Kashmir

An astonishing English tourist’s view of street life in pre-partition Srinagar and Kashmir

The most heartbreaking scene in this travelogue of Kashmir is the bustling street life and intact buildings of Srinagar, which since 1947 has seen waves of violence and ongoing Indian military presence. Many of the traditional wooden houses overlooking the Dal Lake are now in disrepair, though the life of farming, gardening and trading on the lake that the film captures continues even today.

Many of the wooden houses overlooking the lake belonged to Kashmiri Pundits, who fled the valley following waves of ethnic violence throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Though some went to cities including Delhi, many remain in refugee camps in nearby Jammu, which lies within the state of Jammu & Kashmir. The Kashmir part of the state remains one of the most heavily militarised in the world, with the Indian army in situ, fighting separatist groups, and Pakistan along the ‘Line of Control’. Human rights abuses against the Kashmiri people continue; protests are met with violent reprisal from the Indian state. Preti Taneja.