Kehwa Talk: An initiative to promote debating culture

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, January 19

As the three-decade-long conflict in Kashmir shrunk social spaces, an initiative by a young scholar is trying to reclaim the lost talking points by bringing together people from the region’s different walks over hot cups of saffron tea.

Thirtyfive-year-old Peer Ghulam Nabi Suhail’s initiative – Kehwa Talk – is an attempt to reclaim the lost “social and intellectual spaces” in the region by providing a space for discussions. In the past two years, Suhail has organised fortnightly debates over cups of Kashmir’s famed saffron tea Kehwa, and provided space to youth, women, government representatives, students, scholars and people from different walks of life to hold an intellectual interaction.

“I was always keen on creating a space for social and intellectual exchange in Kashmir. The absence of such space for interaction, discussion and knowledge production had led to choking of intellect and idea exchange in Kashmir,” Suhail told The Tribune.

Since Kehwa Talk’s first session in December 2014, 72 speakers, including professors, doctors, entrepreneurs and social activists, have delivered talks. The 51 sessions held so far have been attended by more than 12,000 people.

Kehwa Talk is Kashmir’s only debating space where even those topics have been shared which were previously talked about in hush tones. The topics discussed have included lost of social spaces — self-censorship or state control, post-traumatic stress disorder as consequence of Kashmir’s conflict, religious nationalisms, Kashmir language and identity, and hydropower and hydropolitics in Kashmir, and how music bridges boundaries in Kashmir.