November 1, 2020

Social media has dominated the current affairs in this world. There are numerous software applications such as Facebook, Twitter that provide platforms for people of this world to communicate with each other on a variety of topics – political, culture, and religion. Facebook allows one to create several groups and pages to promote one’s ideas. This was however not always the case. When internet started getting popular in the West, in early 1990s, we had access to several bulletin boards. I was quite active on publishing our literature and refuting false claims made by Kashmiri Muslims on such bulletin boards as soc.culture.indian which was more like a virtual battlefield pitting several groups against each other.

Praveen Raina

In late 1994, when I moved to Dallas area to join Telecom industry, my friend Kong Posh told me about the Kashmiri Pandit Network, called KPnet, being managed by one Praveen Raina. I was subscribed as its 66^th member.

The way in which KPnet worked was simple – everyone would write an e-mail to him, he would collect all the e-mail at the end of the day, perhaps twice a day, compose them into one digest and send this compiled e-mail back to all the subscribers of this e-mail group. Most of the subscribers, say 95% of them were living in this country and European and Middle East countries, and only about 5% in India as India was way too slow to accept Internet in the beginning. KPnet was the only show in town back then. Discussions sometimes were riveting, that would keep the subscribers glued to the forum – it was intriguing to watch what everybody was writing, on what subject, how they were interacting with each other without having actually met, so on and so forth. During that period, KPnet discussions became hot topics at any social gathering around the country.

While pursuing Master’s degree at Louisiana State University (LSU), Praveen Raina had developed KPnet soon after 1993 – the very first electronic communication forum. He grew up in Bihar and Delhi before moving to US for his graduate studies at LSU and is currently Director of Product Management at Motorola Solutions. He is an active member of the Chicago KP community since 1998, organizing and supporting local community events and served as Chapter President in 2004. He is also the founding member of the Kashmir Welfare Initiative (KWI) during my first tenure as KOA President in 2007 and Kashimiri Heritage Initiative (KHI) in 2014. KWI collected over $50K from the local community to support charitable activities in Jammu for vocational education of KP youth and ladies. KHI was a Chicago KP community effort to educate kids regarding Kashmiri language, history and culture. He is also engaged with other non-profit organizations internationally and has served in various capacities.

It’s a little-known fact, even though he shies away from any limelight, but in true sense of words, Praveen is a true pioneer and the “father of the KPnet forum”. My hope is that through this writeup, our community knows about his (and about those who followed him) immense contributions to the community. He was way ahead of our times, as he must have realized at some point that the KPs, who were ethnically cleansed out of their homes and hearths, only to be scattered around the globe, needed a common platform to communicate with each other, leveraging an emerging technology, on a variety of issues confronting the community – it was long before such platforms as Yahoogroups, Googlegroups, Facebook and Twitter came into existence. And he did not even grow up in Kashmir.

Praveen is currently helping me with KOA’s Sponsor A Child (SAC) program as co-program director. In my next writeup, I will soon write more about the impact the KOA programs such as SAC and others has had on our brethren in need back home. I had the privilege of meeting Praveen in person for the first time in the year 2018 when I had gone to Chicago to attend a wedding. He is as cool as a cucumber.

Prof. Subhash Kak

Praveen Raina handed over the reins of KPnet to Prof. Subhash Kak soon after he graduated from LSU in 1995. Subhash ji was Professor of Electrical Engineering at LSU at the time.

Subhash ji is a computer scientist, and is at present the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). He has published on the history of science, the philosophy of science, ancient astronomy, and the history of mathematics. Kak has also published on archaeo-astronomy and advocated the idea of Indigenous Aryans. In 2019, the Government of India awarded him with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India.[1]  I have scanned some of his earliest works at this site – http://ikashmir.net/subhashkak/ .

Subhash ji maintained the KPnet for a few months. During his tenure as KPnet administrator, he established forum guidelines for the first time ever, as some of the discussions used to turn into personal attacks against each other occasionally. This was a period of learning for all of us as to how we should behave on public forums and exercise proper netiquette. In early part of 1996, he handed over the KPnet management to Shivi Fotedar (not related to me).

Shivi Fotedar

Shivi Fotedar, currently based in California, worked for AT&T soon after finishing a Ph.D. degree in computer science. He did something that no one had seen before – all the e-mails sent to the AT&T’s mail server were automatically re-directed to all the KPnet subscribers without his intervention. Though it is no big deal now, but it was something unique back then. No longer was manual control and administration of KPnet required.

Shivi is a hands-on Engineering Development Executive, driven software development executive with a high energy entrepreneurial focus and proven technical expertise and is an expert in all stages of product development. I had the privilege of meeting him once at a KOA camp. He is gem of a person.[2]

Lalit Wanchoo

In 1996, I was actively involved with building my website scanning Kashmiri literature pertaining to all aspects of our lives – political, culture, religions, traditions, etc. Sh. Lalit Wanchoo was the secretary and vice-president of the Kashmiri Overseas Association (KOA) back then. I had developed friendship with him, starting with his phone call to my office in 1995 seeking some high-resolution color pictures of Kashmiri Pandit temples for the KOA calendar that KOA prints for its membership every year. Towards the end of that year, because I was actively posting articles and writeups on the KPnet, he approached me with the idea of bringing KPnet under KOA’s management, which coincided with Shivi’s offer to hand over the reins of the KPnet to someone else, and I had graciously accepted the offer.

Lalit ji first approached the KOA board members to seek some funds for the Internet activities. Internet was so new that it is fair to understand the hesitation of some of the board members. Very few people are like Lalit ji in our community – a ‘person of action’ who has ‘vision’. He was familiar with IT, and he happened to be the right person at the right place at the right time. A sum of $500 was set aside by the board for our internet activities, and this enabled us to register two domain names – koausa.org and kashmir-information.com. As soon as he won the KOA elections in 1996, he approached his dear friend, Sh. Ashok Dhar of Pittsburgh, to host KOA websites and KPnet using latter’s business resources. Ashok ji gladly offered us his services and I took over as KOA webmaster for four years, and as KPnet administrator for about 3 months, which turned out to be one of the most fruitful years in my community service.

With India-based KPs embracing Internet, KOA websites became the most popular website for the KPs, with visitors numbering in thousands every day. Those were glorious years for KOA internet effort. That was the period when we added audio songs, audio lessons, and video clips long before there was YouTube. With the advent of email, many mailing lists – such as KPnet – were maintained manually, with a list owner adding and removing participants by editing a text file until a mailing list manager Majordomo came along. Majordomo has been in widespread use since 1992, predating the popularity of the web browser, in an era when many people had access to email but the World Wide Web did not enjoy wide deployment. KPnet subscribers also started growing in numbers, as this was still the only show in town. I employed Majordomo list server to subscribe, and send e-mails, either as individual e-mails or as Digest which compiled the e-mails as one e-mail and broadcast, to every subscriber once or twice a day.[3]

Lalit Wanchoo is currently Chief Engineer at Adnet, a contractor to NASA for space sciences and remote sensing projects. He lives in Maryland. During his tenure as KOA president, from 1996 through 2000, KOA incorporated several successful programs such as Sponsor A Child (SAC) and Education Assistance Program (EAP) that were run independently before KOA’s involvement. Separate writeup will talk about these successful KOA programs.

This writeup will be incomplete without mentioning timely help provided by Sh. Ashok ji Dhar.

Ashok Dhar

Sh. Ashok Dhar is currently CEO at ExpenseAnywhere at Monroeville, Pennsylvania. As a Business executive with over 30 year-experience in High Technology, he has specialty in Corporate spend management automation and controls.

As founder Virtual Communications, Inc., he helped manage and oversee the design and development and marketing of Internet banking software for Retail and Corporate Banking. The company’s retail banking software won the Industry’s top award for retail internet banking software-WebATM.[4]

It was at Virtual Communications that the KOA website and KPnet were hosted for a few months, until our KOA summer camp in July 1997. I gave a presentation about the KOA websites at the camp, and upon my return to my home in greater Dallas area after the completion of the camp, I found out that the KOA website was hacked. It was such a vicious attack that Ashok ji’s company’s revenues suffered as its servers were down for several days. At this point, Lalit ji moved KOA websites and KPnet hosting to another NRI-owned Internet Service Provider (ISP), called IAOL.

When KPnet became somewhat stable, I asked for a volunteer to manage the KPnet, while I was busy with scanning literature for the KOA website, and several other websites developed and maintained by me. At this point, it was only Lalit Koul who volunteered to help.

Lalit Koul

Lalit Koul started using e-groups for KPnet. It was a big step in the right direction. We liked e-groups for its simplicity and user-graphics interface. In June 2000, e-groups was bought by Yahoo. KPnet subscription reached its peak sometime in mid 2000s. He had also made me and India-based Pawan Durani as co-administrators. During this period, several other KP e-forums mushroomed, but this writeup is about all those e-forums that I was part of – either as a subscriber or as an administrator.

When Sanjay Kaul became the KOA president from 2001 through 2004, after taking over from Lalit ji Wanchoo, it was decided KOA would start its own mailing list for its members and KPnet became a private forum, administered by Lalit Koul afterwards. He worked meticulously to maintain KPnet for more than 15 years in all. With the significance of these mailing lists diminishing over the years largely due to the social media taking center stage, the KPnet was finally closed down sometime in the years 2012 and 2013.

Based currently in Greater Boston area, Lalit Koul is Program Director at CVS Health, responsible for IT portfolio management and project delivery for CVS/pharmacy business unit.[5]

Sanjay Kaul

Sanjay Kaul was one year senior to me at REC Srinagar. With a degree in Civil engineering, he came to the US in the early 1990s, pursued a Master’s degree and settled in Greater Boston area, working for the state of Massachusetts.

Under his tenure as KOA president, from 2001 through 2004, with Arun Koul administering the website and e-forums, KOA created one KOAUSA forum and 10 zonal forums, KOAZone1 through KOAZone10, one for each zone [6] – using Yahoogroups, but now currently hosted by Googlegroups. In addition, KOA-board forum was created for communication between the elected KOA board members. These groups were created to facilitate communication and the participants are KOA members nationwide to positively serve the community. Whereas only dues-paid members subscribe to KOAUSA forum, with KOA management posting organizational messages, appeals for donations, etc., any person believing in KOA’s mission can subscribe to his/her zonal forum (residing in that zone). The zonal e-fora KOAZone1 through KOAZone10 are meant for dissemination of community and KOA related information to the community in USA and provide the zonal community, KOA Director and/or Chapter President(s) access to the KOA community within their own Zone only and engage in discussions. A member’s continued participation as a member of these groups is a confirmation that he/she is in acceptance of established KOA forum guidelines. Anyone found violating any of the guidelines can be removed from these forums.

Arun Koul

Arun Koul lives in Greater Boston area and is MD at Webcontentor. As an experienced leader in technology and services, he builds and provides leadership to application and software development teams in the delivery of large systems as well as innovative, custom solutions. Webcontentor creates and delivers Web Solutions, Mobile Applications and Digital Campaigns for enterprise or new venture.[7]

In addition to creating and maintaining the KOA forums during Sanjay Kaul’s tenure, Arun created Kashmirgroup.com using his own resources, which was perhaps the very first Kashmiri Pandit portal, with database driven KP matrimony site, among many other features that this portal provided.

Puneet Raina

Soon after KPnet yahoogroup was closed by Lalit Koul, I started a Facebook group bearing the same name. I made Chandigarh-based Puneet Raina a co-administrator and together we have established strict guidelines that we enforce well. Puneet takes extra efforts to make sure that the fake profiles are not subscribed to the group. When I became KOA president in the years 2015-2016, he managed this group in my absence. It currently has about 13000 KP subscribers from all over the world.

Puneet Raina, a researcher with experience in Molecular Immunology & Molecular Parasitology, his current research is focused on delineating changes induced by Leishmania parasites in the macrophages after infection.[8]

A KOA president, I created KOA’s official Facebook page and a Twitter account bearing its name and a few LinkedIn groups, one for entrepreneurship. The KOA Facebook group is meant exclusively for the use of only the US-based KPs and their visiting parents, and some from Canada for KOA-related discussions and issues.

I still manage Koshur Yahoogroup and have, in addition, created several individual Facebook pages on Kashmiri temples, saints, playwrights/writers/poets, etc. With so many pages and groups being created on a daily basis by several individuals, the social media has started to lose its meaning now. Facebook and Twitter are soon going to be things of the past and I believe that the humanity is now ready for some new gig to keep itself occupied.

References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Kak

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivifotedar/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majordomo_(software)

[4] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashokdhar/

[5] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalitkoul/

[6] http://koausa.org/site/organization/

[7] https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-koul/

[8] https://www.linkedin.com/in/drpuneetraina/

Disclaimer – The intent of this writeup is to record history for posterity, of such endeavors that have impacted our lives in a positive way after our exodus from Kashmir. It is my understanding that most of our brethren based in India do not know of such events because India was way too slow to embrace Internet in the beginning. Now it is a totally different story. This writeup has tried to give due credit to those movers and shakers in our community who were trailblazers and have contributed significantly to our cause. It is possible that my memory of events has faded with more than two decades having passed. If the events and efforts of individuals do not match with what I have mentioned, it is unintentional, and I offer my sincere apologies for those omissions.

About the Author

Sunil Fotedar, TX

Sunil Fotedar has been interacting with several India-based KP associations and community activists in Jammu, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata over the last two decades and more. He has created a variety of community websites for various organizations such as Kashmiri Overseas Association (KOA) and Panun Kashmir (PK) – the first Kashmiri Pandit to create what has been referred to as Virtual Sharda Peeth – an online Repository of a Kashmiri Pandit’s culture, heritage, religious practices, language, music, history and political literature.

To recognize for his previous community efforts, Sunil was presented with the following awards:

• KOA Plaque for Internet Activities (1997), first of its kind given to any volunteer,
• Special Zaan Award by the Kashmiri Pandit Association, Mumbai
• Featured as an Indomitable Personality in The Sharada Tarangini, Vol. 1, No. 3, March/April-June 2004 issue, the Official Newsletter of Kashmiri Sewak Samaj, Faridabad
• Maa Sharika Samaan (2015) by Kashmiri Sewak Samaj, Faridabad
• Advancement of Hindu Human Rights (June 24, 2019) by Hindu American Foundation (HAF)
• All Time Award of an Outstanding KOA Volunteer (July, 2020) by KOA

Sunil’s association with KOA has been since 1990-1991 when the Kashmiri Pandits back in Kashmir were driven out of their homes due to turmoil. Sunil was Houston chapter president for KOA in 1991 and served twice as KOA National President in 2007-2008 and 2015-2016. As KOA webmaster in 1996-2001, he developed and maintained web servers for KOA, and contributed to the development of several community fora, and incorporated KPnet as KOA’s official communication platform to allow KOA members to communicate and discuss topics of mutual interest with each other. He is currently Program Director for KOA’s Sponsor a Child (SAC) program that supported about 372 KP children in 2018 and 429 KP children in 2019 living at several refugee camps in India, primarily Jammu area, for their K-12 education.

During Sunil’s first tenure as KOA president (2007-2008), KOA was bestowed with Sharda Samman by Panun Kashmir at the 3rd World Kashmiri Conference (delivered in 2009). During his second tenure as KOA president (2015-2016), Sunil created several Facebook and Linkedin groups for US-based community to cater to the needs of youth and entrepreneurs; published second edition of Poozai Posh – a prayer and hymn booklet, Festivals of Kashmiri Pandits written by Sh. Omanand Koul, KOA Calendars for each year (distributed Vijyeshwar jantri), KOA Directory comprising US-, Canada- and Europe-based membership information; organized art and talent competition for youth; and signed up exactly 100 life members (out of 265 total at the time). He was instrumental in creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the organization; and soon to be launched membership-based KOA website. He has helped the 2017 KOA administration with setting up Quickbooks to manage finances, and with defining the process for the entire lifecycle of KOA-sponsored education programs and developing requirements for an online application for the same.

Sunil holds a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Regional Engineering College, Srinagar (India), an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University, Houston, and an M.S. in Applied Mathematics with emphasis on Probability and Statistics from University of Houston at Clear Lake. He was a recipient of two gold-medals in Srinagar for standing first in the 10th and 11th state board examinations. He has worked in several industries – in space industry working as contractor for NASA on Space Shuttle and Space Station programs, as well as an IT professional in Telecom, SSA, CMS, e-commerce and banking. He is currently working as a Reliability engineer for Oil and Gas industry in Houston. His full details are at http://sunilfotedar.com

Source: http://koausa.org/site/programs/sponsor-a-child-sac/

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