The state of Kashmir holds a mythic place in the mind of India. Long known as one of the world’s most beautiful mountain valleys, since the late 1980s it has become synonymous with a political and sectarian conflict which strikes at the very heart of India’s identity.
Delhi-based Bharat Sikka travelled throughout Kashmir in 2014 and 2015, to attempt to make some sense of this troubled region through his own personal experience. Taking inspiration from Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator, which tells the story of a young Kashmiri man’s struggle with his own sense of self buffeted by the exigencies of history and the present, the resulting project is a meditation on the rich, green landscape and those who have lived and struggled within it.
