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.
Literature of Kashmir has a long history, the oldest texts having been composed in the Sanskrit language. Early names include Patanjali, the author of the Mahābhāṣya commentary on Pāṇini's grammar, suggested by some to have been the same to write the Hindu treatise known as the Yogasutra, and Dridhbala, who revised the Charaka Samhita of Ayurveda.
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.
Kak is a Kashmiri Pandit surname and clan 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, an area that includes the India-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract. The majority of Kashmiri Muslims are Sunni. They refer to themselves as "Koshur" in their mother 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.
Sanjay Kishan Kaul is a former judge and lawyer who served as a judge of the Supreme Court of India since 2017 until upon his retirement in 2023. He has served as the first puisne judge, senior-most after the Chief Justice of India. Also, he has been the ex officio executive chairman of National Legal Services Authority.
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–
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-ever Kashmiri-produced Bollywood film to release in Kashmiri cinemas.
The Kashmiris in Punjab are ethnic Kashmiris who have historically migrated from the Kashmir Valley and settled in the Punjab region. Many ethnic Muslim Kashmiris from the Kashmir Valley had migrated to the Punjab region during Sikh and Dogra rule.
Sarwanand Koul Premi, also spelled Sarvanand Kaul Premi, was a Kashmiri poet, journalist, research scholar, Gandhian, social reformer and independence activist living in Jammu & Kashmir, India. Along with his young married son, Verinder (27), he was kidnapped, tortured and killed by Islamic terrorists in 1990.
Shikara is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film produced and directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The film is based on the Kashmiri pandit exodus of 1990. The story revolved around the love story of Shanti and Shiv Dhar, who are Kashmiri Pandits in the backdrop of the Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir. The book Our Moon Has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita has inspired many parts of the movie.
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