abrogation of article 370

On December 19th at Bengaluru, eminent historian Ramachandra Guha was dragged away by the police while protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), on the charge that he had violated Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). Guha later retorted that the crowds had been protesting non-violently in a disciplined way to uphold the values of the Constitution and told the Police Commissioner: “You have used a colonial-era law to suppress us and our voices."  Not Guha alone, hundreds of protesters, that included included Swaraj India chief Yogendra Yadav and politicians D Raja, Sitaram Yechury, Umar Khalid, Sandeep Dikshit and…

The leaves of the chinar trees were still green, signalling winter was yet to arrive. The chinar trees normally signal winter and snow when its leaves turn yellow and start falling. The people, and the administration, were thus totally unprepared for any unseasonal weather vagaries. But on November 5th, the weatherman in Srinagar issued an alert—possibility of heavy rain and widespread snow on November 7th across the region. The prediction was right on the nose. As the clock struck 9 am on November 7th, the crisp morning air was covered with thick snowflakes and within just two hours, Srinagar witnessed…

A city that once looked like a picture postcard, with glassy lake and chinars, today seems to have become an extended army camp. Srinagar, the capital of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, conjures up the image of a remote world under siege. A 11-member fact-finding team of advocates, trade union human activists and a psychiatrist recently released a report titled 'Imprisoned Resistance' after a visit to the strife-torn state from September 28th to October 4th. Denying the Centre's clamorous claims of "normalcy" in the region, the team divulges that the people have reacted with their own hartal. As…

It has been two weeks since the abrogation of Article 370 and the trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir, and yet most of the state remains under a lockdown. With a virtual blockade and clampdown on communication and Internet services, millions of residents in the state have been cut off from the rest of the country. For the same reason, many other Kashmiris living and working in other parts of the country have also been cut off from their families for close to 16 days running. While the partial restoration of landline services has provided some relief, any semblance of normal…

An expression of panic mixed with hope flits across Hamid Ullah’s face every time his mobile phone rings. A Kashmiri earning a living as a porter in Shimla, Hamid fervently hopes that the call is from home. The panic stems from anxiety about the state of his family whose lines of communication with the outside world remain completely cut off for the past six days. “Eid is just a few days away and I have not been able to speak to my family for over 72 hours,” says Hamid, who hails from Anantnag, sitting outside the local Jama Masjid. “What…