Why does time feel faster as you get older? At some point in life, almost everyone begins to wonder about it. Years that once seemed impossibly long now disappear with startling speed. Birthdays arrive sooner than expected. Summers pass almost unnoticed. A decade slips by and feels like a few short years. I have often…
Few poets have shaped the cultural identity of a people as profoundly as Peerzada Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor. Revered as Shair-e-Kashmir (Poet of Kashmir), Mehjoor transformed Kashmiri poetry by bringing it closer to the language, emotions, and aspirations of ordinary people. Literary historians widely regard him as the father of modern Kashmiri poetry because he expanded…
A Kashmiri Pandit’s Perspective on the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir Protest I left Kashmir thirty-six years ago. My family did not leave by choice, nor had we planned to abandon the valley that our community had called home for centuries. In January 1990, a campaign of targeted killings, threats broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, and organised terror forced…
Pain has a strange, insular effect on the human psyche. It possesses the unique capacity to shut out the external world, creating a sudden silence in which a person is forced to look at themselves with absolute clarity, perhaps for the very first time. For Arnimal, the eighteenth-century Kashmiri poet, this silence was not chosen….
The concept of ‘home’ for the Kashmiri Pandit community has undergone a radical, involuntary transformation. Since the exodus of 1990, the physical markers of our civilisation (Our heritage temples, the intricate woodwork of our ancestral houses, and the holy touch of Vitasta have been relegated to the realm of memory. Yet, as we cling to…
Author’s Preface This article was not written from a distance. It was written ahead of the 36th martyrdom anniversary of Sarwanand Kaul Premi and his son, Virender Kaul, at the family’s request. They wanted someone who understood the historical weight of what they had endured, and who would write it with the seriousness it deserved….
April 1990 Killings in Kashmir marked a grim phase of targeted violence, where individuals were singled out and killed in a climate of fear and silence. This article documents verified names and case profiles, including Bansi Lal Sapru, Sarla Bhat, BHL Khera, and Sh. Sarvanand Kaul Premi with his son Virender Kaul, to present a…
Spring came to the Kashmir Valley in 1990 with blood on its hands. Bansi Lal Sapru, a forty-five-year-old Kashmiri Pandit from Gulab Bagh, Srinagar, never saw summer. His neighbours shot him dead in the compound of his own home on 24 April 1990. Three bullets at close range. The killers knew his face. They…
Bhushan Lal Raina was 29 years old and worked at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Soura. He lived in Ompora, Budgam, with his elderly mother and was soon to be married. He had no political affiliations and no connection to militancy of any kind. He was preparing to leave the Valley, as…
In Anantnag, south Kashmir, 84 carved columns rise from the earth in various states of ruin. The Martand Sun Temple, built in the 8th century, stands on a high escarpment that commands an unbroken view of the Lidder Valley below. In March 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir government announced restoration efforts at this site…
Kalhana was Kashmir’s first and greatest historian. He wrote without royal patronage, without flattery, and without the political obligations that corrupted nearly every other chronicle of his era. What he left behind was the Rajatarangini, a work that nine centuries of scholarship have not managed to replace. Royal courts used it to glorify ruling kings…
“He alone is worthy to narrate the history of kings whose mind, though cleansed by the waters of knowledge, remains unruffled by passion — who regards the deeds of rulers with the impartiality of Time itself.” — Kalhana, Rajatarangini, Book I, Verse 7 (Trans. M.A. Stein, 1900) Rajatarangini: The Chronicle No One Taught You About…