By Seema Kazi Kashmir’s 2016 uprising must be placed within the wider context of the persistent rebellions for freedom and justice in Kashmir that, as Christopher Sneddon reminds us in his important book, began to unfold much before the post-1947 India-Pakistan hostilities over Kashmir. The fact that Kashmiris themselves initiated rebellion against a repressive, feudal […]
The highest and most deadly price for the hit-and-run tactics adopted by armed rebels was paid by scores of ordinary Kashmiri civilians who lost lives, homes, honour, livelihoods, property, granaries, mosques, shops, businesses, schools, entire markets, shrines, historical architecture and priceless works of Kashmiri art and culture in the inevitable horrific retaliatory, revengeful and retributive […]
The poet’s imaginary had special and poignant resonance for Kashmir. He would undoubtedly agree that Kashmir never pursued a borrowed history; it lived and was faithful to its own Much has been written on Kashmir’s deepening darkness. The mobilisation around the future of Article 35A that the Kashmiris correctly read as an attempt to destroy […]
Partition of the subcontinent is an uneasy theme in India. Despite a growing literature on the topic, there is little public debate or discussion on the issue. Nor is there a single public monument to what Sunil Khilnani described as the “unspeakable sadness” that produced the world’s largest migration and a death toll estimated at […]
In a recent essay (Caravan May 2016) on the drift of the times, writer-thinker Arundhati Roy highlighted the link between State-backed right-wing vigilantism and the climate of bigotry, violence and impunity in mainland India. She articulated several uncomfortable truths regarding mainland India amongst which was the complicity of all political parties including the Left in […]
“People listened to the victim and they listened to the politicians, but this voice that says: I did this, we did things that were wrong – crimes actually – that’s a voice I did not hear” (David Grossman quoted by Jacqueline Rose, The Last Resistance, 2007). Among conflict and war-torn regions, Kashmir has one of […]
It’s just the chicken coming home to roost India’s writers, artists, scientists, historians, film-makers, academics and members of civil society have rightfully condemned the creeping climate of violence, prejudice and intolerance sweeping across the country. Such protests are a moral and ethical force amidst a deepening darkness. Extraordinary as the protests are, their focus is […]