Z.G. Muhammad   ‘Kashmir University has become an extension of the ‘state establishment. Moreover, academic freedom and genuine scholarship is the biggest causality.’ This lament has been finding an echo in most of the academic seminars held outside the campus. On 10 December 2014, when across the world people were observing the Human Rights Day and pledging to uphold all the   thirty Articles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in a seminar some scholars, researchers and students were raising their voice against denial of academic freedom in the Kashmir University. This seminar had been organized by a group of civil society to mark the historic day. Scholars mostly from social sciences and languages narrated stories after stories about their being coerced to change their findings and bringing them in line with … Read entire article »

PUNCHLINE ‘Political fatigue and surrendering the cherished  political causes for which leaders have whipped up public sentiments, mobilized  millions to come on the streets  and made people to suffer immensely   is neither pragmatism nor realpolitik’ . This was   central theme of my column, ‘the story of climb-downs’,   published two weeks back in this newspaper. To illustrate,  how the  ‘climbing-down syndrome’ afflicting our leadership  had  defeated the resolution of the Kashmir Dispute  and worked as dampener for bringing in lasting peace in South-Asia, I had quoted  examples of  the 1964 Holy Relic Movement and Sheikh-Nehru Dialogue, the 1965, students agitation and civil disobedience movement, the 1968 State Peoples Convention and the 1975 Indira-Sheikh Agreement. Nevertheless, for limitations of space, I had not been able to dwell in detail, how our leadership had … Read entire article »

Z. G. MUHAMMAD   It will be to be too prophetic to say on what signature tune curtains will be drawn on the year 2013 in Kashmir. Fifty-seven days left of the current year ostensibly are too small a period to expect dramatic political changes in a state caught up in uncertainties for over sixty-six years. Nevertheless, in disputes like that of Jammu and Kashmir even a small incident can presage a big change. The last week of October 2013 was significant in as much as   generating a debate over landing of Indian troops on 27 October 1947 at Srinagar airport.  The debate was marked by renewed discourse on ‘date and fact’ of the “Instrument of Accession” that had ‘facilitated’ India to send its troops into Jammu and Kashmir- then an independent country. … Read entire article »

  Z. G. MUHAMMAD   It was a day of introspection. Sitting through a one-day seminar on Mir Sayed Ali Hamadani in Kashmir University, on Wednesday, I was reminded of my identity- Who am I?  Pat came the reply, I am an aborigine born   in a Muslim family. Brought up in a Muslim family in a very large a seminary- the “old” Srinagar city that   was adopted not only as the capital    by the Sultans of Kashmir but also as a great centre of Islamic learning. Even after the Sikh rulers in 1819, closed the five hundred year old Islamic institutions, the city lived to the tradition of being a large seminary- where almost everyone received education in basic tenets of Islam from the pulpits. I was reminded of my debt to Mir … Read entire article »