Poonch Festival

A Strategy to Integrate Border Regions in J&K

This paper discusses the importance of a festival celebrating the ancient culture and customs of the people living in the Poonch region of India's Jammu and Kashmir district. The author argues that such a festival could help to integrate India's notoriously unstable and consequently isolated border regions which, at the same time, are of great political, religious and strategic significance to the whole country. Thus, the author calls upon the state to provide additional infrastructure in order to make the Poonch festival a model applicable to repacify other regions such as Uri, Kupwara, Kargil, Kishtwar and Basholi.

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