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 […]
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 […]
At this juncture, it is the silence of the self-styled champions of law, freedom of speech, equality, justice and democracy that is echoing most loudly in the Kashmir Valley. This shameful silence of the ‘Great Indian intellectual’ is resonating throughout the slopes of the mighty Hindu Kush and crashing in waves over the simmering […]
In electoral politics, especially in the case of voters throwing up a hung assembly, the floor test becomes sacrosanct. Out of 222 Assembly seats in Karnataka Legislative Assembly, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to win 104 constituencies and stake a claim to form a government as a single largest […]
A fact: As Chief Minister of restive Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti is also chairperson of the Unified Command Headquarters (UCH). By definition, she, in her capacity as head of the unified command, should prevail over all the Corps Commanders of the Indian Army, chiefs of all security and intelligence agencies, chief secretary, civil […]
