Understand people’s anxieties
Years and decades of systematic disenfranchisement and constant bullying have sowed the seeds of anger and aversion so deep into the popular psyche in Kashmir that the situation here remains ever-volatile. All it needs is a trigger for the pent-up rage to spill over, out in open, and incinerate everything – the government, its credibility, […]
Conscientious objection
“The tyrant and his subjects are in somewhat symmetrical positions. They can deny him most of what he wants – they can, that is, if they have the disciplined organization to refuse collaboration. And he can deny them just about everything they want – he can deny it by using force at his command. They […]
Area of great concern
Past couple of weeks have once again seen resurgence of horrible road accidents which consumed scores of people in both divisions of the state. As usual, what followed from the government besides the expressions of grief and announcements of exgratia relief for the kin of the dead and injured, were instructions for the hospital authorities […]
Saying is not doing!
Politicians have a knack for saying one thing and doing something else. They master the skills of claiming one position while actually occupying another. This difference of their positions becomes more pronounced when seen and analyzed in context of space and time. For instance, recall what all the Peoples Democratic Party used to say and […]
Next step
In the 1991 ‘coalition war’ with Iraq, the United States and its partners won a decisive victory. Yet Saddam Hussein did not experience decisive defeat, and he continued to not only rule Iraq but also to suppress his domestic adversaries and harass his international audiences and thus provoke wider unease for more than a dozen […]
Beyond war talk
For the past couple of weeks, the brazen and brash jingoism is on full public display within the public as well as government circles throughout India. What is really unfortunate is that war-mongering is openly peddled to create a hysteria of sorts which in reality is dangerous for the entire subcontinent as has been proved […]
It calls for patience
The Indian Air Force carrying out strikes deep inside Pakistan’s territory on what it claims was a militant group’s training camp has once again given birth to a fresh bout of hostilities between the two estranged neighbours. Together with the chest thumping that followed in India, Pakistan had to retaliate – and it did. So […]
Exercise restraint
In the spring of 1987, a team of academics from some prominent universities were taken on a visit of the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) based in Omaha, Nebraska. On the tour, the academics received a thorough briefing on every aspect of American preparedness for a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. They were led […]
Selective condemnations
No other question in the Kashmir context, or in case of any other conflict, has generated as much thought, controversy, anxiety and intellectual angst as the issue of use of force by the state as well as the non-state actors. As can be corroborated by history, the perpetrators have all along maintained that their use […]
Insensitivity unlimited
Saturday was a very difficult day for Kashmir. Though it remains debatable that whatever happened during the day – whether it was planned to be so or it was just a coincidence, but fact of the matter is that developments pushed popular panic to extraordinary heights. The day began with people coming to know about […]