In the Himalayan valley of Kashmir, the year 2021 was greeted by one of the heaviest snowfalls in the last 10 years in terms of snow depth accumulated during January 3 and 6. The highest accumulation of 4.49 ft was recorded at Qazigund, a highway town, 73 km south of the capital city of Srinagar, followed by 3.13 ft at[Read More…]
Gupkar as the name behind a recent political declaration is catching headlines these days. On 4 August 2019, a group of politicians in Srinagar issued a statement, now known as the Gupkar Declaration, to defend the “identity, autonomy and special status of Jammu & Kashmir against all attacks and onslaughts whatsoever”. Within 24 hours, the Government of India responded by[Read More…]
In 1963, an act of serious sacrilege plunged Kashmir into grief and fury never witnessed before. As people in Srinagar woke up to an icy Friday morning on 27 December corresponding to the 7th day of Chilai Kalan, the 40-day long harshest period of Kashmir winter, a shocking news spread like wildfire across the city. The Moi-e-Muqqadas (strand of holy[Read More…]
During our childhood, when elders at home talked about prices of essential commodities prevalent during their own childhood that they referred to as prone zamane (old times), our reaction would be of disbelief. Although their prone zamane was only 40 or 50 years backwards in time but the stories they told would bring it into our mind as an ancient[Read More…]
5 December is the birth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, a mass leader who dominated the politics of Kashmir for over half a century before passing away in 1982. For 22 years between his ouster as Prime Minister in 1953 and return as Chief Minister in 1975, he remained a dominant symbol of the popular demand for UN-mandated plebiscite in[Read More…]
On 24 October 2018, the State Government inaugurated in Srinagar a ‘library building’ named after the third generation Dogra ruler, Pratap Singh, whose memory in Kashmir only evokes painful feelings of oppression. On psychological plain, the development could be read as a statement to emphasize that theoretically the Dogra regime (1846-1947) might have since ended but its spirit still rules[Read More…]
Shortly before the termination of his rule in 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh, the last Hindu ruler of Kashmir, was known to have toyed with the idea of converting Sonawar, a quarter of uptown Srinagar, into a lake to accord a unique peculiarity to his palace, Talay Manzil (Abode of Fortune) of sitting between two lakes, the other being the famed[Read More…]
The beginning and the end of cinema halls in Kashmir is linked with the turmoil it has witnessed for about nine decades now. During the early 1930s, when Kashmir was passing through an uncertain situation following the massacre of about two dozen unarmed civilians on 13 July 1931 and the consequent public revolt against an autocratic rule, a Punjabi speaking[Read More…]
During a study tour on 31 August 2000, when some teachers and students of Degree College Sopore discovered a fossil of a mammoth at Pampore, 15 kms south of Srinagar, geologists in Kashmir were excited. The find, comprising a skull with complete lower and upper jaws, a broken tusk and a vertebra, was highlighted as ‘the largest ever unearthed in[Read More…]
The first batch of 820 (Haj-1439) pilgrims left Srinagar by air on 14 July 2018. In all, about 10,196 pilgrims from Jammu & Kashmir will perform Haj this year through the State Haj Committee. Of these, 8450 are from Kashmir. The last flight will take off from Srinagar on 25 July. The return flights commencing on 25 August will conclude[Read More…]
Indigenous Australians & Palestinians: Treaty, Truth, Voice, Referendum & Senator Lidia Thorpe 
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Meta and Privacy: The Economy of Data Transgressions 
A Response to The New York Times’ Ritualistic Denunciation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution… 
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Kings Coronation, Victory Day Parade and Perverse Values 
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Memorialize USA Lies About Each Mistaken Undeclared War Americans Remembered Today Gave Their Lives 
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A Tale of Two Indias 
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Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
