The passing of Er. Mohammad Anwar Ashai closes another living chapter of Kashmir’s contemporary history. He belonged to a generation that did not merely read about the great political transformations through which Kashmir passed; it witnessed them, participated in them, suffered their consequences and preserved their memory.

An engineer by profession, a student activist in his youth, a civil-society voice in later life and, above all, a man deeply conscious of Kashmir’s history, Anwar Sahib represented a type of public intellectual that is becoming increasingly rare. His importance lay not in the offices he occupied or titles he accumulated, but in what he remembered, understood and was willing to say. His death on 11 August 2026 therefore represents more than the passing of an individual; it is the disappearance of another repository of Kashmir’s institutional and political memory.

I knew Anwar Sahib well before my association with the Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies (KCSDS). We would often meet at marriage ceremonies, funerals and gatherings of common relations or friends, particularly at the residence of late Mohammad Shafi Pandit Sahib, whose wife Nighat Shafi is Anwar Sahib’s niece. He would also frequently visit his brother-in-law, Ghulam Nabi Drabu Sahib, who lived in the adjoining house.Anwar Sahib knew my late father well. Whenever we met, his first enquiry would invariably be about his welfare, and while parting he would ask me to convey his salaam and regards to him. This remained a norm until my father departed from this world. Perhaps their mutual regard also had a spiritual dimension, as both followed the Naqshbandiyya order of Sufi path.

My acquaintance with Anwar Sahib, however, acquired an entirely different depth after I associated with KCSDS. There I discovered not merely the family acquaintance I had known but a remarkable reservoir of institutional memory. He rarely missed a programme, seminar or conference organised by the group and would often arrive earlier than most of us, ensuring that arrangements were properly in place. It was a small habit, but it revealed much about him: seniority, for him, never meant exemption from responsibility.

There is a fundamental difference between information and memory. Information tells us that an event occurred on a particular date. Memory tells us what the atmosphere was like when it happened—who disagreed with whom, what people feared, what alternatives were being discussed, and how decisions subsequently presented as inevitable did not necessarily appear inevitable to those living through them. Anwar Sahib possessed that........

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