“Presenting Zooni … Because Kashmir is about its people, which needs to be seen and heard.” On 2 October 2019, Indian fashion house Raw Mango/ Sanjay Garg released on Instagram a series of pictures of a hyper-exotic, deeply (in)grained bridal photoshoot under the name Zooni. Zooni, more famously known as Habba Khatoon, was the ‘last queen’ of Kashmir whose husband, Yusuf Shah Chak, was tricked into prison by a Mughal ruler in a manner almost perfectly repetitive of every Kashmir story. The pictures in the Raw Mango project were taken by Avani Rai, who also did the art direction for it. Rai is an Indian photographer, who has been very vocal and very quick to share news on social media about the brutalities of the Indian state in Kashmir – without using the words self-determination and/or occupation. We shall come back to this later. She did, however, mention that the…

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