199 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 A. Tickell (ed.), South-Asian Fiction in English, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-40354-4_11 The New Pastoral: Environmentalism and Conlict in Contemporary Writing from Kashmir On 16 June 2013, a new Facebook group, The Kashmir Bicycle Movement (KBM), appeared. Its aims were ‘to reclaim streets of Kashmir for peo- ple, displace cars and restore pride in riding bicycles’ (Kashmir Bicycle Movement 2013). Through photographs, commentary, and organization and reportage of mass cycling events, KBM combined ecocritical conscious- ness with a concern speciic to Jammu and Kashmir: the long-term effects of political conlict as relected through an alienation of Kashmiri people from their natural environment. The cycle promised resistance not just to modernity’s accelerated temporalities, but also to the conlict’s impact on a Kashmiri’s relationship to Kashmir. Unsurprisingly for this volatile region, KBM’s freshness of purpose was from the start compromised by vulnera- bility to political violence. A month later (19 July 2013), a post announced the cancellation of a mass bicycle ride through downtown Srinagar, which was to have reclaimed an urban space marked by heritage monuments, indigenous protests as well military and State-sponsored demonstrations (Kabir 2013). This was to be KBM’s last effective post. KBM’s brief virtual life materialized a fragile but potent nexus between the vernacular, the micro-urban and the landscape around Srinagar. Its mass [AU3] Ananya Jahanara Kabir [AU1] [AU2] A.J. Kabir King’s College, London, UK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22