Peace Watch

  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 »

  Is our narrative outlandish, irrational and unfounded bordering on conspiracy theory? Are we truly paranoid people? These questions bothered me at a recent seminar broadly   organized by Kashmir University and attended by a battery of teachers of political science from within and outside the State.  The broad subject for seminar was finding solution to Kashmir problem within framework of Indian Constitution. In this column, sometime back I wrote that it is encouraging that Kashmir University of late is coming out of the academic inertia by striding across hitherto forbidden turfs – such as discussing the future of Kashmir. But largely so for, these discussions  have been conforming to the ‘dominant discourse’ and ‘official narratives’. Noam Chomsky in his essay, ‘the function of the university in a time of crises,’ has rightly … Read entire article »