Saturday, 18 May 2013
Kainaat Mushtaq SRINAGAR: In a sprawling field surrounded by snowy Himalayan peaks dozens of Muslim women gather every month to stage a sit-in in the scenic region of Kashmir. The women wear white head-bands, carry photographs of their spouses and hold placards reading, "Where are our loved ones?" Often, tears roll down their faces. They are Kashmir's "half-widows" and they are demanding to know the...
Posted 4 days ago.
Rashid Paul SRINAGAR: A teenage boy in Kashmir, on bail over stone pelting charges, has appealed to court to save him from the police who were allegedly pressurizing him to ‘spy’ for them. Danish Farooq spent 16 days in police custody last November and was released after the Amnesty International raised concern over his detention as a minor. The 17-year-old has now filed a petition with the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Srinagar seeking that he be taken...
Posted 6 days ago.
Rakib Altaf SRINAGAR: Hindi, India's national language, has survived the two decades of violent anti-India campaign in Kashmir. After the outbreak of armed conflict in late eighties and the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (ethnic Hindu community), the number of students in the Hindi department of Kashmir University plummeted to just two. The number of students remained in single digit for nearly fifteen years. But today the roll has gone up to 45 which include...
Posted 10 days ago.
Rakib Altaf SRINAGAR: Ruvaida Salam is perhaps the first ever Kashmiri woman to have qualified the Indian civil services exam. Her relatives were happy that she had done her MBBS and insisted that she should now marry. But this young woman from the border district of Kupwara had set her eyes on the Indian civil service. “My relatives made my marriage their top priority, but I resisted all pressures,” she says. Ruvaida is among three women from the...
Posted 11 days ago.
Kainaat Mushtaq SRINAGAR: Shooting has broken out again in troubled Kashmir valley, but this time the canisters contain celluloid, not gunpowder. Stars from "Bollywood," India's active Bombay-based film industry, have returned to sing and dance against a backdrop of snow-capped peaks, encouraging the authorities who insist that guerrilla violence is now under control. So have TV crews. "I have visited...
Posted 18 days ago.
"During the study we also found cases where members of the same family were diagnosed with brain cancer." Rakib Altaf SRINAGAR: Toxic chemicals sprayed on fruit trees in Kashmir orchards are causing fatal brain cancer in the valley. A study has found that 90 percent of patients who die from malignant brain tumor in the valley is linked to orchards where pesticides, insecticides and fungicides are used. It says that...
Posted 19 days ago.
Kainaat Mushtaq SRINAGAR: Mohammad Gul and his two sons sit hunched over a row of handlooms in a small building hidden behind thick creepers and willow trees in Kashmir and stealthily weave a wool shawl. They were not sheltering from the insurgency which has raged in Kashmir for 23 years - Gul was making a shawl from shahtoosh, one of the world's finest wools that is banned because according to wildlife activists it is derived from the hair of an endangered...
Posted 21 days ago.
Mujtaba Wani JAMMU: Files are dusted, paper clips are packed into metal boxes and photocopying machines are loaded onto trucks lining a heavily-guarded road outside the civil secretariat in Jammu. Government officials in the state of Jammu and Kashmir are on the move to Srinagar city in an annual ritual to escape the summer heat of Jammu plains. Under an old tradition called Darbar, meaning council of...
Posted 22 days ago.
Rakib Altaf SRINAGAR: In the nineties, when the Ultra-Islamic group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (daughters of the nation) tried to enforce a Purdah rule in Kashmir, they simply failed. The Kashmiri women were just reluctant to accept their diktat. Now almost two decades later, the trend of the purdah has been rising, mostly among college girls and working young ladies. They have adopted the Abayaa or a long cloak-like dress that covers the entire body from head to toe...
Posted 31 days ago.
Manisha Sobhrajani Day I Country roads… Take me home… John Denver’s famous song was playing on full blast in my head as my aircraft was landing at the Srinagar airport. The familiar sight of brown mountains whose tops were covered in snow, and reminded one of chocolate cake topped with vanilla ice cream, was reassuring. Walking from the aircraft to the arrival lounge at the airport, I...
Posted 36 days ago.
