What is history? How does a land become a homeland? How are cultural identities formed? The Making of Early Kashmir explores these questions in relation to the birth of Kashmir and the discursive and material practices that shaped it up to the 12th century CE. Reinterpreting the first work of Kashmiri history, Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, this book argues that the text was history not despite being traditional Sanskrit poetry but because of it. It elaborated a poetics of place, implicating Kashmir’s sacred geography, a stringent critique of local politics, and a regional selfhood that transcended the limits of vernacularism.Combined with longue durée testimonies from art, material culture, script, and linguistics, this book jettisons the image of an isolated and insular Kashmir. It proposes a cultural formation that straddled the Western Himalayas and the Indic plains with Kashmir as the pivot. This is the story of the connected histories of the region and the rest of India.

A pioneering and comprehensive study of the historical imagination in Kashmir, this book explores the conversations between the ideas of Kashmir and the ideas of history taking place within Kashmir’s multilingual historical tradition. Analysing the deep linkages among Sanskrit, Persian, and Kashmiri narratives, Kashmir’s Contested Pasts contends that these traditions drew on and influenced each other to imagine Kashmir as far more than simply an unsettled territory or a tourist paradise. By offering a historically grounded reflection on the memories, narrative practices, and institutional contexts that have informed, and continue to inform, imaginings of Kashmir and its past, the book suggests new ways of understanding the debates over history, territory, identity, and sovereignty that shape contemporary South Asia.

This Volume Has Two Parts, Surveys Of All The Languages And Selections From Three Languages Assamese, Bengali And Dogri.

Cultural Heritage Of Kashmir By Prof. K.L. Kalla, Presents A Panoramic View Of The Cultural History Of Kashmir Since The Days When Kashmir Was A Seat Of Learning Sharda Peetha And Buddism. It Also Details Its Eternal Charm And Glory, Important Events In History Of Kashmir, Festivals, Composite Culture, Language And Literature, And Impact Of English On The People Of Kashmir. The Reasons For Initiation Of Terrorism In Kashmir Also Find A Place In This Book. The Book Makes A Very Interesting Study On Kashmir In A Very Lucid Style.

It can be said of the 19th century Kashmiri poet, Mahmud Ga ̄mi that he was a pioneer in introducing the Persian genres of the ghazal, nazm, masnavi and na ̄t into Kashmiri. Mahmud Gami's contribution to Kashmiri poetry is unique in both scope and depth. Not only is he the first truly prolific poet who has written entirely in the Kashmiri language, but much of his poetry also stands out for its beauty of expression and depth of thought, such as in the lyrical romance of Shireen Khusrau, Yusuf Zulaikha, and Layla Majnun. Yusuf's Fragrance is both a celebration as well as an homage to Gami's oeuvre. Through these beautiful verses, we explore themes of love, both physical and metaphysical, philosophy, folklore, and tradition through different narrative devices, such as nazms, masnavis, and vatsuns.

In Kashmir’s frigid winter a woman leaves her door cracked open, waiting for the return of her only son. Every month in a public park in Srinagar, a child remembers her father as she joins her mother in collective mourning. The activist women who form the Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP) keep public attention focused on the 8,000 to 10,000 Kashmiri men disappeared by the Indian government forces since 1989. Surrounded by Indian troops, international photojournalists, and curious onlookers, the APDP activists cry, lament, and sing while holding photos and files documenting the lives of their disappeared loved ones. In this radical departure from traditionally private rituals of mourning, they create a spectacle of mourning that combats the government’s threatening silence about the fates of their sons, husbands, and fathers. Drawn from Ather Zia’s ten years of engagement with the APDP as an anthropologist and fellow Kashmiri activist, Resisting Disappearance follows mothers and “half-widows” as they step boldly into courts, military camps, and morgues in search of their disappeared kin. Through an amalgam of ethnography, poetry, and photography, Zia illuminates how dynamics of gender and trauma in Kashmir have been transformed in the face of South Asia’s longest-running conflict, providing profound insight into how Kashmiri women and men nurture a politics of resistance while facing increasing military violence under India.

Drawing on fieldwork in Iraq, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Nationalism, Language, and Muslim Exceptionalism compares the politics of six Muslim separatist movements, locating shared language and print culture as a central factor in Muslim ethnonational identity.

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the complex conflict situation in Kashmir. Through an internal perspective, it charts the shift in the Kashmiri response towards the Centre and offers a detailed examination of the background in which separatist politics took roots in Kashmir, and the way it changed its nature in the militancy and post-militancy period. The volume shows how separatism and armed militancy, as manifest in the Valley in the late 1980s, (though augmented by external factors) have been internal responses to the changing nature of Kashmiri identity politics. It explores how the ideas central to Indian nationalist politics — especially democracy and secularism — echoed in Kashmir and were instrumental in dismantling the feudal structure and negotiating an autonomous space within the framework of asymmetrical federalism. Seamlessly blending facts and incisive analyses, this book raises new questions about the nature of conflict and contestation in the region. It will be of great interest to researchers and scholars of Indian politics, especially on Jammu and Kashmir, and sociology, as well as government bodies, think tanks and the interested general reader.