The Kashmir Conflict Archive

Abstract

Since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, Kashmir has become one of the most militarized regions in the world and the site of multiple wars between India and Pakistan. In 1988 the tensions in the region entered a new phase, when long-simmering discontentment amongst the Kashmiri population led to a popular and armed uprising against Indian control of the region. Out of this revolt a myriad of sometimes competing anti-state militant groups emerged seeking nationhood or merger with Pakistan. The subsequent asymmetric conflict continues to this day and has resulted in nearly 70,000 deaths and numerous human rights violations, including thousands of enforced disappearances. In addition to the corporeal and psychological toll caused by the ongoing conflict, the systematic destruction of both private and organizational collections of documents related to the war by the state has left a large lacuna in the historical record of the conflict and the remaining fragments of material scattered across a variety of private holdings. In contemporary Kashmir, institutional photographic archives preserving the history of the conflict do not exist and archival efforts continue to be suppressed due to the ongoing political issues in the region. More broadly, information blockades including internet shutdowns and limitations on the press are common in Kashmir and the population’s access to information is often heavily curtailed. In this absence, organizations and individuals have often filled the evidential void by collecting diverse forms of historical material, clandestinely preserving it, and disseminating it to the public. One of the few, and among the most notable, of these archives is the personal photographic collection of political activist Shakeel Bakshi (Figure 1). Throughout the 1990s Bakshi led or worked within various Kashmiri pro-separatist organizations including the Islamic Student League and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (Figure 2). Simultaneously he founded the Kashmir Press Agency which, along with media units with the various political and militant organizations, produced and collected a large body of conflict documentation including photographs, videos, and human rights testimony (Figure 3). However, by the mid to late 1990s, as Indian security forces and local proxies increasingly gained control over the situation on the ground, much of this material was confiscated or actively destroyed during raids (Figure 4). As a result, much of the surviving documentation