(FINAL EPISODE SEASON ONE)
A question that most of us get asked is why do we do what we do? This is something I wanted to understand for myself and therefore I had a conversation with two Kashmiri academics, to understand why our experiences are central to what we become and why it is important to leave behind a collective understanding of events that have shaped the present in Kashmir . One of our guests is a historian in making and another one is an anthropologist. As Kashmiri researchers I hardly see us working on topics other than Kashmir and yet everytime we start this research process, it only feels like a beginning. In this conversation with Mohammad Junaid and Iffat Rashid, I realised how this is not the start. There have always been kashmiri historians, writers, ethnographers and journalists who have tried to document our past and our present. It's a different question altogether as to how much their voices were recognised. Mostly our story has been told through the colonial gaze. We have had people outside of Kashmir telling our stories, writing about us and some even exotifying or demonizing the people of Kashmir by saying things like Kashmiris have red cheeks, they have fair skin, they are incapable of ruling themselves or even worse - that kashmirs are  terrorists. Therefore, Kashmiri scholarship is important and it is the only way we not only write our own history and present but also collectively understand possibilities for our future. 

This episode features Iffat Rashid, a researcher at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford.  And Mohamad Junaid, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

This episode features  Ather Zia, talking about the current situation in Kashmir,  the issue of settler colonialism, the myths of development after abrogation of article 370, the agency of Kashmiri women and also talks about Ather’s prose and poetry books. Ather Zia, Ph.D., is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and a columnist. She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019) and co-editor of Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak (Women Unlimited 2020),  Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (Upenn 2018) and A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection “The Frame” (1999) and another collection is forthcoming in 2021. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region.

November 2nd is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, but what does it mean to journalists in Kashmir? A place where journalists are usual targets for police and cases like Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) are easily slapped against them. This episode draws light on the everyday struggles of Kashmiri journalists both male and female and features five Kashmiri journalists who spoke to us on the condition of complete anonymity.