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From Pamposh to IFFJK: Kashmir’s extraordinary journey with Cinema

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September 8, 2026

From Pamposh to IFFJK: Kashmir’s extraordinary journey with Cinema

(Kashmir Archives Exclusive)

There was a time when Bollywood did not need Switzerland to create romance.It had Kashmir.

A shikara gliding across Dal Lake, a houseboat against the mountains, the snowfields of Gulmarg, the meadows of Pahalgam and the gardens of Srinagar became part of the visual vocabulary of Hindi cinema.

For generations of Indians, much of their first experience of Kashmir came not from a journey to the Valley but from a cinema screen.

But Kashmir’s relationship with cinema began much before the familiar era of Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore. And, as the archives of Kashmir Rechords reveal, the story is considerably richer than Bollywood simply coming to Kashmir to shoot songs.

It is a story of forgotten Kashmiri actors, pioneering filmmakers, lost films, packed cinema halls, silence and now a remarkable revival.

Shyama Zutshi: a Kashmiri woman enters Bollywood

One of the earliest chapters belongs to Shyama Zutshi.

As Kashmir Rechords documented in its archival feature on her, Zutshi entered Hindi cinema in 1934, appearing in films such as Shiv Bhakti, Majnu, Karwan-e-Hayat and Khooni Jadugar.

Karwan-e-Hayat brought her into the company of major names including K. L. Saigal, T. R. Rajakumari and Pahari Sanyal.

Her story, however, was not simply one of cinematic success. She eventually left films and became involved in the freedom movement and Congress politics.

Kashmir Rechords also records the story of another Kashmiri woman, Yashodhara Kathju, who entered films in the 1940s and continued working into the 1960s. Their stories are a reminder that Kashmir’s association with Indian cinema was never merely geographical. Kashmiris themselves were part of the industry.

Pamposh: Kashmir and India’s colour revolution

Perhaps the most extraordinary forgotten episode is Pamposh. In 1951–52, filmmaker Ezra Mir brought a film unit to Kashmir to make Pamposh, a pioneering colour production. The film was an experiment in proving that a full-colour feature could be produced, processed and printed in post-Independence India.

And Kashmir provided the perfect laboratory. Dal Lake, houseboats, lotus flowers, gardens, mountains and the extraordinary natural light of the Valley became part of this technological experiment.

As Kashmir Rechords has documented, Pamposh has a special place in Indian film history as the first colour feature domestically produced and processed in post-Independence India.

Its cinematographer was Italian C. F. Marconi, while the music was credited to Mohan Lal Aima and Cecil Mendoza.

The film even travelled to Cannes. And yet there is a remarkable irony.The colour film itself has been lost.

No known colour print survives. What remain are photographs, publicity material, newspaper reports, a poster and archival fragments.

Kashmir Rechords has also preserved a 1953 Blitz photograph of Ezra Mir with an unidentified young Kashmiri girl associated with the production — carefully leaving her identity unresolved rather than turning speculation into fact.

A pioneering film was made in Kashmir. Its memory survived. Its print did not.

Then Bollywood discovered its dream Kashmir

By the 1960s, Kashmir had become something much larger than a convenient location.

It had become Bollywood’s dream landscape.

Junglee (1961), Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon (1963), Kashmir Ki Kali (1964), Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), Jaanwar (1965) and Aarzoo (1965) helped establish the formula.

And nobody embodied that era quite like Shammi Kapoor. He danced in the snow, sang beside the lake and raced through the Valley’s landscapes with an exuberance that became inseparable from the popular image of Kashmir.

Then came films such as Bobby, Aap Ki Kasam, Kabhi Kabhie, Noorie and Silsila.

Kashmir was no longer merely appearing in Hindi films. It had become a character in them.

When cinema began renaming Kashmir

Cinema did something else: it entered the landscape itself.

The location associated with Sunny Deol and Amrita Singh’s Betaab eventually became popularly known as Betaab Valley.

The phenomenon says something about the power of cinema.

The filmmakers came looking for Kashmir. But the films left behind names, memories and associations that became part of Kashmir itself.

Kashmir’s own stalwarts

The Valley also sent its artists in the opposite direction — towards India’s larger cultural and cinematic world.

Dina Nath Zutshi, whose story has been revisited by Kashmir Rechords, moved from radio into Hindi cinema. He is remembered among other things for his performance as Halim Mirza in M. S. Sathyu’s Garm Hava.

His journey also intersected with that of Om Prakash, another major performer associated with Jammu & Kashmir.

Then there was Jeevan — Omkar Nath Dhar, born in Srinagar, who became one of Hindi cinema’s most recognisable character actors and villains.

Raaj Kumar, born Kulbhushan Pandit and from a Kashmiri Pandit family, became another towering presence in Hindi cinema.

And from Srinagar came filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra, whose later career would make him one of India’s most influential filmmakers and producers.

Kashmir’s cultural contribution to Indian cinema therefore extended far beyond locations. It included actors, filmmakers, broadcasters, writers, musicians and theatre personalities.

Kashmir was not simply being photographed. It was participating.

When Bollywood posters covered Kashmir

Kashmir Rechords‘ archival work on Bollywood posters and Chal Chal Re Naujawan offers another glimpse into the era.

Film posters were once part of the Valley’s everyday visual landscape — on walls, tongas, lorries and public spaces.

Cinema was not an abstract industry operating somewhere in Bombay. Its stars were visible. Its posters were everywhere.

And its films were being watched in crowded theatres.

In 1990 Kashmir screens went dark

As militancy intensified, cinema halls became targets. By the end of the 1980s, theatres across the Valley had closed.

Kashmir Rechords’ account of “1990: When Cinema Fell Silent in Kashmir!” recalls a Valley that had once had more than 20 cinema halls in Srinagar and other towns.

The closure was much more than the loss of entertainment.

The cinema hall had been a social institution — a place where families went together, young people gathered and audiences shared the same popular culture as people elsewhere in India.

Then the shutters came down. For an entire generation, cinema became something remembered by parents rather than experienced as an ordinary part of life.

The failed return

There was an attempt to reopen the cinemas in the 1990s.

Regal, Neelam and Broadway reopened in Srinagar. But the experiment did not last.

In 1999, Regal cinema was attacked with grenades during a screening. The reopening effort collapsed, and the Valley’s cinema culture remained largely dormant.

The irony was extraordinary: Bollywood continued making films about Kashmir, but Kashmiris themselves had almost nowhere to watch them in Kashmir.

Bollywood’s Kashmir changed

As security conditions deteriorated, filmmakers increasingly looked elsewhere. Ooty, Manali and other locations substituted for Kashmir.

Switzerland and other foreign destinations increasingly supplied Bollywood with the mountains and snow that Kashmir had once provided.

And the Kashmir seen on screen changed. The romantic Valley of Kashmir Ki Kali and Jab Jab Phool Khile gradually gave way to a Kashmir of conflict, militancy, soldiers and political uncertainty.

Films such as Roja, Dil Se, Mission Kashmir, Yahaan and later Haider reflected different dimensions of this changed reality.

The camera had not completely abandoned Kashmir. But the Kashmir seen through the camera had changed.

Then the camera began returningThe revival was gradual. Filmmakers began coming back to Jammu & Kashmir, and the old cinematic relationship slowly revived.

One of the most symbolic returns was Yash Chopra’s Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012).

Kashmir had been central to Chopra’s cinematic imagination for decades. His final film brought the Valley back into his visual world.

The symbolism was difficult to miss.

The filmmaker who had done so much to turn Kashmir into Bollywood’s great romantic landscape had returned to shoot there once again.

And then cinema itself returned

The revival eventually moved beyond film shoots. In 2022, Srinagar entered a new multiplex era after decades without a functioning mainstream cinema culture.

For the first time in years, Kashmiris could once again go to a modern theatre and watch newly released Hindi films on the big screen.

Bollywood posters also began returning to the Valley. The distinction is important.

For decades Bollywood had come to Kashmir to make films. Now films were coming to Kashmir to be watched.

From film location to film destination

The next phase is more ambitious.

Government film policies have sought to attract productions, simplify permissions and encourage film tourism and local participation.

The objective is no longer merely to bring a Mumbai film unit to Kashmir for a few days.

The larger ambition is to create a film ecosystem — involving actors, technicians, writers, production crews, local businesses, training and eventually more films originating from Jammu & Kashmir itself.

That would represent a fundamental change. Kashmir would cease to be merely a backdrop. It could become a centre of filmmaking.

2026: Kashmir hosts the world

And now comes perhaps the most striking chapter.

From September 7 to 10, 2026, Jammu & Kashmir is hosting its first International Film Festival of Jammu & Kashmir — IFFJK.

Under the theme “Rang-e-Cinema”, the festival includes international competition, feature films, documentaries, shorts, regional cinema and a dedicated J&K Select section.

Films from more than 40 countries are being screened, with about 135 films selected for the festival. The symbolism could hardly be stronger.

A place that once had more than 20 cinema halls. A place where cinema fell silent in 1990. A place that spent decades without a functioning film culture is now inviting the world to come and watch films in Kashmir.

From Pamposh to IFFJK

The journey can almost be read as a cinematic timeline.

1934: Shyama Zutshi enters Hindi cinema.

1951–52: Ezra Mir shoots Pamposh in Kashmir, using the Valley as the setting for a pioneering colour-film experiment.

1960s–80s: Bollywood’s golden Kashmir era — Junglee, Kashmir Ki Kali, Jab Jab Phool Khile, Bobby, Noorie, Silsila and many others.

1989–90: cinema halls close and Kashmir’s public cinema culture disappears.

1990s–2000s: Kashmir increasingly becomes a cinematic landscape of conflict.

2012 onwards: major productions begin returning.

2022: modern cinema returns to Srinagar.

2026: Kashmir hosts an international film festival.

It is not merely a history of films.

It is a history of Kashmir’s relationship with the outside world — and with itself.

The camera has come home

There is something poetic about Kashmir’s cinematic journey.

Once, Bollywood came to Kashmir and taught India to see the Valley through songs.

Then the cameras left. The cinema halls closed. The posters disappeared. The screens went dark.

Now the cameras are returning. The cinema halls are returning. And in 2026, an international film festival has arrived.

Perhaps the most significant change is that Kashmir no longer has to remain merely Bollywood’s beautiful backdrop.

It can become a place where filmmakers come not only to shoot mountains, lakes and snow, but to discover people, histories and stories.

From Shyama Zutshi to Shammi Kapoor; from Ezra Mir’s Pamposh to Yash Chopra’s Kashmir; from crowded cinema halls to three decades of silence; from lost film archives to a new international festival — the story has travelled a long way.

Kashmir has been a frame for Indian cinema for nearly a century. Perhaps the time has come for Kashmir to become the storyteller.

When Jammu & Kashmir had its own Postal Stamps

Kashmir Rechords

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September 6, 2026

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When Jammu & Kashmir had its own Postal Stamps

(Kashmir Rechords Archival Exclusive)

Most of us know that the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir had its own currency. But how many know that it also had its own postage stamps and postal system?

The Dogra state began issuing its own postal stamps in 1866, during the reign of Maharaja Ranbir Singh — part of a wider tradition among several princely states of maintaining their own postal arrangements.

The story, however, is much bigger than the stamps themselves.

Its postal history encompasses different issues, cancellations and markings associated with Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, revealing a communications network that stretched across an extraordinarily difficult geographical landscape.

They were evidence of a functioning state.

Historical postal stamps from Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir, and Gilgit regions issued during the Dogra era — (Postal stamps from many regions, including Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir, Gilgit)

A detailed collage showcasing vintage J&K state postage stamps and postal markings — (Postal stamps from many regions, including Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir, Gilgit)

These were not merely pieces of paper.

Stamps that carried the imprint of a State

The old Dogra postal stamps, cancellation seals, dies and printing plates provide glimpses into how the administration communicated across its territory.

A cancellation could identify a particular post office. A seal could establish the existence of a postal centre. A stamp could reveal the administrative system under which a letter travelled.

And the geographical spread of these markings — from Jammu and Kashmir to places such as Gilgit, Skardu and Leh — offers a fascinating picture of the reach of the Dogra postal network.

Early cancellation stamps and postal marks used by the Jammu and Kashmir postal administration

But much of this history might have remained scattered and forgotten had one remarkable Jammu & Kashmir scholar not gone looking for it.

B. P. Sharma: The Man Who Went Looking

In August 1981, a newspaper report carried the headline:“Rare Postal Seals, Stamps Recovered”

At the centre of the story was B. P. Sharma, then President of the Dogri Research Institute and already known for his extraordinary knowledge of Jammu & Kashmir.

Sharma had undertaken extensive research into the old postal system and had studied 136 postal cancellation and special seals used by different post offices.

More remarkably, he preserved impressions of the seals he examined.

Newspaper clipping from August 10, 1981, detailing the recovery of rare J&K postal seals and stamps

The newspaper reproduced examples of some of the earliest cancellation stamps of the J&K State Post Offices, including markings associated with: Gilgit • Skardu • Sialkot • Kashmir

Sharma did not stop with cancellation marks.He also examined postage-stamp dies, printing plates, revenue stamps and telegraph stamps.

He recorded the use of Dogri and Persian in postal markings and examined material preserved in the Pratap Museum, Srinagar. This was no ordinary philatelic exercise. Sharma was attempting to reconstruct the physical evidence of a postal administration that had disappeared decades earlier.

Archival news feature highlighting B. P. Sharma's research on old Dogra cancellation stamps and dies

Foreign Scholar who came looking for Dogra Post

And then came another extraordinary chapter.

In September 1981, a newspaper reported on Frits Staal, a professor from the University of California, Berkeley, who had come to Jammu & Kashmir to research the postal system of the Dogras.

Staal had already visited Jammu the previous year to collect material for his research.

But he wanted more than documents and stamps. He wanted to understand how the postal system actually worked.

So he travelled into the mountains. He went to Ladakh and Zanskar, travelling on foot through the terrain over which Dogra postal runners had once carried mail.

September 1981 news report covering Professor Frits Staal's field research on Dogra postal routes in Ladakh

He studied the mountain passes and routes because the story of the Dogra post could not be fully understood without understanding the extraordinary landscape through which the mail travelled.

He was also learning Dogri, in part to understand the old postal markings and inscriptions.

Two Researchers, One Forgotten History

There is something remarkable about the coincidence.

In the same period that B. P. Sharma was recovering old seals, stamps, dies and printing material, Frits Staal was travelling through Jammu & Kashmir to reconstruct the operation of the Dogra postal system.

One was recovering the physical evidence. The other was tracing the routes and working of the system.

One possessed decades of local knowledge. The other brought an international scholarly interest to a little-known subject.

And their paths crossed. B. P. Sharma contributed to Staal’s important work, The Stamps of Jammu & Kashmir, published in 1983.

Thus, a foreign scholar’s study of Dogra philately also carried the contribution of a remarkable Jammu & Kashmir researcher whose knowledge of the region had earned him the description “Walking Encyclopaedia of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Portrait of B. P. Sharma, recognized as a walking encyclopedia of Jammu and Kashmir

When a Stamp Becomes History

The Dogra postal system eventually passed into the Imperial Indian postal administration in 1894. The state’s own postal stamps disappeared from regular use. But the evidence survived.

In stamps.In cancellations.In seals.In dies and plates.In old documents.And, importantly, in the memory and research of people like B. P. Sharma.

Look at an old Dogra stamp today and it may appear to be little more than a collector’s item.But behind that tiny piece of paper lies a much larger story:

A state with its own postal administration; a network extending across Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh; postal runners crossing formidable mountain passes; and scholars decades later trying to reconstruct how the entire system worked.

A Question for Our Readers

We often discover history in monuments, books and official records. But sometimes history survives in something as small as a postage stamp. So here is a question for our readers:

Did you know that Jammu & Kashmir had its own postal stamps and postal system more than 150 years ago?

Did you know that B. P. Sharma studied 136 of its old postal cancellation and special seals?

And did you know that a foreign scholar travelled on foot through Ladakh and Zanskar to understand how the Dogra postal system actually functioned?

What is your reaction to this little-known chapter of Jammu & Kashmir’s history?

Did you, or someone in your family, ever come across old Dogra stamps, postal covers or seals?

Tell us in the comments. Your recollection may itself be a piece of history.

KASHMIR RECHORDS
Bringing forgotten pages of Jammu & Kashmir’s history back into the public record.

Sheikh Abdullah and Kashmiri Pandits: When Merit Lost to Community Arithmetic

Kashmir Rechords

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September 3, 2026

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Sheikh Abdullah and Kashmiri Pandits: When Merit Lost to Community Arithmetic

( Kashmir Rechords Archives)

There are moments in history when a political leader says something in the heat of a legislative debate that reveals more than years of political speeches.

For Kashmiri Pandits, one such moment came on September 26, 1981, when Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, then Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, spoke in the Legislative Assembly about their representation in government services and professional institutions. (Kashmir Rechords is the first to bring to light a chapter of history that has remained largely unexplored, unreported and outside public discourse).

Sheikh Abdullah’s argument was stark: Kashmiri Pandits had, he said, “for historical reasons” come to occupy a dominant position in State services. Their “one-sided” representation, he declared, was being corrected.

He favoured community-wise representation based on population in each district, so that every community could receive an “equitable share.”

That statement deserves to be examined closely—not merely as an administrative proposal, but as a window into how Sheikh Abdullah viewed the Kashmiri Pandit community.

For critics of his policy, the disturbing implication was obvious: instead of asking who was best qualified for a government position, the State would increasingly ask how many members of a particular community already occupied such positions.

In other words, merit appeared to be giving way to community arithmetic.

September 1981 newspaper report on Sheikh Abdullah's Assembly remarks about Kashmiri Pandit representation in State services

Chief Minister’s words in the Assembly

The contemporary newspaper report is unusually revealing.

Sheikh Abdullah acknowledged that Kashmiri Pandits had historically occupied a prominent place in State services. But rather than defending the principle of open competition, he said that this “one-sided” representation was being corrected.

He favoured representation “community-wise” according to population.

He further argued that his government could have abruptly ended Kashmiri Pandits’ representation but preferred a gradual changeover.

That last phrase is important.

It means that the policy was not one of instant exclusion. Shaikh Abdullah was not calling for Pandits to be removed from government service merely because they were Pandits.

But it does reveal something else:He regarded their existing representation as something that had to be reduced or redistributed.

And the mechanism he proposed was not simply better education, wider recruitment or equal competition.

It was community-wise representation according to population.

That is precisely where the question of merit arises.

When did community become more important than the individual?

Imagine two equally qualified candidates appearing for a government post.

Under a purely merit-based system, the State asks:Who is more qualified?

Under Abdullah’s proposed community-wise approach, another question enters: How many people from each community are already represented?

That may be defended as affirmative action or correction of historical deprivation. But it is no longer a system based exclusively on individual merit. And that is why the 1981 statement deserves serious scrutiny.

The issue is not whether Kashmiri Muslims had historically suffered discrimination. They undoubtedly had. The issue is whether the remedy for that discrimination should have been to treat Kashmiri Pandit representation itself as an imbalance requiring correction. That is a very different proposition.

The “dominant Pandit” narrative

To understand Sheikh Abdullah’s thinking, one must go back to the narrative he developed about Kashmiri Pandits.

In Flames of the Chinar, his chapter devoted specifically to the community is titled:“The Role of Kashmiri Pandits”

He begins by acknowledging their importance:

“On Kashmir’s political canvas, the Kashmiri Pandits occupy a prominent place; no description of Kashmir can be complete without an account of their achievements.”

But almost immediately he adds that although they constituted a “microscopic minority,” their influence was widespread. Then comes the much harsher formulation: “In fact, during different periods of history they were used as instruments of tyranny.”

Page from Sheikh Abdullah's autobiography Flames of the Chinar discussing the historical role of Kashmiri Pandits

Page from Flames of the Chinar containing Sheikh Abdullah's observations on Kashmiri Pandits and their role in Kashmir

This is not simply a historical observation about particular individuals.

Sheikh Abdullah constructs a broad narrative in which Kashmiri Pandits, because of their education and administrative presence, became associated with the ruling establishment that governed the Muslim majority.

That narrative became important because it supplied a historical justification for what Abdullah was saying in 1981.

But were Kashmiri Pandits really the “ruling class”?

Here a distinction is essential.

There is abundant historical evidence that Kashmiri Pandits were disproportionately represented in certain branches of administration, particularly clerical and revenue work.

But disproportionate representation is not synonymous with political sovereignty.

The Dogra Maharaja was the ruler. The Pandit clerk was not.

The Dogra state was a monarchy headed by the Dogra ruling family of Jammu.

Kashmiri Pandits were recruited extensively into clerical, revenue and other administrative positions, partly because sections of the community had acquired educational and linguistic qualifications that made them suitable for such employment.

The famous statistics about Pandit employment,, therefore, require context.

A community could be over-represented in government employment while still being a tiny, economically diverse minority, containing clerks, teachers, small employees and ordinary families alongside a much smaller number of successful professionals.

To convert occupational concentration into the image of an all-powerful “Pandit establishment” is therefore a substantial political simplification.

Even Sheikh’s own examples expose the problem

There is an extraordinary irony in Flames of the Chinar.

When Sheikh Abdullah wants to demonstrate the achievements of Kashmiri Pandits, he invokes some of the most celebrated names associated with the community:

Ratan Nath Sarshar. Brij Narain Chakbast.Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. Pandit Motilal Nehru.

He writes that they had:

“carved niches for themselves in Indian history.”

And then comes an even more generous assessment:

“With their superb capabilities, the Pandits can serve as a bridge between Kashmir and the rest of the country.”

There is, however, a crucial geographical and social qualification.

Several of these personalities belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit diaspora that had established itself outside the Valley generations earlier.

Sarshar’s literary career was centred in Lucknow. Chakbast was born in Faizabad and grew up in Lucknow. Tej Bahadur Sapru was born in Aligarh and became one of India’s most eminent lawyers at Allahabad.

Motilal Nehru was born in Agra and built his legal and political career outside Kashmir.

These men unquestionably demonstrate the extraordinary intellectual achievements of Kashmiri Pandits.

But they cannot be used as straightforward evidence of the socio-economic position of the ordinary Kashmiri Pandit living in Kashmir.

That distinction is often lost in the political narrative.

The Pandit who became a symbol of “privilege”

This is perhaps the most important transformation to examine.

The ordinary Kashmiri Pandit could be:

a clerk; a teacher; a schoolmaster; a small government employee;
a priest; a shopkeeper; a professional; or simply an ordinary villager.

Yet the community’s historic success in education and government employment could be aggregated into a single political category: “Pandit representation.”

Once that happened, the achievements of the community’s most successful members could become evidence against the community as a whole.

The question became not: “Is this individual qualified?”

but: “Has this community already had too much?”

That is the fundamental danger of community-based political arithmetic.

September 1981: the policy becomes explicit

This is why Sheikh Abdullah’s Assembly statement is so important.

By 1981, the argument had moved beyond historical criticism.

The Chief Minister was speaking about actual recruitment to government services and professional institutions. He said the historical “one-sided” representation of Kashmiri Pandits was being corrected.

He advocated community-wise representation according to population.

And he preferred a “gradual changeover.”

That language is significant. It suggests that Abdullah did not envisage a dramatic purge. Rather, the system would be progressively altered.

And in such a system, the community that had previously enjoyed a disproportionate presence would inevitably see its share decline. The process did not require exclusion. It required changing the rules of representation.

Was this affirmative action—or communal preference?

That is the question history must confront honestly.

Supporters could—and did—argue that the policy was necessary because Muslims had been deprived for generations.

But there is another legitimate question: Why should the child of a Kashmiri Pandit clerk be held responsible for the historical privileges, if any, enjoyed by another Pandit several generations earlier?

Likewise:

Why should the child of a poor Kashmiri Muslim be denied an opportunity merely because his community had historically been represented in greater numbers?

A genuinely just system has to deal with both problems.

It must correct historical deprivation without transforming inherited community identity into inherited guilt or inherited entitlement.

That is where merit becomes indispensable.

Sheikh Abdullah’s autobiography makes 1981 speech even more revealing

The Assembly speech was made in 1981.

The autobiographical manuscript was completed in 1982, shortly before Abdullah’s death, and later appeared in English as Flames of the Chinar.

That sequence is important. The autobiography was not the youthful Sheikh Abdullah speaking in the emotional atmosphere of the 1930s.

It was the retrospective account of a veteran politician looking back over the history of Kashmir.

And what does he say about Pandits?

He acknowledges their achievements—but repeatedly returns to the idea that they had acquired an influence disproportionate to their numbers.

He writes about their role under different rulers.

He recounts their opposition to Muslim recruitment. He discusses the Roti Agitation. He criticises sections of the community for opposing the Quit Kashmir movement.

He portrays their political alienation from the National Conference as connected to their fear that democracy would empower the Muslim majority.

Thus the 1981 speech was not an isolated administrative remark. It appears to have rested on a much deeper political conception of the Pandit community.

Yet Abdullah also claims to have protected the Pandits

A fair account must include this.

In the same chapter, Abdullah says that when tribal raiders invaded Kashmir in 1947, the National Conference gave:

“priority to the defence of the Kashmiri Pandits and their shrines.”

He presents this as evidence of his movement’s commitment to communal harmony.

This makes the historical picture more complicated.

Abdullah cannot accurately be portrayed as someone who simply wanted Pandits driven out of Kashmir. His own account contradicts that.

He wanted them to remain part of Kashmir.

He praised their achievements. He described them as capable of serving as a bridge between Kashmir and India.

But he simultaneously believed that their historical position in administration was excessive and needed correction.

That is a much more nuanced—and perhaps more uncomfortable—conclusion.

The “ivory tower”

Sheikh Abdullah’s concluding advice to the Pandits is equally revealing.

He asks them to: “step out of their ivory tower of exclusiveness and walk into the mainstream.”

But who defined the mainstream?

And why were Kashmiri Pandits, one of Kashmir’s oldest communities, being asked to enter a mainstream as though they had historically stood outside it?

This is where the politics of Kashmiriyat becomes complicated.

If Kashmiri Pandits were an integral component of Kashmir’s historical civilisation, then their numerical smallness could not logically make their culture, heritage or belonging proportionately smaller.A minority does not become less Kashmiri because it is a minority.

Paradox of Sheikh Abdullah

Perhaps the most revealing way to understand Sheikh Abdullah’s position is to place his own words against each other.

He called the Pandits a:“microscopic minority”, but said their influence was widespread.

He described their historical role as that of: “instruments of tyranny”

yet acknowledged their extraordinary accomplishments.

He said they possessed: “superb capabilities” and could be a:

“bridge between Kashmir and the rest of the country.”

But in the Assembly he described their representation in State services as: “one-sided” and advocated: “community-wise representation”

based upon population.

This is not a simple story of hatred. It is a story of political ambivalence.

From Pandit achievement to Pandit liability

And that may ultimately be the most consequential aspect of Abdullah’s approach.

A community’s educational success can be celebrated.

But once that success is converted into a political argument that the community has become “dominant,” its achievement itself can become a reason for reducing its institutional representation.

That is where the line between affirmative action and communal preference becomes blurred.

And that is why the 1981 Assembly debate deserves to be revisited.

The question is not whether Muslims deserved greater representation.

They did.

The question is whether greater representation for the historically disadvantaged had to come at the expense of the principle that a qualified individual should be judged primarily on merit rather than community arithmetic.

History’s unanswered question

Sheikh Abdullah’s defenders may argue that his policy was an attempt to undo generations of Muslim exclusion.

His critics may see it as a calculated political strategy to consolidate Muslim-majority power.

Both interpretations deserve examination. But the primary evidence permits one conclusion that cannot easily be dismissed:

By 1981, Sheikh Abdullah was openly advocating a system in which community and population would play a determining role in representation in government services and professional institutions, while explicitly identifying Kashmiri Pandits’ historically disproportionate representation as something that needed to be corrected.

Whether one calls that social justice, affirmative action, communal balancing or institutional sidelining depends partly on one’s political interpretation.

But one thing is certain: It was not a purely merit-based philosophy.

And that is why the September 1981 speech deserves to be placed at the beginning of any serious examination of Sheikh Abdullah’s attitude toward Kashmiri Pandits.

His autobiography, completed the following year, then provides the historical narrative through which he himself sought to explain why he thought that way.

Kashmir Rechords takeaway

The story of Kashmiri Pandits cannot honestly be written as though they were an all-powerful community that ruled Kashmir.

Nor can the genuine educational and administrative discrimination suffered by Kashmiri Muslims under Dogra rule be denied.

The historical truth lies somewhere more complicated.

Kashmiri Pandits were a tiny minority who achieved a remarkable concentration in education, clerical employment and the professions. That achievement was gradually transformed into a political narrative of disproportionate “dominance.” Under Sheikh Abdullah, that narrative became the basis for advocating community-wise redistribution of State opportunities.

The tragedy is that a Kashmiri Pandit could consequently come to be judged not merely as an individual, but as a representative of a community whose historical “share” was considered excessive.

And when community arithmetic enters the selection of individuals, merit inevitably ceases to be the sole measure.

That is the uncomfortable question Sheikh Abdullah’s own words leave behind:

Was Kashmir correcting a historical wrong—or replacing one form of inequality with another?

Kashmir Rechords believes the answer should be sought not in political slogans, but in the words of Sheikh Abdullah himself, the contemporary record of the Assembly, and the actual statistics of State employment.

That is where the historical verdict belongs.

1982. 1984. 1986. 1987. Before Anantnag’s 1990 Exodus

Kashmir Rechords

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September 2, 2026

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1982. 1984. 1986. 1987. Before Anantnag’s 1990 Exodus

Kashmir Rechords Exclusive | From the Archives

The story of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus is often told backwards.

It begins in 1990, when a large section of the Valley’s Pandit community left their homes amid killings, threats, intimidation and an atmosphere of fear.

The explanation then often moves to 1987—the Assembly elections widely alleged to have been rigged, the political disillusionment that followed, and the subsequent rise of militancy.

All of that is an important part of the story. But it is not the whole story.

For if 1987 is treated as the point at which everything changed, it can inadvertently create another impression: that Kashmir was otherwise peaceful, that its minorities were secure, and that their troubles began only after the ‘rigged’ elections.

The experience of Anantnag tells us to look further back.

1982.

Four years before the infamous communal violence of 1986 and five years before the disputed 1987 polls, Anantnag was already witnessing violent political mobilisation and attacks on minority-owned businesses.

In March 1982, an anti-liquor agitation that began with picketing and demands for prohibition escalated into clashes, looting and damage to liquor shops.

A contemporary Times of India report by special correspondent V. K. Dethe, published after he was sent to Srinagar to report on the agitation, carried the headline: “Administration failed in Anantnag”

Newspaper clipping from Times of India, March 10, 1982 on Anantnag turmoil.

The report said that the agitation had assumed a “communal colour” and noted that of the four liquor shops in Anantnag, three were owned by Kashmiri Pandits. The shops were attacked and liquor bottles smashed, in addition to other retail and grocery shops belonging to Kashmiri Pandits

Another contemporary Kashmir Times report used even more striking language:

“COMMUNAL, SECESSIONIST ELEMENTS HAVE FREE PLAY IN ANANTNAG”

Kashmir Times, Dated March 13, 1982 expressing concern over Communal and Sessionist elements in Anantnag.

The same newspaper record spoke of the political mobilisation surrounding the agitation and the activities of separatist elements.

A subsequent report recorded renewed disturbances, arrests of activists associated with the People’s League and Jamaat-e-Islami, and attempts to extend the anti-liquor campaign to Srinagar. It also described the People’s League as pro-Pakistan.

Kashmir Times story on looting liquor shops in Anantnag, Kashmir

Newspaper clipping about hartal in South Kashmir towns.

The point is not that every person who participated in the anti-liquor agitation was communal or separatist.

Nor does a newspaper report describing an organisation as pro-Pakistan, by itself, establish direction from Pakistan.

The point is simpler—and historically important:

These political currents, communal anxieties and minority insecurities were already visible in Anantnag in 1982. They did not suddenly appear after 1987.

Even Indian Express carried the main-lead story in its March 10, 1982, quoting PTI.

Indian Express, March 10, 1982 quoting PTI news on Anantnag riots.

1984

The archival newspaper clipping dated May 31, 1984 challenges one of the most frequently repeated narratives about the origins of the Kashmir conflict. A common perception is that Kashmir’s troubles began with the 1987 Assembly elections, followed by the rise of militancy and, ultimately, the forced exodus of the Kashmiri Pandit community in 1990. However, this archival evidence also indicates that communal targeting and violence against the minority community predated 1987.

The report explicitly mentions that Kashmiri Pandit temples were attacked and that attempts were made to set them on fire. It states that the All State Kashmir Pandit Association protested these attacks and referred to assaults on temples and other religious places. The report also records widespread violence across Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla and other areas, curfews, police firing, destruction of property, and attacks on public transport.

Newspaper clipping highlighting assault on minority shops and religiouds places in May 1984.

Then came 1986

If 1982 was a warning, 1986 was far more devastating.

In February 1986, communal violence erupted in Anantnag and adjoining areas of South Kashmir. Kashmiri Pandit homes, shops and religious places and temples were attacked, looted, burnt or damaged. The violence was serious enough to contribute to the fall of the G. M. Shah government and the imposition of Governor’s Rule.

The significance of 1986 is difficult to overstate when viewed from the perspective of what happened four years later.

A view of a damged temple in Anantnag riots of 1986 — A view of a temple damaged in Anantnag riots of 1986.

For many Pandit families, 1986 was not 1990—but it was no longer possible to believe that nothing had changed.

Recent scholarship based on fieldwork among displaced Pandits records that many respondents remembered 1986 as the point at which they first sensed a fundamental change in the ground reality. And Anantnag was at the centre of it.

Then came 1987

The following year brought the Assembly elections.

The alleged rigging of the elections, particularly the treatment of opposition candidates associated with the Muslim United Front, became a major political rupture. The events that followed are widely regarded as an important factor in the emergence and growth of militancy.

Kashmir Election ephuria on 1987 — A scene from 1987 Kashmir election rally.

But there is a distinction worth making.1987 elections may have been a turning point. It was not necessarily the starting point.

By the time Kashmir went to the polls in 1987, Anantnag’s minorities had already experienced:

1982 — attacks on minority-owned liquor shops amid an anti-liquor agitation.

1984 & 1986 — major communal violence and attacks on minority homes, businesses and religious places.

1987 — disputed elections and the political crisis that followed.

1989–90 — armed militancy, targeted killings, threats and the mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits.

The sequence matters.

It does not diminish the importance of 1987. It simply prevents us from turning 1987 into a historical curtain that hides everything that happened before it.

What do you remember?

This is where the newspaper archive ends—and where memory begins.

The clippings tell us what journalists reported. But they cannot tell us everything.

Were you in Anantnag in 1982?

Do you remember the liquor agitation? The shops that were attacked?

The people who led the protests? The police response? The atmosphere in the town?

Did you or your family witness the communal violence of 1986?

Do you remember the homes, shops or temples that were attacked?

Do you remember families leaving temporarily—or beginning to think about leaving?

Do you remember what people were saying about the changing atmosphere in Anantnag before the 1987 elections?

And perhaps most importantly: What do you remember that the newspapers did not report?

Kashmir Rechords invites readers from Anantnag and elsewhere who witnessed these events—or whose parents and relatives did—to share their memories, photographs, letters, documents and newspaper cuttings.

A name. A shop. A village. A date. A conversation.

Even a small recollection may help reconstruct a chapter that has largely disappeared from public memory:1982. 1984.1986. 1987. 1990.

Perhaps the history of Anantnag—and of Kashmir—needs to be read not through one date, but through the spaces between them.Tell us what you remember.

When the 1981 Srinagar Income Tax Raids Shook Kashmir

Kashmir Rechords

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September 1, 2026

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When the 1981 Srinagar Income Tax Raids Shook Kashmir

Kashmir Rechords Exclusive | April–July 1981

In April 1981, Srinagar witnessed an extraordinary Income-Tax operation that began as a raid on business establishments and soon turned into a confrontation involving crowds, the Police, the Farooq Abdullah episode, the Jammu & Kashmir High Court—and eventually the Supreme Court.

The operation had begun secretly and was described as the first of its kind in Kashmir.

According to an April 22, 1981 newspaper report preserved in the Kashmir Rechords archive, Income-Tax and Revenue Enforcement officials, accompanied by a CRPF contingent and equipped with metal detectors, arrived in Srinagar and raided several business establishments. The raiding party had reportedly checked into the Broadway Hotel before beginning the operation.

Gold, foreign currency, cash, goods and what the report described as “incriminating documents” were seized.

April 22, 1981 newspaper clipping reporting Income-Tax raids on several Srinagar business establishments, with gold, foreign currency, goods and documents seized. — **The raids begin:** A contemporary report describes a “well-planned and secret” Income-Tax operation in Srinagar, with several business establishments searched and gold, foreign currency, goods and documents seized. The report also records the attack on the raiding party and the trouble that followed Farooq Abdullah’s arrival

When the raid turned violent

The operation soon ran into trouble.

According to the April 22 report, trouble began after Dr Farooq Abdullah arrived at one of the premises being searched. A crowd gathered and members of the raiding party were attacked.

As many as 20 members of the raiding party were reported injured, including two women officials. Some were subsequently taken for treatment.

Kashmir Rechords has preserved the contemporary photograph of the injured Income-Tax sleuths—an extraordinary visual record of an episode that quickly became much bigger than a tax raid.

The report said that some seized documents were snatched, some were burnt and others thrown into the Dal Lake. Similar trouble was reported at other locations, including Hari Singh High Street and Zainakadal.

The raiding party was eventually forced to withdraw from some premises.The human cost of the confrontation was considerable.

The photograph shows three of the injured officials identified in its original caption as P. B. Khanna, K. C. Mathur and P. K. Chauhan. Khanna and Mathur are seen in wheelchairs, while Chauhan has a dressing on his forehead.

Three injured Income-Tax officers photographed after the 1981 Srinagar raids, with two officers in wheelchairs and another wearing a head dressing. — **The human cost of the raids:** Income-Tax officers **P. B. Khanna, K. C. Mathur and P. K. Chauhan**, photographed after returning to New Delhi following the Srinagar clashes. Khanna and Mathur are seen in wheelchairs, while Chauhan has a dressing on his forehead. *Kashmir Times*, May 28, 1981.

The caption records that they had been assaulted by mobs in Srinagar during the raids and had returned to New Delhi before being photographed.

The following day, April 23, 1981, the issue reached Parliament.

A report quoting the Union Finance Minister said that the Income-Tax authorities had acted under Section 132 of the Income-Tax Act and that officials had been attacked after Farooq Abdullah’s visit to one of the premises. The Minister said cash, foreign currency and other material had been seized. Farooq Abdullah denied involvement.

April 23, 1981 newspaper clipping reporting seized cash and goods in Srinagar Income-Tax raids, with the Finance Minister linking the attack to Farooq Abdullah’s visit and Farooq denying involvement. — **The Centre responds:** The Finance Minister says cash, foreign currency and incriminating documents were seized during the Srinagar raids, while the government alleges that the attack on the raiding party began after Farooq Abdullah’s visit. **Farooq denies involvement.**

Diaries and ‘foreign links‘

But the raids were producing more revelations.

April 25, 1981 report carried the striking headline: “Seized Diaries Reveal Foreign Links.” It said diaries recovered during the searches were being examined for references to transactions involving Kashmir, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. The report also alleged that the records indicated manipulation of accounts and possible concealment of income.

The financial scale of the investigation was also beginning to emerge.

The same report suggested that tax evasion of around ₹5 crore might ultimately be established. Within a month, that figure had increased.

April 25, 1981 newspaper clipping reporting that diaries seized during Srinagar Income-Tax raids allegedly revealed foreign links and suspected foreign-money transactions. — **“Foreign links” emerge:** A report says Union Home Ministry officials were examining diaries seized during the raids for details of suspected foreign-money transactions and alleged links involving Kashmir and other countries.

A May 29, 1981 report stated that preliminary scrutiny of documents and books seized from carpet dealers had established tax evasion of more than ₹7.5 crore. It also reported the discovery of unaccounted jewellery worth more than ₹6 lakh in six bank lockers belonging to carpet dealers. Four lockers in Bombay and one in Srinagar, it said, were still to be opened.

May 29, 1981 newspaper clipping reporting alleged tax evasion of more than Rs. 7.5 crores following Income-Tax raids on carpet dealers in Srinagar and other cities. — **The figures mount:** A report says preliminary scrutiny of seized documents and books had established **tax evasion of more than ₹7.5 crore** among carpet dealers, besides unaccounted jewellery worth more than ₹6 lakh.

Constitutional Challenge of 1981 Srinagar Income Tax Raids

The raid did not end with the seizure of documents. It moved into the courtroom.

On May 20, 1981, the Jammu & Kashmir High Court admitted a writ petition challenging the constitutional and legal validity of the Income-Tax raids.

The petition was filed by about 12 leading businessmen whose premises had been raided. Their counsel, the eminent constitutional lawyer A. K. Sen, argued that Section 132 of the Income-tax Act—the search-and-seizure provision used by the authorities—was not applicable to Jammu & Kashmir.

The petitioners alleged that the action was: ultra vires, illegal, arbitrary and mala fide. They sought the return of their seized documents and goods and asked the court to restrain the Income-Tax Department from taking further action.

J&K High Court puts brakes on the raids

On May 21, 1981, the Jammu & Kashmir High Court stayed further proceedings against the Srinagar business houses whose premises had been raided.

The court also directed the Income-Tax Department to return seized goods which were mentioned in the petitioners’ account books, provided the petitioners furnished security in the form of immovable property for their value.

The matter reached the Supreme Court

The Union of India and the Income-Tax Department challenged the Jammu & Kashmir High Court’s order in the Supreme Court of India. The government argued that the High Court’s order had brought the investigation to a standstill.

The report stated that Income-Tax officials had carried out searches in April 1981 at eleven properties in Srinagar, Bombay, Delhi and Jaipur, and had seized valuables besides documents allegedly indicating concealment of crores of rupees by dealers and mill operators.

The Supreme Court vacation judge, Justice A. D. Koshal, issued notice and made the matter returnable within two weeks.

May 20, 1981 newspaper clipping reporting a Jammu and Kashmir High Court challenge to the constitutional validity of the Srinagar Income-Tax raids. — **The raids enter the courtroom:** The Jammu & Kashmir High Court admits a petition challenging the **constitutional and legal validity** of the Income-Tax raids on several Srinagar business houses.

Thus, what had begun in Srinagar in April 1981, as a secret Income-Tax operation had, within weeks, become a much bigger battle—over money, seized records, political influence and the constitutional reach of the tax authorities in Jammu & Kashmir.

And perhaps the most evocative evidence of that turbulent April day is not a figure or a court order. It is the photograph of the injured tax sleuths preserved by Kashmir Rechords.

They had arrived in Srinagar looking for hidden wealth. They left with injuries—and a raid that had opened a much larger question about law, power and Kashmir.

Kashmir Rechords Archive Note

This feature is based exclusively on contemporary newspaper clippings preserved in the Kashmir Rechords archive. Figures and allegations are reproduced as reported at the time and should not be construed as subsequent judicial findings.

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‘Radioactive’ Gulmarg: Kashmir’s long romance with rumours

Kashmir Rechords

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August 28, 2026

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‘Radioactive’ Gulmarg: Kashmir’s long romance with rumours

(Kashmir Rechords Exclusive)

There are places where rumours travel fast. And then there is Kashmir.

In January 1979, a bizarre rumour began circulating in the Valley: Gulmarg was witnessing the presence of radioactive substances. Snow that had recently fallen over the famed winter resort was said to possess “radioactive properties”. The story was alarming enough to find its way into sections of the press, creating apprehension at a time when Gulmarg was drawing tourists for its winter sports.

The scare became serious enough for the authorities to issue a denial.

A preserved Kashmir Rechords newspaper report dated January 24, 1979, headlined “Radioactive Report Denied,” recorded that reports had appeared claiming that radioactive properties had recently been found in the snow at Gulmarg. The report said the matter had been referred to the Director of the High Altitude Research Laboratory.

But when journalists contacted the authorities, the claim was dismissed.The possibility of radioactivity, they were told, was “ridiculous” and “very unlikely”.

A newspaper clipping of January 1979 when Jammua nd Kashmir denied presence of radio active substance in Gulmarg.

There was, however, an inconvenient reality for the rumour: Gulmarg was teeming with tourists. Winter visitors were arriving in large numbers, and a British group of about 75 tourists was reportedly expected the following week.

A radioactive Gulmarg was hardly the kind of news anyone in the tourism business would welcome. Yet rumours rarely wait for laboratory reports. They run ahead of facts.

From a whisper to a panic

The Gulmarg episode was not an isolated curiosity. It belonged to a much older Kashmiri tradition in which information—real, distorted or entirely fabricated—has often travelled through informal networks faster than it could be verified.

The phenomenon has been recorded by chroniclers, travellers and historians for centuries.

Historian Khalid Bashir, in Kashmir: Looking Back in Time, writes about what he describes as the Kashmiri tendency to romanticise rumours and exaggeration. The phenomenon is not simply about telling tall tales. At various points in Kashmir’s history, rumour has also functioned as a political instrument—something capable of creating fear, influencing public opinion and pushing a particular narrative.

The old Kashmiri expression “Khabar Zaina Kadal” itself became almost synonymous with unreliable news.

Discover the 1979 ‘radioactive’ Gulmarg scare and Kashmir’s long history of rumours, from Zaina Kadal and Kalhana to politically driven fear and panic. — **“Khabar Zaina Kadal” was a regular column in Srinagar-based newspapers, chronicling and debunking the rumours doing the rounds in Kashmir**

Zaina Kadal, the fourth bridge over the Jhelum in Srinagar, was traditionally regarded as a place where news and rumours were exchanged and embellished. As the saying went, information could emerge there and acquire a life of its own before anyone had bothered to establish whether it was true.

Sir Walter Roper Lawrence, the British settlement officer who spent years in Kashmir, wrote about this phenomenon in The Valley of Kashmir. He noted that although the wise knew that the reports emanating from Zaina Kadal were false, many others believed them—and that such reports caused considerable misery in the countryside.

In other words, fake news was not born with social media.Kashmir had its own version of it long before newspapers, radio, television and smartphones.

The rumour that made people flee a hill

One of the more remarkable examples came in 1935, when a newspaper reportedly carried a story attributed to a supposedly eminent geologist named Robert Macfield warning that Shankaracharya Hill would erupt between July 15 and August 15.

There was just one problem. The celebrated geologist apparently did not exist. The report nevertheless created panic. People began leaving their homes for safer places until another newspaper exposed the story as a cruel joke. The rumour had achieved its purpose before the truth caught up.

The same pattern appears repeatedly in Kashmir’s history: a whisper, an embellishment, fear—and finally a scramble for verification.

Even a ‘frightful creature’ lived in the Jhelum

British missionary and educationist Tyndale Biscoe encountered another extraordinary example. A rumour had spread that a “frightful creature” inhabited the Jhelum. People became frightened and stopped bathing in the river or carrying out their normal activities along its banks.

Biscoe did not respond with a philosophical lecture on misinformation. He made his students confront the rumour. He reportedly took his 130 students into the Jhelum and made them swim.The creature, needless to say, did not surface.

‘Tarr’: when rumour becomes a political weapon

The Kashmiri word “tarr”, used for fabrication or the spreading of news and rumour, acquires a more serious significance when placed in the political history of the Valley.

Rumours were not always born out of innocence, amusement or ignorance. They could be deliberately manufactured. That makes the 1979 Gulmarg episode particularly interesting. It may have been nothing more than an absurd piece of rumour-mongering.

But it demonstrated the extraordinary power of an unverified claim: snow could suddenly become radioactive, a tourist destination could become dangerous and ordinary people could be transformed into carriers of a story whose origin nobody could identify.

The ghosts, the polio drops,the food packets

Kashmir would witness many more episodes of rumour-driven anxiety.

In 1990, during the turmoil, Governor Jagmohan wrote in My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir about rumours being used to undermine and frustrate the administration.

A page from Jagmohan's my Frozen Turbulance in Kashmir — **A page from “ My Frozden Turbulance in Kashmir”, making a mention of January 26, 1990 rumour.**

At one point, rumours circulated that food packets being distributed by the Army contained material that would cause frigidity among women and impotence among men, supposedly as part of a conspiracy to reduce the Muslim population.

The administration was compelled to counter the rumour in a rather extraordinary fashion: police and paramilitary personnel were instructed to eat the food and drink the water themselves to demonstrate that it was safe.

Then came the “Balaie” scare of 1993—ghost-like entities were said to be attacking people.

There had been similar scares before, including the 1977 rumour about “Naar-e-Tschour” and stories that members of the Jan Sangh were moving around and setting houses on fire.

And decades later, on January 17, 2016, another rumour caused widespread alarm when parents rushed their children to hospitals after being told that polio drops administered earlier that day were lethal.

Different decades. Different rumours.The same psychology.

Kalhana had seen it coming

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this story is that Kashmir’s romance with rumours is not a modern phenomenon.

References to the Valley’s propensity for circulating and believing rumours can be traced back centuries.

The historian Kalhana, writing his Rajatarangini, recorded the importance of rumour in Kashmir’s social and political life. Later scholars also noticed the same characteristic.

James P. Ferguson, in Kashmir: An Historical Introduction, while referring to Kalhana, noted how easily rumours in Kashmir could be manufactured and spread—from bathhouses along the river, shops and places of worship.

The locations changed. The mechanism did not. Once it was the riverbank, the shop, the mosque, the temple or Zaina Kadal.

Today it may be a WhatsApp group or social-media post. The rumour simply travels faster.

Kashmir and the politics of fear

There is, however, a danger in treating all such episodes merely as amusing examples of Kashmiri folklore.

Rumours can be harmless. They can also be devastating. They can empty streets, send people fleeing, destroy reputations, deepen communal suspicion, undermine institutions and create panic where none existed before.

That is why the history of rumour in Kashmir deserves to be studied not merely as a curiosity but as a social and political phenomenon.

The Gulmarg scare of 1979 reminds us that long before the age of viral videos and social-media forwards, fear itself could go viral.

A rumour needed no laboratory. No evidence. No author. It only needed people willing to repeat it. And Kashmir, for centuries, has supplied the perfect ecosystem for the whispered word to become accepted wisdom.

Perhaps that explains the perennial Kashmiri refrain:

“Khabar kya chuk karun?” — Who knows what they are planning?

Sometimes, the answer was simple. Sometimes, it was a lie. And sometimes, by the time the truth arrived, the rumour had already done its work.

Also Read: https://kashmir-rechords.com/january-19-1990-rumour-to-terrorise-kashmiris/

Threat to Kashmiri Pandits was there long before 1990

Kashmir Rechords

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August 26, 2026

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Threat to Kashmiri Pandits was there long before 1990

(Kashmir Rechords Exclusive)

The recent wave of threats against Kashmiri Pandit employees, reported in August 2026, is disturbing not just for its immediate menace, but for its chilling echoes of Kashmir’s past

A recent purported threat poster, attributed to the United Liberation Council (ULC), reportedly named Kashmiri Pandit employees and carried personal details, including addresses and vehicle numbers. While the authenticity of the poster is still being verified by security agencies, the fact that those named have sought protection—and that the matter has prompted calls for an official response—underlines the continuing psychological power of such threats.

But the history of threatening letters and posters in Kashmir did not begin in 1989.

As Kashmir Rechords recently documented, the history of threatening posters in Kashmir stretches back to 1965, proving that these intimidation tactics were weaponized decades before the mass exodus of 1989-90

Read here: Threatening Posters and Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir

While working further on that historical trail, Kashmir Rechords came across yet another remarkable piece of evidence—this time from July 1984.

It is significant precisely because 1984 was not 1990. There was no mass uprising, no widespread armed insurgency and no war-like situation in the Valley. Kashmir was, by and large, being projected and perceived as a normal and peaceful place.

A threat to a Kashmiri Pandit businessman in 1984.

Yet, beneath the surface of that supposedly normal Kashmir, the intimidation of Kashmiri Pandits was already taking root. In July 1984, a prominent businessman in Anantnag was targeted.

An archival newspaper clipping dated July 11, 1984, preserved in the Kashmir Rechords archive, reports that local businessman Roshan Lal Saraf received a threatening letter from the Kashmir Liberation Front (KLF). The organisation was referred to in contemporary usage in connection with what would later be known as the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

The demand was stark: Rs 15,000 in cash, to be left at a specified place in Anantnag.

But the letter was not merely a ransom note.

Written in Urdu, it threatened to kill Saraf’s only son if the demand was not met. It went further, warning that his daughter would be molested if he approached the police.

Saraf did not submit. He informed the police and handed the threatening letter over to them. The incident was reported by newspapers of the time.

There was another revealing detail in the report.

First came the warning.
Then came the identification of the target.
Then came the threat to the individual—or to those closest to him.
And behind it all was the same demand: submit, comply or face consequences.

Two similar letters had already been received by the Deputy Commissioner, Anantnag, and the SHO of the local police station, demanding the release of a Muslim student associated with the pro-Pakistan People’s League, Jamaat-i-Tulba and KLF.

That detail is important because it places the Saraf threat within a broader atmosphere of coercion and political intimidation. At the same time, the targeting of a Pandit businessman and the explicit threats against his children demonstrate how intimidation could enter the private lives of Kashmiri Pandit families even during a period that is often retrospectively described simply as “normal Kashmir.”

The newspaper report, therefore, deserves to be read not merely as an isolated ransom story, but as an archival window into the changing political climate of Kashmir.

It shows that the vocabulary of intimidation was already there years before 1989-90: the threatening letter, the identification of a target, the demand for compliance, the threat of death and the use of family members to exert pressure.

And the trail goes back further still.

As Kashmir Rechords has documented, 1965 witnessed the circulation of threatening and militant posters in Kashmir, including material associated with the underground Al-Fateh movement and other pro-Pakistan networks. Historical accounts record the appearance of Jehad posters and the arrest of an Al-Fateh activist in October 1965 for putting them up. Other material from that period also records threatening and inflammatory posters aimed at officials, politicians and influential individuals.

Seen together, 1965 and 1984 acquire a new significance.

The point is not to suggest that every organisation, every poster or every threat belonged to the same campaign. They did not. The political circumstances, organisations and intensity of violence were different.

What persisted was something more fundamental: the method of intimidation.

First came the warning.

Then came the identification of the target.

Then came the threat to the individual—or to those closest to him.

And behind it all was the same demand: submit, comply or face consequences.

In 1965, the threat could be pasted on a wall or electricity pole. In 1984, it could arrive as a letter.

By 1989-90, threatening posters and letters became part of a much wider campaign of intimidation that accompanied targeted killings and ultimately contributed to the mass displacement of Kashmiri Pandits.

And in 2026, the same psychological weapon can be delivered through a digital poster carrying names, addresses, telephone numbers and vehicle details.

The technology has changed. The political landscape has changed. The organisations have changed.

But the language of intimidation has proved remarkably persistent.

The 1984 case of Roshan Lal Saraf is therefore more than an obscure newspaper clipping. It is a small but significant piece of evidence from a period that is often remembered only through the lens of Kashmir’s later descent into militancy.

It reminds us that the warning signs existed before 1989.

The year 1990 did not invent the threat. It transformed an existing vocabulary and method of intimidation into something vastly more organised, widespread and lethal.

That is why the latest threats should not be viewed in isolation.

They belong to a longer and deeply troubling history—from the threatening posters of 1965, to the letter sent to a Pandit businessman in Anantnag in 1984, to the posters, threats and targeted killings surrounding 1989-90, and now to the digital threats confronting Kashmiri Pandits in 2026.

The medium may have changed. The fear it seeks to create is very old.

They missed him in 1988. They found him in 1989

Kashmir Rechords

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August 24, 2026

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They missed him in 1988. They found him in 1989

(Kashmir Rechords Exclusive)

On September 23, 1988, a year and more than a month before Judge Neelkanth Ganjoo was assassinated in Srinagar, terrorists came to his doorstep.

They did not come secretly.

According to a contemporary report published by Kashmir Times on September 23, 1988, (copy of the same preserved by Kashmir Rechords, unidentified gunmen riding a motorcycle had opened automatic fire at the residence of the retired Sessions Judge in Srinagar. Judge Ganjoo was not inside the house when the firing began.

The bullets struck the wooden guard post outside the residence. Fortunately, nobody was injured. But the significance of the attack lay far beyond the bullets that missed their intended target.

The newspaper reported that senior police officials rushed to Neelkanth Ganjoo’s residence, which had already come under attack at least four times earlier also. On one previous occasion, hand grenades had been hurled at the building. The report further stated that the residence had been guarded by police since that earlier attack and that sniffer dogs had been pressed into service.

Yet the attackers had returned.And this time, they came with automatic weapons.

Neelkanth Ganjoo Srinagar attack 1988

The headline in the Kashmir Times was stark: “Terrorists strike again in Srinagar.” The smaller line above it was even more specific: “Firing on retired judge’s house.”

The eyewitness account published alongside the headline said that two men on a motorcycle, wearing black face masks, sprayed bullets at the building without stopping. They had apparently come from the Kak Sarai side and disappeared near the Goal Market crossing.

13 Months Before JUde Ganjoo Was Killed, Terror Came to His Door

The guard on duty, identified in the report as Ghulam Mohammad, said he could only see a pall of dust rising around his wooden post before he realised what had happened.

The implication was unmistakable: there was police protection, but the presence of a guard did not prevent the gunmen from reaching the house, firing at it and escaping.

The newspaper also reported that the empties recovered from the scene resembled those found after an earlier firing at Magharmal Bagh. According to the report, the cartridges were from a “Kalashnikov” rifle, capable of firing as many as seventy rounds in a single burst.

This was therefore not merely a warning shot.It was an armed attack on the residence of a man whose life had already been repeatedly threatened.

A target already under protection

Perhaps the most important detail in the 1988 report is not the firing itself, but what had happened before it. The authorities already knew that Judge Ganjoo was being targeted.

That raises an uncomfortable question.If a retired judge had already survived repeated attacks, if grenades had previously been thrown at his residence, if police protection had been considered necessary, and if the attackers continued to return—how adequately was the threat being assessed and neutralised?

The September 1988 report provides no evidence that Judge Ganjoo was completely without security. On the contrary, it explicitly says that police guards were posted there.

But it provides equally striking evidence that the security arrangement was proving ineffective. The attackers were able to approach the residence, open automatic fire and disappear.

The fifth attack—and still no breakthrough

The Kashmir Times report described the September 23, 1988 attack as at least the fifth assault on Ganjoo’s residence.

It also placed the attack in a wider pattern of escalating terrorism in Srinagar. It also gives significant inputs that situation in Kashmir had already deteriorated even in September 1988! This is evident from the fact that the newspaper report observes that terrorists appeared to have gained an “edge over the police” by choosing their targets and striking when they wished. It referred to attacks elsewhere in the Valley and noted the growing sense of helplessness among people as the authorities struggled to track down the perpetrators.

Ganjoo’s house was, therefore, not an isolated incident.It was part of a deteriorating security environment in which known targets were being repeatedly attacked.

The newspaper’s account is especially revealing because it was published while Neelkanth Ganjoo was still alive. It was not written retrospectively after his assassination. It recorded, in real time, the fact that a retired judge who had already survived several attempts on his life remained vulnerable.

From attempted killing to successful assassination

The warning contained in that September 1988 newspaper report would acquire a chilling significance thirteen months later.

On November 4, 1989, the terrorists succeeded.

Judge Neelkanth Ganjoo, lying dead , unattended .

Three gunmen confronted Ganjoo in the Hari Singh High Street area of Srinagar and shot him at close range in broad daylight. Contemporary and later accounts identify his judicial role in the Maqbool Butt case as the central motive associated with the assassination. (Read more about his legacy and the aftermath: The Judge Who Stood for Justice, Now Awaits His Own)
Judge Ganjoo had presided over Butt’s trial in the 1960s and had sentenced him to death in August 1968 for the murder of police officer Amar Chand. The sentence was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court.

A newspaper clipping that changes the chronology

For years, the story of Judge Neelkanth Ganjoo has understandably been remembered primarily through the horrifying images of November 4, 1989—the retired judge being gunned down in broad daylight.

But this September 23, 1988 clipping changes the chronology.

It shows that the assassination had a long prelude. Judge Ganjoo had already been attacked repeatedly. His home had already been subjected to grenade attacks. Police had already been deployed. Sniffer dogs had already been used. The attackers had already demonstrated their ability to reach him.

Judge Ganjoo Under Fire: The Forgotten Attack of 1988

And on September 23, 1988, they came again. They fired automatic weapons at his residence. They missed him. He survived. For another thirteen months, he remained alive.

Then, on November 4, 1989, the terrorists found him outside the protection of his residence and killed him in the heart of Srinagar.

The 1988 newspaper report therefore deserves to be read not merely as an account of another terrorist attack, but as an early warning preserved in print.

It records a threat that was already visible.

It records a target who had already been repeatedly chosen.

It records security that was already in place—but apparently unable to stop the attackers.

And, in retrospect, it records something even more tragic:

Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo survived the warning. The system did not prevent the eventual killing.

More than three decades later, the State Investigation Agency reopened the murder case and sought information from the public in 2023 to uncover what it described as the “larger criminal conspiracy” behind Ganjoo’s assassination.

The September 23, 1988 newspaper clipping now adds another important piece to that historical record.

It shows that the question was never simply who eventually killed Justice Ganjoo.There is also a deeper historical question:

How did a man whose life had already been repeatedly targeted, whose residence had already been attacked and whose security had already been considered necessary remain vulnerable long enough for the terrorists to finally succeed?

For a deeper look into the legacy of Justice Ganjoo and the long wait for closure, read our extensive coverage here:https://kashmir-rechords.com/search-for-judge-neelkath-gangoos-murderers-after-34-years/

1953 Kashmir Nepotism Exposé: Mirza Afzal Beg

Kashmir Rechords

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August 21, 2026

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1953 Kashmir Nepotism Exposé: Mirza Afzal Beg

(Based on Kashmir Rechords’ Archives)

Kashmir, August 1953. The political drama surrounding Jammu & Kashmir in 1953 was not confined to the larger questions of accession, autonomy and the struggle for political power. Beneath the grand political rhetoric lay another story—one of appointments, promotions, influence and alleged patronage.

A remarkable report published in the Blitz issue of 22 August 1953, under the provocative headline “Beggar’s Opera”, turned its attention to the alleged influence of the family and associates of Mirza Afzal Beg, then a prominent Minister in Sheikh Abdullah’s government.

The report opened with a bitter proverb attributed to the situation:‘If you are a Beg, you cannot remain unemployed’

It was clearly written as satire. But behind the sarcasm was a serious allegation: that government employment and positions of influence had allegedly become accessible to people because of their family connection with a powerful political figure.

Mirza Afzal Beg’s family tree in the Administration

The Blitz veteran correspondent, A. Raghavan, claimed that a closer examination of the careers of people described as relatives or associates of Mirza Afzal Beg revealed a striking pattern.

One of the examples cited was Ghulam Mohamed Beg, described as the Minister’s elder brother. According to the report, he had been an Assistant Inspector of Cooperatives before the political changes of the late 1940s. The newspaper alleged that he subsequently rose to the position of Chief Procurement Officer and later became Registrar of Cooperatives, allegedly superseding senior officers.

From Mulberry to Broadcasting

Another relative, Ghulam Hassan Beg, described as Beg’s brother-in-law, was said to have been working in the Mulberry Culture Department. The report claimed that during the Emergency period he was promoted as Director of Radio Kashmir.

The newspaper’s sarcasm was unmistakable:“From Mulberry to Broadcasting is a far cry, but then he was a Beg, after all!”

The point was not merely that a person had changed departments. The allegation was that political proximity could make otherwise unlikely career movements possible.

1953 Blitz newspaper clipping exposing alleged nepotism in Kashmir under Mirza Afzal Beg — **Full Report of Blitz, Page 3 , August 22, 1953**

The uncle who held several positions

The report then turned to Ghulam Mohamed Beg II, identified as an uncle.

According to the article, he occupied or was associated with a remarkable collection of positions in Anantnag. The list included the secretaryship of the Kashmir National Conference in the Anantnag district, presidency of the Anantnag Cooperative Bank, chairmanship of the Anantnag Town Committee and vice-chairmanship of the Anantnag Education Board.

The Blitz alleged that these were nominated positions and that the individual received honoraria from them.

Once such a system takes root, merit becomes secondary to connection

In other words, the newspaper was portraying something more consequential than one questionable appointment. It was suggesting the creation of a network of political influence, stretching from the party organisation into cooperative institutions, local bodies and educational administration.

Relatives spread across the machinery of Govt

The report continued with a catalogue of people carrying the surname Beg.

Mohd. Ibrahim Beg, described as a cousin, was said to have been made a Divisional Forest Officer.

Mohd. Amin Beg, according to the report, had been a policeman who was subsequently promoted to Inspector.

It further named Bashir Ahmed Beg, Salim Beg, Nazir Beg and Akhtar Beg, alleging that they had found positions in institutions and departments including the State Militia, Cooperatives, Forest Department and Jail Administration.

Whether every allegation made by the newspaper was correct is a matter for archival verification. But the very existence of such a detailed contemporary report is historically significant. It shows that allegations of nepotism and political patronage were already being publicly discussed in Jammu & Kashmir in 1953.

Political and family power

The most disturbing aspect of the report was that it did not stop with government employment. It alleged that political influence could also be used to control local political competition.

The article referred to another relative in connection with the National Conference organisation and alleged that a rival worker who stood for election to a party position was arrested on what the newspaper described as a false pretext.

This allegation, if corroborated through official records, would demonstrate something much larger than ordinary nepotism: the alleged use of state or political machinery to protect a local patronage network.

That is why this forgotten clipping deserves attention today.

Ghulam Mohammad Chicken episode

The newspaper also singled out Ghulam Mohammad Chicken, described as a class fellow of Mirza Sahib.

According to the report, Chicken had been an Income-Tax officer during the earlier regime and was portrayed as a strong opponent of the Muslim Conference. The Blitz alleged that he subsequently became District Magistrate and Collector of Anantnag.

The report made serious allegations concerning the disposal of paddy and the sharing of proceeds with forest labour, claiming that National Conference workers eventually pressed for an enquiry and that Chicken was removed from the post.

It further alleged that he was subsequently made Custodian of Evacuee Property in Jammu but remained in Srinagar.

These are particularly serious accusations and should be treated strictly as claims made by the 1953 newspaper, not as established facts unless supported by administrative records, enquiry reports or other independent contemporary sources.

The bigger question: what happened to merit?

The real historical significance of the Blitz article lies beyond the individual names.

The emerging political order in Jammu & Kashmir had promised ordinary people a new beginning. The old feudal and autocratic structures were supposed to give way to a system based on popular representation, equality and social justice.

But the newspaper was asking an uncomfortable question:

What happens when the people who come to power in the name of the common man begin creating their own circles of privilege?

The accusation was that political power had allegedly begun reproducing itself through relatives, friends, party workers and loyalists.

A government office could become a source of patronage.
A cooperative institution could become a political base.
A nominated local position could become a source of influence.
A departmental promotion could become a reward for proximity.

And once such a system takes root, merit becomes secondary to connection.

The irony of 1953

The timing makes the article even more fascinating.

The report appeared on August 22, 1953, only thirteen days after Sheikh Abdullah was removed from the premiership. Mirza Afzal Beg, the central figure in the article, had been Sheikh Abdullah’s Revenue Minister. Contemporary records confirm that Beg was a prominent member of Abdullah’s government.

The political crisis of August 1953 was therefore unfolding simultaneously with a public debate about the functioning of the administration itself. Contemporary correspondence preserved in the Nehru Archive also records serious internal conflicts within the Jammu & Kashmir government during this period.

This makes the Blitz clipping more than an amusing old newspaper cutting.

It is a contemporary window into how politics and administration were being perceived at the time.

Lesson for today’s generation

For today’s generation, the lesson is not that every person named in the article was guilty of nepotism. Nor should an old newspaper allegation be transformed into historical fact merely because it fits a modern political argument.

The lesson is more fundamental.

Political slogans can promise revolution, equality and empowerment. But institutions are ultimately judged by what happens to jobs, promotions, public money and administrative power.

The history of Jammu & Kashmir should, therefore, not be remembered only through speeches, political movements and competing narratives about India, Pakistan or independence.

It should also be examined through the mundane records of government—who was appointed, who was promoted, who received nominated positions, who was removed, who benefited and whose relatives entered the system.

That is where political rhetoric meets ordinary life.

And the Blitz report of August 22, 1953 leaves behind a particularly uncomfortable question:

Did the people of Jammu & Kashmir replace one system of privilege with another—or did the new political class genuinely create the merit-based, democratic administration it had promised?

More than seven decades later, that question deserves to be answered not through political speeches, but through the archives.

Editorial Disclaimer

Kashmir Rechords is reproducing and presenting this story solely as an archival record of a report published in Blitz on August 22,1953, with the intention of bringing a little-known historical document to the notice of readers who may not have been aware of it. Kashmir Rechords does not independently vouch for the truth or accuracy of the allegations contained in the original report, nor does its publication imply endorsement of, or attribution of any motive to, any individual or organisation mentioned therein. Readers are encouraged to view the material in the historical and journalistic context of the period in which it was originally published.

Pamposh: The first colour feature made, processed in India was born in Kashmir

Kashmir Rechords

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August 19, 2026

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Pamposh: The first colour feature made, processed in India was born in Kashmir

(By: Dr. Rajesh Bhat)*

There is a remarkable story buried in the early history of Indian cinema — a story in which Kashmir played a starring role in India’s journey into colour filmmaking.

More than seven decades ago, filmmaker Ezra Mir brought a film crew to Kashmir to make Pamposh, an ambitious feature designed to demonstrate that India could produce, process and print a full-colour feature film domestically.

Shot on location in Kashmir in 1951–52, using Belgian Gevacolor film stock and processed at Bombay’s newly established Film Centre laboratory, Pamposh acquired a landmark position in Indian cinema. Contemporary publicity described it as the “first full colour feature film to be produced, processed and printed in this country.” Recent scholarship describes it as the first colour feature film domestically produced and processed in postcolonial India.

This needs one historical qualification. India had experimented with colour much earlier, including Sairandhri (1933) and Kisan Kanya (1937). Those films, however, are now considered lost. Pamposh‘s particular distinction is that it was the first colour feature domestically produced and processed in post-Independence India.

And here lies the extraordinary irony: The film made to demonstrate colour has itself lost its colours.

No colour print of Pamposh is now known to survive. The National Film Archive of India reportedly has no visual material from the film. What survives instead are photographs, a poster, music, newspaper and magazine references, paper ephemera and memories.

For Kashmiris, therefore, Pamposh is not simply a forgotten film.It is a lost visual memory of Kashmir.

Kashmir’s vibrant natural palette—its lakes, gardens, and sunlight—provided the perfect setting to demonstrate the capabilities of the new Gevacolor film stock

When Kashmir became India’s colour laboratory

In the early 1950s, colour filmmaking in India was still technologically difficult and expensive.

Bombay filmmakers often had to send exposed colour negatives abroad for processing. In 1952, Film Centre in Bombay became the first colour laboratory in Asia and the first outside Europe and the United States, according to the recent research.

Its establishment was an important technological step for the young Republic.But a new laboratory needed to prove itself.

Producer Ambalal J. Patel, who was closely associated with Film Centre and was India’s agent for Belgian Gevacolor, decided to demonstrate the laboratory’s capabilities through a feature film.

That film became Pamposh.The choice of Kashmir was inspired.

If you wanted to demonstrate colour, where could you find a more spectacular natural palette? The green of the valley.The blue waters of Dal Lake.Lotus flowers. Gardens. Mountains. Houseboats and of course Sunlight.Kashmir offered almost everything a colour cinematographer could desire.

Researchers Kirsty Sinclair Dootson and Poorvi Gaur, in their detailed 2025 study published in BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, explain that Pamposh was conceived as a demonstration film for Film Centre’s new colour-processing facilities. Kashmir was chosen both for its landscape and for climatic conditions considered closer to those for which Gevacolor had been designed.Kashmir was not merely the setting. It was part of the experiment.

Pamposh Production Team in Dal Lake.1951-52

Ezra Mir arrives in Kashmir

The man chosen to direct the experiment was Ezra Mir, one of the pioneering figures of Indian cinema.

Born Edwyn Myers in Calcutta in 1903, Mir had worked as an actor and Editor in the United States before returning to India and directing feature films.

He subsequently became deeply involved in documentary filmmaking.

By the time he came to Kashmir, he had acquired an important reputation as a filmmaker with a strong documentary sensibility. He later became Chief Producer of Films Division in 1956.

That background matters. Pamposh was a fiction film, but it was made with an unusual insistence on real locations and naturalism.

According to the research, Mir reportedly “walked around the lake for weeks for atmosphere and inspiration” before developing the film.

Director Ezra Mir on location at Dal Lake for the 1954 film Pamposh

The cinematography was handled by Italian cameraman Carlos Marconi.

Producer Ambalal J. Patel, director Ezra Mir and Marconi became the central figures behind the Kashmir production.

And Kashmir itself became their studio.

A rare 1953 photograph: Ezra Mir with a mysterious Kashmiri girl

Among the surviving traces of Pamposh, Kashmir Rechords possesses a particularly valuable contemporary record.

The January 24, 1953 issue of Blitz carried a photograph of Ezra Mir sitting beside a young girl dressed in Kashmiri robes and garments.

*Director Ezra Mir with one of his characters in Pamposh.* Published in *Blitz*, January 24, 1953.

The Blitz caption does not identify the girl by name.That is important.

There is, therefore, no basis for automatically identifying her as Mogli, the film’s central child character, even though the film’s surviving records identify Mogli as a local non-actor of the same name.

What the photograph does establish is equally valuable: in January 1953, Ezra Mir and a young Kashmiri-attired girl connected with Pamposh were being presented to the public while the film was still fresh in the public eye.For Kashmir Rechords, this is not merely an illustration.It is contemporary primary-source evidence

And perhaps the unidentified girl herself is another lost thread waiting to be recovered. Who was she? Was she an actor? Was she a local participant in the production? Was she playing one of the unnamed characters? Did her family know that her photograph had appeared alongside Ezra Mir in a national publication?

The archive leaves the question open.

Shooting Kashmir in the real world

The filmmakers wanted Pamposh to look like Kashmir — not a studio version of Kashmir. The production was shot on location between 1951 and 1952.Dal Lake became the principal stage.

Houseboats became locations.Boats became camera platforms.The crew had to cope with the practical difficulties of filming on water while handling equipment and colour stock.

One particularly important photograph shows Ezra Mir, Carlos Marconi and Ambalal J. Patel together on location in Kashmir. The image was reproduced by Dootson and Gaur from Frederick Foster’s 1954 account.

For today’s Kashmir, such a photograph has value far beyond cinema history.It records how Kashmir looked to a film crew in the early 1950s.

The story of Mogli

Behind the technological experiment was a deeply human story. The central character was Mogli, a mute orphan girl who lived around Dal Lake.

According to the surviving research, Mogli was played by a local non-actor of the same name. She became the adopted daughter of Kassim, a poor houseboat owner, and lived with his wife and biological daughter Naseem.

Mogli earns a meagre living selling flowers. She finds comfort in nature — birds, butterflies, frogs and fish — and in the mysterious Old Man of the Lake, played by Siddiq Chellah.

He tells her stories about the Frog King, who lives in a magical underwater kingdom where kindness rules and suffering does not exist.

But Mogli’s real life is far less magical.Her foster mother mistreats her and blames the child for the family’s misfortunes.

Then comes tragedy!

For Kashmiris, Pamposh is not simply a forgotten film. It is a lost visual memory of Kashmir.

After a fire on the family houseboat, Mogli leaves in her canoe, determined to find the mythical kingdom of the Frog King. She disappears.

Her family and the Old Man search for her, but find only her doll. Mogli is presumed drowned.The irony is striking.

A story about a child disappearing into the waters of Dal Lake was itself eventually to disappear into the waters of history.

**Why the name Pamposh?**

The title has an unmistakable Kashmiri resonance. Pamposh means lotus. The lotus is inseparable from the imagery of Kashmir’s lakes, particularly Dal Lake.

It was, therefore, an appropriate title for a film whose story unfolded among lotus blooms and whose principal purpose was to demonstrate the possibilities of colour.

The surviving research notes that contemporary promotional material celebrated Kashmir’s flowers and gardens as ideal subjects for the new Gevacolor process.

A Kashmiri musical connection

The Kashmir connection did not end with the scenery.

The official Cannes Film Festival archive credits Mohan Lal Aima and Cecil Mendoza with the music of Pamposh. Aima’s name gives the film an important Kashmiri cultural dimension.

The valley was not simply being photographed as a beautiful landscape; a Kashmiri musician was associated with its musical identity as well.

Yet the precise nature of Aima’s contribution remains an area deserving further research. Did he compose original music?Did he incorporate Kashmiri melodies?

Were songs from the film recorded separately? Are any recordings, manuscripts or family papers still available? These are questions that Kashmir Rechords believes deserve investigation.

From Dal Lake to Cannes

After its Kashmir production, Pamposh travelled far beyond India.

The official Cannes archive records Pamposh: Fleur de Lotus as a 1954 Indian feature film in competition.

It identifies:

Director: Ezra Mir
Screenplay: Ezra Mir
Cinematography: C. F. Marconi
Music: Mohanlal Aima and Cecil Mendoza.

The Cannes record also lists the principal cast, including Savitri, Ravi Vinod, Pandit Kaul, Mogli, Siddiq Chella, B. Billimoria and Violet Smith.

Thus the journey of Pamposh can be traced in three words:Kashmir. Bombay. Cannes.

For a film made on the waters of Dal Lake in the early 1950s, that was an extraordinary journey.

Cruel irony: the colour film that lost its colours

Today, Pamposh is considered a lost film. The recent scholarly investigation found that no colour materials from the film have survived. The National Film Archive of India holds no visual material on it, while surviving traces exist in other forms.

Yet fragments have survived in European collections.

The Cinémathèque française holds publicity stills.

The British Film Institute holds production material.

The researchers also found a surviving Pamposh poster and other paper ephemera.

And so we have an extraordinary situation:

We have photographs of a film that we can no longer watch.

Even more ironically, a film created to demonstrate colour is now remembered principally through black-and-white photographs and printed material.

The photographs that survived

The recent SAGE study by Kirsty Sinclair Dootson and Poorvi Gaur has brought together some of the most important surviving visual traces of Pamposh.

Kashmir Rechords is grateful to the authors and SAGE Publications for making this scholarship accessible and for documenting these rare images.

Among the most evocative are:

The Pamposh publicity stills preserved by the Cinémathèque française;
The image of Mogli and the Old Man of the Lake;
Photographs showing the houseboat fire and its aftermath;
and the production photograph of Ezra Mir, Carlos Marconi and Ambalal J. Patel in Kashmir.

Image credit:
From Dootson & Gaur, “A History of Colour Cinema That Can Account for Indian Cinema: The Bombay Film Laboratory, Kashmir’s Climate and Gevacolor’s Pamposh,” BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2025, SAGE Publications; original archival collection credited by the authors.

A film made at a turning point in Kashmir’s history

There is yet another reason Pamposh deserves attention.

The film was made in 1951–52, only a few years after the events of 1947 and during a period when Kashmir’s political future remained intensely contested.

The recent SAGE study goes beyond film history and argues that the choice of Kashmir was connected not only to climate and scenery but also to a wider ideological effort to strengthen India’s claims to Kashmir amid the geopolitical conflict over the region.

This is an interpretation offered by the researchers, and it should be read as such.

But it adds another layer to the film. Pamposh can simultaneously be understood as:

a pioneering colour experiment; a showcase for India’s new film-processing capabilities; a story of a Kashmiri child; a portrait of Dal Lake;

a record of early-1950s Kashmir; an international film that reached Cannes; and a cultural document shaped by the politics of its time.

That complexity makes it far more interesting than a forgotten film title in an old catalogue.

Did Kashmiris get to see it?

There is evidence that Pamposh was screened in Kashmir itself.

A Kashmir-focused account records a screening at Amresh Cinema in Lal Chowk, Srinagar, and recollections of seeing the film there.

This raises questions that remain largely unexplored. How did Srinagar audiences receive Pamposh? Did they recognise the locations? Did they recognise the people?

What did Kashmiris think of hearing Kashmiri dialogue in an Indian feature film?

Did local newspapers review it? How many shows were held? And did anyone in Srinagar preserve photographs, tickets, advertisements or programmes?

For Kashmir Rechords, these questions are as important as the film’s journey to Cannes.

**Was Pamposh India’s first colour film?**

This is where historical precision matters.

It would be inaccurate to say simply that Pamposh was the first colour film ever made in India.

India had colour experiments before it.

But Pamposh holds a more specific and equally important distinction:

It was the first colour feature film domestically produced and processed in post-Independence India.

The SAGE study describes it as having this “privileged status”, while contemporary press coverage called it the first full-colour feature film to be produced, processed and printed in the country.

And that milestone has a remarkable Kashmir connection.

One of the foundational moments in India’s post-Independence colour cinema was created on the waters and shores of Kashmir.

Could the lost film still be found?

“Lost” does not always mean destroyed. Sometimes it means untraced.

A print, negative, foreign-language version, duplicate or fragment could still conceivably exist in a private collection, foreign archive, old distributor’s vault or uncatalogued repository.

Even if the complete film never resurfaces, fragments may. A song. A photograph. A pressbook. A cinema ticket. A newspaper advertisement. A letter. A personal album.

A film reel. Each could restore another piece of the story.

Kashmir Rechords appeals for the missing pieces

Kashmir Rechords would particularly like to hear from readers who may possess any material connected with Pamposh or Ezra Mir.

The unidentified girl in the 1953 Blitz photograph is one such unanswered question.

Perhaps someone will recognise her. Perhaps her family has a photograph. Perhaps another newspaper carried her name. Sometimes history survives in the memories of ordinary families long after official archives have forgotten it.

Pamposh was not simply a film made in Kashmir. It was one of the earliest attempts to put Kashmir itself — its lake, landscape, people and colours — onto the moving screen at a crucial moment in India’s cinematic history.

The film is gone. The colours are gone. But the search need not end.

Perhaps one day, the lost colours of Pamposh will return to Kashmir.

Sources and acknowledgements

Primary archival source:
Blitz, 24 January 1953 — photograph and caption: “Ezra Mir with one of his characters in Pamposh, a film of which he has good reason to be proud.” Photograph supplied from the Kashmir Rechords archival collection.

Principal scholarly source:
Kirsty Sinclair Dootson and Poorvi Gaur, “A History of Colour Cinema That Can Account for Indian Cinema: The Bombay Film Laboratory, Kashmir’s Climate and Gevacolor’s Pamposh,” BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1, 2025. The article was first published online on 11 May 2025 and is Open Access.

Official film record:
Festival de Cannes, Pamposh (Pamposh: Fleur de Lotus), 1954. The official Cannes archive records the director, screenplay, cinematography, music and cast.

Image acknowledgement:
Kashmir Rechords acknowledges the research and archival work of Kirsty Sinclair Dootson and Poorvi Gaur and SAGE Publications, whose 2025 study has brought together rare surviving visual and documentary traces of Pamposh.

Where images reproduced in the SAGE article originate from third-party collections, the original archive/rightsholder also stand credited. The SAGE article identifies, among others, Collection La Cinémathèque française, the British Film Institute and Fotomuseum Antwerp/Agfa-Gevaert Historical Collection as sources for its figures.

*Dr. Rajesh Bhat is a veteran journalist, broadcaster, author and media researcher with over three decades of experience. A Ph.D. in Journalism and Mass Communication, he began his career with Kashmir Times and later served as Special Correspondent with Daily Excelsior, heading its Kashmir Desk during the peak years of militancy. He also contributed on art, culture and heritage to The Tribune. He later served with All India Radio/Prasar Bharati. He is the author of Radio Kashmir in Times of Peace & War and writes extensively on Kashmir’s history, culture, media and archival heritage.

From Padma Shree to a militant’s Bullet: The forgotten Mohammad Din

Kashmir Rechords

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August 16, 2026

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From Padma Shree to a militant’s Bullet: The forgotten Mohammad Din

(Kashmir Rechords Exclusive)

There are stories history records. There are others history owes itself the duty to recover. The story of Din Mohammad Jagir belongs to the second category.

In official records of the Government of India, he is simply “Shri Mohammad Din Jagir, Jammu and Kashmir — Padma Shree, 1966, Social Work.” Behind those few words, however, lies an extraordinary and almost forgotten episode of the 1965 India-Pakistan war.

Black and white historical portrait of Padma Shri Din Mohammad Jagir, the Kashmiri Gujjar shepherd who exposed Operation Gibraltar. — Mohammad Din Jagir, the Gujjar shepherd whose timely intelligence thwarted Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar in 1965. (Kashmir Rechords Archive)

The shepherd who exposed Operation Gibraltar

Mohammad Din was a Gujjar shepherd from the Tangmarg-Gulmarg area of Kashmir. On August 5, 1965, as Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar, he encountered armed infiltrators who had crossed into Kashmir to mingle with the local population, win support, create an uprising and prepare the ground for Pakistan’s military intervention.

According to 1960s records available with Kashmir Rechords, Mohammad Din, (Also written as Din Mohammad) was among the first Kashmiris to detect the infiltrators. They sought his assistance in arranging Kashmiri clothing so they could disguise themselves and move among the local population. They offered him money. He refused to cooperate and decided to inform the authorities.

He took the information to the local CID officer at Tangmarg, who passed it to CID headquarters in Srinagar. Because of its gravity, the information reached the Home Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, who conveyed it to the GOC of the Army Division at Baramulla.

Archival intelligence document from 1965 detailing the role of Din Mohammad in reporting Pakistani infiltrators in Jammu and Kashmir. — Archival document detailing Mohammad Din’s crucial role in detecting and reporting Pakistani infiltrators during the 1965 war. (Kashmir Rechords Archive)

By the afternoon of August 5, 1965, the Home Minister and Army GOC had reached Tangmarg and met Mohammad Din. Army patrols were despatched, the presence of infiltrators was verified, and shelling was undertaken at Dhanwas and other locations, scattering the infiltrating column. The intelligence network was alerted.

Pakistan’s carefully planned covert operation had been exposed almost at its inception.

Mohammad Din had struck the first blow—not with a weapon, but with information.

Pakistan’s plans betrayed prematurely

Operation Gibraltar depended on secrecy. Thousands of trained infiltrators had crossed into Jammu and Kashmir to sabotage installations, disrupt communications, attack strategic targets and, above all, ignite a popular uprising against India.

Instead of the mass uprising Pakistan anticipated, information about infiltrators began reaching Indian authorities. The contemporary account preserved by Kashmir Rechords says Mohammad Din’s information “betray[ed] the Pakistani plans prematurely,” enabling the State Government and Army to take effective counter-measures.

Pakistan had expected local support. Instead, it encountered hostility—or, as the account describes it, “a stony indifference.”

That was the beginning of the failure of Operation Gibraltar.

From shepherd to Padma Shri

India did not forget Mohammad Din immediately. In 1966, the Government of India conferred upon him the Padma Shri for Social Work. The 1966 Padma Awards Gazette records: “Shri Mohammad Din Jagir, Jammu and Kashmir.”

A man from a nomadic pastoral community, without a powerful institutional position or prominent public profile, had performed an act of national importance and received national recognition.

Yet history did not preserve his story with the same care.

The account by D. P. Dhar describes him after the honour returning to his vocation of tending cattle, apparently unaffected by the recognition.

Twice received by Indira Gandhi

According to a Kashmir Times report of May 4, 1990, preserved by Kashmir Rechords, Indira Gandhi had visited Mohammad Din’s house twice during her tenure as Prime Minister. Chief Minister, G M Sadiq too had met the saviour of Kashmir in 1965. Kashmir Rechords is reproducing here an exclusive photograph of Chief Minister Sadiq with Din Mohammad.

Archival photograph of Padma Shri Din Mohammad speaking with Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister G.M. Sadiq after the 1965 war. — Mohammad Din (left) in conversation with the then Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, G.M. Sadiq, following his heroic actions. (Kashmir Rechords Archive)

Then came 1990

Twenty-five years after 1965, Kashmir had changed dramatically. The Valley had entered an era of armed militancy.

On Friday, May 4, 1990, the Kashmir Times and Daily Excelsior carried reports of Mohammad Din’s death at the hands of militants.

According to the reports, he was shot dead by armed militants in his native village at Barz Kani, near Tangmarg, in the Gulmarg area.

May 1990 newspaper clippings from Kashmir Times and Daily Excelsior reporting the assassination of Padma Shri Din Mohammad by militants. — May 4, 1990 news clippings from the Kashmir Times and Daily Excelsior reporting the tragic killing of Mohammad Din by militants. (Kashmir Rechords Archive)

The irony was cruel. In 1965, Pakistan sent infiltrators into Kashmir to create an uprising. Mohammad Din detected them, refused their inducements, informed the authorities and helped expose their presence. His information triggered the response of the State Government and Army. The infiltrators were engaged and scattered, and the Pakistani plan began to unravel.

India honoured him with the Padma Shri. He met Indira Gandhi twice.

In 1990, when militancy had engulfed Kashmir, Mohammad Din himself became its victim.

The man who had once helped defend Kashmir against Pakistan’s covert assault could not be saved from the violence that later consumed the Valley.

He was killed—and then, in an even greater tragedy, almost erased from memory.

A hero reduced to a forgotten line

The official Padma database still carries his name. The 1966 Gazette still carries his name. Historical accounts of Operation Gibraltar occasionally mention him.

But the fuller story is barely known: the shepherd, the infiltrators, the money they offered him, the journey to Tangmarg, the CID officer, the message to Srinagar, the Home Minister, the Army GOC, the counter-operation, the Padma Shri, the meetings with Indira Gandhi, his return to tending cattle, his killing in 1990—and finally, the silence.

It is this silence that makes the surviving documents important.

Kashmir Rechords brings back the missing pieces

Kashmir Rechords has attempted to reconstruct the timeline of Mohammad Din Jagir’s life and sacrifice.

Its archive preserves his photographs and the May 1990 newspaper clippings reporting his killing. Alongside them is the written account of his role in 1965, describing how he detected the infiltrators, carried the information to the authorities, handed over the currency note they had given him and helped set the civil and military machinery into motion.

Taken together, these documents tell a story that deserves to be restored to Kashmir’s historical memory.

Not as propaganda. Not as mythology. But as an archival record of what one ordinary man did at an extraordinary moment.

Despite his extraordinary efforts, for which he lost his life 25 years after the 1965 war, Din Mohammad continues to be the forgotten son of Kashmir.

A Community without an address: The Kashmiri Pandit story

Kashmir Rechords

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August 14, 2026

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A Community without an address: The Kashmiri Pandit story

By R. K. Tickoo*

“Where do you live?”
“What is your address?”
“Where is your hometown?”

Almost every Kashmiri Pandit who has lived outside Kashmir over the past 36 years has faced these seemingly simple questions. And each time, they carry a deeper meaning.

I may be living in, or even owning, a house, flat or property anywhere in India or elsewhere in the world. But the real predicament remains: To which part of the country do I associate my identity? Which address truly feels like home? Where do I belong?

This question has followed us for 36 years

In 1990, lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits were uprooted from the Valley. Most of us arrived in Jammu—a place geographically close to Kashmir, yet worlds apart in language, climate, culture and food habits, particularly for those who had never lived outside the Valley before the exodus.

And then, almost unexpectedly, Rajinder Park in Jammu emerged as a new landmark—a temporary address for a community that had suddenly lost its permanent one.

For thousands of Kashmiri Pandits, Rajinder Park became much more than a park. It became a meeting place, a temple, a centre of community life and, at times, a memorial to a lost world.

Kashmir Rechords poster inviting readers to share personal memories, forgotten stories, photographs, archival documents and lived experiences of Kashmir, with the message “You Write. We Will Publish” and submission email addresses.

For the older generation, Rajinder Park is etched in memory not for its trees or surroundings, but for the grief that gathered there. In the absence of the sacred cremation ghats of Kashmir, families came to the park to perform the tenth-day kriya of their departed loved ones.

But Rajinder Park also witnessed another struggle—the struggle to rebuild lives through paperwork.

Government records, relief packages, service matters, transfers, adjustments, accommodation in camps and countless other problems of displacement had to be discussed and resolved. Enormous meetings were held there. Government employees from different departments and public-sector organisations began forming associations. Colleagues who had been scattered overnight found one another again.

In those days, communication itself was a luxury. There were no mobile phones, no WhatsApp groups and often no reliable way of knowing where a relative, friend or colleague had landed. Rajinder Park became the place where people searched for people.

Separated families reunited there. Friends met after months. Former colleagues rediscovered one another. Information travelled from one person to another, often becoming the only lifeline available to a displaced community.

When Rajinder Park became a symbol of resilience

It represented a community that had lost its homes but refused to lose its identity; a people who had been uprooted but continued to preserve their traditions, relationships and dignity.

For those who lived through 1990, Rajinder Park is therefore not merely a physical space. It is a chapter in the collective memory of displacement—a reminder of how a community without an address created one for itself, however temporarily.

The park gave us an address when we had lost one.

Thirty-six years later, the question still remains: Where do we belong?

Perhaps the answer lies not merely in a house, a city or a postal address. Perhaps it lies in the memory of a homeland, in the bonds of a community and in the continuing hope of returning to a place that still lives within us.

Let us not forget the past. For, as the old saying reminds us, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

And perhaps Rajinder Park deserves to be remembered—not simply as a park in Jammu, but as the first address of a displaced community that had suddenly lost its own.

About the Author

*R. K. Tickoo is a retired senior Prasar Bharati officer and veteran broadcaster. He served at Radio Kashmir, Srinagar and Jammu, on key assignments and later at the Directorate General, All India Radio, New Delhi. His writings draw upon his professional experience, personal memories and close understanding of Kashmir’s history, society and the lived experience of the Kashmiri Pandit community.

Do you have memories of gathering at Rajinder Park? Share your stories in the comments below or email us to help preserve this history.

Threatening Posters against Kashmiri Pandits: A history from 1965 to 2026

Kashmir Rechords

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August 13, 2026

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Threatening Posters against Kashmiri Pandits: A history from 1965 to 2026

(Kashmir Rechords Exclusive)

The latest threats against Kashmiri Pandit employees in Kashmir are not a new phenomenon. For the young Pandit employees recruited under the Prime Minister’s Package, who have lived under threats for years, the latest warning carries a frightening historical echo. Some of their generation have already been killed in the post-Article 370 era—notably government employee Rahul Bhat, shot dead inside his office in Chadoora in May 2022.

Their parents and relatives know this fear all too well. They had witnessed the same sequence in 1989-90—threats, warning letters, posters, targeted killings and intimidation—before thousands of Kashmiri Pandit families were forced to abandon their homes and migrate from the Valley.

But the history of this threat culture goes back even further.

The warning was there before 1990

Archival and historical accounts in possession of Kashmir Rechords indicate that the use of threatening posters, underground propaganda and warning communications was already visible during the turbulent years following 1965. The Al-Fateh phase subsequently gave such underground activity a more organised character. Former police officer A.M. Watali’s account records the use of Jehad posters and the arrest of an Al-Fateh activist in October 1965 for putting them up. Other historical material on Al-Fateh records the circulation of “Red Kashmir” posters directed at government officials, politicians and influential individuals in the mid-1960s.

Even D. P. Dhar, then one of the most prominent political figures of Jammu and Kashmir and the State’s Home Minister, was not spared threatening and abusive communications. The episode is significant because it demonstrates that intimidation through written warnings was not born with the insurgency of 1989.

Jammu andKashmir's then Home Minister, D P Dhar also received a threatening letter. — When D.P Dhar and his family were threatened!

The modus operandi was simple: write it, type it, cyclostyle it or print it—and put it where people would see it. Posters were pasted on walls and electricity poles; letters were delivered to homes and offices; names were circulated and warnings issued.

The purpose was psychological.Make the person feel watched. Make the family afraid. Make the community believe that the threat could become a bullet.

Archival threatening poster from the 1960s Al-Fateh era in Kashmir — A specimen of Threatening Posters in circulation in Kashmir during 1965-66

Threatening posters circulated in Kashmir during 1965-66 — A specimen of Threatening Posters in circulation in Kashmir during 1965-66

1989-90: When the warning became violence

By 1989-90, the old method of 1965 acquired a far more lethal dimension. Threatening letters and posters operated alongside assassinations, militant slogans and targeted killings. The objective was no longer simply to frighten an individual. It was to create an atmosphere in which an entire community and nationalist individuals began questioning whether they could safely remain in Kashmir.

The mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits cannot, therefore, be understood only through the number of people killed. The cumulative effect of threats, killings and intimidation created a climate of fear that ultimately pushed the community out of its ancestral homeland.

A specimen of threatening letter and posters circulated in Kashmir during 1990 — Threatening posters and letters in 1990

Article 370 changed. The threat did not disappear

The abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 fundamentally changed Jammu and Kashmir’s Constitutional and administrative structure. But the threat culture did not vanish.

In the post-Article 370 period, Kashmiri Pandit employees again became targets. Threat posters and warnings have continued to surface. In 2023, non-locals and Kashmiri Pandits were again threatened.

Post Article 370 Abrogation. Threat to minorities continued....

Again in February 2026, purported terror posters triggered fresh concern among Kashmiri Pandits, with community representatives demanding stronger preventive security measures. Even local journalists too faced these threats, before and after Article 370 abrogation. In November 2022, five Kashmiri journalists had to quit their job as dozens of Kashmiri journalists were branded as “Army Agents’’ by “The Resistance Front’’ (TRF) and LeT.

In 2022, local journalists were threatened...branding them Army Agents. — Times of India, November 2022

And now, in August 2026, a purported letter attributed to the United Liberation Council (ULC), linked in reports to Lashkar-e-Taiba, has named six Kashmiri Pandit government employees and claimed to possess details including their phone numbers and information about their families. Authorities have responded with heightened security and precautionary measures, including asking affected employees to work from safer locations or remain away from their workplaces temporarily.

Only the medium has changed

This is perhaps the most disturbing continuity.

In 1965, the threat could be handwritten. In the Al-Fateh era, it could be cyclostyled or printed.In 1989-90, it appeared on walls and electricity poles and arrived as letters and warnings. Today, it comes through digital posters, social media, online communications and mobile phones.

The poster has changed, the technology has changed, but the weapon remains the same—fear.”

The technology has changed. The message has not.

It remains a message of identification, intimidation and displacement: you have been noticed, you are being watched, and you are not safe.

For the young Pandit employees working in Kashmir today, therefore, the latest threat is not merely a new incident. It is an echo of what their parents and grandparents experienced even before 1990.

The paper has disappeared. The poster has gone digital. But the weapon remains the same: fear.

And the history of Kashmir shows that when threats are allowed to become normal, the distance between a warning and a killing can become frighteningly short.

Editor’s Note

Those interested in knowing more about some of the Al-Fateh episodes, including the history of its sleeper cells, the locations where threatening posters were prepared, typed or reproduced, and the individuals and networks involved in their production and circulation, may contact Kashmir Rechords for archival and research assistance.

Write to us at: support@kashmir-rechords.com | kashmirrechords@gmail.com