The Last Open Pulpit: Kashmir’s Friday Sermon Row and the Kashmiri Muslim Fight Over Preserving the Right to Exist
For many Kashmiri Muslims, Friday is the one hour of the week that still belongs to them. The mosque fills, the imam stands, and a community that has had little say over its own affairs hears its fears and its faith spoken aloud by someone it trusts. When the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board…
The Politics of Erasure: Institutional Audits, Banned Books, and the Suppression of Dissent in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
An unprecedented ideological and administrative purge is unfolding across Indian-occupied Kashmir, threatening the foundations of intellectual autonomy and historical preservation. Recent data tabled in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly reveals that authorities have scrutinized a staggering 2,181,582 books and publications across college libraries, public repositories, and educational institutions. Under the official guise of eliminating…
The Kashmir case: Why the Instrument of Accession was Kept Secret until 2016
For decades, researchers visiting the National Archives of India in New Delhi could consult the Instruments of Accession signed by the rulers of princely states that joined India after the end of British rule in 1947. The documents were there, available for scholars to examine. There was, however, one conspicuous exception: Jammu and Kashmir.…
