Srinagar: With the passing of Mohammad Anwar Ashai, Kashmir has lost a witness and participant of a political generation whose youthful idealism unfolded against some of the Valley’s most turbulent chapters. Ashai, a veteran of Kashmir’s student movement of the 1960s and a political activist for several decades, died at his residence in Rajbagh, Srinagar, on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENTThe son of late Ghulam Ahmad Ashai, a noted educationist and political figure who remained associated with Kashmir’s public life through the pre- and post-Independence periods, Anwar Ashai inherited a tradition of public engagement that shaped much of his own life. Through changing times and political currents, Ashai remained engaged with the issues that had drawn him into public life as a young man. Ashai’s death has evoked tributes from former colleagues, friends and acquaintances, many of whom remembered him as a steadfast figure from an earlier chapter of Kashmir’s political history.