The Jaipur Lit fest is over and we are now in Kashmir. I came here last with my parents and it’s worth going back to a column I wrote then.
Kashmir 2018:
“My father, who flies in the face of fear, planned this trip to Kashmir, 95 per cent Muslim, agitating for home rule, supported by Pakistan. It is an area of unrest, shooting between armies on both sides of the border, curfews, a 700,000-army presence of Indian soldiers and Central Police who have (and regularly use) the powers to arrest, shoot and kill rebels.
The driver takes us to a deserted hotel in Srinagar where the staff look inordinately joyful at the idea of visitors, bringing freshly cut roses to our rooms.
The youthful Kashmiri hotel guide responds to my father’s query about a nearby hillstation Sonamarg. “You have to go by horse to see the glaciers,” he says in Urdu. “Better to go to Gulmarg, Western Himalayas, you can go 14,000 feet up sea level by cable. In winter it’s minus 17. Best skiing. Now, in autumn you can see 25-30 types of wild flowers.”
I don’t hear a thing. I was staring, I think. “They are very good-looking people, aren’t they?” my mother said, catching me. “Yes, they are,” I said, sipping KAWAH, green tea with saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, and rose petals proffered by a porcelain-faced beauty in a hijab.
The young man addresses me in Urdu. I freeze. On the plane over my mother said, “For God’s sake, don’t speak in Urdu. Your grammar is appalling. They will know at once that you don’t live in India.”
My Urdu is still appalling–this time I came with Teresa White, known for her formidable corporate skills but as a dear friend and literary critic who soaked up the Jaipur Lit Fest and saw the landscape and sensibility of India with an acute sensitivity.
We had just missed the snow though the remnants of the last snowfall are stamped down the mountain like rivulets.
The mountains of Kashmir rise as a witness to a conflict that has defined the region for over seven decades. Towering peaks like those of the Karakoram and Pir Panjal ranges are more than just physical features; they stand as both a natural and symbolic barrier, isolating Kashmir from the world while also framing its turmoil.
The 1947 partition of British India set the stage for this struggle, with the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, ruled by a Hindu Maharaja but with a Muslim majority, caught between two newly independent nations, India and Pakistan. When the Maharaja chose to accede to India in exchange for military aid, it sparked the first war between the two countries, ending in a ceasefire that left Kashmir divided along the Line of Control (LoC), a division that endures to this day.
The region’s mountains—high, rugged, and remote—have witnessed the harsh reality of this conflict for decades. The insurgency that erupted in the late 1980s in Indian-administered Kashmir, fueled by both local grievances and Pakistani support, is set against the backdrop of these vast ranges, their silent peaks towering above the suffering below.
The violence and instability have only deepened Kashmir’s sense of isolation, both from the rest of India and from the world beyond.
In August 2019, the Indian Government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took a decisive step to alter the region’s political status by revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special autonomy.
This move, which was implemented with a heavy military presence and a communications blackout, was seen by many as an attempt to further integrate Kashmir into India, a decision met with widespread condemnation, particularly in Pakistan and among Kashmiris.
For many, this act seemed to seal the fate of the region’s Muslim-majority population, further diminishing their autonomy and rights.
The mountains, once a symbol of the region’s mystique and isolation, now seem to loom even larger, as the people of Kashmir are left to navigate the uncertainties of their future. The towering ridges of the Karakoram and Pir Panjal no longer offer shelter, but instead cast long shadows over a land caught between competing national interests, historical grievances, and an increasingly harsh reality. Amid these imposing ranges, the struggle of Kashmir continues—a conflict born in the mountains, but shaped by the politics and passions of the world below.
Agha Shahid Ali, one of Kashmir’s most celebrated poets, often captured the tension between the beauty and pain of his homeland.
In “The Beloved”, he reflects on the deep, conflicted relationship that many Kashmiris feel toward their land. His words carry a sense of longing and exile, yet also a bittersweet attachment:
“In the end, we remain who we are: lovers of the valley, unable to leave it, unable to stay.”
This quote encapsulates the paradox of belonging to a place that, while beautiful, is fraught with complexity and sorrow.
The sharp winter air amidst pine air seems to pulse with a quiet weight. It sits between worlds—between the past and present, between hope and despair. The land is stunning in its beauty, but it is a beauty that feels haunted.
In the stillness of Dal Lake, where my friend Teresa and I drift in a shikara the water moves like silk and reflects a sky that burns with the gold of sunset, where a single eagle takes a graceful flight swooping as if to show its beauty and the possibility of a world not run down by defeat there is a haunting quality, as though time itself is caught in some ancient loop.
The people of Kashmir move through this landscape like shadows, their presence understated but significant. A shopkeeper with a familiarity that we in the West eschews pops honey-dripped apricots in our mouths.
We couldn’t refuse even though we were concerned about the hygiene of the open basket and a stranger’s hand in our mouths (probably responsible for a bout of sickness). But Kashmiris give because it’s an innate part of a culture of hospitality and tradition.
But now there is something more, something unspoken. Behind the hospitality, there is a quiet wariness, a careful avoidance of anything that might provoke.
In Srinagar, the streets are strangely subdued though people go about their business in the markets and masjids are punctuated by the heavy presence of soldiers, their rifles slung low but never out of reach, reminding me of my time in Israel decades back.
The driver tells me when he feels he can trust me that there is no work, no development, no future only a sense of occupation.
It doesn’t matter where you stand in the politics. This is a place where the hum of everyday life is interrupted by the silence of curfews and the shadow of military control.
It reminds me, in a way, of Cuba—a place where people speak only in whispers, their words measured because the wrong thing said can turn the tide of fortune in a heartbeat.
And Israel where decades back it grieved me to find soldiers standing on top of mosques pointing their machine guns at people going about their day. It’s a sense of occupation of not being allowed to be a free human.
Here in Kashmir, every conversation seems to carry the weight of something deeper, something buried beneath the surface. The people are polite, but they are also profoundly aware of the consequences of speaking their minds too freely. They know the rules of the game, and they have learned to navigate it with grace, if not without some cost to themselves.
The silence is profound here. In the absence of the internet, in the absence of easy communication with the outside world, the people of Kashmir have retreated into themselves. They go about their daily routines—selling their wares, offering their services—but always with an eye on the soldiers, always with a quiet vigilance that speaks of the constant, gnawing fear of reprisal.
Yet even in this silence, there is dignity. People offer their goods not with the frenzy of desperate salesmen, but with the calm of those who know that what they have is all they can give, and all they need.
Gliding along our shikara on the lake as we watched the dipping of a red-orange sun behind the mountains the call of prayer echoed from the mosques, a familiar, comforting sound in a place that is both sacred and scarred.
In those moments, it was as though the land itself was holding its breath, waiting for something, though none could say what that might be. Kashmir, in its ancient splendour, seemed to ask the question that has haunted it for decades: What now?
But perhaps it is in this waiting that the essence of Kashmir lies—in the quiet moments, in the lingering pain, in the hope that something will shift, that the light will break through the clouds. There is something timeless about this place, something that refuses to be entirely broken, even by decades of suffering. It is as if, in the very stillness, there is a kind of resistance—a refusal to disappear into the darkness of history.
Ira Mathur is a Guardian Media journalist and the winner of the 2023 Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction for her memoir, Love The Dark Days. Website: www.irasroom.org
Author inquiries: irasroom@gmail.com
