On his just-concluded two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh parried a question whether New Delhi was ready to have a dialogue with the Hurriyat, and if yes, what would be its terms of reference? Instead Mr Singh chose to answer this important question in an indirect and hazy manner, […]
By Faheem Jeelani Great creative pursuits have an inherent capacity in them to transcend the actual performance. Some of the most finest musical concerts in past couple of decades, like Guns n Roses’ ’92 Tokyo, wasn’t just about the music. It reached to a folklore stage where the color of Axl Rose’s chequered skirt […]
A former Kashmiri armed rebel who obtained arms training in Afghanistan with the aim to fight Indian forces in the Himalayan Valley and stayed in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi for several years is currently running from pillar to post to own a small piece of land for his family on his return to Pulwama, […]
By Omair Bhat In the last week of September of 2017, a short video was released by the J & K Tourism Department on its YouTube channel. It attracted immediate attention. Shortly after its release, it also surfaced on social networking sites and went viral. Surprisingly, many of us identified with what […]
By Aakash Hassan Three years ago, a professor in my college told me how murky things were when he was my age. “There were students working for different agencies. The college was about politics and spying more than about education and learning,” he revealed. “Some were so powerful that they would openly carry pistols […]
The bone chilling videos showing blood splattered on the floor of Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid and pictures capturing the moment when tear gas shells were hitting the central mosque’s rooftop emanating black smoke this Friday are defining in many ways. These pictures and videos recording what exactly happened in and outside Jamia Masjid, Srinagar, […]
As Asad Durrani and Amarjit Singh Dulat, former spymasters of Pakistan and India respectively, are releasing their much awaited co-authored book THE SPY CHRONICLES: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace, written by journalist Aditya Sinha, in New Delhi, here is a recollection of what A.S. Dulat in his memoir Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years had documented about the Intelligence […]
The recent halt in operations announced by the Delhi has garnered widespread scepticism with both politicians and political experts terming the announcement as ‘futile.’ Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti had suggested a Vajpayee type Ramadhan unilateral ceasefire like the one of 2000. It was accepted by the Centre but with conditions. Far from her claim, is […]
So I hit the South Asia seminar circuit again yesterday. As so often when it comes to that part of the world, the event was held at The Woodrow Wilson Center, a hugely influential foreign policy think tank located inside the massive Ronald Reagan Center and staffed with analysts with direct access to the […]
Of late the J&K dispute has been reduced to a specific narrative. A ‘nominal choice’ of opting for an independent state is being pushed by many quarters. A visible attempt is being made to highlight that option, and there is a deliberate and conscious effort to hide or completely ignore a vast constituency within J&K […]
