Mapping Kashmir

Mapping Kashmir is a multi-layered digital heritage initiative that visualizes the histories of migration and political resistance stemming from Azad Kashmir. It centers an interactive map hosted on a dedicated website, charting two primary narratives: the migration history of Azad Kashmir to Great Britain beginning in the mid nineteenth century with the Kashmiri “lascars” in the British merchant navy and later the mass migration to GB as a result of the Mangla Dam developmental project in the 1960s, and the history of literary connections between Azad Kashmir and other resistance contexts in the backdrop of the global Cold War. The project integrates multimedia elements—such as photographs, oral histories, archival ephemera, and timelines—to provide an immersive and interactive storytelling experience. It is motivated by the need to recover and foreground the often-overlooked histories of Azad Kashmir, a region marginalized in both global and South Asian historical narratives. It seeks to challenge dominant frameworks that limit Kashmir’s story to the Indo-Pakistani conflict, instead highlighting its global entanglements in labor migration, ecological displacement, and Cold War politics.

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