Daily Diary (DD) - Day 297 of 2023

1412hrs:

Another social task to attend to: 

The wedding of dear Toseef Jarral of Kot Jamel, Rajouri and JKLF.

From Sehnsa to Qila Badhaar.

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Daily Diary (DD) - Day 160 of 2023

2342hrs:

Day 18 of #AJKReferendum2023

Tough but that is how resilience is created.

I have always felt that my home/ancestral tehsil (subdivision) Sehnsa is the toughest of all 32 tehsils throughout AJK. Tougher than Haveli or Barnaala. 

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Daily Diary (DD) - Day 145 of 2023

1811hrs:

Motoring along in the southernmost tehsil (subdivision) of AJK.

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Some glimpses of public engagement today:

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Daily Diary (DD) - Day 203 of 2020

1224hrs:

Today is the 3rd day of travelling northwards from one extreme of AJK to the other. The weather remains kind as do the people of my territory.

Today, I'll be proceeding from Barnaala to Dhandar which will also take me into the next subdivision (tehsil) namely Bhimber.

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Please remember that the updates on my Facebook page will be staggered and delayed purposefully to give my readers/viewers enough time to digest other pieces of content on this cycle tour. However, on this weblog they will correspond to the date that the content was generated on:

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The following is yet another key facet of our occupation. Please do visit the links in the comments section of this embed to gain more context:



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As I've increasingly intimated over the past few years, the responsibility of the UK Government in reference to Jammu Kashmir & Allied is not just a moral one, it is essentially legal too, which it has skillfully abdicated from, especially since it skillfully diverted our (the people's) 'right to rule' (Haq e Hukmrani) to one of a bilateral territorial dispute at the United Nations. Most of our people have been hoodwinked ever since and I'm glad that another legal mind has eloquently pointed this out for the likes of the Labour Party in the UK. Many thanks to Mirza Sahib Beg of the Valley of Kashmir and residing in London for his contribution to our common cause:



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Our daily updates on this cycle tour continue at Lala Arshad of Oldham's ancestral home in Dhandar Kot:



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Unfortunately, I did not generate any video clips today and thus have nothing to offer you via Youtube today. This is purely a coincidence and not because there would have been no such need to capture video content between Barnaala and Dhandar Kot. In fact, the downhill sprint at Kadaala would have been a joyful sight on video, Alas!

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Daily Diary (DD) - Day 202 of 2020

0938hrs:

I hope we can get the same blessed weather today as we had yesterday. The next segment of my journey is from Moil to Barnaala.

The most challenging part of my daily journey is whether I can upload necessary content in a timely manner viz. on the day that it is generated. This would allow my co-citizens to monitor my progress accurately and provide feedback as necessary.

A Persian cat in AJK

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Here's our second daily montage of videos taken during our cycle tour:



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Here's our third daily update on JKTV on the trot, live from Barnaala city:



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Our daily Facebook update on my page:



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Daily Diary (DD) - Day 193 of 2020

1512hrs:

Preparing to leave Dadyaal for my cycle ride from Chamb (in tehsil Barnaala where AJK begins in the South) to Sharda (where AJK ends in the North).

I'll also be doing a lot of work on Google Maps on this particular tour, something that I've regrettably not given any attention to in all my previous tours.

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Just as we brought you the Upper Jhelum Water Canal Agreement we hereby bring you the Gilgit Lease Agreement between the British Indian Empire and the State of Jammu & Kashmir:

Any discernible reader will gauge the difference in equation of balance between pre 47 governance in J & K under an autocracy and the despicable terms under which governance operates here post 1947, despite us supposedly living in the modern democratic age. In the case of AJK and GB we don't even get to see an agreement, let alone agree terms safeguarding our interests.

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Daily Diary (DD) - Day 7 of 2020

1159hrs:

Barnaala is where we are at. No electricity since we arrived yesterday evening, except that it has just returned a few minutes ago. 

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The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. #KashmiriHumEkHain#OneKashmir pic.twitter.com/ZxdjZ1SqOr

— Azadi sirf do kadam (@DoKadamAzadi) January 7, 2020

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Being consistent is crucial:



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Chakothi: At the Inter-section of Patriotism, Inhumanity, Public Service and Treason

Chakothi Crossing Point

Notes from Diary of 070715:

Since arriving in Chakothi (Tehsil and District Hattian Bala - Division Muzaffarabad) yesterday evening, Pakistan's security service apparatus has been hounding, hassling and trying to terrify us away from this region. They are meting out this treatment to any and every citizen who makes contact with us. For example, the house where we stayed last night in Taafarabad (about a km from the LOC) is still being hounded with phone calls whereby Pakistan's security services are asking the womenfolk of that household as to why they accommodated us etc....

I spent more than an hour this morning with the local head of Pakistan's army, namely Col. Javed of Barnaala (AJK); explaining who I am and what I'm doing in AJK un-interrupted since April 2005. In summary, that I'm exercising the Right to Self-Determination as a citizen of this hapless territory which has been deprived of its own narrative and political agency. 

I'm conducted the final phase of the National Survey begun in 2011 (which involves randomly sampling 10,000 citizens of AJK by covering every tehsil, profession and tribe) while my wife and two children have been trying to 'enjoy' the natural delights of Kashmir during their summer holidays.

At the moment, we are staying in a house in Chakothi town. What has compelled me to contact the British Government and to put up this update on FB is the fact that just before Iftaar, yet another member of Pakistan's security services came looking for me and the idea of me having to clarify my identity for the upteenth time in the last 24 hrs is way beyond the level of indignity that I can bear in my own home....

The above-mentioned gentleman came to the house where we were staying about an hour after iftaar in desperate search of a way and means to oust me from this part of my motherland. The hour long discussion was heated at times and involved many an inane question from him. In the mutual cross examination that ensued, i discovered that he had 'migrated' from Uri (barely 20 kilometres away on the Srinagar Road beyond the LOC) in 1990. It sickened and disgusted me to see him straining to find a way of pleasing his Pakistani superiors. An acute form of treason he was engaged in though little did he consider it as such. 

By the grace of the Almighty, he chose the wrong individual of course and sheepishly left after an hour. 

As for Pakistan's premier spy agency: smart move - to use a state subject for their dirty work - but not smart enough!

On a more serious note, the above is just a glimpse of what the local citizens of the 'free' part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir have to endure on a daily basis, decade after decade. All for the cause of Pakistan's myopic security and water interests, concealed under the guise of a benign Islamic fraternity.

Azaadi Pa-indabad