Books return to Kashmir bookshops

A Reuters report: Books are back on the shelves of Kashmir. If anyone has any idea of what books mean to Indians, you will understand how traumatic their absence has been for them.

For years, Kashmir's few literary bookshops had to stay shut due to the insurgency and the violence that broke out in 1989. Shops selling Islamic tracts or tuition books stayed open but Asian or Western classics and new blockbusters became scarce.

But now, finally, the works of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy are back on the shelves with Salman Rushdie and Dan Brown in Srinagar's bookshops.

"The (Kashmir) valley's elite class would read a lot before the militancy erupted ," Hameeda Nayeem, a teacher at Kashmir University's department of English literature, told Reuters: "But reading is not a thing of the past now in Kashmir. A growing number of people have started reading literature."

Another said "... For the first time, I felt something good is happening to Kashmir ..."

Full story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061218/en_nm/kashmir_bookshops_dc