TRENDING
Reclaiming Azad Jammu Kashmir For Her People
The Evolution of AJK Public Agency
Citizen’s Opinion + Citizen’s Resources
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Citizen’s Control of Public Policy
The most important aspect of modern-day governance is a consensus...
FEATURED
Protected: Fleeing poverty and becoming poorer; the truth of dispossession
Recently, given my father’s imminent demise, he is terminally ill with leukaemia, I started to ask him about his life in the land of...
Reclaiming Azad Jammu Kashmir For Her People
The Evolution of AJK Public Agency
Citizen’s Opinion + Citizen’s Resources
=
Citizen’s Control of Public Policy
The most important aspect of modern-day governance is a consensus...
The same tired mantras, the same bandwagons
Apparently, if you read the Guardian, Britain is a racist society. White writers aren’t saying this, BME writers are, because the leftwing Guardian doesn't do...
Asking the questions, having the discussions!
Reclaiming AJK For Her People [Video Segment]
EXCERPT from "The Evolution of AJK Public Agency"
"Before arriving here, I can confidently assert that I was neither a patriot, nor a nationalist or...
Pakistan Has Criminalised Independence for Kashmir According to UN
Preliminary questions to think about…?
How does propaganda work? General Context?
How does propaganda work in Kashmir? Specific Context?
Who benefits from propaganda?
How...
Ethnic tokenism in electoral politics and the laws of unintended consequences
There was a time when you could walk into any local Labour Party branch meeting in the densely populated Pakistani constituency wards of England,...
The Curious Case of Authoritarianism, Digital Media & Pseudoscience
Don't trust everything you read online.
You'll be duped into believing utter tosh. This holds true for Twitter, Facebook...
What’s in a name? A brief look into place names of Azad Kashmir
Unknown (or often untold) stories live on in the names of villages and towns in the Pahari speaking region of divided Jammu & Kashmir....
Fake News, False Narratives and Identity Politics, Silencing Dissent through Digital Media and Search...
Digital Media particularly through interactive platforms like Wikipedia and Social Media, are vehicles of disinformation and political propaganda. Whatever the nature of an online...
Pakistan’s ethnonationalists will be best remembered for the country that imploded amidst a civil...
Pakistan we are told was created for Muslims in 1947. The chap credited for the creation of Pakistan, Mr Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was the...
TOPICAL
Nation state fictions and imagining the past
A lot of us confuse our 'countries', and the technical term for what I'm describing is 'nation states', with ideas of historical continuity. We...
The Feudalism of the Western Himalaya and Myths of Caste Identities
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting with some local guys consuming copious amounts of alcohol to the backdrop of a varied playlist...
Appraising Mirpur’s documented history, the story of Kashmir before and after...
Mirpur was the name of an historical settlement in the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir (1846 – 1947), variably known as Kashmir State,...
MOST COMMENTED
Muslim Ummah Syndrome and Identity Politics
Some years ago, Saudi Arabia proscribed its male citizens from marrying the citizens of four nationalities. Pakistanis were included on this list. The Monarchy had its reasons, no doubt, good or bad; the preponderance of such marriages was given as the primary reason. Apparently, marriages...
Contextualising prejudice within its social and political settings; explaining why and how Pakistanis demonise Mirpuris
The following post was updated 30 October 2020
https://youtu.be/97IES3jFOg0
There comes a point for members of a community to stand up and be heard. And that time has now come for British Azad Kashmiris, otherwise less popularly known as the Kashmiris, but selectively as the Mirpuris.
For...
Why do anti-Semites say “Israeli Jews are not real Jews?”
You must have heard the claim that modern-day Israel is a country with another people’s language and religion?
If you haven’t, antisemitism has become so common these days (I’m speaking of hatred against Jews, and not criticism against Israel), that you’ve probably come across multiple...
Fake News, False Narratives and Identity Politics, Silencing Dissent through Digital Media and Search Engine Manipulation
Digital Media particularly through interactive platforms like Wikipedia and Social Media, are vehicles of disinformation and political propaganda. Whatever the nature of an online conversation, be it a family’s travel vlogs, pictures, fashion tips, food stories - “dad’s visit to Israel” - when a...
Ethnic tokenism in electoral politics and the laws of unintended consequences
There was a time when you could walk into any local Labour Party branch meeting in the densely populated Pakistani constituency wards of England, and you would realise that something was breathtakingly afoot. The room would be overcrowded. Almost entirely male-dominated with the usual...
The Curious Case of Authoritarianism, Digital Media & Pseudoscience
Don't trust everything you read online.
You'll be duped into believing utter tosh. This holds true for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Had it not been for authoritarianism and control freaks, these spaces would have been wonderful places to learn...
The curious case of the anecdote becoming narrative
Internalising the negative perceptions of out-group members is not proof that there’s something inherently wrong with your in-group identity. This has happened to lots of people who have been ‘othered’ through a combination of factors that include inaccurate media portrayals, native informants and unjust social...
Appraising Mirpur’s documented history, the story of Kashmir before and after 1846
Mirpur was the name of an historical settlement in the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir (1846 – 1947), variably known as Kashmir State, Jammu Kingdom and/or the Dogra Raj. The name Mirpur postdates the principality’s alleged founding in the 1600s. Centuries later, the...
Pakistan’s Article 370 Delusions; the Free State that is not Free!
It’s ‘Azad’ - 'Free'.
"Okay!?" "It's Azad Kashmir!" "Free!"
This is Pakistan’s official stance on 'Azad' Jammu & Kashmir.
But what is Kashmir ‘free’ of?
According to the Pakistani state-enforced narrative, Azad Kashmiris are free from Indian tyranny. Women aren’t being raped by Indian soldiers, and by Indian they mean non-Muslim...
Understanding Disinformation and Propaganda on Kashmir
Those who argue that Kashmir is the Valley of Kashmir and that Kashmiris are the ethnic Kashmiris of the Valley are engaged in deliberate disinformation. These sinister interests want you to think that they are making ethnolinguistic claims about the people we call Kashmiris, but...
Whose Kashmir is it? Conflict, Territorial Claims & the Abuse of Myths
As in my earlier post on Israel and competing myths of exclusive origin, Kashmir serves as a good example of national myths and territorial claims. But unlike Israel, Kashmir has a special place for us. It's the place from where our forebears originated, before...
How Mirpuris were invented by ethnonationalists opposed to Kashmir’s Independence
People everywhere want to learn something about their past. I did too. I was born in the UK. The first member of my direct family to come here was my maternal grandad. He was a veteran of the British Indian Army. Terms can be...
The Feudalism of the Western Himalaya and Myths of Caste Identities
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting with some local guys consuming copious amounts of alcohol to the backdrop of a varied playlist and it dawned on me that my opposite number were unaware of the caste titles they were fondly using as...
What are cultural spheres?
The term ‘cultural sphere‘ can be used in different contexts. At the core of the idea is the notion that a culture can be shared between people living in a clearly demarcated territory. There are three ingredients that I would like to explore in this...
The Governance Dilemma in so-called “Azad” Jammu Kashmir
This footage makes an attempt to summarise the effort of Mahmood Ahmed Musafir in light of his herculean effort to address the near absence of governance in AJK.
#ajk #AjkMagayAzadi
DAY 53
Quote of the Day
“I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my...
Learning the difference between Group Identities and Identity Politics
Having been born and raised in the UK, whilst ascribed an ethnic minority status from birth, I discovered that identities are complicated things. Being ascribed a group identity is one thing, but not feeling part of it is another thing altogether. We can have...
Oh Kashmir, who did you offend!?
Oh Jammu & Kashmir, what was your crime? Who did you offend that they long to punish you?
Are you not a people, old as the nations of the world, older than the straight borders of colonial maps?
Nay, nay, you are not a nation!...
What exactly is cultural heritage?
What do we mean by the term ‘cultural heritage’?
For my British Kashmiri readers, I have compiled a series of short posts to educate them about their cultural heritage, as a means of showing them that modern identities have never been around since time immemorial....
Who are Azad Kashmiris? Are they Pakistanis, Kashmiris, or Occupied Indians?
“Pakistan and India are fighting over Kashmir, a third people's land! One way to win this fight is by splitting the Kashmiris into different groups, ethnicities, religions, castes, social groups, languages. When people are divided, or adopt the identities of the Occupiers naively, the...
The same tired mantras, the same bandwagons
Apparently, if you read the Guardian, Britain is a racist society. White writers aren’t saying this, BME writers are, because the leftwing Guardian doesn't do divisive politics, it just does identity politics, which needs the right identities to express the ubiquitous grievances. Where there are...
