REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES
Knowing in Our Own Ways
Women and Kashmir
Nitasha Kaul, Ather Zia
W
hen it comes to international conflicts, ignorance is
as much an ally as ill-will in their prolongation. The
vested interests entrenched in profiting from conflict unsurprisingly seek to limit the range of possible political
options that might lead to demilitarisation, dialogue, conciliation, a just peace, and eventually resolution. However, the
means by which the conflicts are prolonged relate just as much
to the usually effective embargoes on what kind of knowledge
can be produced about the conflict, by whom, and with what
kind of visibility.
This is acutely so in the case of Kashmir, where ignorance
and ill-will work synchronously to produce a simplistic understanding of the region that belies its complexity in terms of
its history, politics, competing claims, traumatic memories,
divided populations, lack of justice, denial of rights, loss of
homes, and cycles of extremism, corruption, and occupation.
The mainstream understanding of Kashmir outside the region
and globally is predominantly through the prism of an Indian
and Pakistani statist narrative. There is little space for Kashmiris and their knowing in their own ways; even less for Kashmiri women speaking about women and Kashmir. In that
sense, the present Review of Women’s Studies, with all its limitations, provides Kashmiri women this space.
The word “Kashmir” is hypervisible in the Indian discourse
today, but in specific and limiting ways. Most Indians and others
internationally have a received understanding of Kashmir that
is based mostly on media reports, which again tend to be
significantly state-centric. Thus, the signifier “Kashmir is a
tremendously powerful one in the contemporary Indian imaginary and, depending on the qualifiers attached to it, it can be
made to carry different political meanings and messages. For
instance, when used in the public discourse, the terms Kashmiri
Pandit, Kashmiri Muslim, Kashmiri men, and Kashmiri women
will all perform different discursive functions. Kashmiri
women, as part of that hypervisibility, are often presented as
passive victims of their men and of the overarching political
violence. Our remit and motivation, here, is to initiate the
reader into a more complex understanding of women and
Kashmir—women of Kashmir, women in Kashmir—as a way
of further interrogating the significance of gender in questions of prolonged conflict.
At the outset, we reflect on some of the issues of grouping
the themes and the challenges we faced in putting together
this review issue. As co-editors, being Kashmiris ourselves,
our motive for this review issue was to include the “herstories”
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of Kashmir. We have, deliberately and with intent included
only work by Kashmiri women. We do not claim to be representative of or speaking for all Kashmiri women, but our motivation is to bring a heightened visibility to at least some Kashmiri scholars who are actively thinking about the intersection
of gender and the political dispute. The Kashmiri women writing in these pages are scholars, professionals, and activists
who present their analysis in light of history, anthropology,
law, and feminist studies. No doubt, there will be other
endeavours where we can include a more diverse array of
Kashmiri scholars and scholars of Kashmir across genders. We
consider this review issue as part of an ongoing endeavour
that will prioritise Kashmiri voices that have been usually sidelined. We are aware that in this review issue there is relative
absence of gender concerns as they relate to Kashmiri Pandits
and other Kashmiri minorities, the Kashmiri and Indian economy, as well as the disputed parts of Kashmir administered by
Pakistan and China. It is not that we did not try to find some
such voices, but it was not possible always to find or to retain
them. In that context, much more work needs to be done, and
this is only the beginning.
Each paper in this review issue refers to the conflict, and relies on a wide range of narratives and sources. The aim here is
not to provide a definitive account of what Kashmiri women
think, or say, or want, or experience. Indeed, for us, as editors,
selecting and finalising the papers was a tough balancing act.
On the one hand, it is not always possible to request a citation
for the experience of being marginalised or of witnessing marginalisation, and, on the other hand, scholarly work cannot
rely entirely on assertions. We have tried, wherever possible,
to walk this line between acknowledging the theoretical feminist insights and making sense of the empirical realities faced
in the colonial periphery of the postcolonial nation.
In a protracted conflict as the one in Kashmir, the life of people
remains suspended often, in the time between the next encounter, killing, arrest or curfew. When men become direct victims
of state violence, it falls to the women to hold the last vestiges
of the community together. Samreen Mushtaq’s (p 54) paper
We would like to thank the guest editors Nitasha Kaul and Ather
Zia, and the members of the editorial advisory group of the Review
of Women’s Studies Mary E John, J Devika, Kalpana Kannabiran,
Samita Sen, and Padmini Swaminathan for putting together this
issue on “Women and Kashmir.”
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REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES
engages with the ways in which Kashmiri women are part of a
more overt and wider political struggle, but also part of the
everyday resistance where the binaries of home and outside
do not hold, and where the home is not an indicator of safety.
She looks at the ways in which everyday resistance can be
understood through visibility, resilience, and dignity in the
reproduction of the daily existence of Kashmiri life. Ordinary
life also features in Mona Bhan’s (p 67) paper, but in an
extraordinary manner. Bhan shows us how the daily life of
ordinary Kashmiris is threatened as Indian policies increasingly weaponise nature. Bhan specifically locates her paper in
the aftermath of the floods of 2014, when Kashmiris en masse
challenged the notion that the flood was natural, and thus
apolitical. Kashmiris linked the questions of nature, and
ecological and resource sovereignties to their struggle for
self-determination against Indian hegemony. Bhan’s paper
situates Kashmiri women’s narratives of dispossession and
the proliferation of Indian investments in mega hydroelectric
dams on Kashmir’s rivers within this context. Uzma Falak’s
(p 76) paper is a lyrical analysis of affective female alliances—
vyestoan—and their liberatory potential. She theorises women’s mobilisation in friendships that emerge during protests,
demonstrations, and funeral processions of militants and
civilians alike who are killed by the government forces. She
analyses these linkages not just as a form of support, but also as
the creation of a gendered resistance. In Inshah Malik’s (p 63)
paper, we see how funerals have become spectacular sites of
feminist resistance. She challenges the myth of the grieving
mother as a passive symbol of patriarchal nationalism, and
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meaningfully theorises Kashmiri women’s agency in the
public sphere.
Mir Fatimah Kanth (p 42) excavates the history of gendered
resistance, illustrating a continuity when it comes to women.
She looks at women, politics, and subjectivity in relation to the
state and its arbitrary exercise of power, and in relation to society and its gendered expectations of women. Kanth’s tracing of
this history makes it clear that resistance to Indian authority is
not a post-1989 phenomenon and certainly has not been bereft
of women’s participation. In the context of the empowerment
of Kashmiri women, Hafsa Kanjwal’s (p 36) paper takes us back
in time, alerting us to how state-sponsored women empowerment programmes in the early years of post-partition Kashmir
resulted in feminist projects that were affiliated with the state,
and, in time, became deeply contested and politicised. In this
context, women’s mobility and education were more geared in
the service of consolidating the power and legitimacy of the
state, rather than allowing indigenous movements—political
or social—to grow and flourish. Essar Batool’s (p 60) paper
tackles the issue head-on by focusing on sexual violence under
intense militarisation and patriarchal norms. Batool, who is
also a co-author of an important volume titled Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora?, analyses the sexual violence against
women, men, and transgender persons in Kashmir at the hands
of the government’s troops, who are emboldened by the legal
immunity provided by laws like the Armed Forces (Special
Powers) Act. While militarisation-related violence works differently on men and women, issues of “shame,” “honour,” and
reprisals mean that fear results in under-reporting of such
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violence for both men and women. Batool also makes the
important point of how the structure of patriarchy can act as
an ally of state violence and oppression. Alliya Anjum’s (p 47)
paper makes sense of how militarism and militarisation is
linked to a denial and loss of rights, investigating the gendered
effects of this in terms of how violence is experienced and
why it is perpetrated. She thinks through the conflict-related
sexual violence paradigm in the context of Kashmir, calls into
question the government response towards human rights
abuses in Kashmir, and urges the need for ending impunity,
especially in the context of international legal policy, which is
stringent and clear with regard to sexual violence in conflicts.
Understanding Experiences of Women in Kashmir
While the structure of a military occupation cracks down
equally on all genders, feminist scholarship has shown us that
the interlocking nature of militarism and masculinity means
that competing patriarchies of oppression and resistance become mutually constitutive, and women are at the sharp end
of both. Understanding and analysing the life experiences and
agential potential of women in disputed zones like Kashmir
becomes difficult as well as crucial. In addition to the complications of the globally ubiquitous patriarchy, there is the question of how war and occupation is an exercise in gendered hyper masculine power in the context of a conflict zone. Against
this backdrop, Kashmiri women deserve to be recognised for
their tremendous role in challenging the narratives and impacts of occupation; these are generational struggles, at once
poignant and powerful. We think of inspirational women like
Parveena Ahangar who is the co-founder and chairperson of
the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), an
organisation that brings together those searching for Kashmiri
men who have disappeared in the custody of the Indian armed
forces. We think of the 55 Kashmiri women who came together
in 2013 under the banner of the Support Group for Kunan
Poshpora, and have been key to the annual commemoration of
23 February as Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day. We think of
the Kashmiri women of the past, the present, and the future
who have spoken truth to power, stood up for their rights,
braved all odds and persevered, disrupted both patriarchy
and occupation, and have lived to tell their stories, to laugh,
sing, and love.
Yet, so many Kashmiris have had their lives brutally cut
short by conflict and violence that has been orchestrated to
humiliate them and render them bereft of relatives, homes,
and hopes. Do you know how Kashmiris remember? Kashmiris,
of any and all kinds, map their timelines not merely by running through the years chronologically, but by recalling the
years through what they brought: the summers of massacres,
months of mass blindings, humiliations of human shields,
ceaseless curfews and bans, repeated uprisings, political upheavals, impositions of governor’s rule, India–Pakistan border
hostilities, rigged elections, mass exodus, and mass rape. Srinagar
has flowers that grow on mass graves, lanes that are littered
with ruined houses and torture centres that have been turned
into official residences. There are soldiers and guns everywhere.
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In 2018, the United Nations produced a “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir: Developments in the Indian
State of Jammu and Kashmir from June 2016 to April 2018,
and General Human Rights Concerns in Azad Jammu and
Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.” The reception of this report in
the Indian media was overwhelmingly one of rejection and
ridicule. The illegitimacy of the Indian state’s actions in Kashmir
is aided by a common-sense public opinion of the Indian majority,
which only allows for seeing the Kashmiri struggle through
the lens of paternalism or jingoism.
What serious scholar of Kashmir could deny the simultaneous
existence of human rights abuses and a political problem that
needs a political resolution which must involve the Kashmiris
themselves? Yet, even something as basic as this is hard to find
being reflected in the Indian mainstream media, through
which most Indians form their opinions on Kashmir.
We urge the readers of this review issue to move beyond the
comfort zone of merely acknowledging the vulnerabilities of
the marginalised Kashmiris, by equalising the illicitness of
the military and the militants, by thinking past the self-serving machinations of the Indian power brokers at the centre
and Kashmiri mainstream politicians at the periphery, and by
asking the difficult question: How long must ordinary Kashmiris
suffer their traumatic history as endless memory before their
calls for freedom and justice are taken seriously enough to
warrant a political resolution?
The Kashmiri women herein speak of myriad things: of
spectacles and street protests; women’s companionships and
female alliances; women’s movements and imaginaries of
resistance; the links between militarisation, militarism, and
the creation of impunity by the law; competing patriarchies
and sexual violence as they seek to break Kashmiri communities; the infrastructures of control that limit their mobilities,
bodies, and experiences; public grief at funerals as a challenge
to Indian sovereignty over Kashmir; and autobiographies, oral
histories, and the textures of political memories.
In the powerful idiom of postcolonial criticality, the question we should ask is not “Can the Kashmiri women speak?”
but rather “Can you hear them?”
Nitasha Kaul (nitasha.kaul@gmail.com) teaches Politics and International
Relations at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of
Westminster, London. She is a multidisciplinary academic, novelist,
poet, artist, and economist. Ather Zia (editor@kashmirlit.org) teaches
Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado,
Greeley, Colorado. She writes poetry, short fiction and is the founder of
Kashmir Lit and co-founder of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective.
EPW Index
An author-title index for EPW has been prepared for the years from 1968
to 2012. The PDFs of the Index have been uploaded, year-wise, on the
EPW website. Visitors can download the Index for all the years from the site.
(The Index for a few years is yet to be prepared and will be uploaded when
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EPW would like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the library of the
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