download gvim72.exe. Direct link for gvim72.exe here. When installing on Windows, it will ask you for the kind of install, select “Full Install” there.

After installation the Windows user will get a batch file “gvim.bat” in C:\windows, it is this file which needs to be executed and not the gvim.exe found in C:\Program Files\Vim, that needs to be executed when we have to open gvim. But Windows users do not need to worry as whenever you type gvim in run command interface, it will always open gvim.bat. For Linux users, they can open gvim by typing in “gvim &” from the console (& will put the gvim in backgrouond in that console window), or type in gvim in Linux run command interface (Which can be opened by ALT+F2 in KDE). You will get a basic gvim running there.

This is it, installation is always the easiest way, it is the working with gvim which we have to learn. gvim is highly customizable editor, which you are going to know very soon. Gvim stores its settings in a file named “vimrc”. In windows the filename is “_vimrc” and it is located at C:\Program Files\vim. And, in Linux the filename is “.vimrc” and it is located at $HOME/.vim directory. If there is no vimrc file at these locations create them. If there is no “.vim” directory in $HOME, create it and then create a empty file “.vimrc” there.

For windows users there will be two directories in C:\Program Files\vim : vim72 and vimfiles. Whatever syntax changes, colorscheme changes any plugins that you add, they all need to be done in “vimfiles”i directory. And for “Linux” users it is the $HOME/.vim directory. This is to keep your customization safe when you are going to upgrade to future versions of VIM. e.g. VIM is going to release VIM 7.3, when you install that your vim72 directory will get irrelevant but you will not loose your customizations as the new vim installation will takje it from vimfiles folder, and in Linux it will be “.vim” directory. Other reason is that you can mess as much as you can with your vim, and if you screw it totally, you just need to empty vimfiles/.vim folder and everything will be fine again, then start again 🙂

So let’s make some basic changes in vimrc file and start editing… For winodws the changes need to be done in “_vimrc” and for Linux the changes need to be done in “.vimrc”.

Suppose you need to set you font to Lucida Console, 10 pt, Bold. To set your font
In Linux:


And in Windows:



Want to set a default colorscheme. Add this line to your vim:
Check the Vim color schemes sample here. Download your chosen colorscheme and put it in $HOME/.vim/colors (Unix) or C:\Program Files\Vim\vimfiles\colors (Windows) folder.

I am putitng my vimrc file here just for refrence. The comments in it explain what the commands do.

Note: ” in vimrc is for putting comment.
source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
"I am a Cobol Developer :)
autocmd FileType cobol set sw=4 sts=4 et sta tw=7
set nocompatible
"Behave like Microsoft.. CTRL+P, CTRL+P stuff
source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin
set nu "Display line numbers
set ignorecase
set smartcase
set nobackup
set nowrap
"Set file formats to Unix, the other options
"are ff=dos or ff=mac. If you open a file from 
"Windows while your gvim ff=unix, you will see 
"^M characters. These ^M characters are Windows 
"End of Line characters
set fileformats=unix
set guioptions=agimrLt;
"The following commands will indent your code the right amount, 
"using spaces rather than tabs and automatically indent after you 
"start.>>> 
set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set autoindent
set smartindent
"<<< Complete indentation code
set autochdir
"Whenever I open or creat a file with extension pco, cpy or
"link, set its filetype to cobol, which will evoke proper
"syntax highlighting
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.pco set filetype=cobol
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.cpy set filetype=cobol
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.link set filetype=cobol
set diffexpr=MyDiff()
let cobol_legacy_code=1
let $p_h='/home/vivek/public_html'
set gfn=Consolas\ Bold\ 10
colorscheme ps_color
set cursorline
" Press Space to turn off highlighting and clear any message already displayed.
nnoremap   :nohlsearch:echo

"Tab navigation like firefox
nmap  :tabnext
nmap  :tabprevious
map  :tabprevious
map  :tabnext
imap  :tabpreviousi
imap  :tabnexti
nmap  :tabnew
imap  :tabnew
"Key map to copy the selected word and search it... Key Map: CTRL+F
map  /
imap  /
nmap  /
"Go Directly to Procedure Division in COBOL...
nmap  /PROCEDURE
imap  /PROCEDURE
"CTRL+Z --> Undo
imap  :u
nmap  :u
map  :u
"CTRL+O --> Open a new tab and also open a window to browse 
nmap  :tabnew\|browse e
imap  :tabnew\|browse e
"CTRL+W --> Selects word
nmap  bvw
imap  bvw
":%s#\s*\r\?$##
"ATL+M --> Trim trailing spaces
nnoremap  :%s#\s*\r\?$##
inoremap  :%s#\s*\r\?$##
noremap   :%s#\s*\r\?$##
"CTRL+Down Arrow --> Scroll page down
nnoremap  
inoremap  
noremap  
"CTRL+Up Arrow --> Scroll page up
nnoremap  
inoremap  
noremap  
"CTRL+F1 --> Toggle Shortcuts Bar 
nnoremap  :if &go=~#'T'set go-=Telseset go+=Tendif


This is just for getting a basic Vim running on your machine. Next I will write down how to do real work in Vim.
Let me know if I missing something in this post.

My Lost Home in Kashmir…


Video Produced by: Deepak Ganju Images: Veer Munshi & Deepak Ganju Song: Arti Tiku Kaul See at shehjar Magazine at: http://www.shehjar.com/list/94/840/1.html Each image of Kashmiri Hindu House is stark, plain-spoken, without embellishment. There is no annotati ve manipulati on of these images, no theatricality, no vein of melodrama, no overtly elegiac air, no demand for sympathy. There they stand, in our line of sight: ruins, monuments, memorials. This is testimony to the unforgiving march of history, which takes no prisoners. ‘Ranjit Hoskote’
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