Dr Nyla Ali Khan

My maternal grandmother Akbar Jehan’s father’s family, the ‘Nedous’, had emigrated from Dubrovnik, Croatian city on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea, to Lahore in the 1800s. Croatia is currently an independent country. From 1815 to 1918, it was part of the Austrian Empire, and from 1918 to 1991, it was part of Yugoslavia. […]

My maternal grandmother Akbar Jehan’s father’s family, the ‘Nedous’, had emigrated from Dubrovnik, Croatian city on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea, to Lahore in the 1800s. Croatia is currently an independent country. From 1815 to 1918, it was part of the Austrian Empire, and from 1918 to 1991, it was part of Yugoslavia. […]

The aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir point to the way towards a workable democratic pluralism in the state. I state very clearly, at the outset, that I am greatly interested in the revival of Kashmiri society, in the constructive rebuilding of that society, and in the growth and burgeoning of our younger […]

Tranquility in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been shattered by the heavy hand of military totalitarianism and militancy in the past, and is now a victim of the fragmentation that is ripping our social fabric to pieces. More than mobocracy, kangaroo courts, lynchings, and panaceas – we need a return to the rule of law […]

Getting to know one’s ideology is a work in progress. Ironically, it was in the United States — a country that prides itself on the power of its military-industrial complex — that I cultivated the drive to study the South Asian politico-cultural matrix, particularly the intractable Kashmir conflict. Writing about the lack of ideological and […]

As an academic in the North American academy and as someone who is well-aware of her complicity in the perpetuation of elitist discourses, I would posit that the debate about the veritableness and factualness of a literary discourse, the vindication of some writers as the ‘voice of the people’, and the discrediting of others as […]

The predominant theme of my work is the crossing of frontiers of nationality, culture, and language in three areas of the Indian subcontinent: India, Pakistan, and Kashmir. To that list, I would add my attempt to cross the barrier of citizenship as a self-conscious political philosophy. I hope, through my work, to make my readers […]

All of us, as a people, are responsible for the turmoil haunting Kashmir for the past 23 years and the degeneration of its politics and society. While it is important to condemn, question, and seek redress for human rights violations in Kashmir, it is also important to construct a politics that would enable rebuilding of […]

There is nothing surprising about the latest Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) attempts to label Tipu Sultan as ‘anti-Hindu’ and ‘anti-Kannada’ or to make Kashmiri children studying at schools outside the state to chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ (the essentialist Hindutva version of “Viva India”). Recall the Ram Janmabhoomi agitations from 1989. Conflicts that had led […]

Political institutions cannot be subordinated to precepts determined by the clerical elite of any religion or faith. The clergy belongs in temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques, while political institutions are meant to be run by administrators and politicians. Let’s not blur the boundary between these two set of institutions. The political and social upheaval that […]