In October 2020, India declared October 26 a public holiday in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time, to mark the accession of the state to India in 1947. For more than three decades before that, Kashmiris had marked the following day, October 27, the day Indian troops...
Every September 23, government offices and schools across Jammu and Kashmir close. Since 2022, the date has been an official holiday for the birthday of Hari Singh, the last Dogra ruler of Kashmir. It arrived after July 13, the day Kashmiris mourn those killed by...
Across the global calendar, few months carry as much weight for an occupied territory as August does for Jammu and Kashmir. For nearly eight decades, August has not simply been a period on a timeline; it has repeatedly served as the site of structural redefinitions,...
Memory is rarely neutral in an occupied territory; it is a battleground. In the ongoing struggle over Jammu and Kashmir, the conflict is fought not only through troop deployments, military checkpoints, and legal statutes, but through a systematic effort to dictate...
The passage of time has a tendency to strip international conflicts of their urgency, turning active humanitarian crises into frozen diplomatic files. Yet, the question of Jammu and Kashmir refuses to be archived. Decades after it was first inscribed onto the agenda...
What began in occupied Kashmir now extends to people across India In the rugged geography of the Himalayas, silence has been weaponized for decades. What the world once viewed as an emergency measure in occupied Kashmir has, in reality, been the blueprint for a much...
The recent shutting down of the historic Jamia Masjid on March 13, the last Friday of Ramadan (Jumat-ul-Vida) marks yet another event in the ongoing struggle faced by the Muslims of Indian-occupied Kashmir. To the indigenous people of Indian-occupied Kashmir it is...
For the people of Indian-occupied Kashmir, months are not measured by the changing of seasons, but by the weight of their tragedies. Time in the valley does not flow naturally; it is anchored to a long continuum of grief, memory, and state-sponsored violence. When May...
We have deaths that bring an end to a chapter. And there are deaths which reveal the fault lines in a war. History knows moments when the state speaks the language of finality. A performance warrant is to be signed. A clock is fixed. A rope tightens. Official records...
Introduction: Why January Bleeds in Kashmiri Memory January is not just a period or a time in the consciousness of the history and politics of Kashmir, but a symbol of group trauma and struggle that is ingrained in the collective consciousness. The generation after...
Hospitals are supposed to be havens in areas of conflict, where the political lines are blurred by human frailty and where the moral imperative to heal overrides ideology. In Indian-occupied Kashmir, even these sanctuaries have been placed under suspicion,...
Corruption in Kashmir is a highly complex phenomenon that is way beyond the traditional understanding of misusing public funds or being an inefficient state system. It is a very ingrained problem, which illustrates historical, social, and political changes of the...
1. Kashmir is often described as the most dangerous location on the planet. The possibility of two nuclear powers confronting each other in such a relatively confined area is indeed alarming. The conflict over Kashmir remains one of the most extended and tragic issues...
Early Life and Activism Yasin Malik’s journey is inseparable from the modern history of Kashmir. Born in Srinagar in 1966, Malik grew up witnessing political unrest, curfews, and the suppression of student movements. Drawn to activism early, he co-founded the Jammu...
I. Conflict, Perception, and the Power of Narrative The Kashmir dispute is one of the longest-running and most complex political conflicts of the modern era. Its roots go back to a time before the creation of India and Pakistan in 1947, when the region was made up of...
Introduction: The Silence That Enables Oppression Kashmir is often labelled a "dispute" between India and Pakistan, yet it remains alarmingly overlooked in the urgent conversations surrounding global justice. The cries of Kashmiris, trapped in one of the harshest...
Introduction The question of why India and Pakistan continue to fight over Kashmir is one that surfaces frequently in media, textbooks, and international discourse. It’s often presented as a straightforward territorial dispute born out of the 1947 Partition — a...
The Transformative Power of Art For centuries art has been used by many to resist injustice, help with healing and preserve the culture of those who are oppressed and marginalized. Whenever people cannot use ordinary pathways to protest peacefully, art transforms into...
In the wake of the recent Pahalgam attack, more people are beginning to seek out the deeper story of Kashmir, a story too often missing from the world's headlines crowded with crises, wars, and political upheaval. Kashmir remains one of the world’s longest unresolved...
Geopolitical tensions, cross-border hostilities, and an ongoing struggle for sovereignty have long marked the Kashmir conflict. Unfortunately, amidst this prolonged conflict, another aspect of its tragedy, which gets little attention, landmines, continues to occur....
The night of the 23rd of February 1991 witnessed a brutal tragedy unfolding in the two twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora in the Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir administered by India. What happened that night is one of darkest marks in Kashmir's history — a...