Kashmir Halcyon:

  By Daanish Bin Nabi New Delhi unilaterally abrogated the special status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. What happens next? This needs no talking, no discussion, and for a reason, which is that India and Pakistan will have to learn to live honourably and with dignity. For that, we need to address disputes, get closer to each other, promote an understanding of the dynamics of the situation across the world. And then come to grips with the heartbeats of the people in this subcontinent. The bona fide people of the sub-continent want peace. They want to live with dignity, but for that we have to remove the bottlenecks. But is New Delhi ready to provide a platform for such a dialogue? To begin with, India and Pakistan will have to rise above yesterday, above intransigence, and above hostility. They will have to put their heads together and address the issues with courage, imagination and flexibility. If they don’t do it, I am afraid we may be caught up in a situation where f...

  By Daanish Bin Nabi Not just the legendary Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani. Not just the hub of separatist activities. The town of Sopore in north Kashmir is also famous for its fish industry. Need it even be said—the situation is grim since the sudden abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. “Since August 5, the fish business has been reduced to Rs 4 lakh per day when it was worth between Rs 40 and Rs 50 lakh just prior to that. The market closed and only a few vendors have been allowed to operate by our association; that too, at a few places in Sopore town,” says district president, Baramulla, Farooq Ahmad Dar. Sopore’s fish trade is among Kashmir’s biggest industries, with over 5,000 license-holding Mahageers (fisherman), followed by Bandipora district’s close to 3,000 license holders. The famous Soporian fish is netted from Wular Lake—although encroachments into the water body have distressed many fishermen in recent years. The state has some 93,000 fishe...

  By Daanish Bin Nabi Shayan Nabi, who describes himself as a “freelance digital marketer” in Srinagar, announced on Twitter on the night of October 10, that he is shutting down his company because of the internet shutdown in Kashmir since August 5. “It’s been more than two months now and I can’t bear any more losses. Thank you, dear India,” he wrote. His tweet got hundreds of responses, most of them sympathetic to the plight of ordinary Kashmiri people and those being run out of business by the clampdown on communications in the Valley. The Central government has made tall claims of creating more jobs in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) after unilaterally revoking the state’s special status and abrogating Article 35A of the Constitution, which protected resident’s rights to buy and sell land. Yet, the outcome of the revocation has only been a social, political and economic crisis. Employees of all sectors from tourism to the much-vaunted Information Technology (IT) sector are on ...

  By Daanish Bin Nabi In the more than one month of communication clampdown imposed on Kashmir, every aspect of life in the Valley has suffered. The economy has been shattered, colleges and universities remain shut, parents are cut off from their children studying outside Kashmir and children are unable to reach their families in the Valley. There is also a medical emergency, as international media reports indicate, which the political dispensation in Delhi has been denying. Amidst all this gloom, there is another section of society that is feeling alone and depressed, and those are the couples of Kashmir. The married, the boyfriends and girlfriends, those engaged, and those who would have been engaged or married, if not for the events that unfolded on August 5. On that day, a security lockdown was imposed that ended communications within the Valley and between the rest of the country and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Just like the parents from Kashmir who tried (often in vain...

  By Daanish Bin Nabi The owners of Al Barq Sanitation, a bustling warehouse in the heart of Srinagar city’s main market, have started “exploring options”. This is code for making their plans to pack their bags and leave the dread-filled Kashmir valley behind forever. After New Delhi’s “historic” decision on August 5, to demote a full-fledged state to a Union Territory and bifurcate it, ordinary Kashmiris are living in abject fear. That includes the family that started Al Barq in 1963. Riyaz Hakeem’s grandfather launched the company and it is a flourishing establishment. Yet, since August 5, the day a clampdown was tightened around Kashmir, the family has not opened the warehouse-showroom even once. “We have run into losses of hundreds of thousands of rupees,” Hakeem says. At his lavish residence in Srinagar, Hakeem discusses the possibilities of growing his business in future, making up his present losses and the politics of Kashmir as a Union Territory. His father and two...

  By Daanish Bin Nabi The people of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) are up in arms against the decision to revoke the region’s special status. There are also fears that the issue could turn communal. There is a sense of gloom about what might happen to the relationship between the majority Muslims of Kashmir and the local Pandits. From the Shivpora locality of Srinagar, home to longtime friends Ravi Kumar (a Kashmiri Pandit) and Akram (a Kashmiri Muslim), comes a ray of hope. The friends say that revoking special status would not matter to the equations shared by the communities they belong to. They rule out chances of any kind of communal clash between the two communities. Comparing Kashmir with Delhi “Whatever New Delhi wants to do and whenever New Delhi wants to do it; that is done and always without asking anyone,” Akram says. He feels the local Kashmiris cannot stop the central government but that does not change how the people of Kashmir think or live, or what they believ...

  By Daanish Bin Nabi Those affected by the communication lockdown in Kashmir the most, are journalists and the media organisations they work for. At the moment, there is a tussle going on in the Valley between Indian and international media. While Indian television channel reports show the local populace in Kashmir as happy with the decision of the government to abrogate the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the international media has been showing ground realities, such as the curfew, the protests and the clampdown. In this tussle between these two media giants, it is the local Kashmiri media whose voice is being muzzled. It is they, the local media outlets and their reporters, photographers, and other staff members, who come in the direct line of fire from the corridors of power. “We have not published since the clampdown on August 5. We have no contact with our staff members either,” says Shams Irfan, an associate editor at Kashmir Life. He says that most staffers of K...