Jammu,02-May; Satish Mahaldar, a displaced Kashmiri Migrant, has been awarded the coveted ‘Newsmakers Achiever Awards’.The award acknowledges his efforts to restore peace and harmony in Kashmir. For converting any effort into an achievement, it is essential to have commitment, sincerity, discipline, belief in oneself and the zeal to stand up to adversaries. The struggle gets all the more challenging when the effort is aimed at creating an atmosphere of goodwill, bridging deep wedges and creating pockets for peace. When the mission is Kashmir, the challenges may seem to be manifold. Satish Mahaldar was forced to leave his well settled home in Srinagar in 1990, struggled and reached a certain level in his professional life. He might as well have continued to remain contended with the settled life that he has been leading. But, the inner longing for his homeland Kashmir has made him take the plunge for peace. Within no time he was able to connect to the people in the valley. Being a Kashmiri himself, it was very easy to strike the chord and more and more people started responding to his peace initiatives. He reached to all sections of the societies, like traders, professionals, civil society, religious leaders and politicians. Reaching out was not difficult because all were speaking the same language of peace, all wanted to go back in time and live just the way Kashmiris used to live — with harmony, respect and discipline. It was this feeling that Satish Mahaldar was able to tap. And, in return he was showered with the same affection that Kashmiris are well-known for. The Kashmiri society which has been torn apart because of the terrorism, is in dire need for peace and harmony initiaives between the majority and the minorities. Satish’s outreach has provided the much needed space for this. The good response has resulted in the formation of the JK Peace Forum, which has members from the Muslim, Sikhs and Christians apart from Kashmiri Pandits. This year on the occasion of Navreh celebrations, a successful event, Navreh Milan was hosted in the Sher-i-Kashmir Park Srinagar, which was the direct result of the efforts of Satish Mahaldar and his associates in the JK Peace Forum. For three decades, Kashmir has only been about terrorism, death and tears. Several issues were not being taken up and people were suffering.
