Sharmila Tagore in Kashmir Ki Kali is new 'poster' child for Kashmiris injured by pellets

Sharmila Tagore and Shammi Kapoor’s musical romance Kashmir Ki Kali wowed audiences when it released in 1964. The movie not only featured a beautiful love story but also focused on the scenic landscapes of the troubled valley. Fast forward to Kashmir in 2016 where the city is under curfew after the demonstrations and protests that  followed the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on 8 July 2016. Protesters who do venture out on the streets, hit with ’non-lethal’ pellet guns, have sustained crippling injuries.   More than 350 people have been hit by pellets and according to doctors, most will either suffer some form of permanent damage, disfigurement or loss of eyesight. Read on Firstpost: With the Valley on curfew after Burhan Wani’s death, Kashmiri artists respond to the uprising Kashmiri cartoonist Mir Suhail created a poster showing Sharmila Tagore in the poster of Kashmir Ki Kali,  with an apparent pellet injury on her eye. Suhail’s now viral poster is being used to bring attention to the violence in the valley.

Using the hashtag #KashmirBleeding and #ResistingPellets, the artist is also penciling in eye injuries and pellet wounds on other famous paintings to highlight the use of the rising use of pellets on protesters in Kashmir. Here’s Van Gogh’s Mona Lisa if she was a protester in Kashmir:

The Girl With A Pearl Earring after being hit by a pellet gun:

Another campaign against pellet guns that went viral was a Facebook campaign by a group called ‘Never Forget Pakistan’ that has posted some hard-hitting images of celebrities on Facebook , which have been photoshopped to show what they would look like if their faces had been injured by pellet guns. The celebrities featured were Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, and others. Read about it here. Then there’s Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain who has created a series of black and white posters of boys of the valley with shrunken, shikara shapped pupils. Hussain told the Hindu , “It pains (me) to see kids being blinded by pellets. All that an artist can do is stroke the canvas with that pain.”

Also, since none of the international human rights organisations are speaking up against the crippling pellet injuries, founder of Black Sheep.Works Asif Amin Tibet Baqual started a campaign where they renamed these organisations and altered their logos with a common tagline running below them. “In the interests of human rights everywhere but #Kashmir,” the tagline reads.

Baqual also created Braille posters to add to the anti-pellet gun campaign on the social media.

There’s also a Facebook page Kashmir Olympics which draws parallels between the ongoing Rio Olympics and the protesters in Kashmir.