| News Details |
| Balraj Puri remembered | |  Jammu, September 16, (Scoop News)-In a meeting in memory of Balraj Puri organized by the Peoples’ Union For Civil Liberties(PUCL) on this Saturday, the 13th September, 2014 at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi glowing tributes were paid to him by several speakers.
Badri Raina, former professor of Delhi University and well known commentator on politics, culture and society, remembered the days of 1947 when the Jammu region was wrought with communal conflict. At that critical time, Balraj Puri collected a band of secular students to form a Jammu Students Union who devoted themselves to check the communal madness and were able to save many lives. Raina drew attention to the tremendous work done by Puri in maintaining, promoting and strengthening secular values and communal harmony in J&K. He was respected by all sections of the society in the State and his voice always had saner influence when sensitive issues erupted. In his personal life Puri was very simple and his house in Karan Nagar, Jammu, from the very beginning to the present day has been open to people from all stations and backgrounds. He never aspired for political patronage or personal favour.
Pushkar Raj, well known human rights activist, former General Secretary of the PUCL and at present representative of Amnesty International in Australia, spoke about the love and affection bestowed upon him when as a young man he had initiated himself in the human rights work. He spoke about the amount of labour put by Puri in preparing the autonomy report as Working Chairman of the Regional Autonomy Committee set up by the J&K govt and how he immediately tendered his resignation when he found that the govt. was not sincere about it. Puri was the Director of the Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan since its inception in J&K. He was the guiding spirit behind the teaching course in Journalism started by the Bhawan wherein a brilliant corps of journalists was groomed who are at present holding very important positions in various newspaper establishment and are known for their honesty and integrity.
Prem Singh, General Secretary of the Socialist Party, remembered his last meeting with Puri about three years back when he and other members had gone to meet him at his house during convention of the J&K chapter of their party at Jammu to seek his blessings and advice. He remembered Puri’s valued contributions made in the various fields and lamented that his demise was a great loss to the democratic and secular movement in the country. He called upon the present generation to preserve and promote the legacy left by Puri.
Rajkumar Jain, the veteran socialist, spoke about the contribution made by Puri to the growth and development of the socialist movement in the country of which he was one of the important pillars. Though socialist movement was broken in various factions but all the factions had no hesitation in going to him to seek his support and invite him to their conferences. The view entertained by Puri on Kashmir question was acceptable to all the factions of the socialists.
Salim Engineer, Secretary of the Forum For Democracy & Communal Amity, said that Puri was one of the important members of the Forum which was formed in 1993 after demolition of the Babri Masjid under the chairmanship of Shri V.M.Tarkunde. The Forum had been campaigning holding meetings in various parts of India to promote communal amity and Puri used to attend and address such conferences.
Shri Venkatesh Nayak representing Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Shri K.G.Verma, retd. Professor from Delhi University also paid their tributes. In the beginning of the meeting, N.D.Pancholi, representing PUCL, gave a brief account of the social and political activities of Balraj Puri. He said that Puri was a multi-faceted personality - social worker, journalist, scholar, a great champion of human rights and a political analyst of great repute. In his young days he participated in the ‘Quit India Movement of 1942’. He also participated in ‘Quit Kashmir Movement’ of 1946’ in association with Sheikh Abdullah against Dogra Ruler Maharaja Hari Singh. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, between 1948 to 1964, regularly sought his opinion when crucial issues erupted in relation to Jammu & Kashmir. Puri was member of the ‘Recovery of Holy Relic Committee’ which was removed from the Hazratbal shrine in 1963 due to which the Kashmir in particular and the Muslim community in general were on the boil, and helped in defusing the situation. He was founder member of the Citizens For Democracy floated by Jayprakash Narayan in 1974 and also of PUCL which was initially set up in October 1976 during the Emergency. He was in the forefront in highlighting the issues of violations of human rights in Kashmir by the security forces as well as by the militants when Jagmohan’s rule as Governor of J&K let loose state repression on the people in the early period of 1990. Pancholi cited one instance of March 1990 when a PUCL-CFD joint team, which was constituted at the instance of Puri which included Justice V.M.Tarkunde (Retd.), Justice Rajinder Sachhar (Retd.) , Balraj Puri and Pancholi himself to investigate into human rights violations in the valley, was at the Hazratbal shrine to inquire into an incident, some militants came and began to question about the team members. They were using Kashmiri language. The local guide of the team, being afraid that the militants might do some harm to the team members if they come to know that the team members were Hindus, told them that the team members were not Hindus but Christians. Balraj Puri knew Kashmiri and being angry he reprimanded the local guide for telling a lie. Puri confronted the militants and told them in Kashmiri that team members were not Christians but were Hindus and had come to inquire into violations of ‘Insani Haquq’ in the valley. The words ‘Insani Haquq’ (human rights) appeared to have some impact on the militants and soon they disappeared. Pancholi said that his work and writings will always serve as great inspiration to those involved in the human rights movement.
Since the condolence meeting was held in the midst of the National Council conference of the PUCL (13/14 Sept.), the meeting also condoled the demise of the other members of PUCL who passed away during the last year, namely U.R.Ananthamurthy, Malladi Subamma and B.D.Sharma,advocate. Two minutes silence was observed in the memory of the departed. Large number of persons belonging to various strata of society –especially academicians, journalists, human rights activists and advocates, attended the meeting.
... |
| |
|
|
Share this Story |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|