'Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir'
MACK
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PLEASURE GARDENS: BLACKOUTS AND THE LOGIC OF CRISIS IN KASHMIR Srinagar sits on the floor of a valley surrounded by mountains and large, mirror-like lakes. Dal Lake is flanked by the Zabarwan Range, and at night, as the mountains slip into darkness, a string of lights is switched on along a southern slope. This glittering perimeter hovers above the city skyline, and marks the boundary of Badami Bagh Cantonment, one of the largest army camps in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IOK), established in 1954. The camp is difficult to access, drive past, or photograph. It cannot be visited without special passes. Badami Bagh is sometimes in the news: soldiers committing suicide, allegations of sexual assault by military personnel on Kashmiri women, Kashmiris taken in for interrogation and disappearing. As rumours down in Srinagar have it, the camp has a multiplex, shopping mall, and paved roads. Each year, the lights steal higher up the mountain. ‘Badami Bagh’ means ‘Garden of Almonds’ in Urdu. It used to be an orchard of almond, walnut, and Chinar trees. The Dal-facing slopes of the Zabarwan still carry the remnants of Mughal pleasure gardens, and pink almond blossoms dapple this landscape in the spring. The first Kashmiri pleasure gardens were cultivated in the fourteenth century under Persian influence, and restyled during the time of the Mughals. Fountains pour into stone-lined waterways, and tree-decked terraces are staggered along mountainous slants. But here, at the site of Badami Bagh, the garden is overwhelmed by crisscrossing roads, tin-roofed barracks, mess halls, war memorials, and temples. Soldiers in military fatigues rest, strategise and train within the camp’s perimeter, which is marked by several layers of barbed wire, dug-out bunkers, checkpoints, and patrols with automatic rifles. Seema Kazi, a researcher who visited Badami Bagh in 2004, describes entering the camp and finding it to be a ‘dark, forbidden place of torture, fear, and death – a place where the disappeared were seen before they disappeared, a space of dark deeds’. On 10 September 1990, the Indian central government issued The Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (1990), or AFSPA, a region-specific law that grants ‘special powers’ to members of the Indian armed forces. The act allows military, air, and land forces to declare an area as ‘disturbed’ should there be suspicions of ‘terrorist’ activities, or events aimed at ‘disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India’ (including, for example, ‘causing insult to the Indian National Flag, the Indian National Anthem and the Constitution of India’). It also allows persons of the armed forces to ‘fire upon or otherwise use force’ against an alleged perpetrator, ‘even to the causing of death’. Officers are granted permission to destroy structures suspected to be fortifications, weapons stores, or shelters, and to ‘arrest, without warrant, any person who has committed a cognizable offence or against whom a reasonable suspicion exists that he has committed or is about to commit a cognizable offence’. They may also enter spaces without warrant, search as they deem fit, seize vehicles or other property, and break open locks. In 2020 the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) released a report of their decades-long findings since the special powers were first granted. There have been at least 8,000 cases of ‘enforced disappearances’ in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since 1990. These disappearances are a tactic of intimidation, a manner by which to crush dissent or stirrings of rebellion among Kashmiri youth. 
This passage is extracted from the latest book in our DISCOURSE series, Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir, by Skye Arundhati Thomas & Izabella Scott, with photo essays by Ufaq Fatima, Nawal Ali, and Zainab. Pleasure Gardens carries out a crucial investigation into the military occupation, land appropriation, and communication blackouts in Kashmir, interrogating India’s surveillance of the area and its parallels with Israel’s occupation of Palestine. EXPLORE OTHER TITLES IN OUR DISCOURSE SERIES: 
David Campany & Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa UPCOMING EVENTS 25 June at 2220 Arts + Archives, Los Angeles. Celebrate the launch of Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema, mostly with readings from Little Joe contributors, films, and a conversation with Sam Ashby. LEARN MORE 26 June at Magenta Plains, New York. Book launch for Shirley Irons's Composition, a two-volume publication of the artist’s paintings to date. LEARN MORE 5 July at Arles Book Fair, Arles. Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez will be signing copies of Anchor in the Landscape. LEARN MORE 11 July at Rio Cinema, London. Sam Ashby will be in conversation with writer and director Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers, 45 Years, Weekend) to celebrate the launch of Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema, mostly. LEARN MORE 11 July at Bildband, Berlin. Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez will be in conversation with writer Deborah Feldman to mark the launch of Anchor in the Landscape. LEARN MORE 
VISIT OUR LOS ANGELES READING ROOM Visit us at 939 to browse copies of Sofia Coppola’s Archive, now in! 939 
VISIT MACK + BILDBAND BERLIN At our Berlin studio, explore books from MACK and SPBH Editions, including The Last Safe Abortion, Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema, mostly and Tee A. Corinne: A forest fire between us. MACK + Bildband Berlin Header image © Zainab. Zainab is a visual artist based in Kashmir, and graduated in journalism and mass communication from Women’s College, Srinagar. She is currently a practicing photojournalist and a founding member of Her Pixel Story, a Kashmir based women photographers’ collective. Her engagements with photography are mostly personal and involve documenting her experiences that arise from survival in a military occupied region. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, including at the University of Leiden, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, the 10th Breda Photo Festival and Gulf Photo Plus, UAE. She is currently a part of the 2023-24 Pathshala International Photography Programme.      MACK |
