Dr Nyla Ali Khan

The first Muslim Prime Minister (PM) of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah viewed the accession of the state to India as a strategic and pragmatic necessity, and sought to justify it by deploying the rhetoric of socialism and secularism. Regardless, he continued to harbour hopes for the creation of a sovereign Kashmir. In October […]

In an attempt to create a congenial atmosphere for rational dialogue, the globally known non-profit organisation Pugwash arranged a two-day seminar on the Kashmir conflict in Islamabad on 29 March 2008. The purpose of the Pugwash conference was to facilitate a convention of public figures and intellectuals from India, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K),Azad Jammu and […]

My book Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Reflections on Kashmir (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) is a compendium of the speeches and interviews of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who reigned as Prime Minister (PM) of the State of Jammu and Kashmir from 1948 to 1953. The man also had a large presence on the political landscape of India […]

How many people in Kashmir know about Article 35-A, over which a lot of hue and cry has been raised, came into being? Do they know what a difficult task it was to get it incorporated into the Constitution of India and then implemented? Several of my readers in mainland India and Pakistan as well […]

The recent elections in Pakistan — in which the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and it’s MMA alliance had a very poor showing — have made as clear as day that the homogeneous culture advocated by this politico-religious organisation and vigilante groups affiliated with it lacks mass appeal in South Asia. Although JI hasn’t enjoyed electoral success in […]

The people of Kashmir have tried, time and again, to translate themselves from passive recipients of violence, legitimated by legislations of the physically and psychologically removed parliaments of India and Pakistan, into subjects who recognise that they can exercise agency and take control of their destinies. They march forward with a refusal to allow history […]

In Pakistan, historically, the political evolution of the society has been nipped in the bud by an all-powerful military establishment because of which state policies have always fallen short of being coherent. The more the military establishment made incursions into democratic spaces, the more shaky institutions of state got and the more fragmented the polity […]

With the Legislative Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in suspended animation, horse trading is in full swing. At this critical juncture, the individuals who were not in the running for the chief minister slot in 2014, the year assembly elections were held in J&K, are now staking a claim to government formation and chief […]

The book ‘Spy Chronicles’ by former Chief of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Asad Durrani, and former Chief of the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) AS Dulat is a quick read but not very fascinating. Despite the controversy around it, Intelligence communities cannot replace the hype from grassroots politics. The […]

In November 2017, I wrote an article in response to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s statement, which he made at a conference called the ‘Future of Pakistan 2017,’ at the London School of Economics (LSE). In it, he explicitly rejected the idea of an ‘independent Kashmir’ and claimed that there was no demand for one […]