The advent of print media in Kashmir dates back to the year 1856, but the foundation stone of English journalism was laid during the year 1935. The credit goes to Janki Nath Zutshi and Baldav Prasad Sharma who started Kashmir Time— an English news weekly that later emerged as the most popular newspaper of the state, recalls Yousuf Jameel, one of the most prolific journalist Kashmir has seen in contemporary times. A parcel bomb blast in Srinagar office of the British Broadcasting Corporation...

Christopher Snedden is an Australian politico-strategic analyst, author and academic specialising in South Asian studies. His consultancy, Asia Calling, works with governments, businesses and universities. In Kashmir: The Unwritten History, he dismisses India’s claim that Pakhtoon tribesmen stoked the Kashmir conflict in October 1947. On the contrary, an uprising by the subjects of princely Jammu & Kashmir in Poonch, who were disenchanted with the Maharaja’s rule, triggered the...

From the HAJY group— widely considered to be the first among hundreds of Kashmir boys to pick gun in late 1980s— Sheikh Abdul Hamid crossed over the Line of Control between the Indian and Pakistan Kashmir months before his three friends: Ashfaq Majid Wani, Javed Ahmad Mir and Yasin Malik. Credited with the launch of an armed insurgency in this Himalayan region, Hamid died while fighting the government forces in 1992 on this day. Kashmir Dispatch correspondent Adil Lateef visited the Jammu...

A strange, disabling affliction — undiagnosed, unnamed — has become the scourge of the people of a village in Poonch, says Baba Umar



SURROUNDED by mountains of the Pir Panjal range, Adai village in Poonch district of Jammu & Kashmir is a stranger to development. Like many other villages in the region, phrases like sick infrastructure, lack of transport, ailing healthcare, erratic power supply and unhygienic drinking water have for years described Adai’s profile. However, a...

In 2010, two ‘unknown’ militants, carrying a bag of weapons, entered a house in North Kashmir’s Sopore town. The ultras made a dangerous request. They wanted their weapons to be hidden. Refusal wasn’t an option, complying has led to unending spell of arrests and trouble for the Dar family in the apple town.

Today, students of University of Kashmir protested in the campus against yet another tragedy that has befallen them. Their youngest son Munazir Ahmad Dar, a commerce student at...

IT ISN’T every day that you meet a man who has donned the hat of a militant, an uncompromising protest-organiser for separatist groups, a goldsmith and a reform-minded sarpanch. Abdul Rashid Zargar (55) of Daraha Sangla village in Poonch district’s Surankote area is such a man.

With Kashmir riven in a spate of sarpanch killings, Zargar’s transformation from being a separatist militant to a reformist needs to be read as more than just a freak case: it is an indication of how a growing...

As the lease of the Valley’s one of the biggest meadow – Tosa Maidan— located in central Kashmir’s Budgam district to the Indian Army nears an end this December, people living in adjoining areas are demanding an immediate removal of the firing range from the area.

Tosa Maidan situated in the Himalayan range and surrounded by dense forests, is believed to have been used by the Mughals to reach the valley of Poonch.

“If we construct a new house, we have to repair it only after one...

Pain united the two women. The pain was that of separation. Years ago their sons disappeared. And for years they searched for them together. When Mugli, often called the lonely mother of Kashmir, was in her last hours of life, she made Parveena Ahanger to promise - to continue searching for her son.

These women are part of the tragic landscape of Kashmir. Their sons and husbands were taken away in the night, from the markets, homes and streets. Many years after the men are among the...