The Kashmir Walla Podcasts

When she saw her son’s face she fell unconscious, unable to bear looking at him. With her son’s face etched into the memory, she now wants him to visit her once, in her dream. “I want to sleep just to see him,” she said. “Just once!” The Kashmir Walla's senior reporter, Gafira Qadir, reads the story of Dilshada Gulzar, who lost her son to a gunfight.

A sonorous chorus of male devotees fills the air at dawn in many parts of Kashmir. After the conclusion of the fajr prayers at dawn, devotees have been chanting the Awradh-e-Fateh in Kashmir’s mosques since the fourteenth century. The Awradh is an anthology of Quranic verses and the centrality of monotheism in Islam. A large part of the Awradh also consists of the prophets sayings, the names of Allah, and expressions of gratitude and praise for Allah. It was introduced by the traveler saint, Mir Syed Ali Hamdani, popularly known as Shah-e-Hamdan, who arrived in Kashmir in the fourteenth century and popularised Islam among Kashmir’s masses. In this week’s podcast, host Sarwat Javaid takes a dive into the mysticism and politics of the Awradh in Kashmir. We have with us, Qurat-ul-Ain, who is a Ph.D. scholar in Islamic Studies from Shah-e-Hamdan Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Kashmir, and Mohammad Ashraf Wani, who is a historian.

On 26 December 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that the District Development Council (DDC) elections in Jammu and Kashmir opened a new chapter in the region’s politics. He said that it was a "moment of pride" for India. Contrary to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims of having established its acceptability across Jammu and Kashmir, the party’s performance in the DDC elections paints a different picture. The BJP won just 75 of the 280 DDC seats, just three of them in the Kashmir Valley. On the other hand, the People's Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) won 110 seats, and the BJP arch-rivals the Congress won 26 seats. The recently formed Apni Party managed to win just 12 seats, while the remaining 50 were won by independent candidates. Counting on two seats was halted after questions were raised over the citizenship of some of the candidates.

A fresh crisis is brewing in Jammu and Kashmir. After New Delhi imposed a series of laws redefining permanent residents of and allowing non-locals to own lands in Jammu and Kashmir, the government has given way to fresh fears after it focussed its attention on beneficiaries of the now infamous Rohsni Act. On 28 November 2018, the Roshni Act was repealed by Satya pal Malik, the then Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. On 9 October this year, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court declared the Rohsni Act as “unconstitutional, contrary to law and unsustainable”. On 31 October, three weeks after the High Court order, the Jammu and Kashmir administration said that it had initiated a process to retrieve within six months all lands regularised under the Rohsni act. In our latest podcast, host, Sarwat Javaid speaks to Sharik Jan, an advocate about the Rohsni Act and the retrospective application of court judgments impacting the scheme’s legal beneficiaries as a precedent that could erode public faith in the system.

Recently, Mudasir Ali, a senior editor at Greater Kashmir died of a heart attack. His family alleged that the on-duty doctor at the hospital was not available immediately and when he did attend the patient, he delayed treatment. The unfortunate death brought back to focus the poor response to health emergencies in Kashmir. An inquiry was ordered into Mudasir’s death and as per Greater Kashmir, the investigation has admitted to multiple lapses in handling Mudasir. The committee has also recommended attaching the medical staff with the administrative office for the time being. But Mudasir is not the first and despite the government’s claims, it is likely that he will not be the last. This despite the fact that the Kashmir Valley’s Directorate of health services has about 1980 doctors in two thousand one hundred and two hospitals across Kashmir. Why then is the response to medical emergencies inadequate? In our latest podcast, host Sarwat Javaid explores this question. She speaks to  Irfan Ahmad Bhat, a consultant cardiologist at Srinagar’s SMHS hospital, to talk about the public health response. Doctor Bhat is also a member of the Save Heart Initiative, a pan Jammu and Kashmir network of medical staff who coordinate to help save patients who suffer cardiac arrests about the same.

While campaigning for candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Jammu Division's Rajouri district, former minister Priya Sethi of the BJP asserted that the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A had ensured the political empowerment of the Gujjar, Bakarwal, and other Scheduled Tribes in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Ironically, this statement was made just weeks after the J-K administration demolished temporary shelters of the tribal community in south Kashmir's Pahalgam area, besides issuing notices for the evacuation of such Shelters and lands across the Kashmir and Jammu divisions. At the center stage of this controversy is the non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, whose provisions ensure the right to shelter in forests and the use of forest products except timber. For more than a decade, the central law -- that was a long pending demand of the Gujjar activists -- was not extended to J-K by the erstwhile state assembly dominated by Kashmiri unionists. In our latest podcast, Sarwat Javaid speaks to Zahid Parwaz Choudhary, a tribal rights activist, and Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an information transparency activist, about the predicaments of the tribal community and other forest dwellers.

In our latest podcast, host Sarwat Javaid speaks to Zeeshaan Nabi,a singer-songwriter, a music producer, co-founder of the band Ramooz, and a founder of Meeraki studios about contemporary music in Kashmir, the current situation of Kashmir's music industry and what it lacks.

On 26 October 2020, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) imposed another order upon Jammu and Kashmir. This time annulling the region’s hard-won land laws that had ended decades of tyranny and slavery of the powerful landlords under the rule of the autocratic Dogra Hindus. The day that the BJP chose to impose this law is also symbolic. On 27 October in 1947, the last Dogra ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, had signed a conditional accession to the Indian Union and Indian troops had landed in Kashmir. In our latest podcast, host Sarwat Javaid speaks to Dr. Suhail Rehman,  a lecturer in the department of higher education in Handwara about the current land laws are reminiscent of the land usage system under the Dogra rule and if New Delhi is turning the clock back to take Kashmir to the Dogra times by imposing these land laws. Dr. Suhail has a doctorate in the agrarian history of Jammu and Kashmir from the Aligarh Muslim University.

Graphic journalism is a recent format in Kashmir’s press. The Kashmir Walla is the first and the only organisation in Kashmir that produces Graphic reports. We publish two graphic reports every month. Kashmir has prominent political cartoonists like Bashir Ahmad Bashir, who is also the first cartoonist.  His cartoons have attained cultural significance as a witness to and chronicler of Kashmir’s tumultuous history. In recent years, Kashmir’s first graphic novel, Munnu, A Boy From Kashmir, a semi-autobiographical story of a boy growing up in Kashmir was written by Malik Sajad. We also have Suhail Naqshbandi, a former editorial cartoonist with Kashmir’s largest newspaper Greater Kashmir, who has risen to prominence for his creative visual representation of events in kashmir. More recently, cartoonists like Mir Suhail have risen to prominence for their sharp takes on contemporary events in Kashmir. But Practicing journalism in Kashmir has never been easy, despite a proliferation of the media in Kashmir, newer formats of reporting like graphic journalism have not been explored in as much detail through graphic reportage. In our latest podcast, Sarwat Javaid of The Kashmir Walla speaks to Anis Wani, editorial cartoonist at The Kashmir Walla about graphic journalism in Kashmir.

After abrogation of semi-autonomy of erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir on 5 August 2019, the BJP government downgraded the J-K to a federally-governed territory on On 31 October 2019. Sarwat Javaid of The Kashmir Walla, speaks to Romaan Muneeb, a lawyer; Adnan Ashraf, spokesperson for People’s Conference; Sarwar Malik, Managing Director of Pro-Active Premium Water; and Fahad Shah, editor-in-chief of The Kashmir Walla about what has changed legally, politically, economically and security wise, a year after the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded to a federally-governed territory.