Diaspora

A filmmaker from Jammu Kashmir has come up with a remarkable cinematic masterpiece “Sanson Ki Mala” (Beads of Breath), which has garnered applause worldwide. Shoaib Shawl’s ‘Beads of Breath’ is a poetic odyssey with a strong theme about true nature of love. The film revolves around an eccentric man, who yearns to find the true nature of love while villagers' varied perspectives about his identity heat things up. “Beads of Breath" transcends borders, both geographical and cultural. The Himalayas, in their raw, resplendent glory, morph from mere backdrop to living characters, mirroring the emotional ebb and flow of the protagonists. At the heart lies an enigmatic man, consumed by a yearning for love's true essence. His presence ignites a web of speculation and intrigue amongst the v...

A Kashmiri scholar has received the prestigious Joukowsky Prize for his dissertation at Brown University in Rhode Island. Identified as Suvaid Yaseen, the Kashmiri scholar’s dissertation titled ‘Islamic Intersections: Religion and Politics in Kashmir in the Long Twentieth Century’ explains the lives and ideas of Kashmiri poets, teachers, Ulema (Muslim scholars), activists, rebels, and revolutionaries. His dissertation, explores the Kashmir Valley and presents a groundbreaking re-evaluation of the region, according to his nominators. This area has previously been called everything from a utopia to an area where Muslim militants are on the rise. Yaseen has published an article in the prestigious Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society titled ‘Poetry as history: Maulana Muhammad Anwar S...

Another Kashmiri scientist has brought laurels to the valley as he has been inducted into the world’s oldest interdisciplinary scientist society, Sigma Xi. The Kashmiri-origin Senior Corporate Scientist, University Professor, and Honorary Judge Dr. Syed Basharat Shah has been nominated and admitted as full-time member in Sigma Xi – The Scientist Research Honor Society, founded in 1886 at Cornell University, USA, Kashmir News Service reported. Dr. Shah, who is from Bijbehara in Anantnag in south Kashmir, works as a senior corporate scientist for an Austrian global company and is an honorary judge in the German judicial system. Shah has been awarded an honorary doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences by Ballsbridge International University, Dominica. He has been awar...

A march was staged in Vienna, Austria to express solidarity with Kashmiris and to highlight the "human rights violations" in the region. Reports reaching The Kashmiriyat said that hundreds of Kashmiris living in Vienna along with Pakistanis and several others gathered outside the Vienna International Centre on Saturday and called upon the international community to "wake up" to the pligt of Kashmiris. The event was specifically organised on the eve of the 77th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session at the UN headquarters in New York, US, to remind the international community about UN resolutions and pledges to resolve the Kashmir issue. The protestors demanded that the UN and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) must come forward to support Kashmiris.

The Oxford Kashmir Forum has announced that it will conduct the second edition of its free online course on ‘International Human Rights Law and Kashmir from May 7 to July 2. "The course will combine theory and practice to offer insights into international human rights law (IHRL) and its enforcement in Kashmir," a presser of Oxford Kashmir Forum said. As per the comminique the series of lectures will be delivered by the of Prof Philipa Webb (King’s College London), Prof Yuval Shany (Former Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee), Priya Gopalan (Member, UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention) and Dr Fozia Lone (City University of Hong Kong), among others. The course is primarily aimed to help law students in Kashmir and elsewhere, but applications from others with a demonstrated ex...

Mubashir Naik Hundreds of Kashmiri students enrolled in different colleges and universities are caught in a dilemma due to the lingering uncertainty regarding their exams. The students are divided, few are stranded in Valley, while most of them are in Bangladesh. University Administration is yet to take any final decision. As Covid-19 is at its peak in India, Bangladesh has closed its border with India. It’s very difficult for the students stuck in Kashmir to travel to Bangladesh. Earlier, medical colleges had scheduled the MBBS final year exam from May 30 but the students who were stuck in Kashmir urged the government for their intervention to facilitate their travel to Bangladesh which resulted in the deferment of the exam by another month. While the exams are being deferred ...

Kashmiri Scholar Winning Mirza Saaib Bég and his team which included Nandita Venkatesan (India), Tafadzwa Matika (Zimbabwe), Andrés Ordoñez-Buitrago (Colombia) have won the Weidenfeld Hoffmann scholarship debate conducted by Oxford Union-  a 200-year old debating society. The Weidenfeld Hoffmann Scholars' Debate is the key element of the leadership programme offered by the Wiedenfield Scholarship under which Saaib was granted admission. Last week Facebook’s oversight board upheld the ban on Donald Trump and the debate motion focussed on this issue. The motion for the debate was: This house believes that social media has no right to ban politicians. During the debate, Mirza Saaib stressed on the need for “preventing an encroachment of our rights by outsourcing the job of dispensing...