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...
Who are Azad Kashmiris? Are they Pakistanis, Kashmiris, or Occupied Indians?
Anonymous Quote
“They’re fighting over Kashmir! One way to win this fight is by splitting the people into different groups. When people are divided, or adopt identities of neighbouring people naively, the occupiers win. Indians and Pakistanis celebrate their own unity. But Jammu & Kashmir...
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 tend to confuse our countries delineated by their map-depicted borders as being the product of a natural timeline that connects...
Remembering the victims of political oppression in ‘Azad’ Jammu Kashmir
Muhammad Ali Murtaza, an innocent young man was brutally tortured to death by Pakistan's army without any explanation and worse, they tried to cover it up.
Quotes of the Day
"The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who...
The Importance of Cultural History; Kashmir – a Fragmented Land
The immediate thoughts which sprung to mind when faced with the word ‘history’ were recollections of sitting in a high school classroom making notes on British monarchs. However, it is only after following the dictation of the National Curriculum, I found myself with a...
Social media is destroying young people’s lives
Meedi Mydi Media Mo...!
Meedi Mydi Media Mo
I scour the pages of friends and foe
Night and day, a restless soul
I cascade into a virtual hole
Betwixt my Egyptian sheets
My body aches, my eyes bulge
Fingers scaling, skin peeling
My head vibrates, ping pong po
I voyageur into a universe...
Colonial myth making and the Martial Races
Heather Streets, author of "Martial Races; the military, race and masculinity in British imperial culture, 1857 - 1914" said,
"...the savage representations of masculinity that lay at the heart of martial race ideology* were a crucial imaginative site upon which Anglo-Indian military elites responded to,...
Reconciliation for divided Jammu & Kashmir; working towards peace
At some point in the not too distant future, Commander Farooq of Mong and Dr Karan Singh, son of the last Dogra Jamwal Rajput ruler of Jammu & Kashmir, could (and should) meet in Mong, auspices of the people of “Azad” Jammu & Kashmir. This...
