Roshni Ka Shaheed e Awwal (First Martyr for the Light) Father of Kashmiri Nation Shaheed Mohammad Maqbool Bhat From Birth To Gallows
Compiled by Mohammad Hussain Altaf
Publisher= Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, Maqbool Manzil, Srinagar Kashmir.
Year of Publication= Not Mentioned
Price= Rs 120
Kashmiris have been fighting for their basic rights for many centuries now, and during all these centuries of struggle countless people have dedicated and sacrificed their lives for keeping the resistance aflame but most of these resistance forces have died as unsung heroes and their sacrifices for the cause are still in oblivion. The writers, intellectuals(if any) and historians of Kashmir are the culprits of this gross negligence as they have not done justice to their profession by documenting nothing about these great sons of soil. Even in the contemporary times none has tried to research, locate and document about their lives and work. Even the big stalwarts among them like Mohammad Maqbool Bhat who was hanged in Tihar Jail on 11 February, 1984 is a victim of this apathy as nothing substantial is available on his life, thought, ideology and political activities.
Mohammad Hussain Altaf, a Political Activist of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) rather than any historian or political analyst has tried to fill this void by compiling the letters, press statements, interviews, writings, press conferences and speeches of Mohammad Maqbool Bhat in a book titled Roshni Ka Shaheed e Awwal, before him another political activist and leader of JKLF(R) Tahir Mir penned down a small booklet on the life of Maqbool Bhat entitled as Maqbool Bhat Trehgam Sey Tihar Tak (Maqbool Bhat from Trehgam to Tihar), but that wasn’t so comprehensive as the present book under review is. Mohammad Hussain Altaf in his Preface to the collection writes that “The reality and facts about the lives and works of the genuine leaders and torch bearers of any nation are either distorted or hidden. This job is undertaken so that the nation would be kept away from its struggle and goal and to keep its people in perpetual sense of inferiority complex”.
