The Sufi culture which dominates Kashmir is one in which tolerance and peace are ideals, which is ironic given the place's recent history. But Davidson reports optimism on the ground, even in this nuclear age: 'On the street in Srinagar, people say the leaders of India and Pakistan could sit down and make peace in an afternoon.' Isaac shows the people of Kashmir in the quotidian activities of every day life: Children play cricket, boys fish with their fathers on houseboats, families weave the celebrated cashmere scarves in intricate, ancient patterns, attend prayer services and tend to their crops, including crocus crops grown for saffron.
One of Isaac's photographs shows a Kashmiri mother making dinner for her husband and two children. In the foreground is a chipped tea cup, flawed, delicate and still holding together, like a symbol of the fragile peace in the region.
Isaac has now been to Kashmir over nine times, and feels that politically, the "guilt is on both sides," and that for peace to reign, India and Pakistan cannot keep revisiting the wounds that have been repeatedly inflicted and reopened for over sixty years now, but instead that "we should start today. That is what evolution is all about."
The Kashmiris he spoke with while working there, he says, "want to be part of India," but "greater tolerance is needed on all sides." He feels strongly that given its Gandhian legacy, India must hold itself to higher standards when it approaches any conflict. Isaac would like to see India become again the standard-bearer of peaceful, non-violent, non-cooperative politics in an era in which the stakes are always higher given the nuclear capabilities of so many countries, including India and Pakistan.
As photographer and visitor, Isaac reports that he was touched by the generous hospitality he was shown again and again by the locals. The Sufi mullahs granted him permission to take pictures inside mosques during prayers. "Not one village objected to my being there," he says.
In Isaac's photographs, the rivers of Kashmir reflect the silhouettes of temples and mosques. It is a Kashmir so achingly beautiful, this land of snowy mountains and saffron fields, overhanging trees and floating villages, that the oft quoted words of the Emperor Jahangir come dramatically alive: If there is paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.
An image by John Isaac: In Kashmir, a craftsman meticulously weaves beauty.
Also see: A martyred hero and his extraordinary parents
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