Illustration courtesy: Mir Suhail ‘Become a nation unto ourselves’ is what the motto should be, not a nation that huddles together when bodies of its young boys fall. It should be a nation that has a common goal, a common aspiration; a nation that sees in itself its own future; that rides the waves […]
The brazen covert part of the operation ‘silence-the-media’ has been the arrest of Kashmir Narrator’s Assistant Editor Aasif Sultan (on 27 August 2018). The State was unmoved by huge media outcry in Kashmir and outside and protests by the local media fraternity. Despite appeals, it went ahead and booked him under false, flimsy and unsubstantiated […]
Next month, Kashmir will mark the second anniversary of the 2016 agitation. The year 2016 will, unarguably, go down in the history of Kashmir as annus horribilis. Over a hundred persons were killed, thousands injured, hundreds blinded for life, many thousand jailed, and businesses suffered immensely. The repeated imposition of e-curfew, which has since become […]
The recent killing of nine civilians in actions of the Army in south Kashmir’s Shopian has cast a long shadow over the dysfunction of the State. It is the State’s responsibility to protect its citizens. But such is the dysfunctional state of Jammu Kashmir, that the very people who are meant to be the instruments […]
The Indian Army has been a major pillar of democracy in India. In the mid-1970s, when Indira Gandhi was at the height of her power, there stood an honest Chief of Army Staff, Gen Tapishwar Narain Raina, a Kashmiri by birth. He famously refused to allow the Army to serve the interests of any political […]
2017 will probably not go down as one of the worst years in recent history. But, on a personal level, most Kashmiris felt fatigue, frustration, and a sense of despondency about how life in Kashmir would probably never change for the better. Life, since 1989, has become a cycle from boom to bust on repeat mode, […]
After being roasted for its mishandling of the 2016 uprising, the unified Hurriyat Conference seems to be facing an existential crisis. Despite all its flaws, the Hurriyat represents an important resistance political force in Kashmir. But whether united or separate, it has always appeared as an entity belabouredly struggling on in the rough and tumble […]
The most disturbing news that came a few weeks ago was the induction of thousands of pellet guns into Kashmir for use against civilians. Efforts to increase the number of these guns from the current 640 to an unbelievable 5589 is already on fast-track anvil. These 12-bore pump action guns fire bursts of irregularly-shaped metallic […]
Where do you draw a line where media freedom should end? That is an old debate. Its contours are shaped by the times you live in, the system you work in and, of course, the biases of those whom you ask. If we reframe this question and ask: where do you draw a line where […]
More heads usually means better decisions. When the Hurriyat leaders put theirs together after decades of separation, one thought this basic rule would apply. But as always the Hurriyat leaders proved themselves what they are: a massive disappointment. And these are no ordinary times we are talking about. At one end, the current times are […]