Mapping Kashmir

This project is a multi-layered digital heritage initiative that visualizes the histories of migration and political resistance stemming from Azad Kashmir. It centers on 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 the mass migration to Great Britain resulting from the Mangla Dam development project in the 1960s. The project also explores literary connections between Azad Kashmir and other resistance contexts during the global Cold War.

Integrating multimedia elements—such as photographs, oral histories, archival ephemera, and timelines—the project offers 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. This initiative challenges dominant frameworks that reduce Kashmir’s story to the Indo-Pakistani conflict, instead highlighting its global entanglements in labor migration, ecological displacement, and Cold War politics.