My name is Hamreen Khan, I come from Indian-Administered Kashmir and was born & raised in Srinagar, considered one of the major cities nestled in the Himalayas. Since I come from Kashmir Valley, which has been conflict-ridden for more than 75 years, I have always wondered why nations of the world were unable to solve conflict that has been ongoing for such a long time. Kashmir, though landlocked, was historically well-connected to the world through the silk route. The people of Kashmir were involved in trades of various goods with Central Asia. Its economy was well-integrated with Central Asian countries due to which Kashmir followed independent foreign policy with its neighbours.

But after 1947, this connectivity was broken and Kashmir became the victim of three nuclear giants: India, Pakistan, and China, and we are still suffering from this today. This conflict has divided families, divided territories, and caused ever-lingering emotional scars. The travel inside the region is quite restricted—especially among border areas. As I’m a solo mountain biker, I have experienced it myself, where one is under constant surveillance. While riding on my bicycle, I was once was carrying a bag of apples. A soldier on the way stopped me and mistook it for a bag of hand grenades.

I have a dream to travel the world on my bicycle, but the tragedy is that I face obstructions in my homeland. Because of the political situations, I decided to major in political science from university. But as my choice for it was influenced by living in the conflict zone, I came to know that even education is also under surveillance. We were not allowed to do research on the Kashmir conflict during my post-graduate course. During my time in high school, I found history most interesting of all. There were many interesting topics in history that I liked very much. Political science at that time was not taught as a separate discipline, and the syllabus structure was much more biased towards civics, which mostly infused the knowledge of Indian constitution.

History at that time was much more global in nature. It was only at the time of higher secondary school that political science was taught as a separate discipline. The curriculum contained interesting topics such as the Cold War, U.S. hegemony, and India U.S. relations. During my graduation, I also studied political science in depth. In the 4th semester of my college, we were introduced to international relations. I learnt about two different paradigms of IR, liberalism, and realism. In addition to focusing on my studies, I actively participated in social activities like plantation, climate change awareness campaigns, and also advocating eradication of social evils in Kashmir society. I also joined a local NGO called Voice of Youth where I acted as a spokesperson by interacting with people in power and highlighting various youth related issues in Kashmir valley.

During my experience in working with this organisation, I came to realise that writing could also be used as method of social change. Prior to that, I usually stressed upon social activities and movements. I’m an avid reader and a creative writer. I mostly used to upload short paragraphs on social media. Sometimes I also used to construct poems and various thoughts in my head, but I didn’t immediately transcribe them. My writing skills had an academic touch during my Masters dissertation—during which my writing skills shifted from being experimental and creative to more complex and rigid.

After my Masters, I worked as research assistant. During that time, I was occupied in conducting and transcribing interviews, which brought along new challenges such as translating Kashmiri into English and analysing the raw data into academic format. Currently I’m working with a group of journalists on a film project as a freelance researcher. I’m involved in sharing the background knowledge regarding various themes and social issues. Though I’m mostly associated with academic writing, I try my best to write in a lucid manner.