By IANS,
Shimla : The Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS) here is organising a three-day seminar from Monday on human dimensions of the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, a statement said Sunday.
Twenty-two experts from Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country are attending the seminar ‘Ordinary lives in a conflict zone: Voices from Kashmir’.
The seminar is an attempt to bring together the everyday experiences of ordinary people who have suffered since the beginning of conflict in 1989, a statement from the IIAS said.
“Often, in the debates on Kashmir, the ordinary people are pushed to the periphery. The IIAS, thus, has taken an initiative by facilitating a platform where common people from across religious and cultural communities articulate their thoughts on changing contours of Kashmir conflict and its impact on the lives of people within and outside Kashmir,” it said.
The highlights of the seminar will be the testimonies of widows, migrants, youth and children who have faced the brunt of the conflict.
IIAS director Peter Ronald deSouza will deliver the inaugural address.
He said the seminar aimed to bring writers, critics, psychiatrists, social activists, policy makers, academicians, journalists, students and common people together to share their post-1990 personal experiences of exile, nostalgia, social bewilderment, torture, camp experiences, suffering disappearance and oppression.
The IIAS is a premier advanced research institution in the field of humanities and social sciences and is housed in the erstwhile Viceregal Lodge, built here during the viceroyship of Lord Dufferin before India’s independence.