Review of “Torch Bearer”  A Novel by  G.N. Gowhar. By Zahid. G. Muhammad Venu M.D. Taseer Hall, A.S. College, Srinagar   Thank you Gowhar Sahib, for giving me an opportunity to read  your novel and then review  the same. I do not know why? While coming to this place names of Palestine poet Mehmood Darwish, Tawifq  Zayyad and  Fadwa Tuqan persistently knocked my mind…it sounds ironic, why I did not remember any of  the contemporary poets of my mother tongue…the language I love and relish.   Perhaps, I was caught up in a web of dilemmas- should I look at   the Torchbearer merely as a piece of literature and discuss it simply as a genre of literature. Is this novel charged with defiance, does it cascade with pain and agony that people of this land have been undergoing, … Read entire article »

In 2008, Kashmir Was Part of Obama Rhetoric 2012 He has forgotten even name why? Z.G. MUHAMMAD The South Asia will be fulcrum to US policy in Asia has been a general belief with foreign affairs wizards, geo-strategic experts and political pundits in and around Washington. The region would prominently figure in the presidential election campaign and the debate has been part of the belief. Some factors that contributed to this belief have been increasing role of China in the region. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) emerging as an alternative mechanism to fill the vacuum once Western troops depart from Afghanistan. The challenges after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, institutionalization of democracy in the war ravaged country and challenges of militancy in Pakistan. Possibilities of an alliance between three Muslim countries, Iran, Pakistan and … Read entire article »

Torch Bearer” A magnum opus that should be read by everyone PUNCHLINE Z.G. MUHAMMAD Smaller Default Larger Not telling the truth candidly is disappointing. That too, when literati, writers and poets submit to expediency and fail to sing songs of compassion for their compatriots. Of late, I have started believing that the looming clouds of disappointment have started vanishing from our literary scene and we are on threshold of a renaissance – a literary renaissance in our own right.  One, after another book telling the peoples tale are added to ‘Kashmir literature   shelf.’ Some two or three weeks earlier Shafi Ahmed’s novel ‘The Half Widow’, narrating woeful tale of hundreds of Kashmir women whose husbands were subjected enforced disappearance was released in Srinagar. This was second in queue, to internationally acclaimed ‘stunningly poignant’ story of … Read entire article »

  Trapped in inertia and choked for years Kashmir writers   have broken their silence. They have started telling their story- telling it boldly. “He who writes his story; Inherits the land of that story, wrote years back great Palestine poet Mahmud Darwish. That Kashmiris are yet to tell their story- truthful story to the world has been an overwhelming grouse with the common people.  Like many others, I also craved for having our own literature in the vein of internationally recognized, ‘Palestine Literature’- a literature that ‘takes its testimony from the place it is born- ‘a literature written within a specific historical context- a context which may be immediately situated within the contemporary struggle.’ There can be no denying, many important European and Americans historians, writers and novelists during past sixty year … Read entire article »