WOMEN AND CONTEMPORARY

KASHMIR: EXPLORING THEMATIC TRAJECTORIES

KU UGC-HRDC Presentation

(20/03/2018)

Dr. Saima Farhad,

Dept. of Social Work, KU

Email: saimafarhad@uok.edu.in

1

CONTENTS

� Brief Introductions: Substantive Core Ideas

� Women & Kashmir: Cursory Overviews

� Women and Contemporary Kashmir: Thematic Trajectories (Violence)

� Key Themes for Future Explorations

� Concluding Remarks2

BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS: SUBSTANTIVE CORE

IDEAS I

� Part of a Larger Project: Collaborative work with a few researchers, based in Kashmir and Outside.

� The presentation draws from my own Doctoral Work on Conflict as a Lived Domain and Ideas of Work on Conflict as a Lived Domain and Ideas of Resilience (unpublished, but undergoing reviews).

� The larger thematic exploration is rooted to my review of substantive literature, and field exploration on Women in Conflict Zones

3

BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS: SUBSTANTIVE

CORE IDEAS II

� Contemporary Kashmir:

� Moves away from essentialist unitiary positions

� Complex and not rooted to linear cause effect � Complex and not rooted to linear cause effect relationships.

� Identifies Normative Academic Discourse on Kashmir as a part of practices of power.

� Moves away from Statistical/Positivist/Statist to Meaning/Construction/People Centric 4

WOMEN & KASHMIR: CURSORY OVERVIEWS

� Debates located in ideas of ;

� Desire.

� Human Rights.

� Victimhood.

� Conservative Morality (Religious & Cultural) and in Opposition to it.

5

WOMEN & CONTEMPORARY KASHMIR: THEMATIC TRAJECTORIES

� Discoveries during Doctoral Work:

� Field Work: Life Stories of Two Participants.� Thematic Locations: Deewan, Kazi, Qutub, Zia etc

� Dialogue between Field and Literature

6

FIELD WORK: PARTICIPANT I

� Shameema:� Husband picked in a Crackdown.� Pregnant at the time of Husband’s killing.� After widowhood has to deal:

� with death of a son� with death of a son� Forced out of the house� Death of parents� Blindness� Problems with the sister-in-law� Moves to another house� Everyday Life� Son

7

FIELD WORK: PARTICIPANT II

� Shaheen:� Disappearance of brother� FIR� Armed Men� Killings, Injury and Rape� Killings, Injury and Rape� Hospitalised� Insanity of Father� Stereotyped and Stigmatised� Marriage� In-laws� Children� Health and Associated problems 8

EXPLORING TRAJECTORIES: ESTABLISHING

LOCATIONS

� Fear Psychosis (Deewan 1994)

� Restricted Mobility of Women

� Establishing Violence and the Scale of Violence Against Women:� Pregnant Lady:� Policeman’s Family:� Mass Rapes and Violations:

9

EXPLORING TRAJECTORIES: ESTABLISHING

LOCATIONS

� Contexualising with Field Work:� Larger overviews: The participants are small dots in this

larger map

� Violence not limited to one spectacular incident.� Violence not limited to one spectacular incident.

� The lives of two participants indicate that they keep suffering multiple violences throughout their lives

� Women caught with multiple Patriarchies

10

EXPLORING TRAJECTORIES: ESTABLISHING

SCALES AND MAGNITUDES

� Violences by state and non-state actors.

� Militarised Zone.

� Impunity, immunity � Impunity, immunity

� HRW 1996 and HRW 1999.

� Amnesty International 2015.

� APDP 2012. 11

EXPLORING TRAJECTORIES: DEEPER

INSIGHTS

� Incidents of Rape contextualised with Abuse of Power (Kazi 2009)

� Official Silence on Sexual Violence

� Competing and Converging interests of rival patriarchies being played out over women’s bodies.

� References to the Shopian Rape Case

12

EXPLORING TRAJECTORIES: DEEPER

INSIGHTS

� Contexualising with Field Work:� Abuse of Power: FIR. Violence and Rape

� Sexual Violence is a part of a larger network of violences.violences.

� Silence:� Official, � Social & � Individual

13

ESTABLISHING TRAJECTORIES: VICTIM

CATEGORIES

� Widowhood and Half-Widows (Qutub 2012 and Zia 2013)

� Who is a Half-Widow?� Existence in ambiguity.� Case of a Half-Widow (Sadaf ):

� Charts her life story� Known for her beauty� Her beauty becomes a curse after the disappearance of her

husband.� No social/state support.� Rumours of sight of Husband.� Suspect Existance / Favours asked.� Burka and associated problems. 14

ESTABLISHING TRAJECTORIES: VICTIM

CATEGORIES

� Contexualising with field work:

� A lot of focus on Half-Widows. Lesser attention to Widows.

� Sadaf’s life relates to Shameema’s life:� Struggles with social and religious patriarchies.� Suspect existence.� Sadaf’s Burkha and Shameema’s Confinement.

� Victims vis-à-vis State/non-State.

� Victims vis-à-vis Society. 15

ESTABLISHING TRAJECTORIES: AGENCY

� Sadaf (Zia 2013):� Attempts to play up the ‘asal zanaan’, and tone down

whatever the society considers symptomatic of ‘Kharab’

� Mourns the demise of her earlier modern life, but is not entirely submitting to social diktats.entirely submitting to social diktats.

� The notion of agency in this regard encompasses more possibilities than just resistance to relations of domination, or subversion of norms.

� It includes conscious goal-driven activities, and the propensity to make choices between pathways of action

16

ESTABLISHING TRAJECTORIES: AGENCY

� Resilience is not a closed definition. Located in a complex everyday domain.

� People tend to locate their experiences of conflict in terms of disease, but it is only a small part of their meaning making.

� Resilience moves beyond medicalised understandings:�

� a habitual routine, familiarity of the conflict

� Not a normalisation of violence.

� A flux: Suffering, ailments, and disabilities, are infused with this familiarity

� Small agencies to adjust and make choices

� People may slip from suffering to agency, or vice versa, and are involved in a continuum of violences, adjustments, familiarities, ruptures, and slippages.

17

KEY QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE EXPLORATION

� Fear:� How does pervasive fear condition people’s lives?

� Silence:� What are the meanings of silence? And What do silences

communicate about lived contexts?communicate about lived contexts?

� Suffering:� How does suffering permeate everyday life?

� Agency and Resilience:� How do people move beyond or negotiate suffering?� What are the practices (Cultural, Social, Economic etc) which

societies evolve to navigate conflict zones? 18

CONCLUDING REMARKS

� Need to cross fixed boundaries.

� Need to move beyond safe zones.

� Need to discard narrow hegemonised ways of seeing the world.

� Need to understand the politics of academic locations.

� Need for deeper engagements with field. 19

REFERENCES

� AI. (2015). “Denied”: Failures in Accountability for Human Rights Violations By Security Force Personnel in Jammu and Kashmir. London. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa20/1874/2015/en/

� Dewan, R. (1994). â€TM Humsheera ’, â€TM Humsaya “: Sisters , Neighbours: Women”s Testimonies from Kashmir. Economic and Political Weekly, 29(41), 2654–2658.

� HRW. (1996). India’s Secret Army in Kashmir: New Patterns of Abuse Emerge in the Conflict (Vol. 8). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/India2.htm

� HRW. (1999). Behind the Kashmir Conflict: Abuses by Indian Security Forces and � HRW. (1999). Behind the Kashmir Conflict: Abuses by Indian Security Forces and Militant Groups Continue. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kashmir/abus-tor.htm

� IPTK, & APDP. (2012). Alleged Perpetrators: Stories of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir. Srinagar. Retrieved from http://kashmirprocess.org/reports/alleged_Perpetrators.pdf

� Kazi, S. (2009). Shopian: War, Gender and Democracy in Kashmir. Economic and Political Weekly, XLIV(49), 13–15.

� Qutab, S. (2012). Bulletin Women Victims of Armed Conflict : Sociological Bulletin, 61(2), 255–278.

� Zia, A. (2013). The Spectacle of a Good-Half Widow: Performing Agency in the Human Rights Movement in Kashmir (Thinking Gender Papers). Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3xx4n1zf 20

THANK YOU

� Email Id: saimafarhad@uok.edu.in

21