For most of her life she was pitied, taunted and told she can’t even manage to care for herself. But Nargis Khatoon, now 24, didn’t let any of that get in her way. As we sit for a chat at her office near the main bus stand at Budgam, she recalls those tough days. […]
Mudabbir Ahmad This girl is as wonderfully surprising as her dreams. And immensely inspiring too. How difficult is it to opt for mountaineering expeditions for a Kashmiri girl? I ask Fouzia and she is already ready with an answer. “It is difficult to find acceptance in our society for what I want to do. But […]
Kashmir’s only synthetic turf at TRC ground, Srinagar was bathed in an out-of- season January afternoon sunshine. It was chock-a-lock. Football was the magnet. All and sundry were hooked up — no half-measures. The crowd was at its boisterous best. It was always going to root […]
The ‘shrine’ at Choon was constructed by the army under the Operation Sadhbhavna launched in 1998,— as a part of its WHAM (winning hearts and minds) doctrine across Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Defence Ministry has given the army around Rs 300 crore under this Operation for various ‘developmental’ activities across Kashmir. Nayeem […]
The recent execution of Shia cleric and scholar Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr along with 47 others in Saudi Arabia triggered protests among Kashmiri Shias across the Valley. The protests prompted police action and curfew restrictions for several days in the Shia-dominated areas of Srinagar city. Some people saw Nimr’s execution by the Saudi authorities through […]
As water levels surged in his south Kashmir village in the 2014 floods, Khurshid was stranded on the rooftop of his small house. He wasn’t sure if he would survive. And, as if as a last wish, he wanted to make a call. While everyone else was trying to connect to relatives in the village […]
The sight of Indian soldiers and Kashmiri rebels clutching AK-47 rifles would fascinate him. He would rush home, grab a toy gun and fiddle with it. “It was then when I thought of making a gun,” says Zubair Ahmad Kumar. Zubair was just nine then. Six years later in 2014, he claims, he actually made […]
With surveillance and micro-profiling of Kashmiris reaching new levels, India’s top spy agency Intelligence Bureau (IB) seems to be mounting pressure on Kashmir University (KU) to crack down on its faculty which the agency accuses of pushing students towards militancy. A recent report by the IB accused KU faculty of being behind rising cases of […]