This month for the first time, I was able to have a brief stroll around the Christian cemetery at Sheikh Bagh in the heart of Srinagar. For a century until the early 1950s, Kashmir had a small but significant European community. And this is where many of them are buried. There is a new perimeter fence around the graveyard, but as we walked past I noticed that the gate was ajar. I popped in and took a few photos before the caretaker asked me, very reasonably and courteously, what I was doing. The older part of the cemetery, further away from the gate, has mostly European graves. The part closer to the gate seems mainly to be for the burial of Indian Christians. The burial ground is close to the Christian-foundation Mallinson and Tyndale Biscoe schools, but there's no church nearby and I don't think there ever has been. So I am not sure how this very central spot alongside the Bund, the walkway along the bank of the Jhelum river, became a graveyard. Much of the damage caused by the terrible floods of 2014 had been made good - thanks to renovation work supported by the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. The graveyard is a little bare, but well tended and secure. I didn't have time to look round the graves with the attention they merit. But as I was leaving, I got a jolt. I came across the grave of someone I knew, Father Jim Borst, a missionary priest who spent most of his adult life in Kashmir. The photograph of him below is taken from the site of his religious order, the Mill Hill Missionaries. And this is where he is now, in Sheikh Bagh. He was a good and brave man.
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