day1: 5th august 2019…. It is the morning, not the one it was yesterday. I could open door or window or heart yesterday or I could go out to talk about the leaked government orders which directed officials to prepare stocks of essentials at least for three to six months. I could ask questions to my local officials who would[Read More...]
9th September is revolutionary Punjabi poet Pash’s birth anniversary. He was born on 9th September 1950 in Talwandi Salem village in district Jalandhar and assassinated by Khalistani fundamentalists on 23rd March 1988. While going back into memories, an interesting episode from his life relevant to present day Kashmir situation came to my mind. I was in jail during emergency from[Read More...]
When the British officially brought India under the governance of the British crown in 1858 declaring Queen Victoria as the Empress of India, the rationale provided was that the British Government would work to ‘better’ its Indian subjects. The ‘natives’ then considered uncivilized and deprived of the ‘enlightenment’ were therefore deemed unfit to govern themselves. Thus the white man’s burden[Read More...]
Co-Written by Dr. P.S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal In solidarity with the locked up Kashmiris not one, but two protests were held simultaneously from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the 10th of September, 2019.The organizers and participants of the first protest were Kashmiri students and professionals based in Delhi or outside Delhi who decided to come together at JantarMantar[Read More...]
Co-Written by Ishfaq Majid & Varinder Singh In 1949, a special provision was added to India’s constitution providing autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The article was allowing the state to have its own constitution, a separate flag, and independence over all matters except foreign affairs, defence, and communications. Another provision later added under Article 370 was 35A[Read More...]
Recently economist Jean Dreze told, “There were radical land reforms in Kashmir in 1950s and those land reforms were made possible due to Article-370.” [https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/economist-jean-dreze-jandk-mo…] It is really so because without Article 370 the then Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah could not expropriate big landlords without compensation.
The Punjabi Press Club of British Columbia unanimously condemned the ongoing assault on press freedom in Indian-occupied Kashmir at its monthly meeting in Surrey on Tuesday, September 3. On August 5, the Indian government unilaterally scrapped special rights given to the state of Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian constitution, suspending civil liberties and arresting local leaders on the[Read More...]
A Report by the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) and the Free Speech Collective (FSC) A month after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, on August 5, 2019, the continuing shutdown of communication in the Kashmir valley has resulted in the throttling of independent media. Laxmi[Read More...]
I arrived in Srinagar on the 3rd of August to spend my annual vacation with my family based in Kashmir. Two days after I arrived government suddenly announced bifurcation of the state, revocation of article 370 and turning Kashmir into a union territory. With this decision Mobile phones, internet and all other forms of communications were cut immediately to stop[Read More...]
Amid a debate over whether the annulment of article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir was purely a government decision to reorganise the state, it is necessary to know whose real interest lies here. This removal of article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir (aka J&K) invited a number of intellectuals across the world to hold talks and making opinions regarding legitimacy[Read More...]
