It was during 19th century when Kashmir Valley became a new touristic paradise. Called by some
the “Switzerland of South-Asia” due to its incredible landscape full of forests, mountains and rivers,
it has became nowadays more like the “Palestine of South-Asia”. Teenagers clash almost every day
with indian military police, throwing stones and shouting 'Free Kashmir', which reminds of course
to the palestinian intifada.
For more than fifty years, this land inhabited by more than four million people, is a land of fight and
difficulties of any kind for the muslim population, around 95% of them.
Stories of murders, tortures and disappeared, are difficult to believe when one is drinking saffron tea
at the touristic Dal lake in Srinagar. Everything seems quiet and heavenly while the little boats carry
children to school and mothers come back with groceries from the market. But if one dares to walk
in the old part of the town one Friday after the praying, he would find the clashes between the
young Kashmirs and the indian military police. Some of these teenagers tells you how their friends
died last year during these clashes because the indian used real bullets instead of marble balls.
Others show, almost with pride, the bullet wounds in their arms and legs.
All of them cover their faces and ask not to be photographed. They are afraid of military police
going to their homes at night searching for them.
Funded by some radical political parties and supported by mosques prayers, part of the population
live deep absorbed in the constant fight. The rest try simply to live outside of the problems, trusting
that one day agriculture and tourism will flourish again, even under indian rule.
Daily life in Srinagar shows a city that doesn't stop despite of the difficulties. While the fightings
break through the tranquility in this paradise, its inhabitants continue to bathing in the lake, going to
markets and praying at the mosques. Only during curfews people would stop their activities. Except
for going to the mosque. Indian authorities know very well that forbidding it would create ever far
worse popular clashes. In the other hand, is the mosques where people organize themselves,
exchange news, and decide to continue fighting.
Kashmir is not only a strategic point in the map, it's part of the collective imagination which
extends further than politics, it's a crystallization of the ideas that led to Pakistan and India to its
infinite separation.