About

In his relatively short span of life, Shamim Ahmad Shamim blazed a bright trail over the horizon of his homeland—Kashmir—and beyond in literary, political and journalistic spheres. His fearlessness defines his public profile. Between 1964 when he started his immensely popular Urdu weekly, AINA, from Srinagar to his demise in 1980, at the age of 46 years, Shamim’s name and fame as a forceful legislator, parliamentarian, orator and journalist had travelled across the subcontinent. Renowned author/editor, Khushwant Singh had described Shamim as one of the three best speakers of his time in the Lok Sabha: Atal Behari Vajpayee in Hindi, Piloo Mody in English and Shamim in Urdu. Shamim earned global fame with his strident opposition to imposition of Emergency in India in 1975 and consequent muzzling of opposition and the media. Born into a middle class family at Nasnoor in 1934, Shamim completed his school education in Shopian town of South Kashmir.

Shamim Ahmad Shamim is an unforgettable name in the folklore of journalism in Kashmir. I put him alongside my two chief inspirations in writing. Orwell and Manto. One I love for his clarity, second for his rawness and both for their courage. Shamim offers me the meeting point. For me – he is too distant and too close. Distant as I have not seen him. But close as when I grew up I fell in love with those who destroyed the false gods of the time. And given the slavery, the flattery we have nourished as a trait if someone stands up and says it clearly, boldly – I get closer. And that defines my intimacy with Shamim. We either eulogise or denigrate and both ways the truth is lost. Death doesn’t make us great. The only difference it should make is the difference of tense. Alive I am `is’, dead I will be `was’. The rest is unchanged. Neither the persons, nor the places are sacred. Well that never means we treat each other with contempt. That means we treat each other respectfully but realistically.