Sanjay Kak (born 1958) is an Indian author, activist and self-taught film-maker. He is known for his documentaries about environmental activism and resistance politics.
Sanjay Kak (born 1958) is an Indian author, activist and self-taught film-maker. He is known for his documentaries about environmental activism and resistance politics.
Kak was born into a family of Kashmiri Pandits, based in New Delhi for several generations.
Kak studied economics and sociology at the University of Delhi. He is a self-taught film-maker who is actively involved in the documentary film movement and in the Campaign against Censorship and the Cinema of Resistance project.
Kak makes documentary films. His early work includes Punjab: Doosra Adhay (1986) about the Punjab in the days of the Khalistan struggle, and Pradakshina (1987), about the river Ganges. He followed this with a 1990 film about Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple, Angkor Remembered. In 1993 he released films about the Indian diaspora in England (This Land, My Land, Eng-land) and South Africa (A House and a Home). 1995 saw the release of Harvest of Rain.
One Weapon (1997) followed, "the documentary that marked Sanjay Kak as an explicitly political filmmaker", according to The Caravan magazine, and In the Forest Hangs a Bridge (1999) about the making of a bridge in Northeast India; winner of the Golden Lotus Best Documentary Film, National Film Awards; Asian Gaze Award, Pusan Short Film Festival, Korea. His next films were Words on Water (2002), about the struggle against the Narmada dams in central India, which won Best Long Film prize at the International Festival of Environmental Film & Video (Fica) in Brazil, and Jashn-e-Azadi - How We Celebrate Freedom (2007) about the Kashmiri freedom struggle.
Jashn-e-Azadi is a film that has "widely influenced the way Kashmir was perceived in India". [1] The film has had a chequered screening history. [2] [3]
In 2008, he participated in Manifesta7, the European Biennale of Art, in Bolzano, Italy, with the installation A Shrine to the Future: The Memory of a Hill, about the mining of bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha. He writes occasional political commentary, and is the editor of Until My Freedom Has Come – The New Intifada in Kashmir (2011).
His latest feature-length documentary is on the revolutionary Maoist movement in India, called Red Ant Dream . The film was under production for more than three years and released in 2013.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir, officially the State of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and colloquially referred to as simply Azad Kashmir, is a region administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing entity and constituting the western portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947. Azad Kashmir also shares borders with the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the south and west, respectively. On its eastern side, Azad Kashmir is separated from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir by the Line of Control (LoC), which serves as the de facto border between the Indian and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Geographically, it covers a total area of 13,297 km2 (5,134 sq mi) and has a total population of 4,045,366 as per the 2017 national census.
The Kashmiri Pandits are a group of Kashmiri Hindus and a part of the larger Saraswat Brahmin community of India. They belong to the Pancha Gauda Brahmin group from the Kashmir Valley, located within the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmiri Pandits are Hindu Kashmiris native to the Kashmir Valley, and the only remaining Hindu Kashmiris after the large-scale of conversion of the Valley's population to Islam during the medieval times. Prompted by the growth of Islamic militancy in the valley, large numbers left in the exodus of the 1990s. Even so, small numbers remain.
Ram Chandra Kak was the prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir during 1945–1947. One of the very few Kashmiri Pandits to ever hold that post, Kak had the intractable job of navigating the troubled waters of the transfer of power from British Raj to the independent dominions of India and Pakistan.
Kapil Kak is a retired officer of the Indian Air Force, who rose to the rank of Air Vice Marshal. Kak is a Kashmiri Pandit. He was the Deputy Director at the Centre for Air Power Studies. He was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal in 1981. Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak is one of the many petitioners, who have moved the Supreme Court challenging the J&K Reorganisation Bill & the abrogation of Article 370.
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, and also between China and India in the northeastern portion of the region. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier, and 70% of its population; Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; and China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.
Kak is a Kashmiri Pandit surname originating in the Kashmir Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, India.
Kashmiris are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group speaking the Kashmiri language and originating from the Kashmir Valley, which is today located in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
The Gawkadal massacre was named after the Gawkadal bridge in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India, where, on 21 January 1990, the Indian paramilitary troops of the Central Reserve Police Force opened fire on a group of Kashmiri protesters in what has been described by some authors as "the worst massacre in Kashmiri history". Between 50 and 100 people were killed, some from being shot and others from drowning. The massacre happened two days after the Government of India appointed Jagmohan as the Governor for a second time in a bid to control the mass protests by Kashmiris.
Kashmiri Muslims are ethnic Kashmiris who practice Islam and are native to the Kashmir Valley of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The majority of Kashmiri Muslims are Sunni, while Shias form a minority. They refer to themselves as "Koshur" in the Kashmiri language.
"I Protest" is a rap song by a Kashmiri singer MC Kash, that he sang in 2010. The song that is about the 2010 Kashmir Uprising and Human rights abuses in Kashmir and failures by Kashmiri politicians including the separatists. It became an immediate hit in the valley and outside. The song was sung during protests. The studio where the song was recorded was raided by the local police after the song was released and the staff was questioned about involvement of any separatist leader. Kash, who was emotionally disturbed by the deaths of youth, including his friend, in the unrest, wrote the song. According to Kash, he wrote this in English to spread awareness about the situation in Kashmir. Kash faced hard time in recording his songs after this song was released as most of the studios denied facilitating him and he felt considerable pressure to stop raising such issues in his songs after people close to him showed concern about his security.
Sapru, also spelled as Sipru or Saproo is a Kashmiri Pandit clan and surname native to the Kashmir Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, India.
The Kashmiri diaspora refers to Kashmiris who have migrated out of the Kashmir into other areas and countries, and their descendants.
Red Ant Dream is a 2013 documentary film directed by Sanjay Kak. This documentary is based on the rebel Maoist movement in India. The documentary has been screened in various cities in India since 8 May 2013. It follows the Maoist protests and ambushes which feature the circumstances and environments of the Maoists. It sheds light on what goes on with the Maoists, what they are fighting for where they have been allegedly mistreated by the government.
Kashmir: The Case for Freedom is a collection of essays by Tariq Ali, Hilal Bhat, Angana P. Chatterji, Habbah Khatun, Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy, published by Verso.
The Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, or Pandits, is their early-1990 migration, or flight, from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in Indian-administered Kashmir following rising violence in an insurgency. Of a total Pandit population of 120,000–140,000 some 90,000–100,000 left the valley or felt compelled to leave by the middle of 1990, by which time about 30–80 of them are said to have been killed by militants.
Kashmiri cinema is the Kashmiri language-based film industry in the Kashmir Valley of the India,- administered union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The first Kashmiri feature film, Mainz Raat, was released in 1964. In 2023, Welcome to Kashmir, directed by Tariq Bhat, became the first Kashmiri-produced Bollywood film to release in Kashmiri cinemas.
The Kashmiris in Punjab, also referred to as Punjabi Kashmiris, are a group of people in the Punjab region who either have partial or full Kashmiri ancestry who have historically migrated from the Kashmir Valley and settled in Punjab. Most people of this category identify as Punjabis with Kashmiri descent, either some or full. Kashmiri migration from the Kashmir Valley to Punjab continued during Sikh and Dogra rule.
Under Dogra rule, people in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir launched several political movements. Despite ideological differences and varying goals they aimed to improve the status of Muslims in a state ruled by a Hindu dynasty.
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