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...

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...

It’s okay to maim my name for I am an inconsequential thing You can place me on the shelves of Primark and Aldi Mine is a ‘budget identity’, made on the cheap - no frills! But a long time ago, in the era of benign...

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...

The needle has struck, the hour has come, and the open road unwinds. With a heavy heart,  I place my soul’s keeping  into nature’s lair for the journey ahead. Of human depredation, her foibles, her impatience, I know her...

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...

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!...

Competing ‘State Identities’ & Ethnic Ambiguities In the absence of a genuine Pakistani state or nation-state identity what are Azad Kashmiris? It is at this point that we enter the quagmire of the Kashmiri identity dialectic which in the UK some pro-independence actors from Azad Kashmir...

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...

Mainland Pakistanis By the term, mainland Pakistanis, I am strictly referring to Pakistanis from areas that constitutionally make up the territory of Pakistan. I am not speaking of nationality laws that apply to the citizens of Pakistan, but rather a defined area that is internationally...