Chronicles from Kashmir

Front matter

hronicles from Kashmir An Annotated, Multimedia Script

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Contents

Videos: Chronicles from Kashmir vii GLOSSARY ix Introduction: Chronicles from Kashmir xi Summaries and Deconstructions 1 The Schedule 19 The Journey Begins 21 Scene 0: Framing the Experience 25 Scene One: The Experiment 31 Scene Two: The Departure 47 Scene Three: The Man & the Woman 55 INSTALLATION A 67 Scene Four: The Artists 75 Scene Five: The Puppets 85 INSTALLATION B 89 Scene Six: The Incarcerated 95 Scene Seven: The Soldiers 101 Scene Eight: The Argumentation Cultures 109 The First Coalition 115 Scene Nine: The Sikhs 119 Scene Ten: The Apples 125 INSTALLATION C 127 The Second Coalition 131 Scene Eleven: The Village-City Love Affair 133 A WEDDING and a CURFEWED NIGHT 139 Scene Twelve: The Mirrors & a Poetic Lament 147 The Third Coalition 155

Scene Thirteen: The Pelters 157 vi Chronicles from Kashmir

Scene Fourteen: The Banalities 161 Scene Fifteen: The Time 165 INSTALLATION D 171 Scene Sixteen: The Women 175 Scene Seventeen: The Game Show 179 INSTALLATION E 187 Scene Eighteen: The Hideout 193 Scene Nineteen: The Return 199 Scene Twenty: The Seesaws 205 Scene Twenty-One: The Disappeared & the Police 209 Scene Twenty-Iwo: The Hope 221 The Last Coalition 225

Bibliography 231

Videos: Chronicles from Kashmir

1. The Condensed, Two-Hour, Film: http://hdl.-handle.net/20.500.12434/ 7£37b8b1

The Beginning: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/26fe800f The Experiment: http: //hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/cbac2e87 The Departure: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/ab436b9e The Man & the Woman: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/324ada06 The Artists: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/f5dde0b9 The Incarcerated: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/69cf0a75 The Soldiers: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/8afdb7fe The Argumentation Cultures: http://hdlhandle.net/20.500.12434/97a54d49 10. The Apples: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/619424ff 11. The Village City Love Affair: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/3afc6f47 12. The Wedding: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/fe68a6bd 13. The Curfewed Nights: a. Part 1: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/e9252776 b. Part 2: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/49c94c02 14. The Pelters: http://hdlhandle.net/20.500.12434/20d5d863 15. The Banalities: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/3d6ef2d4 16. The Game Show: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/589ed14c 17. The Hideout: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/78d379e1 18. The Return: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/092182ab 19. The Disappeared & the Police: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/55ba313b 20. The Hope: http://hdl-handle.net/20.500.12434/55ba313c

GLOSSARY

Aam: Mango

Aam aadmi and aurat: Common man and woman

Anaar: Grapes

Arre: Hey

Asalaam alaikum: May peace be upon you

Beta: Son (colloquially used as the equivalent of “my dear”)

Bhand Pather: Traditional folk theatre of Kashmir

Billi: Cat

Chalo: Let’s go (literally) or Alright (colloquially)

Chooha: Mouse

Dastarkhaans: Long cloth that is set on the floor/table in order to serve food Dil toh chahta hai: The heart wants it

Dupatta: A type of scarf

Halaat: The condition/the situation

Hartal: A strike

Hijab: Scarf worn by Muslim women

Ikhwan: Armed militia that are sponsored by the Indian government Insh’Allah: If it is the will of God/ God willing

Jahaaz: Ship

Janab: Your Excellency (a colloquialism that is used to connote respect, regardless of the gender of the person being addressed)

x Chronicles from Kashmir

Kaun Banega Crorepati: Who wants to be a millionaire?

Kehewa: A tea preparation that is particular to Kashmir Kharghosh: Rabbit

Kurta: A tunic

Mehandi: Henna

Mohalla: Neighborhood

Namaskar: Greetings

Nimaaz: The ritualistic prayer that is performed by Muslims five times a day Pangas: Colloquial term to refer to picking fights

Patang: Kite

Pheran: A type of tunic that is particular to Kashmir

Raat: Night

Rabab: A stringed instrument that is used in various Asian contexts Rouf: A folk-dance form performed by women in Kashmir Rotis: A kind of bread

Saab: Sir

Samar: Fruit

Tamatar: Tomato

Titili: Butterfly

Topi: A hat that functions as a marker of one’s identity Walaikum asalaam: And may peace be upon you as well Wanvun: A style of choral singing that is particular to Kashmir

Wazwaan: A multi-course meal that is particular to Kashmir, served during celebratory occasions

Yakhni: A yogurt-based dish that is particular to Kashmiri cuisine

Zaalim: Oppressor

Introduction: Chronicles from Kashmir

B. B. Yasir

Exploring the legitimate scope and space for theatre in a conflict zone like Kashmir is an extremely uphill task. It involves many social, cultural, religious, political and economic challenges, and above all, the risk to one’s life, property and reputation.

Jammu and Kashmir have been a bone of contention since 1947, when this Subcontinent was divided after the termination of British rule into two new nations — India and Pakistan. This partition also forcibly divided the multi-regional but then politically united fabric of Jammu and Kashmir State, which fractured the State geographically, intellectually, socially, culturally and politically.

After the uprising of the militancy in 1988, Kashmir has become an uncontrolled conflict zone that presents multi-dimensional socio-political and humanitarian challenges, including risk to life, prosecutions and persecutions, unabated violence, military operations, and above all, uncertainty and loss of peace in the region. While peace of mind and a peaceful atmosphere is the basis for every theatrical activity, turbulent situations like these can provide rich dramatic content.

As an “insider,” I would not like to say much about the history of this region, as my comments are likely to be treated as stemming from a biased viewpoint. Besides, Nandita (the “outsider”) has already thrown sufficient light on the subject in her introduction, with the big question: “what is happening in Kashmir?”

Being a theatre professional and a Kashmiri nationalist, I have long felt it to be my moral obligation to give new impetus to the theatre movement of Kashmir and to carve a legitimate space for theatre after a dark era during 1990-2005. Thus my decision to establish the Ensemble Kashmir Theatre Akademi — EKTA (School of Drama & Repertory) in 2006, as a step forward in that direction. EKTA soon went on to become recognized as a national institution; the first of its kind in Kashmir.

In 2012, Nandita Dinesh — who had gone through a tough experience during her first visit to Kashmir in 2011, which had made her desperately sick and reluctant to return at first — came to see me at EKTA in Srinagar, referred to me by one of my students, who happened to be a college professor. After hearing about her work and

© Bhawani Bashir Yasir, CC BY 4.0 https: //doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0223.37 xii Chronicles from Kashmir her wish to collaborate with EKTA as part of her doctoral project, we embarked on a multi-year collaboration.

Itis important to remark here that providing a platform for an outsider is extremely challenging in Kashmir due to potential security risks and suspicions of secret agendas. But given my commitment to the theatre, I decided to take on these risks and to provide space open for Nandita to work with the artistes of EKTA, without putting any restrictions or limitations on the work. The only suggestion I made was that we had to be very careful about the sensitivities and sensibilities of people in Kashmir when dealing with their unimaginable suffering, while approaching the subject with honesty and constructing/deconstructing the content of the play. Such conversations formed the basis of the characters Guide #1 and Guide #2 in the play, representing the insider and the outsider views that were present at every step of the creation of “Chronicles of Kashmir”.

While Nandita explains the process in detail in this book, I would like to draw your attention to some important points:

1. Being “insiders” who have lived the conflict, our Kashmiri actors and audience could easily connect with the content of the play and its immersion in everyday life in Kashmir.

2. When performing in Kashmir, every scene — however much we tried to be indirect — was immediately connected to someone’s real-life experience.

3. During the process of revealing some concealed realities of Kashmir, about which I happened to be a first-hand source, the actors and the audience often reacted furiously towards Nandita and me, and suspected that we had some secret agenda.

4. There were big questions raised, even among my friendship circles within the theatre fraternity, concerning my collaboration with an (Indian) outsider who could not be deemed as “trustworthy”. On many occasions, even my actors and members of EKTA asked: why are we doing such a project?

5. In spite of having been a leading pro-freedom activist, in many political and public circles I was viewed suspiciously for my approach to theatre activities that were unconventional.

6. It was also a big challenge to maintain consistency of performance in this multi-year project. Every stage included a gap of one year, and there were always new additions of content, concepts, thoughts, audiences and artists — but we did not let the spine of the play break.

From 2012 to 2014, the play was performed at the EKTA campus and all of the scenes were set in different rooms and spaces. Most of the scenes were very intense, but the movement of the audience from one space to another allowed them a sigh of relief to prepare for the next powerful scene. I don’t mean that the audience was alienated

Introduction: Chronicles from Kashmir xiii from the play, as Brecht has put it, but that moving from one space to another provided them with time to connect with the action intellectually.

However, the final live performance of the play at a theatre space in Kamshet, Maharashtra, was a bitter experience in comparison with the performances in Kashmir. Ido not understand why a group of high-profile police officers raided the campus, and although they did not actively disturb our performance, their arrival disturbed the audience mentally and added to the intensity of the play. It showed us all how the word “Kashmir” is disturbing for Indian authoritarian rulers.

I am sure this play will be a new milestone in the landscape of world theatre in general, and a landmark in the evolution of the contemporary theatre of Kashmir, in particular. I feel proud to be part of it, as co-author and a lead actor.

Bhawani Bashir Yasir Srinagar-Kashmir (J&K) Pin-190005, India.

What is happening in Kashmir?

A deceptive simple query to which there are no simple answers.

Like other complex issues that leave their considerers perplexed for stretches of time, the answer to the question “What is happening in Kashmir?” depends on a range of factors. It depends on who is being asked the question. It depends on who is doing the asking. It depends on the context in which the question is being asked — the place, the time, the perceived intentionality, and the audience.

Answering a question about what is happening in Kashmir is complicated because there are myriad ways in which the region’s story has been told and re-told. To choose only one of these versions would give the reader an incomplete picture; it would create a false sense of certainty about a conundrum that has perplexed the finest of minds, for decades.

So, in an attempt to highlight the polyvocality that has been so crucial both to Chronicles from Kashmir’s development and to my own understanding of the region, there follows a less-than-conventional approach to framing Kashmir’s historical and contemporary socio-political condition. In this less-than-conventional approach, a one-paragraph summary of the conflict is deconstructed, in order to performatively communicate the various layers of what has happened/ is happening/ is understood as happening in the region of Kashmir.

Before going into the summary and its deconstructions, I have to tell the reader that my knowledge of these different layers of Kashmir’s condition stems primarily from formal interviews and informal conversations with a range of individuals within and outside Kashmir, with a healthy sprinkling of archival research. My process of understanding Kashmir’s history has been theatre-based, subjective, and fragmented, and it is precisely this lens that I would like to share with the reader of this book. So, embrace the subjectivity that follows. It is intentional; it is problematic; it is, to me, more real than any declarations of certainty and fact when it comes to understanding Kashmir.’

1 Readers who would like a more scholarly starting point to explore Kashmir’s histories are encouraged to consider the range of reading material that has been included in the Installations and referenced in the Bibliography. It is not in line with the ethos of this work to make a prescriptive suggestion about where one should begin — so use your discretion; pick your starting point!

Since one version of events is not an option, let’s start with a very general summary — a summary that can then be pulled apart.

1. Perhaps the most well-known version of Kashmir’s history is the one in which recent conflicts are described as being rooted in the Partition of 1947, when the Hindu ruler of a majority Muslim region initially refused to join either of the newly created nation-states of India or Pakistan.

2. This initial refusal changed when Pakistani forcesinvaded Kashmir a few years later, causing the Hindu ruler to approach India for assistance — assistance that was offered on the condition that Kashmir would accede to the Indian nation-state.

3. The Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is said to have assured Kashmiris that this accession would be temporary and last only until law and order returned to the region.

4. This assurance also included a promise that, when law and order returned to the region, a plebiscite would be held so that the people of Kashmir could decide their fate.

5. Would they want to join India? Pakistan? Or function as an independent nation-state?

That’s the reductive, less complex version. But now, let’s break those ideas apart, shall we?

1. Perhaps the most well-known version of Kashmir’s history is the one in which the conflicts are described as being rooted in the Partition of 1947, when the Hindu ruler of a majority Muslim region initially refused to join either of the newly created nation-states of India and Pakistan.

e There are others who say that the region of Kashmir — comprised of Jammu, the parts of the Kashmir Valley that are currently within Indian borders, Ladakh, the parts of the Kashmir Valley that are currently within Pakistani borders, Gilgit, and Baltistan — has never been conflict-free. According to this view, there have always been conflicts between the different groups inhabiting Kashmir, and many of today’s tensions existed much before Partition. It is the historical conflicts, these opinion-holders suggest, that underpin the ongoing stalemate that exists when it comes to solving the region’s problems.

e There are others who say that the region was, historically, a centre of religious syncretism and that it is the communal agendas of India and Pakistan that have caused a seemingly unresolvable situation in which positions are being drawn based on religious lines. In this view, the religion of the ruler during Partition was politicized in relation to the religious composition of his citizens — a politicization that has since rendered a chasm across the region and the subcontinent. Part of the argument that is contained within this narrative is that Kashmiris have historically been unique; different; embodying a Kashmiriyat (Kashmiri-ness, for the lack of a better translation) that has been threatened by forces of communalism. So, for those who agree with this view, all the regions of Jammu and Kashmir belong together, as an autonomous nation-state. Kashmiris are not, and have never been, Indian or Pakistani.

There are those who say that the region of Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan as soon as Partition occurred. And that it was the placement of power in the hands of minority groups that did not allow this natural affiliation to take place.

Then, there are the arguments that fall somewhere between all of the above.

2. Thisinitial refusal changed when Pakistani forces invaded Kashmir a few years later, causing the Hindu ruler to approach India for assistance — assistance that was offered on the condition that Kashmir would accede to the Indian nation-state.

Could the event be called an invasion if scores of people in the region wanted to join Pakistan to begin with, but were disallowed because of their Hindu ruler?

And if it wasn’t an invasion, what was it?

How might we interpret India’s involvement at the behest of a monarch, rather than his citizens?

Did the Hindu ruler truly come to India for temporary assistance? Or did he, knowing that his citizens would otherwise never agree to an accession to India, use Pakistani aggression as an excuse for accession?

What are the ethics of the Indian Prime Minister’s offer, in asking for an agreement of such massive gravity, at a time when Kashmir’s ruler had his back against a wall?

Then, there are the questions that are offshoots and derivatives of all of the above.

3. Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is said to have assured Kashmiris that this accession would be temporary and last only until law and order returned to the region.

e Some speak to a continued involvement by the Indian government in perpetuating Kashmir’s turmoil precisely to prevent the return of law and order. After all, if law and order never return to Kashmir, the pre-conditions for the plebiscite will never be met.

e The counterargument that is offered here, of course, is that law and order are never achievable because of Pakistan’s involvement in the region (not India’s).

e Who would decide that law and order have come to prevail in Kashmir? Would that status need to be decided and verified by the UN? Or would it be a status that needs to be declared and agreed upon by the governments of India and Pakistan (and China, for the parts of Ladakh that fall within its control)?

e Then, there are the questions that are offshoots and derivatives of all of the above.

4. Anassurance that also included a promise that, when law and order returned to the region, a plebiscite would be held so that the people of Kashmir could decide their fate.

e Even in the unlikely event that a plebiscite is under consideration, which Kashmiris are we talking about? The Kashmiris who live in the Valley that is under Indian administration? Does that also include the citizens of Hindu-dominated Jammu and Buddhistmajority Ladakh? Does the pool of plebiscite respondents also include the Kashmiris who live in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Gilgit, and Baltistan? What about the Kashmiris who live in the part of Ladakh that is contested by China? What about the huge Kashmiri Diaspora that now inhabits regions across the world, many of whom — the Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) in particular — are said to have been driven out of the Valley in fear for their lives? When we talk about carrying out a plebiscite, which Kashmiris are we referring to?

e Who would conduct the plebiscite? How would it be implemented? Who would monitor the results? What would be the plan for transition, for each of the possible outcomes?

e Then, there are the questions that are offshoots and derivatives of all of the above.

5. Would they want to join India? Pakistan? Or function as an independent nation-state?

e What options are on the ballot for the plebiscite (should it ever happen)?

e Some say that Kashmiris only get to choose between India and Pakistan. Others insist that there is, and always has been, a third option: an autonomous Kashmiri nation-state.

e And if all these conundrums weren't enough, in August 2019, the Indian government revoked an Act that gave the region of Jammu & Kashmir special status in the Indian constitution — an Act that ensured that the complexities surrounding the resolution of Kashmir’s conflicts were acknowledged, albeit symbolically. With this Act’s revocation, Kashmir’s fate has become even more unpredictable. If Kashmir has now been absorbed into the Indian nation-state, unilaterally, is the government even bound to acknowledge that a conflict exists?

If one summary can be deconstructed in so many ways, imagine how many more summaries could be written and rewritten, deconstructed and reconstructed.

So, what is happening in Kashmir? Many, many things.

And just like the conflicts that drove its creation, there is no simplified way to speak about the evolution of Chronicles from Kashmir.

The summary is this. Between 2011 and 2018, Chronicles from Kashmir evolved:

e from being a doctoral project to becoming a longer-term undertaking;

e from being a piece with no particular durational restrictions, to becoming a 24-hour immersive experience;

e from being a play conceptualized for the theatre, to straddling the worlds of theatre, writing, film, and education.

This summary, just like the one that came before, needs to be deconstructed. This time around though, it might be easier to take the summary apart through a linear timeline.

Before doing so, I should inform the reader that I have written extensively about my work in Kashmir. And like most acts of re-telling, there are slight differences each time that I (re)tell the story. Sometimes, moments that were once considered to be essential, fade in their importance. Sometimes, occurrences that were once glossed over, seem more deserving of attention. Each time I talk about Chronicles from Kashmir — a project that has consumed my life for almost a decade — the narrative is the same, but different.

Sometime in 2009, a friend sent me a copy of Griselda Gambaro’s (1992) Information for Foreigners (IFF); the same friend who also sent me Susan Haedicke’s (2002) article about the immersive work, Un Voyage Pas Comme Les Autres Sur Le Chemins De'l Exil (Chemins). This friend clearly knew my aesthetic preferences before I could even articulate them myself.

Reading Gambaro and Haedicke struck a chord, and from the time that I encountered IFF and Chemins, I have been consumed by:

e immersive aesthetics — works that are multisensorial and alter traditional modes of engagement between audience and spectators;

e the use of the promenade — where the audience walks from one space to another rather than engaging with a performance in one, predetermined location and position;

e site-responsive strategies — where performances take place in response to unexpected spaces.

Beginning in 2009, in every theatre project that I undertook, I would try to find a way to include these elements — sometimes successfully; most of the time, not so successfully. It was a time in my practice when I could not articulate why these particular aesthetic choices spoke to me. All I knew was that they did, and that I had to explore them.

My very first visit to Kashmir was by way of Jammu, where I began my time in the region by conducting theatre workshops with young girls in a home for orphans. Jammu, I thought at the time, would be a gentler first entry to the region before jumping directly into the intensities of what was happening in Kashmir. Eventually, the administrators of this organization invited me to visit a similar home that was operated by their organization in Kashmir; a home that was a few kilometres form the border with Pakistan.

And so, I landed in Kupwara in the harshness of winter, and fell terribly sick.

Most of what I remember from that trip is through a haze of watering eyes, nose, and throat. I think I was taken to a funeral. I think I got stuck in the middle of a protest on my way to the airport. I think I got questioned by an army officer about why I wanted to visit Kashmir.

I don’t remember much. At all. My first visit to Kashmir was a complete blur.

After that not-so-great first visit, I didn’t think I would return to Kashmir. Until a colleague reached out. This colleague was visiting India from the UK and wanted to conduct a theatre workshop in Kashmir. Somehow, she convinced me that I should go with her, as a collaborator. And so, I returned.

The same organization that I had worked with the previous year agreed to host us, in a different city this time: Anantnag. And while the project got off to a very slow start, with neither of us thinking that anything more than a few theatre-games-based workshops with the young women would be possible, circumstances slowly began to shift.

Suddenly we found ourselves meeting people, running additional workshops, forming wonderful friendships, and being connected to theatre folks around the Valley — one of whom was the director of the Ensemble Kashmir Theatre Akademi (EKTA); an ensemble that would become my partner for years to come.

As these connections developed, so did my thinking about the role for theatre within the Kashmiri context. Would it be possible for Indian army soldiers to immerse themselves (theatrically) in the life of Kashmiri civilians? And if they did, would such an immersion enable them to become more empathetic in the way they carried out their jobs? Would it be possible for militants to step, theatrically, into the shoes of soldiers in the Indian army? Could Immersive Theatre, in this context, become a powerful way for Others to engage in perspectives and experiences that they had not lived themselves?

With grandiose ideas for how theatre could intervene in the region, and a newfound potential partner in EKTA, I realized that I needed to develop a critical framework to better articulate my considerations. After all, creating cross-community Immersive Theatre works in an active conflict zone needed some rigorous analysis and design. Enter the decision to pursue a doctoral project and to frame that undertaking as a theatrical exploration of the grey zones in Kashmir’s conflicts.” The grey zones — the

2 Fora detailed account of the specific trajectory of my explorations, and their positioning within the larger arena of Theatre & Performance studies, please see Theatre & War (Dinesh, 2013), available Open Access, http://www.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0099 areas of murkiness where traditional understandings of victimhood and perpetration need to be questioned — in relation to soldiers, militants, and civilians in Kashmir.

This year saw my first collaboration with EKTA and the first time that I had to systematize the process of conducting a formal workshop around Immersive Theatre. Given the newness of these challenges and partnerships, I decided to start my collaboration with EKTA by focusing on the most accessible of three identity groups that I wanted to work with: civil society.

The workshop’s focus on understanding the civilian experience in Kashmir was informed by the ensemble members in the workshop, civilians who shared various aspects of their experience with me; I realized that these experiences revealed many blurred boundaries between the more obvious identity groupings of civilian, soldier, and militant. The month-long process led to the creation an immersive performance about women’s experiences in the region; a performance entitled Pinjare (Cages) that could only admit two spectators at a time, and that was targeted toward male, Kashmiri spectators.

In addition to this focus on aestheticizing the grey zones of civilian experience, 2013 was also the year in which I started— always in consultation with my colleagues at EKTA— creating future theatrical partnerships with Kashmiri militants and with soldiers in the Indian Army. And while my attempts to reach active militants failed, my attempts to reach the army did not. A Brigadier agreed to speak with me, to chat about the potential for arts-based practices in the training of soldiers; he also agreed to attend a performance of Cages. This was all before I left Kashmir, of course. After I left, the Brigadier simply became impossible to reach.

As many project initiators do, I learned more from my failures than my successes. From my failure to reach the militants, I realized that there was no way an active militant would agree to speak with me and that even if they did, all of us would be at too much risk. From the failed conversations with the Brigadier, I eventually learned about the ways in which armies tend to isolate themselves. From intense conversations with audience members of Cages, I slowly began to unpack the sheer extent of the politics in which I was embroiled by my very presence in Kashmir: as a woman; as an Indian.

When I returned to EKTA in 2014, the goal was to figure out how to include the voices of militants, when active militants would not or could not engage with me. I quickly realized that former militants were perhaps the only group that would be able/willing to meet with me; creating material for a Documentary Theatre piece about former militants thus became the focus of that year’s collaboration with EKTA.

Upon connecting with an organization that works for the welfare of former militants, two EKTA actors and I travelled to parts of Kashmir I had never been to before: homes that lay inside small villages; homes that were far away from witnesses; homes in which former militants talked to me about their particular experiences. They described why they had joined the militancy; what they were fighting for; why they had decided to leave.

I did all of this not realizing that I was stepping into a veritable minefield. That listening to the voices of these men and their wives, as an Indian woman, was going to spark reactions that I did not even know to expect, let alone predict. Although the process of creating Meri Kahani Meri Zabani (My Story, My Words; MKMZ) was incredibly rewarding for myself and for the actors — and seemingly for the folks we had interviewed — things changed quickly, intensely, and in a volatile fashion.

The man who was my primary contact in facilitating interviews with the former militants disappeared after the first showing of MKMZ. The post-performance discussions with audience members who had not been involved in the interviews became explosive. And quickly, I realized that I had to question both my right to tell the stories that I was telling, and my dubious decision to share those narratives with people who had borne the brunt of each other’s traumas for decades. Suddenly, I had to acknowledge the idea that the work I was making in Kashmir might not be for Kashmiri audiences; that my grandiose notions of sharing work about an Other with an Other, in that context, was impossible.

So I left EKTA that year, considering two potential target audiences for the work we were creating: an audience of young Kashmiris who might be more willing and able to engage with content about the histories of their land; an audience of non-Kashmiris, like myself, who did not have the lived experience of war and needed to learn more about the region in order to become better allies, in whatever way we could.