TRENDING
Reclaiming Azad Jammu Kashmir For Her People
The Evolution of AJK Public Agency
Citizen’s Opinion + Citizen’s Resources
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Citizen’s Control of Public Policy
The most important aspect of modern-day governance is a consensus...
FEATURED
The Governance Dilemma in so-called “Azad” Jammu Kashmir
This footage makes an attempt to summarise the effort of Mahmood Ahmed Musafir in light of his herculean effort to address the near absence...
Identity DIS Podcasts
Google Search Results; "Mirpuris"
Twitter Search Results "Mirpuris"
Kashmir’s Occupied Rivers
And here lived, beneath the receding waters of Kashmir, my forebears, once upon a time
As her waters recede and the green grass shimmers...
Asking the questions, having the discussions!
Who are Azad Kashmiris? Are they Pakistanis, Kashmiris, or Occupied Indians?
“Pakistan and India are fighting over Kashmir, a third people's land! One way to win this fight is by splitting the Kashmiris into different...
A quiet triumph for humanity
Politics and politicians herd us like sheep into a protective ‘national’ net that restricts and exploits us rather than allow us to utilise our...
India, Pakistan, and “Kashmir” – the Economist explains…!
This is how the Economist explains the "Kashmir" conflict using the colonial label of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' - these are 'constructed labels' however common-sense...
Pakistan’s Occupied Azad Kashmiris
Mainland Pakistanis
By the term, mainland Pakistanis, I am strictly referring to Pakistanis from areas that constitutionally make up the territory of Pakistan. I am...
Identity DIS Podcasts
Google Search Results; "Mirpuris"
Twitter Search Results "Mirpuris"
The same tired mantras, the same bandwagons
Apparently, if you read the Guardian, Britain is a racist society. White writers aren’t saying this, BME writers are, because the leftwing Guardian doesn't do...
Ethnic tokenism in electoral politics and the laws of unintended consequences
There was a time when you could walk into any local Labour Party branch meeting in the densely populated Pakistani constituency wards of England,...
TOPICAL
Reclaiming Azad Jammu Kashmir For Her People
The Evolution of AJK Public Agency
Citizen’s Opinion + Citizen’s Resources
=
Citizen’s Control of Public Policy
The most important aspect of modern-day governance is a consensus...
Understanding Disinformation and Propaganda on Kashmir
Those who argue that Kashmir is the Valley of Kashmir and that Kashmiris are the ethnic Kashmiris of the Valley are engaged in deliberate disinformation....
Who are Azad Kashmiris? Are they Pakistanis, Kashmiris, or Occupied Indians?
“Pakistan and India are fighting over Kashmir, a third people's land! One way to win this fight is by splitting the Kashmiris into different...
MOST COMMENTED
Fake News, False Narratives and Identity Politics, Silencing Dissent through Digital Media and Search Engine Manipulation
Digital Media particularly through interactive platforms like Wikipedia and Social Media, are vehicles of disinformation and political propaganda. Whatever the nature of an online conversation, be it a family’s travel vlogs, pictures, fashion tips, food stories - “dad’s visit to Israel” - when a...
Ethnic tokenism in electoral politics and the laws of unintended consequences
There was a time when you could walk into any local Labour Party branch meeting in the densely populated Pakistani constituency wards of England, and you would realise that something was breathtakingly afoot. The room would be overcrowded. Almost entirely male-dominated with the usual...
The Curious Case of Authoritarianism, Digital Media & Pseudoscience
Don't trust everything you read online.
You'll be duped into believing utter tosh. This holds true for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Had it not been for authoritarianism and control freaks, these spaces would have been wonderful places to learn...
The curious case of the anecdote becoming narrative
Internalising the negative perceptions of out-group members is not proof that there’s something inherently wrong with your in-group identity. This has happened to lots of people who have been ‘othered’ through a combination of factors that include inaccurate media portrayals, native informants and unjust social...
Appraising Mirpur’s documented history, the story of Kashmir before and after 1846
Mirpur was the name of an historical settlement in the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir (1846 – 1947), variably known as Kashmir State, Jammu Kingdom and/or the Dogra Raj. The name Mirpur postdates the principality’s alleged founding in the 1600s. Centuries later, the...
Contextualising prejudice within its social and political settings; explaining why and how Pakistanis demonise Mirpuris
The following post was updated 30 October 2020
https://youtu.be/97IES3jFOg0
There comes a point for members of a community to stand up and be heard. And that time has now come for British Azad Kashmiris, otherwise less popularly known as the Kashmiris, but selectively as the Mirpuris.
For...
Pakistan’s Article 370 Delusions; the Free State that is not Free!
It’s ‘Azad’ - 'Free'.
"Okay!?" "It's Azad Kashmir!" "Free!"
This is Pakistan’s official stance on 'Azad' Jammu & Kashmir.
But what is Kashmir ‘free’ of?
According to the Pakistani state-enforced narrative, Azad Kashmiris are free from Indian tyranny. Women aren’t being raped by Indian soldiers, and by Indian they mean non-Muslim...
Understanding Disinformation and Propaganda on Kashmir
Those who argue that Kashmir is the Valley of Kashmir and that Kashmiris are the ethnic Kashmiris of the Valley are engaged in deliberate disinformation. These sinister interests want you to think that they are making ethnolinguistic claims about the people we call Kashmiris, but...
Whose Kashmir is it? Conflict, Territorial Claims & the Abuse of Myths
As in my earlier post on Israel and competing myths of exclusive origin, Kashmir serves as a good example of national myths and territorial claims. But unlike Israel, Kashmir has a special place for us. It's the place from where our forebears originated, before...
Why do anti-Semites say “Israeli Jews are not real Jews?”
You must have heard the claim that modern-day Israel is a country with another people’s language and religion?
If you haven’t, antisemitism has become so common these days (I’m speaking of hatred against Jews, and not criticism against Israel), that you’ve probably come across multiple...
How Mirpuris were invented by ethnonationalists opposed to Kashmir’s Independence
People everywhere want to learn something about their past. I did too. I was born in the UK. The first member of my direct family to come here was my maternal grandad. He was a veteran of the British Indian Army. Terms can be...
The Feudalism of the Western Himalaya and Myths of Caste Identities
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting with some local guys consuming copious amounts of alcohol to the backdrop of a varied playlist and it dawned on me that my opposite number were unaware of the caste titles they were fondly using as...
Muslim Ummah Syndrome and Identity Politics
Some years ago, Saudi Arabia proscribed its male citizens from marrying the citizens of four nationalities. Pakistanis were included on this list. The Monarchy had its reasons, no doubt, good or bad; the preponderance of such marriages was given as the primary reason. Apparently, marriages...
Protected: Fleeing poverty and becoming poorer; the truth of dispossession
Recently, given my father’s imminent demise, he is terminally ill with leukaemia, I started to ask him about his life in the land of his native birth, erstwhile Jammu, now split between India and Pakistan. I was quite startled about his individual story of...
Pakistan’s ethnonationalists will be best remembered for the country that imploded amidst a civil war in our lifetimes
Pakistan we are told was created for Muslims in 1947. The chap credited for the creation of Pakistan, Mr Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was the grandson of a Hindu convert to a heterodox sect of Islam not considered Muslim by mainstream Sunnis and Shias. We...
Are Azad Kashmiris the same people as Valley Kashmiris?
Competing ‘State Identities’ & Ethnic Ambiguities
In the absence of a genuine Pakistani state or nation-state identity what are Azad Kashmiris?
It is at this point that we enter the quagmire of the Kashmiri identity dialectic which in the UK some pro-independence actors from Azad Kashmir...
Nation state fictions and imagining the past
A lot of us confuse our 'countries', and the technical term for what I'm describing is 'nation states', with ideas of historical continuity. We tend to confuse our countries delineated by their map-depicted borders as being the product of a natural timeline that connects...
Gandhara
It’s okay to maim my name for I am an inconsequential thing
You can place me on the shelves of Primark and Aldi
Mine is a ‘budget identity’, made on the cheap - no frills!
But a long time ago, in the era of benign...
A Message to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir
Dear Pakistan Occupied Kashmiris
I speak to you through this medium as a brother from Indian Occupied Kashmir. I speak to you for our shared homeland, history, and continuous struggle against oppression and aggression. We are the children of hills and mountains. We fought collectively...
I’m a person who can talk
I can dance, I can sing
I only do my thing
I can run, I can hide
I take myself with pride
Because I only have one life
Sometimes I’m organised, sometimes
I’m just a mess, and I know
I will always try my very best
Shout out your opinions to me
Cuz...
Learning the difference between Group Identities and Identity Politics
Having been born and raised in the UK, whilst ascribed an ethnic minority status from birth, I discovered that identities are complicated things. Being ascribed a group identity is one thing, but not feeling part of it is another thing altogether. We can have...
