Latest news with #Kashmiri
New Indian Express
6 hours ago
- Health
- New Indian Express
Iran a big draw for MBBS students from J&K
SRINAGAR: Iran has emerged as an increasingly popular destination for students from Jammu and Kashmir aspiring to pursue MBBS degrees since 2016. Each year, over 300 students get admitted to different medical universities in Iran. 'Iran has left behind Bangladesh, which was once the favoured destination of Kashmiri for medical education. In Bangladesh, living expenses are much higher compared to Iran,' said Wajid Rizvi of Rizvi Educational Consultancy. The seven-year MBBS degree costs between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 35 lakh in Iran. However, with an emphasis on quality intake, the country offers scholarships to students with a minimum of 95 per cent marks. The admission process for MBBS starts in Iran from June to mid-August, and according to Wajid, they are receiving queries from people in J&K despite Iran's war with Israel. Persian (Farsi) is the primary language of Iran, but many Iranian universities offer MBBS programs in English, with basic Farsi taught in the foundation year. Students from J&K find it easier to pick up Farsi because it's similar to Urdu, which is widely spoken in Kashmir, Wajid said. He said students also prefer Iran due to its cultural affinity, quality of education, and safe environment. He pointed out that even when Iran was at war with Israel, the country ensured the safe evacuation of Indian students by opening its airspace for Indian flights.
Indian Express
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Prada reps kolhapuri chappals: Grace is always in vogue
Long before it gave its name to one of the most iconic patterns in fashion, Paisley was just another Scottish town. Its star rose in the 19th century, when it became so well-known for its imitation Kashmiri shawls that the shawls' traditional 'buta' pattern was soon named 'paisley'. This erasure of the pattern's origin, removing it from the specific cultural context in which it was first created — the 'buta' is said to be inspired by the shape of either a pinecone or mango — makes it an early instance of cultural appropriation. But is this also what is happening with the footwear — strongly resembling Kolhapuri chappals — that the Italian fashion house Prada featured as part of its Spring-Summer 2026 collection this week? In its show notes, Prada described the footwear as 'leather sandals', with no reference to an Indian connection. This has infuriated many in India's fashion community as well as traditional makers of Kolhapuri chappals. The history of fashion, of course, is one of crosscurrents and confluences, with textiles, motifs and styles passing from region to region, and wardrobe staples in one place inspiring luxury creations in another. But fashion labels in the West have a history of appropriating and flattening different cultures — often tipping over into controversy, such as when Gucci sent out models wearing Sikh-style turbans in 2016. This understandably leads to wariness among designers and craftspeople in the Global South. Change, however, is already underway, with labels like Dior and Louboutin starting to look for collaborators, not just ideas, in other cultures — the former worked with Mumbai's Chanakya School of Craft for its pre-fall 2023 line, while the latter teamed up with designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee for a capsule collection in 2017. With Prada yet to make the details of its latest collection public, it still has the chance to give credit where it's due. Grace, after all, is one of those things that never go out of style.
The Hindu
8 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Operation Sindhu: Fear, flight, and an uncertain future
In New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, Suhail Qadri, 57, paces nervously in front of an 'arrivals' gate as he waits for his two children — Imroz Qadri, 20, and Raiban Qadri, 23 — to land from conflict-torn Iran. When he finally sees them, quietly exiting from another gate to avoid the glare of cameras, his face lights up with relief. The brother and sister drop their luggage and run into his arms in a dimly lit corner. Imroz and Raiban are students of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in the capital of Iran. Suhail, a resident of Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), says he had lost touch with them from the fifth day of the conflict that broke out between Israel and Iran on June 13. 'For the last two days, I have been glued to my phone, waiting for an international number to pop up on my screen. I was hoping that the caller would either be my children or an embassy official telling me where they are,' he says. In J&K, every fifth house has a child pursuing an MMBS degree in Iran, explains Suhail. When news first broke about heightened tensions between Iran and Israel, Suhail and some of his neighbours quickly reached out to their children. The students were not perturbed at first. They became alarmed only when they began to spot missiles. 'Imroz called to say Israeli bombs had hit Tehran on June 13,' he says. 'They saw many missiles and got messages on WhatsApp that two Kashmiri students were hurt.' On June 13, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) instructed people in Tehran's District 18, which includes military buildings and residential neighbourhoods, to evacuate. When the IDF launched the attack on Iran's capital, several residential buildings and university complexes were impacted. Following this, the Indian Embassy in Iran posted on X that Indian students had been moved out of Tehran. The Embassy requested other residents with access to transportation to leave the capital too. On June 18, the Indian government launched Operation Sindhu to evacuate Indian nationals first from Iran and then from Israel as well. Imroz and Raiban were two of the 160 people evacuated and flown directly to India on June 20. So far, under the mission, India has evacuated more than 1,400 Indian nationals from Iran and more than 1,100 from Israel. Missiles in Iran When the attack began, Imroz recalls sitting inside the women's dormitory room with her friends. 'We were having a sleepover when we heard a thud. We thought crackers were being burst. But when the noise continued, we realised that there was an attack,'she says. Also read: 'There were sounds of sirens and distant explosions every day' Minutes later, Imroz and her friends, who had been following the news on the tense situation in West Asia, realised that the street in front of their dormitory had been bombed by the Israelis. Panic stricken, they rushed to the basement and huddled around the guards trying to understand what they should be doing next. Hania, 23, a fourth year MBBS student at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, saw the Israeli air strikes hit the university complex. 'The bomb dropped on the men's dormitory and the glass windows broke. Shards of glass injured at least two Indian students in the dorm,' she says over a call from Qom, about 160 kilometres away from Tehran, while waiting to be evacuated. Hania says the Indian Embassy contacted Indian students in Tehran and asked them to relocate to Qom, a relatively safer city. Many students chose to move out in buses provided by colleges. Some, like Hania, booked private cabs. 'There was no time to pack properly, so I left with my documents, some clothes, food, and some cash lying around,' says Hania, who is also from J&K. Tamheed Mughal, a third year student at the same university, says he has lived in a conflict zone (J&K). 'But when I found myself in another country hearing the incessant sound of bombing, I began palpitating. My anxiety got worse when the U.S. entered the war,' he says. Some of his peers have heard that the university will be holding a meeting on June 30. This, he thinks, may help him decide his future course. Tamheed is keen to go back and complete his degree. Iran's Health Ministry claims that 224 people have been killed so far in the conflict. Accustomed to conflict Indian nationals enrolled as students in Israeli universities say they had become accustomed to the stress of being at the centre of a conflict zone even before the latest round of attacks began between Iran and Israel. Sreyashi Bhowmick, 31, a postdoctoral student enrolled with the Tel Aviv University, says, 'Whenever Israel senses an attack coming its way, the civil defence force warns us of a possible attack from another country. The sirens then go off and we are expected to rush to the nearest bunkers or bomb shelters.' Sreyashi had earlier been evacuated in October 2023, under India's Operation Ajay, launched in response to the conflict between Israel and Gaza. She went back in February 2024, to continue work at the Geological Survey of Israel. 'It is exhausting to be on alert always,' says Sreyashi. 'It is bound to take a toll on your mental health, especially when you are living on your own, but the government here is very organised regarding wartime protocol,' she adds. Also read: Operation Sindhu: Special flights bring more Indians home from Iran and Israel On the evening of Israel's attack, when Iran hit back, Sreyashi was alone in her apartment. 'It was the middle of the night when messages started coming in, asking us to move to bunkers and bomb shelters. But to do that, I had to step out alone and walk to my landlady's house, since my apartment does not have any bunkers. So I decided to stay put,' says the student, who hails from Kolkata in West Bengal. Sreyashi, who is still in Israel, says, 'If something drastic happens, the Indian Embassy will arrange for our evacuation.' Another postdoctoral student from Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, about 20 km from Tel Aviv, says panic had not set in until missiles hit his university. 'Everyone living here told me that they had seen missiles being constantly launched and intercepted. Only when my university was hit did I realise that I was living in a conflict zone,' he says. He has been living in Rehovot for more than a year. About his decision to study in Israel, which is already at war with Gaza, he says, 'I was aware that Israel was at the centre of a geopolitical conflict, but since it is so invested in scientific research, it seemed like a good choice.' He reached Delhi after U.S. President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire on June 23 between the warring nations and is now home in Kolkata. Living with worry During the early hours of June 19, a flight with 110 students from Iran's Urmia University landed in New Delhi. Like many others, Nargis, 22, a resident of Mumbai, Maharashtra, was in the midst of her semester exams when she was given a few hours' notice to leave. With just a cabin-sized bag, she travelled from Urmia to Qom and then to Yerevan in Armenia and then to Doha before finally reaching home. After spending 52 hours in transit, Nargis is elated to be in India, but she is also worried. Wiping beads of sweat off her forehead, the second year MBBS students says with a faint smile that she is hoping for stability in Iran soon. 'I took a loan to pursue an MBBS degree there,' she says. 'Many of us chose to pursue an MBBS degree in Iran because the tuition fees is far lower than in private medical colleges in India. A mediocre private medical college in India costs a minimum of ₹1 crore. In Iran, we can complete the same degree by paying ₹30 lakh without compromising on the rigour of education.' Editorial | Strategic misfire: On the Israel-Iran conflict Sitting inside an apartment in a colony in Sultanpuri, Delhi, Aman, 21, a first-generation medical student in his family, is anxious. 'Going by conversations on WhatsApp groups, several universities in Iran might open up for local students in a couple of weeks, but the university is yet to share any information with international students,' he says. Aman says if he is unable to go back, he may not be able to complete his foundational degree. 'Universities in Iran have tie-ups with other foreign universities, but the National Medical Council of India does not take cognisance of medical degrees from every other country. This degree is the only way my family and I can climb the societal and financial ladder,' he adds. Imroz left Iran during her semester exams. She spends all her time chatting with worried friends on WhatsApp and following the news. 'We have not received a single notification from our university about when our classes will resume, so my brother and I have no clue what lies ahead,' she says. Imroz has left all her books and notes in Iran, so even if she is asked to study online, she believes it is going to be a challenge. The parents of these students are equally worried. Md. Kachakkarel, 55, from Malappuram in Kerala, has spent nearly all his savings to educate his youngest daughter. 'I have spent more than ₹45 lakh for her degree and stay in Iran,' he says. 'If she cannot complete her degree, what was the point of my working in the Gulf for 25 years?' Kachakkarel went to work at construction sites in Saudi Arabia to save enough to fund the education of his three daughters. 'I saved every penny doing manual labour to ensure that my children could pursue higher education, which I could not. My youngest daughter has come back from Iran. The older two had to live through extreme stress while pursuing medical degrees from Russia, which is at war with Ukraine,' he says. While Indian students from Iran are unsure about when they can go back, those studying in Israel are more certain that they will be able to go back soon. The postdoctoral student studying in Israel says considering how prepared the country seems to be in dealing with emergencies, he is certain that things will get better soon and he will be able to resume his research. A sense of déjà vu Reports and videos of students deplaning after being evacuated from Iran and Israel with nothing but backpacks and small trolleys brought back many unhappy memories for Dr. Jeetender Gaurav. The 30-year-old resident of Patna, Bihar, was one of the many students evacuated from Ukraine in 2022. He was relieved then, but that warm feeling quickly turned into fear as the situation in Ukraine worsened with time. When war broke out between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, nearly 18,000 Indian medical students were evacuated from Ukraine under the Indian government's Operation Ganga. Among them were several students pursuing an MBBS degree. Following petitions from the students who had returned, the Central government committee recommended to the Supreme Court that the medical students be allowed to take the final MBBS exams in two attempts, according to the existing National Medical Council syllabus and guidelines. The Court agreed. Once they passed the exams, the students were required to complete a compulsory rotatory internship. The government clarified that this was an exception and would not set a precedent for the future. Those who had not finished their five-year course and chose to stay in India had to either take the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test to redo their medical degrees or explore other career options. Ukraine universities also offered to help students migrate to other foreign universities to complete their degrees. Some Indian students went back to Ukraine to finish their medical degrees. Jeetender, who had been pursuing a degree from Ternopil National Medical University and was in his third year, was one of them. He says his university was offering a transfer to universities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Georgia. But since a medical degree from these countries was not valid in India, many students waited and eventually went back to Ukraine. But on reaching Ukraine, the students realised that the situation was much worse than what they had imagined. After nearly eight months of continuous conflict, they were hit by skyrocketing inflation. Electricity supply, too, was limited. 'Russia had hit most of the major power grids, so we would get only two hours of electricity a day. For the rest of the day, we had to manage with candles. Our phone batteries would die often,' recalls Dr. Jeetender. While those like him, who went back and completed their degree, are now expected to clear the Foreign Medical Graduate exam and complete a year's internship, many who chose to pursue the last leg of their degree online are expected to take the same exam and follow it up with at at least two or three years of internship before getting a licence to practise. Dr. Jeetender says that unless the universities in Iran open their doors again for students, the road ahead will be as rocky as it was for him and his peers. 'The low availability of seats in Indian medical colleges makes it impossible for stranded students to be absorbed in,' he says. (With inputs from Bindu Shajan Perappadan)
Indian Express
11 hours ago
- Health
- Indian Express
Asked to ‘trim' his beard, Kashmiri doctor loses seat at Coimbatore hospital
A Kashmiri doctor – Zubair Ahmed — has accused Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital located in Coimbatore of forcing him to 'quit his super speciality seat'. The doctor, who was allotted a seat at the nephrology department of the hospital after he cleared the NEET-SS was allegedly told by the hospital administration that he will have to either shave or trim his beard if he were to take admission. The doctor who had grown his beard for religious reasons refused the same, even as he agreed to abide by the hygiene requirements of the hospital including wearing a mask to 'hide his beard'. He decided to forgo the seat at the hospital, because the administration was refusing to budge. 'They clearly told him to shave or trim his beard or not take admission at all,' a source at the hospital told the Indian Express. When contacted the hospital administration clarified, 'We have not denied admission to anyone. We were allotted the candidate and we have to take admissions based on their rank given by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences'. The hospital administration asked Dr Ahmed to 'merely trim his beard', the hospital clarified. 'He was wearing a beard which reached his chest and we wanted him to trim it because in the nephrology department which he was planning to join he will be dealing with several patients whose immunity is low. Personal hygiene in such cases is absolutely important,' a spokesperson of the hospital told the Indian Express. According to sources at the hospital, Dr Ahmed had written to NBEMS 'accusing the hospital of discrimination'. NBEMS asked him to take admission by June 26. 'He had approached for admission on June 19, which was more or less the last day for admissions. His date of joining was extended to June 26, considering the special request he had made. But he did not turn up to take admission,' the hospital's spokesperson said. Doctors at the hospital said that the administration follows a strict attire policy and does not allow 'doctors with beards'. The spokesperson, however, said, 'We have a policy of grooming which is essential in all hospitals for the sake of hygiene. We only request our doctors to abide by these rules of personal hygiene'. The spokesperson clarified that there are senior doctors at the hospital who keep their beards. 'We allow groomed beards at the hospital. There are senior doctors who have been keeping trimmed beards for years at the hospital,' the spokesperson clarified. When contacted, Dr Zubair Ahmed was not available for comment. However, the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association has written to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, on Dr Ahmed's behalf. The letter read, 'Dr Zubair was left with no choice but to withdraw from the programme, despite having earned the seat through an all-India merit-based examination'.
Hindustan Times
15 hours ago
- General
- Hindustan Times
Review: Loal Kashmir by Mehak Jamal
There's a common saying, 'In Kashmir, the news can be wrong, but the rumours are always right,' writes Mehak Jamal in Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land, her debut collection of 16 real-life love stories set in the Valley against the backdrop of the unrelenting conflict. In this case, she is referring to a sense of foreboding in Kashmir in July 2019. By the end of the month, locals had begun hoarding food, medicines and fuel, preparing for the suspension of phone and internet services, and generally sensed that something was afoot. But no one was prepared, after the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, for the total communication blackout imposed — certainly not young people in love. Lōal is the Kashmiri word for love and longing. Like rumours, love here often exists in whispers and moves in the shadows. And Jamal's book is a collection of the sweet, bittersweet, or even bitter — and often inventive — ways in which Kashmiris must navigate romantic relationships, with patience and restraint. Under the chinar trees at the Nishat Mughal garden in Srinagar. (Waseem Andrabi/ Hindustan Times) 364pp, Rs599; HarperCollins The people in this book have lived through the significant political events of the last three decades, and Jamal has neatly divided their accounts into three chronological sections: Otru (day before yesterday) from the 90s, Rath (yesterday) from the 2000s and Az (today) from 2019. Altogether, this book is perhaps the most perspicuous account of Kashmir and the conflict. The most complex and powerful — and suddenly, unanticipatedly topical — story is about Pakistani wives of former Kashmiri militants. Months after the publication of Lōal Kashmir, these women were among the Pakistani nationals across the country deported in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack in April. What's little known outside of Kashmir is the years of protest by dozens of these women — Pakistani wives of former Kashmiri militants — to either get Indian citizenship or be allowed to return. Bushra, a young woman in the Bagh district of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, marries Burhan, a member of the Hizbul Mujahideen from Baramulla who had crossed over for arms training in the 1990s. When they married, he left militancy. They were madly in love, they ran a fruit and vegetable shop together, had children. A few years later, in 2010, chief minister Omar Abdullah started a rehabilitation programme for ex-militant youth stuck in PoK, giving them a chance to return and be reintegrated into Kashmiri society. Bushra accompanied her husband to the home he hadn't seen in over a decade since he was a boy, promising her mother that she would be back soon. But Burhan had thrown away their passports. And Bushra, along with about 350 other wives, was now stuck in limbo, neither being granted Indian nationality nor allowed to return to their home towns. Over the course of the story, Bushra and Burhan's marriage, soured beyond repair by his betrayal, ended and she joined Pakistani women like her who were protesting their precarious situations. This is a story about the inheritance of displacement. Bushra's grandfather too had been from Pattan, Burhan's home town, in Baramulla. During the 1965 war, he had crossed the ceasefire line and married a woman from Bagh and then had been unable to return or visit his family. But Jamal doesn't analyse the labyrinths of borders and identity and ideas of nationhood and belonging — she simply lays them out for readers to make their own connections. The early stories, more so because of the benefit of the passing of time, are more compelling. There's the love story of the Kashmiri woman who lived in Gaza (and was evacuated in 2023) with her Palestinian husband she had met when they were students at the Aligarh Muslim University in the 1980s. There's a man from a village in Anantnag who still carries around a love letter in his pocket because when he was 17, in the 1990s, he was saved from what could have been a terrible encounter with soldiers, by one written in poetic Urdu from his girlfriend. There's the unlikely relationship of a young Pandit boy and Muslim girl in the early 2000s — spending time together talking in a PCO booth or empty Matador buses or a giftshop called Dreams whose sympathetic owner let them wander around — and the story unfolds over the years starting from his family decision's to return to the Valley after temporarily relocating to Jammu during the exodus of the Pandits in the 1990s to what their lives looked like in the Kashmiri crossfire between the army and militants. There's a woman whose Indian-American husband — his knowledge of the Valley was limited to the 2000 Bollywood movie Mission Kashmir — was aghast at the realities of life in a conflict area. Most stories, though, are from around the 2019 blackout — and couples somehow found ways to correspond. An engaged doctor couple, working in different hospitals and unable to meet, exchanged love letters passed through a chain of medical staff. Couples would handwrite letters, take photos of them and share via Bluetooth. They were using Bluetooth-enabled messaging apps — 'many a boyfriend visited his girlfriend's neighbourhood, and once in the area range, messaged her while standing in the lane right outside her house, hoping she checked her phone and his journey would not prove futile.' A young trans man who flew to Amritsar to be able to stay uninterruptedly on the phone with his girlfriend who had moved to study medicine in Islamabad. Lōal Kashmir started as a memory project in 2020. Jamal, a filmmaker, grew up in Srinagar 'struggling with language, religion and belonging'. Her father is Kashmiri Muslim and mother Maharashtrian Hindu, and she writes in the introduction to the book, 'I always felt I belonged to Kashmir, but I wasn't sure Kashmir belonged to me.' This is a reclamation, her own love letter. She put out a call online asking Kashmiris willing to share their stories to fill up a Google form and then conducted detailed interviews. Author Mehak Jamal (Courtesy A Suitable Agency) The idea is deceptively simple — its execution more so. Jamal is a thrifty writer. She prefaces the stories with brush strokes of the history of Kashmir — from Yusuf Shah Chak, the last indigenous Kashmiri king in the sixteenth century to the assembly elections in 2024 — in four pages. And in 16 stories (although some could have been skipped), she covers the most significant events of the last three decades. This is a very accessible book, which is not to say that it's simplistic. Far from it. The writing is plain but succeeds through its clarity. Its only real flaw is the inability to capture any kind of sentimentality. The material is dramatic, the characters are intriguing, and the landscape is stunning. But there's little here in terms of emotions or insight associated with love and strife. There isn't, really, any passage or sense of feeling worth quoting but all the stories are easy to remember and to read. Saudamini Jain is an independent jouralist. She lives in New Delhi.
