The Spectacle of Collective Mourning: Analysing Women’s Resistance in Kashmir

Keywords: Feminist Geography, South Asian Geography, Conflict Zones and Human Rights, Kashmir, Gender Studies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 29

Abstract

The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been engulfed within violence, bloodshed and forced displacement since the twentieth century. The state was divided between India and Pakistan in 1947, following the Partition of British India. The territory of the former princely state has become a bone of contention between the two nations since then. The conflict culminated in the insurgency of 1989, which led to massacre and involuntary displacement of Kashmiris. The counter-insurgency movement, planned by state-sponsored agencies, was equally brutal and led to mass killings, torture, and enforced disappearance of many Kashmiri Muslim men.

These forced disappearances have neither been acknowledged by state-sponsored institutions, nor have they received their due representation. As a result of this erasure of both men and memories, Kashmiri women were compelled to come out crying on streets, to mourn their loved ones, abandoning their sheltered lives.

My paper aims to analyse the narratives of resistance produced by women through the public spectacle of collective mourning in the urban landscape. These spaces and spectacles produce counter-memories produced by women from marginalised communities. Analysis of these gatherings and writings about them will help me understand the role of counter-narratives of women that are forcibly silenced by the powerful groups in re-telling the stories of locals. By emphasising on Kashmiri women’s agency, the paper will point towards a crucial aspect: “In the powerful idiom of postcolonial criticality, the question is not Can the Kashmiri women speak?, but rather: Can you hear them?” (Kaul and Zia 2018: 34)