Books by Sahba Husain

Researcher and activist Sahba Husain has been working in Kashmir for two decades, and in this personal, passionate account of that state and its people, she documents her deeply engaged and empathetic involvement with Kashmir's politicized terrain. We join her as she meets--and, crucially, listens to--people who carry all of the anger, despair, and helplessness of a people caught in conflict and violence. Forming deep friendships through this process, Husain finds herself questioning her own "Indian" identity. It is those relationships that form the backdrop of this book, in which Husain focuses on certain key areas: the health of a people, militancy and its changing meanings for local people and the state, impunity and the search for justice, migration and the longing for homes left behind, and women's activism along the faultlines of nation-state and community. A book of difficult subjects, but one that finds surprising beauty in its engagement with human relationships, of love for a land and a people and of hope for a future free of violence, Love, Loss, and Longing in Kashmir is a compelling and necessary read.

On February 6, 2003, Anjum Zamarud Habib, a young political activist from Kashmir, was arrested in Delhi, convicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and sentenced to five years in Delhi's notorious Tihar jail. Her crime? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as well as being the chairperson of the Muslim Khawateen Markaz and a member of the Hurriyat Conference, which disputes India's claim to Jammu and Kashmir. In this passionate and rare first-hand account by a Muslim woman in Tihar jail, Habib describes the shock and bewilderment of arrest; the pain of realizing that there would be no escape for years; the desperation for contact with the outside world; and the sense of deep betrayal at being abandoned by her political comrades. Prisoner No. 100 provides an inside perspective on the impact of the Kashmir conflict on real people's lives and offers a searing indictment of draconian state policies, while telling the courageous story of one woman's extraordinary life.