Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Kashmir Problem is, Primarily, a Failure of Statesmanship Badri Raina’s Kashmir : A Noble Tryst in Tatters is a first book of its kind presenting a Kashmiri Neo-Marxist account of what is wrong with Indian engagement with Kashmir. Awaited eagerly by Kashmiri readership of Indian left, it, true to the Kashmiri poetic genius, combines the poet’s view of the issue with an incisive analysis of what can only be termed as an absence of statesmanship or failure of politics. The author pleads for his essential thesis that Kashmir isn’t to be framed/can’t be understood in identitarian or communal terms or as an unfinished legacy of partition. It is simply failure of a relationship that had nothing inherently problematic about it to begin with, but turned sour due to mishandling or lack of vision and trust. India’s moral claim over Kashmir has largely been lost even though Azadi is not a solution. Vetoing against any kind of proposal of divorce between India and Kashmir, even though noting f...

Badri Raina is Kashmir’s contribution to Marxist discourse in India. A vast majority of people are not capable of thinking – or don’t care to think – and don’t distinguish between opinion and truth. (If you doubt, visit facebook and see how illogical, uninformed, prejudiced comments don it). The question is why so many brilliant and gifted minds, especially in the modern world, have been alienated from religion and have, in order to maintain loyalty to critical reason, taken other refuges than what we would call the refuge of religion? Isn’t it strange that religions should be convicted in the court of reason when their ultimate principle (Logos/Truth/Good/Buddhi/ Aql) grounds reason and its deepest motivations that secular humanism has championed? I don’t intend to attempt to clarify this issue but ask a somewhat related question – is it the religion of the masses or priests or saints and philosophers that fails the test of common sense and critical rationality – while reading one...