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Basharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years countless young men, seduced by the romance of the militant, fuelled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to boarding school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir—angrier, more violent, more hopeless—was never far away. In 2003, the young journalist left his job and returned to his homeland to search out the stories and the people which had haunted him. In Curfewed Night he draws a harrowing portrait of Kashmir and its people. Here are stories...
Neoliberals thought capitalism would bring about democracy, civil liberties, and human rights everywhere. But that is fast becoming an illusion, particularly in the East, where traditionalist and nationalist leaders are attracting religious, rural, or newly urban constituencies and ushering in an era of illiberal democracies. Peer reports from two of the world's largest democracies and examines how two charismatic strongmen came to power and moved their country in the direction of authoritarianism.
Since 1989, when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir, more than 70,000 people have been killed in the battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Born and raised in the war-torn region, Basharat Peer brings this little-known part of the world to life in haunting, vivid detail.. Peer reveals stories from his youth as well as gut-wrenching accounts of the many Kashmiris he met years later, as a reporter. He chronicles a young man’s initiation into a Pakistani training camp; a mother who watches as her son is forced to hold an exploding bomb; a poet who finds religion when his entire family is killed. He writes about politicians living in refurbished torture chambers, idyllic villages rigged with landmines, and ancient Sufi shrines decimated in bomb blasts.. Curfewed Night is a tale of a man’s love for his land, the pain of leaving home, and the joy of return—as well as a fiercely brave piece of literary reporting..
Every morning in Sadar Bazaar, one of the oldest markets in Delhi, a gang of men gather looking for work in the building trade. For five years, Aman Sethi shared their lives, and in particular that of Mohammed Ashraf. Ashraf is a mazdoor, an itinerant house-painter, but he's not a typical labourer - he's studied biology in college, and after college learnt how to repair TV sets, cut suits, and slice chicken. He lived all over India, but now he finds himself in Delhi: the second most populous city in the country. The morning will bring hangovers, whisky breakfasts and possibly answers to the lingering questions that haunt Ashraf. How did he get here? Why is he the way he is? And is there a way back home? One of the very best young journalists in India, Aman Sethi brings Ashraf vividly alive and illuminates the lives of countless others like him. Wry, humorous and insightful, A Free Man is an unforgettable portrait of an invisible man in his invisible city, and an extraordinary human story.
‘With delicately drawn characters, Shahnaz Bashir tells the heartbreaking story of one woman’s battle for life, dignity and justice.’ – Mirza Waheed, author of The Collaborator ‘The night is tired now, the old moon, hanging in the dark sky, is tired too’ It is the 1990s, and Kashmir’s long war has begun to claim its first victims. Among them are Ghulam Rasool Joo, Haleema’s father, and her teenage son Imran, who is picked up by the authorities only to disappear into the void of Kashmir’s missing people. The Half Mother is the story of Haleema – a mother and a daughter yesterday, a ‘half mother’ and an orphan today; tormented by not knowing whether Imran is dead or alive, torn apart by her own lonely existence. While she battles for answers and seeks out torture camps, jails and morgues for any signs of Imran, Kashmir burns in a war that will haunt it for years to come. Heart-wrenching, deeply troubling and written in lyrical prose, The Half Mother marks the debut of a bold new voice from Kashmir.'
"Frontier of Faith" examines the history of Islam-especially that of local "mullahs," or Muslim clerics-in the North-West Frontier. A largely autonomous zone straddling the boundary of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Tribal Areas was established as a strategic buffer zone for British India, and the resulting autonomy allowed local mullahs to assume roles of tremendous power. After Partition in 1947, the Tribal Areas maintained its status as an autonomous region, and for the next fifty years the "mullahs" supported armed mobilizations in exchange for protection of their vested interests in regional freedom. Consequently the Frontier has become the hinterland of successive, contradictory "jihads" in support of Pashtun ethnicism, anti-colonial nationalism, Pakistani territorialism, religious revivalism, Afghan anti-Soviet resistance, and anti-Americanism. Considering this territory is said to be the current hiding place of Osama bin Laden, there couldn't be a better time for a sourcebook detailing the intricacies of the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands today and the function of the "mullahs" and their allies.
The boy known as Tor Baz—the black falcon —wanders between tribes. He meets men who fight under different flags, and women who risk everything if they break their society’s code of honour. Where has he come from, and where will destiny take him? Set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban, Jamil Ahmad’s stunning debut takes us to the essence of human life in the forbidden areas where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet. Today the ‘tribal areas’ are often spoken about as a remote region, a hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks and conflict. In The Wandering Falcon, this highly traditional, honour-bound culture is revealed from the inside for the first time. Wi...
Based on Hamlet, Haider is the third film in the Shakespearean trilogy written and directed by Vishal Bhardwaj.The screenplays of Okara and Maqbool will also be publsihed by Hrpercollins India at the same time. Shot in Kahmir, the film faced protests from the locals but was able to complete its schedule. The film starts Shahid Kapoor, Tabu, Shraddha Kapoor, Kay Kay menon and Irrfan Khan. Shahid Kapoor is co-producing Haider along with Bhardwaj and UTV. Vishal Bhardwaj stunning interpretition of Hamlet.
Four teenage boys, who used to spend their afternoons playing cricket, or singing Bollywood ballads down by the river, have disappeared one by one, to cross into Pakistan and join the movement against the Indian army. A tale tinged with grief, 'The Collaborator' describes the heart of a war that is all too real.
On a cold February night in 1991, a group of soldiers and officers of the Indian Army pushed their way into two villages in Kashmir, seeking out militants assumed to be hiding there. They pulled the men out of their homes and subjected many to torture, and the women to rape. According to village accounts, as many as 31 women were raped. Twenty-one years later, in 2012, the rape and murder of a young medical student in Delhi galvanized a protest movement so widespread and deep that it reached all corners of the world. In Kashmir, a group of young women, all in their twenties, were inspired to re-open the Kunan-Poshpora case, to revisit their history and to look at what had happened to the survivors of the 1991 mass rape. Through personal accounts of their journey, this book examines questions of justice, of stigma, of the responsibility of the state, and of the long-term impact of trauma.