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 upon me that my opposite number were unaware of the caste titles they were fondly using as...

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This is how the Economist explains the "Kashmir" conflict using the colonial label of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' - these are 'constructed labels' however common-sense they seem to us today! There is a huge scholarly body of knowledge that demonstrates that before the emergence of...

Pakistan we are told was created for Muslims in 1947. The chap credited for the creation of Pakistan, Mr Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was the grandson of a Hindu convert to a heterodox sect of Islam, not considered Muslim by mainstream Sunnis and Shias. We...

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!...

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 even a democrat. I was a journalist working in various conflict hotspots around the globe (Iraq and Afghanistan), had regular...

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...

Unknown (or often untold) stories live on in the names of villages and towns in the Pahari speaking region of divided Jammu & Kashmir. Variably known as the 'Pahari Ilaqah' of Kashmir, or the 'Pir Panjal' region of Jammu & Kashmir State, this area...

Dear Pakistan Occupied Kashmiris I speak to you through this medium as a brother from Indian Occupied Kashmir. I speak to you for our shared homeland, history, and continuous struggle against oppression and aggression. We are the children of hills and mountains. We fought collectively...

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 his native birth, erstwhile Jammu, now split between India and Pakistan. I was quite startled about his individual story of...