"Paradise on Fire” is a comprehensive study of the struggle for freedom in Kashmir and a biography of a man who has played a central role in carrying the Kashmiri cause forward with determination and vision. The author of the book, Abdul Hakeem, openly acknowledges his patriotic feelings for India, but, to his credit, does not ignore the wrongdoings of his nation in relation to Kashmir.
The author begins with an elaborate account of the Kashmir dispute. He starts from the era of Afghan rule, through the Indo-Pak Partition of 1947, to the post-partition conspiracies that allegedly duped Kashmiris into accession to India and brings to light all misunderstandings related to the dispute.
Syed Ali Geelani’s struggle is compellingly narrated. His life as a student, the hardships experienced through poverty, his inspirations and early attempts to achieve freedom and his first arrest, which prevented him from performing his father’s last rites, are all documented.
Since then, the now 88-year-old Kashmiri separatist leader has often been detained by the Indian authorities on a variety of charges.
Despite his failing health, Geelani continues his struggle. While others have succumbed either to threats or the lure of luxury from India, Geelani has remained steadfast in his loyalty to his cause.
He has maintained a clear stance on the rights of Kashmiri minorities, too, respecting and protecting those whose religious beliefs differ from his own. “We want to live with our Hindu and Buddhist brothers,” he has said. “We have never pressured anyone. Hindu brothers who left Kashmir were never told by us to leave the state. It was the Indian government that asked them to leave Kashmir,” he claimed.
There are numerous tales of the wrongs inflicted on Kashmiris: The shooting at Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq’s funeral procession in May 1990, by forces in Kashmir, the alleged gang rape of Kunan Poshpora in February 1991 and the continuing series of heart-wrenching atrocities committed against Kashmiris.
The ill-treatment detainees are subjected to in the interrogation centers is barbaric. Kashmir is a heavily militarized zone with the highest civilian to soldier ratio in the world. It can be no coincidence that 80 percent of Kasmiris suffer from mild or severe psychiatric disorders.
The formation of militant groups in 1989 was probably the first attempt to get widespread attention for the Kashmiri cause. Tired of the futile non-violent measures Kashmiris had been relying on in their struggle for freedom, their efforts turned violent after the 1987 elections were allegedly rigged. They were forced to choose the bullet rather than the ballot.
India has successfully presented the pro-freedom group led by Geelani as an insignificant minority. However, the magnitude of significance and support that Kashmiri people attach to him is shown by the large following answering his calls for strikes or election boycotts. Kashmiris have consistently boycotted elections held by the Indian government in order to showcase the façade of a peace process to the rest of the world.
Geelani was instrumental in the formation of the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC). However, an ideological split between those who wanted independent statehood and those who wanted a merger with Pakistan destroyed the party.
Kashmir’s strategic location in the middle of the Sino-Indian-Pakistani Arc is seen as pivotal to the potential conflicts that could arise between the three, all of whom wish to control the region’s rich abundance of resources.
Nehru, India’s first prime minister, made a pledge to the people of Kashmir: “If, after a proper plebiscite, the people of Kashmir say, ‘we do not want to be with India,’ we are committed to accept that. We will accept it though it might pain us.”
Book Review: The Kashmir question
Book Review: The Kashmir question
What We Are Reading Today: Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read
In “Little Bosses Everywhere,” journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time.
“Little Bosses Everywhere” exposes the deceptions of direct-selling companies that make their profit not off customers but off their own sales force.
The book lays out an almost prosecutorial case against many multilevel marketing schemes, explaining why regulators need to take the industry seriously, and the larger story it tells about whom the economy has set up to fail.
The book “reads like a thriller as it investigates the birth and growth of this shadowy and sprawling industry that polished up door-to-door sales with a new veneer of all-American entrepreneurialism,” said a review in The New York Times.
The book primarily focuses on a broader analysis of pyramid schemes and their history.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘King Leopold’s Ghostwriter’
Author: Andrew Fitzmaurice
Eminent jurist, Oxford professor, advocate to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Travers Twiss (1809–1897) was a model establishment figure in Victorian Britain, and a close collaborator of Prince Metternich, the architect of the Concert of Europe.
Yet Twiss’s life was defined by two events that threatened to undermine the order that he had so stoutly defended: a notorious social scandal and the creation of the Congo Free State.
In “King Leopold’s Ghostwriter,” Andrew Fitzmaurice tells the incredible story of a man who, driven by personal events that transformed him from a reactionary to a reformer, rewrote and liberalized international law—yet did so in service of the most brutal regime of the colonial era.
In an elaborate deception, Twiss and Pharaïlde van Lynseele, a Belgian prostitute, sought to reinvent her as a woman of suitably noble birth to be his wife. Their subterfuge collapsed when another former client publicly denounced van Lynseele.
Book Review: ‘Oil Leaders’ by Dr. Ibrahim Al-Muhanna
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Muhanna’s book, “Oil Leaders: An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s Global Energy Policy,” offers a detailed narrative of the oil industry’s evolution from a Saudi perspective, drawing on the author’s four decades of experience.
Published in 2022, the book coincides with global energy crises triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Al-Muhanna relies on data from OPEC, the International Energy Agency and interviews to provide an anecdotal biography of key figures who shaped oil politics, targeting a broad audience including policymakers, researchers and industry professionals.
The book is divided into 11 chapters, beginning with the influential role of Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani, whose overconfidence and perceived indispensability are critically examined.
Subsequent chapters highlight other pivotal figures, such as Hisham Nazer, Yamani’s successor, and delve into events such as the 1991 Gulf War.
The narrative also covers Luis Giusti, of Venezuela’s PDVSA, whose disregard for OPEC quotas sparked tensions, and discusses OPEC’s struggles with production cuts and falling oil prices in the late 1990s, which led to economic crises in oil-exporting nations such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Al-Muhanna explores the political ramifications of oil price fluctuations, noting how high prices influenced US presidential elections and shaped diplomatic interactions, such as George W. Bush’s visit to Riyadh.
The book also examines the rise of Russia under Vladimir Putin, the privatization of Saudi Aramco as part of Vision 2030, and the roles of contemporary leaders such as Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and former US President Joe Biden in shaping global energy policy.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Africa’s Buildings’ by Itohan I. Osayimwse
Between the 19th century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States.
Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures.
“Africa’s Buildings” traces the history of the collection and distribution of African architectural fragments, documenting the brutality of the colonial regimes that looted Africa’s buildings.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Birds at Rest’ by Roger Pasquier
“Birds at Rest” is the first book to give a full picture of how birds rest, roost, and sleep, a vital part of their lives.
It features new science that can measure what is happening in a bird’s brain over the course of a night or when it has flown to another hemisphere, as well as still-valuable observations by legendary naturalists such as John James Audubon, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Theodore Roosevelt. Much of what they saw and what ornithologists are studying today can be observed and enjoyed by any birder.
