The ‘half negative’ and other graphic memories of legendary Kashmiri photojournalist Meraj Ud Din

“Maine kya kya nahi dekha?” What haven’t I seen? “I saw all of Lal Chowk burning. Sometimes dead bodies piled up in front of my eyes.”

Meraj Ud Din is usually soft-spoken. But as Kashmir’s legendary photojournalist and videographer unspooled decades of graphic memories, his voice took on dramatic intensity.

I had been graciously received into his home, even though his son Umar – also a videographer – had recently returned from hospital with a broken leg, an injury suffered in the frenetic action to cover a gunbattle. The conversation unfolded through a mellow afternoon, interspersed by the inevitable rolling out of the dastarkhani for a tea break.

I was struck both by the 64-year-old photographer’s wealth of experience and his rich archive of images. It was a poignant reminder of the vital role Meraj and his photojournalist colleagues play in bearing witness as members of the Kashmiri community in turbulent times and extremely complex socio-political situations.

Sometimes his entanglement with events was so tight that the photographer himself became the story. Meraj recalled one occasion when he was called to cover a parade by a tanzim, or militant outfit, and then locked up in a room because they claimed that the newspaper for which he worked favoured a rival faction.

In 1990, photographer Habib Naqash and he were detained by the police for two days because they believed he had knowledge of the whereabouts of Yasin Malik, the head of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.

Assault came with the job. An eye injury is a grim reminder of collateral damage he suffered during a protest that involved stone throwing.

Sometimes, journalistic detachment was impossible. Meraj spoke of breaking down after the Gawkadal shooting on January 21, 1990. Huge crowds of unarmed protesters had crossed the bridge in Srinagar to express their outrage against the relentless house-to- house searches the night before at Chhota Bazar and the alleged molestation of women.

The protesters were mowed down by Central Reserve Police Force personnel. At least 55 were killed.

The scenes near the police control room were horrific, said Meraj. Bodies had piled up and the paramilitary forces were clambering over them. “Main bahut roya.” he said. “Phir aadat ban gayee.” I wept a lot and then it became a habit.

Two years ago on the commemoration of the Gawkadal massacre, veteran journalist Yusuf Jameel tweeted: “Do recall colleague and ace photographer Merajuddin hitting his head with a police lorry after seeing a pile of mangled corpses, drenched in blood, still and silent, lying inside. That was in 1990. Then our hearts turned into stones.”

Meraj was introduced to photography in 1979 by a friend who ran a photo studio. He described the heady satisfaction of realising that his pictures could prompt real change. Around 1984, acting on a tip off, he had gone to a charas takiya, or marijuana den, in downtown Srinagar where young men were smoking up. These photographs, along with those of other charas dens, published in the Urdu paper, Srinagar Times, saw a quick reaction. Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah ordered the dens to be shut down.

It was a period when the press was unhindered. “Koi rukawat nahi, azadi se kaam karte the,” said Meraj. There were no restrictions. We worked freely.

Then came the late ’80s and ’90s. The contentious state elections in 1987, which many in the Valley believe were rigged, were the catalyst for armed rebellion. Years of bloody violence followed. The conflict was put down by no-holds barred counter insurgency operations.

Kashmir came into focus, viewed through both a national and international lens. Meraj, who had begun freelancing for the Kashmir Times, found his pictures in demand by the news agency PTI, Time magazine, Sunday, Outlook and many others. His pictures were often carried on the cover.

In 1993, the Hindi weekly Ravivar ran his image of the Lal Chowk arson, with people examining gutted buildings and the ruins of their places of business on its cover. Outlook’s maiden issue in 1995 also featured Meraj’s picture of militants and he shot extensively for India Today.

Pictures shot for publications outside Kashmir would be sent by air cargo or simply handed over to passengers flying to New Delhi with a request that they deliver them to someone who would pick them up from the airport.

That method was pressed back into use by Kashmiri journalists in 2019, when the internet was suspended for six months after the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Delhi abrogated the provisions in the Constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir a degree of autonomy. Digital images and articles stored on pen drives were sent out of the Valley with helpful air passengers.

The Kashmir Times operated out of an old building in Amira Kadal and the receiver of the teleprinter, which was shared by the phone line, could catch the wireless feed of the Intelligence Bureau’s office. That is how Meraj came to know of the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, by Kashmiri militants in December 1989.

It was in the ’90s that the powerful image from Kashmir began shaping and challenging official narratives. Disturbing pictures raised concerns. Photographers found themselves grappling with many knotty questions. Were they actually colluding with the security forces? Or with the subjects and their actions? When did control of the image begin?

There were few curbs during the early years of the insurgency because the security forces were engulfed in the fighting. “You could hire a car or motorbikes and take off wherever there was action,” said Meraj. “Even the foreign media. The press would often be called for a photo opportunity by militant cadres who would then strike a pose.”

As documentary film maker Sanjay Kak observes in his book Witness, Kashmir 1986-2016 Nine Photographers:

“The frame in which the photographs are placed – that of being a ‘witness’ is not a fixed one, nor is it always transparent about its position. The evidence gathered can be read in multiple complex ways. What is missing is often as telling as what exists. In the early pictures, for example, the arrangement between the photographer and the militant reflects a high degree of openness, and the images could be read as a display, what was colloquially described as a ‘gun-show’.”

He added: “But over 20 years, the counterinsurgency drove the militants deep underground, and the figure of the gun-toting rebel became a shadow. He materialised only occasionally, as a broken body in the custody of the police, or at the centre of a funeral procession becoming invisible again.”

Among the many photos Meraj shot of militants striking a pose is one of Haroon Khan, better known as “Major” Mast Gul. A militant from Peshawar belonging to the Hizbul Mujahideen, he stormed into headlines when he and militants from other groups holed up in the strategic Chrar-e-Sharief shrine in the winter of 1994. For Kashmiris, the shrine is a special place, being the hometown of the Sufi saint and preacher Sheikh Nooruddin Wali.

With Mast Gul’s forces well-entrenched, a long standoff with Indian security forces ensued. Fierce fighting over several months culminated with a mysterious fire on May 11, 1995, The shrine and 200 buildings in the town were destroyed. Some militants were detained but Mast Gul managed to escape across the border.

Meraj, who had covered the Chrar siege and the fire, explained how he gained access to the militant. As he headed towards the shrine, he was stopped in the bazaar by men of the Rashtriya Rifles forces. “But, one of the army men said we should be allowed to go as they would then at least get an inkling of what was going on, of the numbers in the shrine,” he said.

The Chrar operation has long been remembered for how messily it was handled by the bureaucrats and for the debacle it proved to be for the military. For Meraj, it marked a milestone in his career. He was asked by the Associated Press, for whom he was now working, if he had any videos. As it turned out, he did have some footage. After this, he decided to switch over to videography.

Among the photographs that Meraj showed me is one of the Hazratbal siege in Srinagar, which houses a holy relic. On October 15, 1993, two companies of the Border Security Forces surrounded the complex and began a confrontation with the militants who used to frequent the shrine.

After weeks of intense negotiations, the state allowed the militants to leave. Meraj’s photograph shows the militants with the officials, who include Wajahat Habibullah, the chief negotiator. What is of curiosity value today is the identity of the unmasked man accompanying the militants. Who is he? A middleman? One among the many civilians who were also said to be trapped in the shrine?

In Meraj’s frame line, this siege weighed in because of the repercussions that followed – the Bijbehara massacre and the story of the “half negative”.

With news that the army had surrounded Hazratbal, angry protests had broken out all over Kashmir. On October 22, after the Friday prayers in Bijbehara town, residents began to protest on the highway. Border Security Force troops opened fire. At least 43 were killed and more than 200 injured.

The next day, the media rushed to the site but the army got into an altercation and began opening their cameras, destroying the images by exposing the film to the light. Meraj, who had three cameras, managed to quickly shut one of them and salvage the film. One image became famous and was reproduced extensively.

This “half negative” of a soldier standing amidst abandoned footwear stands testimony to the violence of the day. It tells of the crowds that ran helter skelter as bullets rained down on them. The other half, an exposed strip of yellow, reflects the attempt to kill any record of the tragedy.

“I escaped a beating,” Meraj said. “I remember an Indian journalist loudly exclaiming she was related to General Joshi and the security personnel retaliating, ‘Aaj main general hu’.” Today, I am the general.

Whilst journalists would face restrictions ever so often, the situation really began to darken with the arrival of the Ikhwanis, Kak said in a conversation with me. These renegade militants, who had the protection of the state, had absolutely no accountability and did not respect established norms. They abducted residents, raped women, killed hospital staff with impunity and were – naturally – no respecters of the media.

Meraj’s experience with the Ikhwanis in 1995 came because they had mistaken him for the prominent journalist Zafar Meraj. He accompanied Harinder Baweja of India Today for an interview with Kuka Parray, who led the Ikhwani outfit Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon. “He had agreed to pose for pictures and answer some questions put to him,” Meraj said. “He kept asking me my name but I didn’t give it much thought.”

But as the two journalists were returning home after the interview, they were ambushed by some four men. “One of them yelled, ‘Saamne bahar aah jao,’ [Come out and stand in front],” Meraj said. “I thought it was a dacoity and put all the money I had at the bottom of the car. The men kept asking me if I was Zafar Meraj and were trying to drag me away. Harinder was screaming at them and finally they let me go, realising I was not the man they wanted.”

A fact that is etched sharply in his mind is that though some policemen were in a bus close by, they chose not to intervene.

“I warned Zafar who had worked with me in Kashmir Times and some months later Parray’s men shot him in the abdomen and left him to die in a spot close to where we had been ambushed,” Meraj said. “Zafar Meraj though courageously managed to crawl and get help and survived.”

It was not just kidnappings, abductions, arson and shootouts. Civilians faced the whiplash of counter-insurgency operations that included cordon-and-search operations. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act enables troops to enter homes, conduct searches for militants and ammunition and even destroy or kill if a threat is perceived.

Two pictures shared by Meraj capture the trauma of homes being desecrated and privacy being violated. The first image, he explained, is of three generations in a family in the courtyard of their home. As armed troops stand by, the family waits for the search to get over and the outsiders to leave. Two little girls are nestled under the protective gaze of a bespectacled man, their father. An elderly woman – the man’s mother – sits a little distance away.

There is an older man with a beard and cap standing with the soldiers. He was, I was told, an elder of the neighbourhood who had been asked to accompany the troops on their mission, probably to ensure nothing untoward happened.

In later years, the practice of bringing a member of the local community to these searches began to take on different aspects. Small children would be told to accompany troops and to peep through a window and see if anyone was in the room. A young man could be ordered to go ahead of the troops, to enter a room and draw the curtains aside, sanitising the way ahead. Many Kashmiris say they now believe they were being used as human shields.

In Witness, Kak describes how he and Meraj went back to the very same house where the photo was shot so many years ago and met with Ghulam Rasool, the man in the centre of the photograph. Rasool could not recall the date, choosing to say, “It was a time of such khauf ”, fear.

“It is interesting to note how people may forget many details but the persistent image in memories of crackdowns is that of the boots worn by the soldiers and how they entered homes in it,” Kak said.

Many women also told me of their distress over the invasion of their domestic spaces because soldiers “joote nahi uttar teh”. They don’t take off their footwear before entering homes.

Meraj’s second image of the crackdown is of the troops indoors, examining a neatly wrapped package. Women spoke about how wounding it was when their intimate items came under a hostile masculine gaze. Sometimes, they said, there was vandalism. Kitchens were ransacked, grains poured out and vessels smashed.

Another feature of the counter-insurgency operations was the indefinite curfews. The sight of troops and armoured vehicles occupying every small lane and the inability to step outside the confines of home, except for a few hours, for days on end would take a heavy toll on mental health.

Meraj’s photo of one such curfew was taken in January 1990, shortly after Jagmohan took over as the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. It is around the same time as the Gawkadal massacre. What is clear from the image is that it was an extremely volatile and tense time. The exodus of the Pandits from the Valley occurred during this period.

But there are few photographs of the departure – an inexplicable gap in the documentation of the period. It is only much later that photojournalists began shooting images of elegant abandoned Pandit homes, which stand witness to the exodus.

A photograph’s appeal or ability to speak can be difficult to explain and Meraj confesses he does not know why some of his images garnered so much attention. In one instance, he said, he had shot a picture of a protest rally to the Srinagar office of the United Nations Military Observers Group India and Pakistan. It depicted a man carrying a little boy dressed in a shroud. The shroud was intended to convey a political statement.

Later, a German journalist said he simply had to have a copy and from an initial offer of Rs 500 he said he would pay Rs 5,000 – a large sum in those days.

Seen today, the photograph captures historic realities that have become blurred over the years. It is a reminder that the Kashmiris have sought an international perspective on a resolution for the dispute since the United Nations in 1948 called a plebiscite to be conducted by the two governments of India and Pakistan, acting in cooperation. The vote never took place. Since then, Kashmiris have organised “UN Chalo” marches to this office.

For Mehraj, the money he earned from his photographs was only a secondary consideration. He was driven by the compulsion to shoot and tell the story. “Sometimes it could be the security forces or then even the public who did not want the picture,” he said.

Only once was he assailed by self-doubt. “It was after the blast outside the Assembly in 2001,” he said. “I saw the dead bodies and the thought flashed through my mind: I should be helping. I put down my camera. I even helped carry one body. But then came another thought. Nahi yeh toh dikhana hai. [No, this has to be shown] and I resumed shooting.”

The interview is almost done. We have been in flashback mode.

The disquiet over the role of the photojournalist in current times stayed unspoken. Meraj confessed with regret, “Koi majha nahi raha… ” There is no joy.

Today’s photo journalists would find it near impossible to get the raw, upfront images that Meraj and photographers of his era captured. Until 15 years ago, journalists could get access to a site after a gunbattle with militants (or “encounters”, as they are called. ) It was possible, explained Kak, to capture the aftermath – residents trying to douse the flame of homes set on fire, the search for possessions in the debris, spent shells on the ground.

Over the years, the extent of the cordon that was thrown around the fighting has expanded. It pushed photojournalists further and further away, denying them access. With these restrictions, powerful images began to dwindle.

The clampdown of images of resistance came in the aftermath of the killing in 2016 of Burhan Wani, the militant who had attained iconic status. Photographs of his funeral showed massive crowds, many people atop trees, and processions of lakhs of mourners. Realising the emotive powers of these events, the authorities started imposing restrictions.

In 2020, the administration refused to hand the bodies of those killed in gun fights back to their families, using the pandemic as a pretext. This soon became the norm. The bodies of those killed in fighting were buried by the security forces in graves in another district. Large funerals and images of them have disappeared.

The stringent new media policy imposed following the abrogation in 2019 of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave Kashmir nominal autonomy, now criminalises any depiction of militants, of militarisation or anything the authorities see as anti-national or as “glorifying” terrorism.

Several clips of gunbattles, stone-throwing incidents and protests have been removed from YouTube. There is intensive surveillance and tight control over social media. In 2020, Masrat Zahra, a young woman photojournalist, who had uploaded some of the images she had taken, was slapped with a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Her pictures included one of a woman displaying the possessions of her relative killed in firing and another of Shias carrying a poster depicting Burhan Wani during a Muharram procession. Masrat was charged with glorifying anti-national posts with criminal intention.

The crisis caused by the enforced disappearances of images has become more acute with Kashmiri newspapers pulling down their online archives. In addition to the digital disappearance, there is the loss of some physical archives due to floods or fire.

Meraj lost many of his pictures in a fire that engulfed the premises of the Srinagar Times and then in the 2014 floods that ravaged his office. It makes his role as documenter that much more precious and is the reason, he said, for his decision to share photographs and recollections for Kak’s book.

“Yeh mere kuch cheeze,” he said. “Kuch yaadein rehenge…yeh jo humne witness kya. Yeh humne kya dekha.”

Here are some of my possessions, my memories...they will live on. These are what I witnessed. This is what I saw.

Freny Manecksha is the author of Behold, I Shine: Narratives of Kashmir’s Women and Children.