Zanaan Wanaan

12/12/2021

Read the cover art explainer of ZW's Issue II by .

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/zw-issue-ii-cover-art-explainer/

12/12/2021

Read Vanessa Chishti's essay analysing how the discourse on Kashmir is changing in the midst of India’s political turmoil. It discusses the significance of striking down Article 370 for the political project of Hindutva, and briefly traces the influence of the sangh parivar in shaping the broader national consensus on Kashmir. The essay concludes with arguments suggesting the peoples movements in India signal important departures from conventions of politics and political discourse in the country.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/speaking-kashmir-in-india-a-cautiously-optimistic-note/

11/12/2021

Read Souzeina Mushtaq’s essay which discusses the communication blockade and abrogation from a media point of view.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/mediating-experiences-of-kashmir-thinking-through-the-abrogation/

10/12/2021

Read Samreen Mushtaq’s essay which discusses the themes of visible/invisible ways in which censorship and self-censorship are manifested amid an ever-increasing setting of state control and power.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/the-sounds-of-silence-self-and-censorship-in-kashmir/

10/12/2021

Read Sadaf Wani’s essay on the contentious subject of visual documentation of life in Kashmir. The essay makes a case for the ‘erasures’ of violence that some photographs achieve by actively overlooking the markers of conflict; proposing a radically different way of thinking about everyday photography.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/the-many-projections-of-a-normal-life-everyday-photography-and-visual-production-in-kashmir/

09/12/2021

Read Ifat Gazia's essay on the ever-increasing concerns of cyber-surveillance, censorship and politics of internet, particularly in context of Kashmir.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/in-kashmir-internet-access-and-social-media-visibility-are-both-an-uphill-battle/

09/12/2021

Read Heeba Din's essay which prompts us to think about humour as a fascinating subject of analysis. It touches upon themes of visual cultures while examining the gendered politics of cartoons in Kashmir.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/politics-of-humor-women-in-political-cartoons-of-kashmir/

08/12/2021

Read Hameeda Syed’s essay about her reflections as a Kashmiri journalist, discussing the nuances of storytelling in Kashmir.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/i-am-not-one-story-the-metaverse-in-kashmir/

07/12/2021

Read an excerpt from Farah Bashir's memoir Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir.

This piece was re-published with permission from HarperCollins India.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/i-would-grow-up-to-be-collateral-damage/

07/12/2021

Read Bisma's memoir of the Aug 5 Lockdown detailing her experiences as a journalist working on ground in Kashmir.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/memoir-of-a-lockdown/

06/12/2021

Read Aashna Jamal's essay which offers a comparative analysis of media repression in Kashmir and West Papua. The essay gives an introduction to the tactics routinely used by authoritarian governments (in India and Indonesia) to censor media and restrict information from the respective regions.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/territorial-disputes-and-media-repression-a-case-study-of-kashmir-and-west-papua/

05/12/2021

Read the tribute to Aasia Jeelani, who was an activist, journalist, and human rights defender, in our latest issue.

https://zanaanwanaan.com/issues/aasia-jeelani-a-kashmiri-feminist-trailblazer/

20/11/2021

ZW's second issue on the theme, 'Militarised Media: Power, Propaganda, and Press,' is now available on our website.

To read the full issue, please click the following link: https://zanaanwanaan.com/issue-2/

Cover design:

08/11/2021

Our final group of contributors is Farah Bashir, Heeba Din, and Sadaf Wani.

Farah Bashir was born and raised in Kashmir. She was a former photojournalist with Reuters and currently works as a communications consultant. Rumours of Spring is her first book.

Heeba Din is a Lecturer at the Media Education Research Center of the University of Kashmir, where she teaches Human Rights and Photography. She did her Doctorate on Political Cartoons in Kashmir from KU, during which time she was awarded the Maulana Azad Fellowship. She has also received the Kashmir Times Shamim Ahmed Shamin Memorial Award for professional work and academic excellence in 2015.

Sadaf Wani is a Research Associate at Zubaan, a feminist NGO based in New Delhi. She has an MPhil in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Her research interests lie at the intersection of anthropology of space, gender and visual cultures. Her work has been published in Himal South Asian, Scroll, and Wande Magazine among others.

06/11/2021

Our second group of contributors is: Ifat Gazia, Souzeina Mushtaq, Aashna Jamal, and Hameeda Syed

Ifat Gazia is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has an M.A. from SOAS, University of London, in Media and Development. She is the founder and host of The Kashmir Podcast. Ifat is the recipient of the Muslim Women in Media Fellowship 2020, the UMass Research Enhancement and Leadership Fellowship and the Unicorn Fund 2021.

Souzeina Mushtaq is an educator and a photographer based in New York City. She received her doctorate in Media and Gender studies from Ohio University. She worked as a journalist in multiple capacities as a reporter, editor, and television host for seven years in Kashmir and New Delhi. Her research focuses on q***r Muslim women and their intersecting identities. Moreover, she collaborated on a visual ethnography project on "Nomads and Weavers of the Himalayas" in Kashmir and Tibet and "Yörüks of the Ta**us Mountains" in Turkey for nearly a decade. She currently teaches journalism at the University of Wisconsin-RiverFalls.

Aashna Jamal is an economist with experience working in low and middle-income countries. She has cross-cutting experience in governance, health, child protection, social protection, and education sectors. She holds an M.A. in International and Development Economics from Yale University, U.S.A. and a B.A. (Honours) in Economics from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Aashna has received scholarships from Aga Khan Foundation, Rotary International, and P.E.O. International, amongst other institutions. Her interests lie in public finance and governance within fragile states. She likes writing fiction in her spare time.

Hameeda Syed is currently pursuing her Master’s in Conflict Analysis and Peacebuilding at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She has worked as a journalist for close to two years in Kashmir and Delhi. Having completed her graduation in Psychology, she has also spearheaded a two-month online Zoom session imparting mental health awareness to young Kashmiris. Her areas of interest include conflict analysis, mental well-being, and building community-based info

05/11/2021

The second issue brings together a diverse cohort of 10 Kashmiri women exploring the theme of 'Militarized Media: Power, Propaganda, and Press.'

We are pleased to announce our first group of contributors for the second issue: Dr. Vanessa Chishti, Samreen Mushtaq, and Bisma Bhat.

Dr. Vanessa Chishti is an Associate Professor at Jindal Global Law School. Her areas of interest include modern South Asian history, histories of capitalism, Marxist and Feminist political economy, and theories of social reproduction. Her Ph.D. thesis titled 'Articulating Kashmir: Commodity Economy and the Politics of Representation c.1770-1930' offers a historical political economy of modern Kashmir and is currently under revision for publication into a book manuscript of the same title.

Samreen Mushtaq is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Ashoka University, India, as part of a collaboration with Governing Intimacies, located at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Jamia Millia Islamia, and her research interests include gender, militarisation, and everyday forms of resistance.

Bisma Bhat is a Kashmiri journalist who reports on education, conflict, and crime. She has a Master's degree in Convergent Journalism from Central University of Kashmir. After her Master's, she joined The Kashmir monitor, a local English daily of Kashmir, where she worked for three years. Presently, she is working with the weekly magazine Free Press Kashmir as a feature writer. Her stories have also appeared in news portals such as First Post, Article 14, The Wire, and Gaon connection. She has also been a winner of the Sanjay Ghose Media Award 2020.

31/10/2021

The theme for ZW’s second issue is ‘Militarised Media: Power, Propaganda, and Press.’

This issue explores the multiple ways in which media intersects with the conflict and political turmoil in Kashmir. This exploration is not only limited to examining the role of the media but also touches upon the socio-cultural, gendered, economic, political, regional, and technological transformations within which media operates in the region.

The long kept tight reins of the state extend to traditional as well as new media to keep any form of subversion within the ambit of political acceptability. In this context, media is a case study to analyse the myriad ways in which the state enacts, extends and disseminates its propaganda. Any discussion on the media in Kashmir, thus, is simultaneously a discussion on power.

A collection of ten works will aim to expand the theoretical and historical discussion on media, the complex challenges and obstacles in the face of state power and militarisation, and the existing/emerging scholarship navigating these questions.

Artwork by

30/04/2021

In the final episode of season one of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss Sociology and Anthropology as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. The episode discusses the shift from the colonial origins of this discipline to indigenous knowledge production, incarceration and criminological discourses, research in social work, Kashmiri women's scholarship and methodologies like participant observation, auto-ethnography, phenomenology and long term immersion in the field.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0dtmeOAS2c9AZYG8Un1NCS?si=bUTYJWVDQHOXtbi6UwlZVw&dl_branch=1

26/04/2021

In the eighth episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss English Literature as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. This episode discusses the need to build a collective memory through literature, the scope and opportunities in this discipline, interdisciplinary research methodologies, the concepts of deconstruction of language, trauma theory and emerging online spaces as witness libraries.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1aTQIjTquC1luBBVAJYo4W?si=ocHLSJjWQaqCyXXMwr_P2w&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A5GQILQbwlPwmNTVAI7hjR3&nd=1

22/04/2021

In the seventh episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss Media as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. This episode discusses the need for storytelling to amplify the narratives from Kashmir, the challenges confronting Kashmiri women journalists, the politics of institutional affiliation, the perplexities in media practice due to censorship and the changing dynamics of this field due to social media and emerging technologies.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/26qzHM7zWGGrn1ZmNr4mx4?si=n8jgJncLQcqtFx0JaIuNGg&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A5GQILQbwlPwmNTVAI7hjR3

19/04/2021

In the sixth episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss Psychology as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. The episode addresses the importance of destigmatising and decolonising mental health discourses, the role of critical research that is context sensitive and the need for more mental health professionals in a militarised conflict.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3skTXN2M1ozPYmIBj6z07J?si=xHXeWY6PQqq3lmqPIZkZUQ&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A5GQILQbwlPwmNTVAI7hjR3

15/04/2021

In the fifth episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss Political Science and International Relations as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. The episode discusses the role of identities in shaping up research interests, the merits of inter-disciplinary research within this discipline, research methodologies like action research methodology, auto-ethnography & feminist methodology, the importance of academic freedom, ethical considerations within institutions and the need to decolonise knowledge production as well as institutional mechanisms

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2mmoAkGZSQynezdkzCPwCV?si=SXgKgzZkRiia5DDxBZSdaw&utm_source=copy-link

12/04/2021

In the fourth episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss STEM as a stream in the context of Kashmir. With a focus on physics and computer science, this episode discusses the need for a shift in sciences beyond Medicine and Engineering, the application of STEM in research and practice, the importance of representation to address the gender parity in STEM, scope and opportunities offered by data sciences, coding etc.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2r79eOuNhxfHjDYoSrJAY5?si=saDzzzMNTF6ZrszoA9wtDQ

08/04/2021

In the third episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss History as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir. The episode analyses the politics of the history writing, evidence interpretation, the accessibility and importance of reliable sources in Kashmiri history, the systematic erasure of women from primary texts, the role of institutions in conducting research in this discipline and the significance of oral narratives.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1r1oekijbXEUt7uKMLUz2n?si=uaOIICHqS_eND76eQqAarA

05/04/2021

In the second episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss Law as an academic discipline in the context of Kashmir.

Available on Spotify and our website.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1z1xRPU0B6S1c7Zn7QaI0L?si=iRdrGYaGQYSaekZaS03RBw

01/04/2021

In the first episode of The Zanaan Wanaan Podcast, we discuss Economics as an academic discipline and locate it in the context of Kashmir.

Available on Spotify and our website.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0jJACDta37sTHb8Cg9jric?si=skIOLAhzSOyLrGCkaAbt0A

22/03/2021

We are expanding our team as we venture into new terrains of knowledge dissemination. We are therefore inviting applications for a research assistant position at Zanaan Wanaan.

Find the role description and other details here:
https://zanaanwanaan.com/work-with-us/call-for-a-research-assistant/

08/03/2021

On this day, we reiterate our commitment towards strengthening the women's movement in Kashmir. Our aim is to decolonize narratives, build transnational alliances, encourage feminist activism, advocacy, produce independent scholarship, and support Kashmiri women cultural practitioners.

As a part of this vision, ZW organised an event on 23 Feb with a group of 10 women. Following are some of the key take-aways of the discussions that emerged:

The problems with the representation and glorification of (a)political Kashmiri women in the Indian media.

Unpacking the idea of empowerment where Kashmiri women are presented as hyper-entrepreneurial subjects. One of the participants brilliantly pointed out that we rarely see a program dedicated to a baker, writer, artist, athlete etc. from India. This focus on individual success stories creating icons out of women also aids the narrative of normalcy propagated in the Indian media. This is often seen in new items every other day which highlight the many “firsts” of Kashmiri women.

All aspects of life in Kashmir are tied to the political situation in the region. Therefore, to analyse any event, experience, situation in isolation is an inherently flawed lens of understanding life in Kashmir.

The disproportionate backlash on contested issues received by Kashmiri women which is loaded with misogyny, especially, on online forums.

The lack of physical spaces for women in Kashmir to gather and discuss freely and the importance of building such spaces.

Read the full event summary available on our website.

Artwork by:

23/02/2021

WOMEN’S RESISTANCE IN KASHMIR

*Call for submissions*

In commemoration of Kashmiri women’s resistance day and as a part of ZW’s commitment to bringing attention to Kashmiri women’s struggles, we are pleased to announce our forthcoming project titled, ‘Women’s Resistance in Kashmir’. This project is in collaboration with International Women's Alliance and Stand With Kashmir and will culminate in a virtual art exhibition and a panel discussion in May 2021.

This project invites works of art from Kashmiri women that consider questions about, but not limited to, gender, society, culture, history, politics, power, the structures of violence, militarism, and Kashmir. The recent surge of interest and the hyper-visibility of ‘Kashmir’ within online spaces has brought to fore many possibilities of engagement with issues that affect the daily life of Kashmiris. This is why we turn to these spaces and use them to platform Kashmiri women’s voices and narratives.

For further details about eligibility and submissions, please click the following link:
https://zanaanwanaan.com/events/call-for-submissions-womens-resistance-in-kashmir/

In commemoration of Kashmiri women’s resistance day and as a part of ZW’s commitment to bringing attention to Kashmiri women’s struggles, we are pleased to announce our forthcoming project titled, ‘Women’s Resistance in Kashmir’. This project is in collaboration with the International Wo...

23/02/2021

Kashmir Women's Resistance Day: Explainer

https://youtu.be/twsKfDaT7dc

On 23rd February 1991, the army soldiers of Fourth Rajputana Rifles launched a massive crackdown in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora. They detained and tortured the men and r***d at least 31 women from age 13 to 60. The three decades–long struggle of the survivors from Kunan and Poshpora is a part of the larger on-going fight in Jammu and Kashmir, against the institutionalized and structural violence of the Indian state.

In a momentous event of women's collaborative resistance, in 2013, several women played an instrumental role in the re-opening of the Kunan Poshpora case and the demand for a reinvestigation. They mobilised about a 100 women to file a PIL at the lower court in Kupwara. The endeavour for justice is ongoing still.

Honouring these struggles of the survivors of mass r**e and torture of Kunan and Poshpora, every year since 2014, 23rd February is commemorated as Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day.

On 23rd February 1991, the army soldiers of Fourth Rajputana Rifles launched a massive crackdown in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora. They detained an...