The name Ghulam Nabi Khayal during the decades prior to 1990s was ingrained in the consciousness of Kashmiris as somebody who like his contemporary, Ali Mohd Lone, frequently wrote class radio dramas with socio economic themes.  Based on these dramas and his poetry broadcast over Radio Kashmir, one could arrive at a conclusion that  Khayal’s thought process revolved essentially around Marxism and despite the pressures one had to endure in Kashmir post 1990, he could not relinquish it totally.

Ghulam Nabi Khayal was a voracious reader, a prolific writer, political commentator, an existentialist poet and a profound speaker who most of the time did not hesitate to call spade a spade. He was sought as a consultant on matters pertaining to Kashmir by domestic as well as international press.

Though possessing  a rational and analytical mind, he unfortunately could not assess and decipher the changing dynamics of Kashmir militancy. Ghulam Nabi Khayal could have walked in the league of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the journalists of Watergate fame. He indeed was a seasoned journalist from Kashmir who possessed a cosmopolitan outlook and was a well-wisher for peace.

“Manufactured Intolerance”

After the change in government at Centre in 2014, he along with many left leaning politicians, academics, poets, jurists and others protested against the  “perceived intolerance’’  in the country  by returning  the Sahitya Akademi Award, he was bestowed  in 1975 for his Kashmiri Book “Gasher Munar”.  This act of returning the awards  after so many years was dubbed by Late Arun Jaitley as “the manufactured intolerance by those who had become irrelevant after Modi government’’.

Khayal (80), who breathed his last on October 15, 2023, had authored more than 30 books and was associated with major newspapers in India including the Illustrated Weekly of India. Incidentally, Khayal was arrested also in 1958 in the “Kashmir Conspiracy Case’’, the mention of which has exhaustively been made by none other than   former Director of Intelligence Bureau,  B N Mullik in his book, “My Years with Nehru—Kashmir’’.