About Dhaar
What is Dhaar?
An independent public archive and research platform for Azad Jammu & Kashmir. Dhaar documents, preserves, contextualises, translates, and makes accessible the historical and contemporary record of Azad Jammu & Kashmir.
Independent. Public. Sourced.
It brings together archival records, documents, photographs, maps, oral histories, visual materials, research, translations, and public-history resources through transparent sourcing, verification, editorial review, and preservation practices. Dhaar is not a news site, campaign page, or personal blog.
For the spelling and meaning of the name, see Why the Name — Dhaar / دھار.
Mission & Scope
To preserve the record of Azad Jammu & Kashmir and make it accessible for research, learning, public understanding, and future generations.
Dhaar works through seven connected commitments:
Preserve
Safeguard historical and contemporary material.
Document
Create structured records of events, people, institutions, places, movements, and cultural life.
Contextualise
Connect records to historical, social, political, geographical, and cultural contexts.
Verify
Make the evidentiary basis and verification status of records transparent.
Translate
Enable knowledge to circulate across regional and international languages.
Research
Produce and support scholarship grounded in archival evidence and careful source work.
Connect
Link records, researchers, translators, communities, places, and collections rather than leaving materials isolated.
What Dhaar contains
The full institutional structure
On the homepage, explore cards stay record-focused. Here, the preview covers the platform as a whole — including research and translations.
Archive Records
Events, documents, and structured entries built through sourcing, verification, and editorial review.
Open →Visual Archive
Photographs, artwork, and other visual documentation with credit, consent, and rights review.
Open →People & Places
Biographical and geographic records that situate material in named lives and locations.
Open →Collections
Curated gatherings of records around themes, movements, persons, and periods.
Open →Research & Publications
Reports, essays, bibliographies, and other citable outputs from the archive.
Open →Translations
Recovered texts and translations across the linguistic worlds of AJK and beyond.
Open →About pages
About Dhaar
Dhaar is an independent public archive and research initiative dedicated to documenting, preserving, contextua...
Why the Name
The name Dhaar is shown together with the Urdu دھار. Dhaar is the spelling used consistently across the archiv...
Mission & Principles
Mission To document and preserve the political, social, legal, cultural, environmental, and everyday histories...
Methodology
Documentation, for Dhaar, is a discipline with its own standards, applied consistently rather than invoked occ...
Verification Standards
Verification status is one of Dhaar's defining credibility systems, not merely a coloured badge. These labels...
Ethics & Safety
Dhaar reviews material for dignity, consent, and risk before publication. Exact home addresses, private phone...
Sensitive Materials
Ordinary web forms are not a secure channel for extremely sensitive evidence. Do not use Contribute, email, or...
Identity & Pseudonym Policy
The public founding editor publishes as Uroosa Khan for security reasons. Contributors may use a legal name, a...
Team & Contributors
Uroosa Khan — Founding Editor (pseudonym). Oversees Dhaar’s research programme, editorial standards, and long-...
Corrections & Updates
Every substantive correction records what changed, when, why, and whether a central finding changed. Reports a...
Rights & Reuse
Rights status is recorded per item: owned by Dhaar, licensed, permission granted, public domain, fair-use/fair...
Privacy
Dhaar collects the least personal data necessary to operate the archive and contribution queue. Visitor analyt...
Terms of Use
Use of this site is subject to Dhaar’s rights, ethics, and privacy policies. Archive records may be updated as...
Contact
For general enquiries and contribution questions, use the Contribute form. Role-based project addresses are li...
Editorial Standards
Dhaar publishes archival records, not breaking news. Editors distinguish evidence from interpretation, keep ve...
Accessibility
The public site is designed to be readable, keyboard-navigable, and usable with assistive technology. Pages us...
Digital Preservation
Identifier scheme: public records receive a permanent ID of the form DHAR-TYPE-YEAR-NNNN (for example DHAR-EVT...
Funding & Independence
Dhaar is an independent archive. Editorial decisions are not sold. Funders, if any, do not determine what is d...