Silent Mothers With Million Word Woeful Stories
PUNCHLINE Our Sombre Sunday Z.G. Muhammad It was a sunny April Sunday, just, following the historic Sunday, when 2.3 million people of three districts of Kashmir, Srinagar, Ganderbal, and Badgam had registered their protest against the perpetuation of the uncertainty about future of the State through ballot- by boycotting the by-elections for the Srinagar parliamentary constituency. Nonetheless, despite the apple trees in full blossoms and vast tracts of mustards fields splashed with gold dust, the April Sunday was … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured, Kashmir-Talk, Perspectives, Point of view
Washington’s New Offer And New Delhi’s Response
PUNCHLINE Kashmir: Truman to Trump By Z. G. Muhammad A few days earlier to Nehru’s death in May 1964 he had shown an inclination towards departing from his straitjacket ‘Procrastination Policy and Diplomacy’ about the Kashmir Dispute by sending Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as his envoy on an exploratory mission to Islamabad for meeting the President of Pakistan. Perhaps, at this stage after the 1962 India-China War, which had made Nehru bid adieu to his “nonaligned policy” he … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured, Kashmir-Talk, Point of view
Nehru-Communist Dubious Role In Kashmir- Response to Andrew Whitehead
Punchline Beyond the “Cut and Paste” Story Z.G. Muhammad Everybody has a right to his ideas. Nonetheless, as Nietzsche says, “We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.” A few day back, Andrew Whitehead, a former BBC journalist who reported from Srinagar in the nineties now turned historian had been invited to deliver a talk, Kashmir 1947-1953 by Kashmir University. He … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured, Kashmir-Talk
The Fifth Province Dilemma- Gilgit-Baltistan And Kashmir Problem
Punchline The Fifth Province Dilemma By Z.G. Muhammad It is the first step towards the “new Great Game”. That is how experts are looking at the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in China’s ambitious project ‘One Belt, One Road vision of land and sea connections between Asia, Europe and beyond. The economic, political and geostrategic fallouts of this project have generated multiple discourses across the globe including in Pakistan- it expects a windfall of economic benefits from the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
Debate In Indian Universities On Kashmir- A silver-lining
PUNCHLINE Indian University Campuses and Kashmir Dispute By Z.G. Muhammad The seventy-year-old Kashmir ‘Dispute’ or ‘Problem’ is graduating towards a resolution. To some friends, overawed by New Delhi’s denials this pithy observation may sound creating false hope. Even a ‘false hope’ as novelist Lois Greiman has said, ‘is better than no hope at all’. Nevertheless, the aim of the statement is not creating false hope. It is based on analysis of the situation as I see it … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
Tales of Downtown Boy Of Srinagar:
Tales of downtown Srinagar: A book that talks of resistance and culture in Kashmir books Updated: Feb 25, 2017 09:09 IST Hilal Mir Hindustan Times Scenes from Lal Chowk, Srinagar in November 2016.(Waseem Andrabi/HT Photo) For the past nine years, Zahid G Mohammad has been writing a column titled ‘Nostalgia’ in the Greater Kashmir newspaper. In his columns, Zahid attempts to reconstruct the politico-cultural history of old Srinagar, where he was born, simply by writing about the mundane and the important facets of mid-twentieth century life in the city. Two collections of these columns have appeared so far: Srinagar: My City, My Dreamland and, recently, Srinagar, The City of Resistance and Culture: Story of Downtown Boy. Both have been published by Gulshan Books Kashmir. Read more ‘Bullet for bullet’ Pakistan policy will worsen J-K situation: Farooq Abdullah Kashmiri youth … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
Natives Have Right To Return, But Big No to Walls of Shame.
Punchline No Walls of Apartheid By Z.G. Muhammad It is my birthright to live in my land. It is of no consequences; if I am an Aborigine belonging to one of the twelve tribes’- the earliest settlers including the Greeks and the Turks or I belong to later arrivals in this land from Persia or the Central Asia. So far I am a state subject morally and legally I have every right to live in the land of my ancestors’. If due to political situations at various points of time I might have migrated to any other part of the sub-continent I have a right to return. This column is not to debate the mass migration of people of our land to British India for fear of corvee and discriminatory and brutal tax … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured