Human beings are different from animals in multifarious ways. However, the most important aspect in which we essentially differ is our capacity to be rational, which, besides other factors, has helped us in developing a sophisticated framework of shared languages over the course of history. This peculiar nature of ours has enabled us to interact…
The recent strikes followed by the swelling security footfall have once again made Srinagar a bunkered city where the strife clashes have returned to dominate the news. The quick-fire strike in Srinagarโs heartland on November 24 once again catalyzed the capital shift. Those covering โsecurity beatโ in the strife zone from the last three decades…
Home Minister Amit Shahโs recent statement that the Government of India will only engage with the youth of Kashmir has once again shifted focus to the restive group grappling with plenteous problems at present. Return of the jumble-sale methods has already made fall a chilling winter in the valley. The metaphorical contrast of the withering…
On the heels of a Kashmiri Pandit councillorโs killing, a virtual talk and the subsequent speculations threaten to plague yet another summer in the valley. With J&K Police investigators still probing how did a protected person travelled to Tral without his security guards, some of his incensed brethren have already thrown their weight behind the…
Iโm writing this anonymously because Iโm afraid my mother will face the repercussions. Should such fear be expected from the educational sector of the government? Is this normal? Only days before the holy month would commence, weddings were being conducted, feasts held, markets flung open without social distancing, and officials at the airport, the ones…
Last year saw a surge in LoC fireworks amid LAC standoff, keeping life on the cutting edge on tenterhooks. Before snow transiently silenced guns at the Line of Control (LoC), the belligerent nuke-loaded neighbours were at it again โ shelling over the bodies of Kashmiris. Last summer, the frontier fireworks were full of spark and…
Before New Delhiโs new land laws for Jammu and Kashmir would force local unionists to raise demographic change fears in the region, the abrogation of Article 370 had long set the stage for the landscape alteration. After losing its special constitutional positioning on 5 August 2019, the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir is fanatically…
Sri Aurobindo, in his seminal essay The Future of Poetry, observes that “Truth of poetry is not truth of philosophy or truth of science or truth of religion only because it is another way of self-expression of infinite Truth so distinct that it appears to give quite another face of things and reveal quite another…
Jerusalem or al-Quds is one of the three holiest sites in Islam, the reference of which has been found both in ambiguous and in unambiguous terms; both in The Holy Quran and in the Hadith literature. The city has been in the centre of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I would attempt to see the โHoly…
With uncertainty all around us, the entire world has come to a standstill. Countries across the globe, barring a few, are either under a complete or a partial lockdown. From trade and commerce to politics and education, and even to the closure of places of worship, every aspect of human life has been affected. With…