"I want to recall here my days as a young journalist covering Kashmir because I faced the same incomprehension that sometimes bordered on contempt in my reporting. At that time, the BBC was the Queen, so to say, of all media, because television was still in its infancy here and radio remained, for both the public and us journalists, the best and fastest means to keep abreast of the news. Mark Tully was then the South Asia Chief of Bureau of BBC — he was worshipped by Indian and Western journalists alike, and his word was gospel. From 1989, when the first Hindu public figures of the Valley of Kashmir were getting murdered by what was then the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), such as the director of Doordarshan, Lassa Kaul, and Satish Tikoo, people whom I had interviewed earlier, till the first elections in Kashmir in 2000, the Indian government was accusing Pakistan of training, arming, and financing the Indian Kashmiri militants, and sending them back across the border to create havoc in India. Mark Tully, ironically, accused the Indian government of lying and denied that the Pakistani government had a hand in Kashmir's terror saga. ...I was there, it touched me immensely and opened my eyes to what a monotheist and intolerant religious worldview could do to other people. What bothered me most was that Western journalists, led by Mark Tully, followed by Indian reporters, only highlighted the so-called human rights violations committed by the Indian Army and paramilitary forces on Muslims of Kashmir, but kept quiet on the ethnic cleansing of Hindus — as if they were responsible for their persecution."