RAW MANGO Releases its Kashmiri Fashion Campaign Amidst Kashmir Lockdown

After the de-operationalisation of Article 370 on August 5, as most of us are aware social media was flooded with videos and songs made by Indians to “marry Kashmiri women”. The unabashed, crude joy to own yet another unpossessable and inaccessible entity like Kashmiri land, were Kashmiri women.

Despite Kashmir valley experiencing a crippling communication blackout for the last sixty days, with massive restrictions and curfew imposed, where it has impacted life beyond one’s imagination, one comes across the launch of a fashion campaign (Zooni) directed by Avani Rai for a label called Raw Mango.

It is not just that the campaign is ill-timed and insensitive, but it does damage by further fetishing Kashmiri women. The aforementioned campaign comprises a few stills and a marriage video. In the stills, there are women standing atop a Shikara, wearing red brocade salwar kameez facing the sun. The video had a delicate model with chiseled features in a mess of a bridal attire (Kashmiri veil, non-Kashmiri jewellery and a Gojri cap (subsuming identities within a larger identity, but that is larger and a separate debate).

After I posted it on my Instagram, that is where I saw it first, a friend and I discussed if it was just about “cultural appropriation”. It obviously is. Being disrespectful to someone’s history, appropriating the name “Zooni” that is what Habba Khatoon (Kashmir’s last queen was also known by) and releasing it at a time when misery should not be capitalized on.

Besides that, it’s deeply problematic and pornotropic as it reinforces a certain image of a Kashmiri woman. Gone are the days when a Kashmiri woman was reduced to being an object that “needed to be loved and adored”. A resilient Kashmiri woman somehow just does not seem to fit that hegemonic bill, that fantasy. She is the one who negotiates with militarization on a daily basis. She braves pava sprays and tear gas, she is the one who faces pellets, the one who goes looking for her siblings and children in jails, the one who looks for her husband subjected to enforced disappearance, she is the one who has spent years in jail, she is an academic who has been detained without any charges. What she is not- is someone who poses with the utensils in her home after a CASO, or with the remnants of a fighter jet where she further loses her agency. It is nothing but additional violence that a Kashmiri woman must endure in form of a different narrative.

After much furore on social media, about its timing, Raw Mango has retracted their “Zooni” campaign. They have issued a statement on the campaign process that had begun much earlier than the stipulated launch that happened to coincide with the two-month long siege and communication blackout in Kashmir. They conclude the statement by saying that they’ve withdrawn it given the timing (which is creating waves internationally, wonder how did it not occur to them sitting barely an hour away from the valley), and “assumption on intent” indicative of how we, Kashmiris, probably are not equipped to recognize their benevolence. The video from the campaign comes at a time when hundreds of weddings have been cancelled or postponed in the valley including my sister’s. The stills come at a time when Kashmiri women are feeling most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, two days ago, I was having nun-chai with our old neighbour who has two unmarried daughters. He often complains of backache and sleepless nights. As a father, he fears that with the de-operationalisation of Article 370, “not just the land but they will take our daughters away too.” A sentiment that one has to live through to understand but not difficult to empathize.

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A RAIOT POSTSCRIPT

Although, Raw Mangooooose took down their occupation fashion porn with some knicker in a twist bad grace, it is worth some curiosity that photographer of their visual campaign is one Avani Rai(@avani_rai), who Raw Mangobar had tagged in their instagram launch of their Khooni campaign (look at the bottom of the screengrab below).

So who is this Avani Rai? As a small town webzine from the lost frontiers of Indian empire, we googled her and we were impressed and appalled. Ms. Rai (daughter of reeeeeallyyyyy famous Raghu Rai as most of the media reports reported) has photographed some really amazingly non conflicty, non-politicy photographs of Kashmir. As she arrogantly/ignorantly told Indian Express 

[su_quote]My work is not to do with the politics of the Kashmir conflict, it is to do with the pain and suffering of a people whose voice has been taken away, torn long between borders and uncertain destinies… ‘Exhibit A’ has a single argument — let them speak.[/su_quote]

LET WHO SPEAK? 

Enframing Kashmir – On the edges of truth in the age of Photoshop

Sanna Irshad Mattoo

“Photography isn’t looking, it’s feeling,” the old man said…

Raiot

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Farah Bashir Written by:

Farah Bashir, former photojournalist with Reuters, is an independent researcher.

One Comment

  1. Sabina varman
    October 4, 2019
    Reply

    You’ve made a big mistake not naming the people responsible for this -Malika Verma Kashyap and the agency she runs Border and Fall. They run at the design and creative decisions there. And see their response here trying to evade responsibility.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B3GrUGnFwv1/?igshid=15itu6tstsdwd

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