Kashmir: Paradise Lost

By Martin A. Sugarman. Sugarman Productions, 1994, 144 pp. 140 plates. List: $32.95; AET: $24.95.

Reviewed by Rafique Kathwari

John Milton's words, "No light, but rather darkness visible" serve as a caption for the opening paragraph. A young boy clenching his lips walks briskly under an ashen sky, the shell-struck rubble of brick buildings and corrugated tin littering his path as smoke rises in the background. This could be the Balkans but for the clothes the boy is wearing—plaid pants and the unmistakable pharen (a loosely tailored cape)—that define the geography of the shot. It sets the tone for this brave book of black-and-white photographs by Martin Sugarman, a respected independent journalist who recently visited both parts of Kashmir: the Valley, controlled by India, and "Azad" (Free) Kashmir, under Pakistan's control.

Sugarman's photographs show the death and destruction wrought by over four years of India's brutal response to the armed militancy of Kashmiri youth seeking independence. Thirty thousand men, women and children have died in Kashmir during the past four years, 10 times more than have died in Northern Ireland during the past 25.

It is not only a lost paradise, but also a loss of innocence that Sugarman portrays. Such losses are captured, and framed, in a self-explanatory moment, evoking the French master of photography Henri-Cartier Bresson.

The many photographs of children are the most compelling. A boy stands by his father's grave, his hand resting on the grave marker as he looks fiercely straight at the lens. A boy with a gunshot wound being treated at the Bone and Joint Hospital, Srinagar, throws his head back in an agonized scream; a naked emaciated child lying in a hospital bed stares blankly at the ceiling; a rag serves as a diaper for a wounded infant with bandaged eyes at the Children's Hospital.

Interspersed with this Miltonian darkness are haunting visions of paradise. Lonely Shikaras (gondolas) with heart-shaped oars moored under a grand Chinar on the banks of the Dal Lake; terraced rice fields fenced by naked poplars, their tips touching the horizon; young girls dancing on the pebbled shores of Gandarbal Lake; the head groundskeeper at the Shalimar Gardens offering the photographer flowers.

Aside from several pages of editorial introduction at the beginning of the book, there is no text other than a one-line caption for each photograph. Ruins of ancient Hindu temples stand beside burned-out Muslim mosques. A street vendor sells pomegranates near an Indian army bunker.

You must involve your own emotions and read into the photographs what you will, for they tell a thousand tales. For instance, just one photograph tells the entire story of 45 years of economic progress and social development in Kashmir under India's control: in a room that is barely nine feet wide, daylight filters through two windows at either end. Steel-rimmed twin beds rest underneath each window. There are plastic sheets on the beds, but no pillows. Two steel nightstands separate the beds. One nightstand is dented, and both are heavily rusted. The strip-sign on the dirt-stained, bare wall between the windows reads, in Urdu, "Smoking is not permitted," and the book's photo caption reads, "Intensive care unit, S.M.H.S. Hospital, Srinagar."

Sugarman uses his shutter-release finger effectively, having put his own life in grave danger to bring the stark reality of heaven and hell home for all freedom-loving people everywhere. It all is here: faith, hope, beauty, tragedy. The eyes speak more eloquently than the lips.

Rafique Kathwari is a Kashmiri-American businessman who has lived in the New York City area for the past two decades.

Editor's note: Kashmir: Paradise Lost is available at a promotional price of $24.95 either from the AET Book Club or through the Kashmir Human Rights Foundation, P.O. Box 361220, Los Angeles, CA 90035-9420.