The statement by Donald Trump whereby he declared he could mediate on Kashmir and its rejection by India follows a familiar pattern - the omission of Kashmiri voices on the future of their homeland and their own political aspirations.
As writer and journalist Mirza Wahid wrote recently in The Guardian. “Internally Kashmir has never been normal, despite the narrative push and despite the appearance of normality, scripted elsewhere and executed on the ground through security-administrative complex.” Underneath the quiet, he warns, is “dham, a quiet bruising suffocation with no space to breathe.”
The erasure of Kashmir is manifested in the way its history, culture and distinctive identity is airbrushed or then fashioned by Bollywood into a mythical backdrop for romance.
One of the few authentic cinematic voices of Kashmir is Aamir Bashir and I was able to catch his film Maagh: The Winter Within some weeks ago.
Opting for quiet, measured tones, Bashir deploys Kashmir’s famed grandeur and winter imagery or landscape to convey a state of mind rather than beauty.
He explains the title and the creative process, “I had intended to make a trilogy on Kashmir. So, starting with Harud (Autumn), (released in 2010), winter is/was the next installment.
“In the Sanskrit calendar Maagh is the coldest month in winter coinciding with Chila-e-Kalaan, (a period of 40 days characterized by the coldest temperatures and snowfall). Winter is the metaphor used to convey the occupation/state oppression.
“There is a Kashmiri expression which translates to the manner in which the cold seeps right into the bones. So, in a sense this is the metaphor used to portray the way oppression/violence has seeped into people’s lives, tearing apart the social fabric.”
The film is the story of a couple - Nargis (Zoya Hussain) and Manzoor (Manzoor Ahmad Bhat). We are shown Nargis in the city of Srinagar, working as a domestic worker, but Manzoor is missing.
In between chores, Nargis makes painstaking trips to lawyers, policemen, detention centres but is unsuccessful in locating him and forced to return home.
Late one night, in the depths of winter, Manzoor returns. But this is no joyful homecoming. Memories of what he has undergone and what will continue, have left him broken, a wreck of a man.
At a macrocosm level this is reflective, not just of the lives of this couple, but of Kashmir, a tormented land where disappearances, silences, humiliation, stripping of identity and dignity work in many layers. Its legendary beauty is inextricably tangled with oppression, vividly illustrated by the way Nargis’ exquisitely woven shawl gets stuck on the barbed wire of a military camp.
I was reminded of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats poem “Easter 1916” on the people’s uprising against the British. “All changed, changed utterly:/A terrible beauty is born.”
Although a fictitious tale, told lyrically, Bashir’s film is girded in the stark brutality of an occupation. At times the film seems like a docu drama, but the narration is nuanced. Much is suggested or takes place on the sides, not in the fury of action.
Manzoor’s “disappearance” or absence in the earlier part of the film is revelatory of a phenomenon in the nineties. An estimated 8,000 people disappeared at the height of the militancy. The state’s official response was that they were militants, mujahideen, gone across the borders for training and then engulfed in conflict.
Manzoor is one such person - someone who has been held by security forces. Then allowed to go.
Apart from militants, a vast number of unarmed civilians were also picked up for interrogation, allegedly tortured to death or killed and never seen again.
It left families, especially women with the agonizing question of what happened to their loved ones and lack of accountability by the state.
It is the question that Nargis grapples with: Where is Yaseen, (Shabir Ahmad Lone) the man who has been her silent provider of succour?
These “enforced disappearances,” as the people who vanished are officially termed, manifested in the landscape of Kashmir in the shape of mass unmarked graves. Corpses, mutilated and bloodied were handed over by security personnel to grave diggers.
The film makes a touching tribute to one such grave digger, the late Atta Mohammad. An elderly graveyard digger of Bimyar he courageously spoke out about the bloodied bodies handed to him.
The opening frames of the film carry the powerful gut-wrenching visual of a man, caressing the bloodied face of a dead man, before burying him. No names are taken, nothing is spoken, but here is the silent mourning and collective grief for these nameless victims of violence.
It is this same subtle treatment which Bashir brings to the phenomenon of torture. Torture was almost normalised, used routinely as counter insurgency and psychological warfare on both militants and civilians.
One such mode of torture was using a heavy roller on the legs of a person that then led to damage of muscles or rhabdomyolysis as it is known in medicine. It results in lasting kidney damage and incontinence.
Broken bodies and limbs were meant to convey a chilling message. There was also emasculation of the mind through threats of horrendous violence. Some men, as the film portrays, returned home scarred in soul and traumatised in mind. There was very little treatment for this inner despair and desolation.
But perhaps, the greatest hidden trauma inflicted on the close-knit community was the way society got fragmented - people were forced to become mukhbirs or informers, collaborators or those who lived off the suffering of victims like the policeman who demands huge money from Nargis but never gives the information she so desperately seeks.
Bashir explores this complex terrain and also subtly critiques society.
He speaks of why he chooses a woman, Nargis as the main protagonist of the film.
“Women often are left to pick up the pieces in a conflict, which is not of their making. I chose Nargis, a Bakarwali woman, to add another layer of marginalization and a sort of internal critique of Kashmiri society, which is oppressed but not perfect in any sense. The Gujjars and Bakarwals have had to bear the brunt of not just the state security forces, but also of the majority community’s prejudices as well. My main thrust was to show that women in general seem to have a greater commitment to the values of freedom and justice. Perhaps because they’ve had to fight against patriarchy to begin with,” he says.
“Look at Parveena Ahangar for example, an illiterate woman who has been seeking justice and closure, not just for her own son, who had disappeared at the age of 16, but for thousands of other families looking for their missing sons, fathers, brothers…”
Parveena Ahangar, is one of the founders of the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons. She used to lead the members at performative mournings in a public park demanding accountability from the state and asking, “where are our loved ones”. In 2019 state action brought its activities to a halt.
I asked Bashir about the prospects of making his third film to complete the trilogy. He pointed out that he had always found it difficult to raise funds for his films because people (outside of India) have very little knowledge about the Kashmir situation.
“So, when Maagh won the audience awards at Busan, South Korea and Nantes, France, it came as a pleasant surprise. The two audiences were very different as well. Busan has a very young, university student kind of audience, whereas Nantes had a kind of jaded older audience, who have seen it all,” he says.
“Also, I myself don’t consider my film to be particularly audience friendly. So, for it to resonate with the audiences was gratifying. Unfortunately, the film has not found any takers in India though, which says something about the state of fear in the country,” he adds.
Will there be Spring or then, will it be as a gentleman, in his seventies, recently told me, “In Kashmir one leg always seems to be stuck in winter.”
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