The Invisible Kashmiri

Ghazala Wahab

“Ab nahin chhodte hain,” (now, they don’t let us attend) my Srinagar-based photographer tells me every time I ask him to cover a government of India event in Kashmir.

Paramilitary personnel stand guard near the Amarnath Yatra main base camp at Baltal, Sonamarg

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Srinagar to strike a few yoga poses on International Yoga Day, my photographer sent me photographs of empty streets adorned with giant posters welcoming him. On Kargil Vijay Diwas, he sent me photographs of banners and buntings from the national highway leading to Zoji La. Though the ministry of defence had asked journalists to reach Srinagar, from where they were to be driven to Dras/ Kargil to hear the Prime Minister, the advisory did not apply to Kashmiris.

Once a favourite of the security forces—the FORCE photographer was often invited to accompany them during counter-insurgency operations or to field locations—now he sends me pictures of tourists taking their own pictures. The story of Kashmiri stringers with whom I have worked in the last 20 years is the same. They are happy to criticise the local politicians, all of whom are powerless to effect any changes, but are worried about chronicling their own lives. The honest Kashmiri is the one who does not live in Kashmir any longer. Those who live there are invisible, not only to the outsiders, but to themselves too. Each pretending that the other is unseen, lest someone asks—How are you?

Of all the people across the country that I have met in the last three decades of my professional career, Kashmiris have been the most political. Even a shikarawallah had a perspective on Kashmir’s history and the possible future. Most had an opinion on the politics of the day. These days, they don’t even have an opinion on the apple harvest, in case the listener detects a political statement in their comments. Hence, with an outsider, the voluble Kashmiri goes into listening mode. Getting the Kashmiri perspective, then depends upon your skills to read her expressions. Does she nod vigorously when you talk of political resolution or stare blankly? Does she shake her head sadly when you refer to false cases or vehemently deny it? Does she smile when you mention pervasive fear or point to economic windfall because of the boom in tourism? And finally, when you say that the Kashmiri today exists only to service the Indian tourists and fortune-seekers, does she laugh out loud or look at you with vacant eyes?

Five years after the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A, when India was supposed to have embraced Kashmir as its integral part, all natives of the beleaguered state, now a Union Territory (UT), are suspects at best and legitimate targets at worst. Even those who qualify as ‘official Kashmiris’ are always at the risk of being denied this exalted status and deemed suspect.

In mid-July, the director general of J&K (Jammu and Kashmir) police, R.R. Swain said as much in his statement to the media. According to him, “Pakistan successfully infiltrated all important aspects of civil society, thanks to so-called mainstream or regional politics in the valley...” Swain can be forgiven for his ignorant remark, because denial of Kashmir’s recent history is integral to government of India’s project of recasting the former state in the mould envisioned by its ideological anchor S.P. Mookerjee.

However, the collective memories of Kashmiris or people of Kashmir origin is making this task difficult. Way back in 2008, former chief of naval staff and a Kashmiri, Admiral Arun Prakash wrote in FORCE. “Growing up in the Valley in the 1950s and 60s, my neighbours and playmates were all Kashmiris; of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faith. Our parents were friends, we ate in each others’ homes, and celebrated all festivals together. But even as children, we clearly understood that Kashmir was not India, and that the average Kashmiri’s attitude towards India was at best ambivalent, while he definitely had an empathy for Pakistan.” Too much anti-nationalism?

The revocation of the Constitutional Acts that bestowed special status on the state of Jammu and Kashmir by way of notional autonomy, was not only aimed at complete integration with the rest of the nation, but also to recast the narrative about the Valley. No matter what the ground situation was, the government of India declared that normalcy was finally restored in the restive valley. Anyone who challenged this was deemed anti-national. Both ‘acche din’ and ‘Amrit Kaal’ had concurrently arrived in Kashmir, whether they arrived in other parts of the country or not.

Interestingly, in Kashmir, the words normal and normalcy means different things. Normalcy implies resolution of the political problem, which depending upon who one speaks with could mean any of the following—‘azadi’ (freedom), merger with Pakistan, or conversion of the line of control into international border. Normal means absence of violence and its consequences—curfew or bandh—on a particular day or week. Basically, normal means the day people could go about their everyday lives without interruption, even as they await normalcy. But after 5 August 2019, normal was redefined as normalcy.

The problem with this recasting, however, is that reality frequently clashes with the re-writing of history. For instance, in the seven months of 2024 alone, 11 army personnel have been killed in encounters with militants, mostly in the Jammu division, until now considered peaceful. The army attributes this surg