Fight, flee or tell a story

Showkat Nanda’s photograph titled ‘Zaheen on the run’ (2014) opens out from its French fold to reveal a frame dominated by black. Very few details have caught light. In the background, a man wearing a cap stands silhouetted against the light coming from a window. In the foreground is the left side of a boy’s face— its youthful suppleness overtaken by the hardness of his look, a look of hurt and anger. His refusal to look at the camera implicates the viewer. For him, we are allied with those who have forced him to seek refuge in darkness. Nanda’s image is part of Witness / Kashmir 1986-2016 / Nine Photographers , a book of photographs edited by documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak.

As the title suggests, the book contains the work of nine photographers — Meraj Ud Din, Javeed Shah, Dar Yasin, Javed Dar, Altaf Qadri, Sumit Dayal, Showkat Nanda, Syed Shahriyar and Azaan Shah. Kak, who has made several award-winning documentaries such as In the Forest Hangs a Bridge (1999) and Words on Water (2002), presents them as witnesses and their photographs as testimonies to the story of Kashmir. In Urdu, the word for witness and martyr is the same, shaheed . Even though Kak introduces the book with this definition, his undertaking is more “documentary” and arises out of a need to give voice to a set of traumatic experiences that are constantly on the verge of lapsing into silence and erasure.

There are a few images where the militant’s body is cast as that of a martyr’s. In Dar Yasin’s ‘Funeral of militant / Pehlipora / 2016’, for instance, the body of Waseem Malla, of Hizbul Mujahideen, is wrapped in a red blanket and appears Christ-like. The skyline is littered with the silhouettes of men who have climbed sparse trees to get a glimpse of the militant/martyr. But mostly, the images capture violence and grief not so much in its mindlessness but in its incomprehensibility. In two consequent photographs by Altaf Qadri we see the plight of Kashmiri policemen. In ‘Policeman wounded in attack / Srinagar / 2006’, a cop holds on to his cap in one hand and his rifle in the other as two civilians drag him to safety; his bleeding leg cannot support him. In the next image, ‘Policeman and injured shopkeeper / Srinagar / 2008’, another cop clutches a stick fashioned out of tree branch in one hand and the shirt sleeve of the bleeding body of a civilian in the other. In both instances, their helpless wrath is directed to an entity outside the frame. Their uniforms give them neither the power to protect themselves nor those around them. Instead, they too become bodies that will be broken because we all seem confused about what freedom means.

Even though the book begins with the photographs of Meraj Ud Din (b. 1959) taken in 1986 and ends with those by Azaan Shah (b. 1997) in 2016, it does not offer a linear or cohesive narrative. The images appear as disparate utterances, conveying sometimes an uneasy silence and at other times the howls of grief. What ties it all together is the story behind how each of the nine became witness-photographers. Written thoughtfully and with honesty, their experiences allow us to understand how in extraordinary circumstances, instead of fleeing or fighting, some of us are compelled to become storytellers.

Very tellingly, the stories of women are missing. There are several images of women mourning, protesting, praying or simply walking down a quiet lane. There is the distraught image of Niloufer’s husband and her crying son (‘Shakeel and his son Suzain / Shopian / 2009’ by Sumit Dayal) but she, of course, is missing. Niloufer and Asiya were sisters-in-law who were allegedly abducted, raped and murdered by security forces in May 2009 and became known to the world as the ‘Shopian rape and murder cases’.

Every conflict plays itself out on the bodies of women but these bodies are forever missing and their voices reduced to the grieving cries of mothers and wives. This is not a shortcoming of Witness but a testimony to how well-oiled systems of violence are.

Syed Shahriyar writes that till a few years ago, photographers used to position themselves on the side of the protesters to take pictures. But that changed after 2013, when the State began using pellet guns indiscriminately. The perspective of the photograph may have changed but the photographers are well aware that they are part of the story. “In my case the story has no limits,” Altaf Qadri writes about his work in Kashmir, “I belong to it.”

Witness / Kashmir 1986-2016 / Nine Photographers is published by Yaarbal, an imprint of Octave Communications Pvt Ltd. In New Delhi, limited copies of the book are available with Midland Books, Aurobindo Place Market, at a special price of ₹2,400. To order it online, visit www.facebook.com/witnesskashmirbook/

Blessy Augustineis an art critic based in New Delhi

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