Kashmir’s Yarkand Links
With Yarkand Sarai, one of the trading landmarks in Srinagar, in the focus of recent government intervention, Kashmir’s Silk Route memories have revived. Scholar Dr Abdul Hamid Sheikh details the systems and practices of...
Historian Hangloo
On the eve of the publication of his ninth major book, historian Prof Rattan Lal Hangloo spent a few days in Srinagar after a protracted absence of nine years. Living outside Kashmir since 1978,...
Exceptional Mirzas’
On the state and status of governance and people in Kashmir prior and after the Dogra rule are a thick volume of letters in the archives, written by a family of writers connected with...
Samdanis’: Peshawar, Delhi, Lahore, Turkey
In the early nineteenth century, a Kashmir trader migrated to Peshawar and emerged a major businessman. His sons played a major role in India’s independence movement and later two of his sons became envoys...
Kashmir’s Forgotten ‘Spy’
In 1891, a Kashmiri cosmopolitan Sheikh Abdul Rasul was arrested in Bombay, jailed for nine months and deported to London, triggering a crisis in the House of Commons. Later, confidential British India records deconstructed...
Kashmir: A Lawrence Speech
Walter R Lawrence, one of the most popular British India officers in Kashmir, known commonly as Lawrence Sahab, was an authority on a region pushed to slavery by the East India Company. A land...
Khwaja Sanaullah Shawl
Father of freedom movement leader Sauddin Shawl, Khawaja Sanaullah Shawl was one of the most respected traders of his era with a chain of outlets in the region. A philanthropist, he was a friend...
Kashmir 1823
British veterinarian, William Moorcroft (1767-1825), who played a key role in exploring Central Asia for the East India Company, spent a harsh winter in Kashmir (1822-23) at the peak of hugely exploitative Sikh rule....
Hazratbal 1954
Roads and plenty of cars is a recent phenomenon. In this 1954 travelogue, Pearce Gervis explains how the huge floating gardens, rations and the devotees to Hazratbal chiefly used the abundant waterways
After a...
Kashmir’s Canal Life 1954
Srinagar’s water bodies have historically remained a self-sustaining eco-system in which people lived, worked and thrived throughout. Life remained unchanged for a long time as this 1954 travelogue by Pearce Gervis explains
= Going down...
Kashmir’s Church Bells
The oldest Protestant Church over the Rustum Gari hill is being revived and renovated by the government under its smart city project. Constructed in 1896, there is a detailed narrative about the community’s struggle,...
Kashmir 1835
Carl Alexander Anselm Baron von Hügel (1795-1870), a prominent naturalist from Vienna spent more than five years in India. He spent part good time visiting Kashmir in 1835. Though most of his observations and...
Kashmir 1877
A Bengal Medical Service professional, G C Ross spent some time in Kashmir in 1877. He wrote a couple of write-ups about the life, amenities and governance in the valley, a year later. The...
The Kangri Cancer
Not in so distant past, most of Kashmir lacked resources to even have adequate garments in winters. Kangri, the fire pot was the only warm tool but its overuse was triggering peculiar cancer endemic...
Kashmir’s Plague Story
Plague like many other epidemics got imported into Kashmir. A Mitra, Kashmir’s erstwhile Chief Medical Officer of Kashmir treated the plague-infected and tackled the epidemic for the government in 1903 while keeping a detailed...
