Kashmir: a long winding road to freedom

ABSTRACT Questions of political allegiance between India and Pakistan have turned Kashmir into one of the most militarised zones in the world. Although antagonism between India and Pakistan vis-à-vis Kashmir is predicated on territorial disputes, the Kashmir Valley since the end of the British rule in India in 1947 has struggled with the contentious issues of identity, freedom, armed intrusions, often resulting in mass murders, and illegal arrests of its people. Although independent documentary film-makers address these issues, and thus offer a complicated history and politics of Kashmir, Iffat Fatima, perhaps as the only independent woman documentary film-maker based in Kashmir, engages a wide-ranging issues including enforced disappearances, politics of memory/remembrance, resistance, neo-national ideologies, ‘states of exception’ in her films. Unlike the usual male dominated conflict zones, protests in Kashmir are characterized by its resisting and protesting women. In boldly articulating Kashmiri experiences through her independent films, Fatima foregrounds women’s participation as an essential aspect of Kashmiri protest producing different outcomes and relations. Situating herself in such a precarious space, Fatima in the interview at hand discusses her filmic self, her engagement with resistance movements in Kashmir, and women’s protest movements in Kashmir.