writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

KASHMIRI WOMEN’S TESTIMONIOS: LIVES IN LIMBO
Anupama VOHRA *
In testimonio, the narrator intends to communicate his / her own and /or groups trauma in the
context of oppression and struggle to claim some agency in the act of narrating, and to call on
readers to respond actively in judging the crisis. Documenting abuses is important because unheard
and unaddressed memories and traumatic experiences breathe danger of being buried. When
memories are buried, they are not necessarily forgotten but reoccur time and again all the more
forcefully: “Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are the prerequisites both for
restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.” 1 According to Tal, “Bearing
witness is an aggressive act … Its goal is change” 2 , a joint goal, as Kimberly A. Nance explains, of
testimonio, “the goal is not only to produce books; [the authors of testimonio] they are after
concrete social change.” 3
This paper takes Nance’s deemphasizing testimonios role as a repository of stories about human
rights abuse, and stressing the active shaping and deployment of “potential action” 4 rather than
positive action as the focal point to examine the traumatic sufferings of Kashmiri women: widows,
half widows, aggrieved mothers through the lens of family, society, separatist leaders and state to
highlight their experiences of trauma, isolation, shame, stigmatization, nightmares, and
marginalization. This can be analyzed through a close reading of the collective testimonios of the
over‐arching record of atrocities against people in Afsana Rashid’s Widows and Half Widows (2011).
The memory of the brutality of the event is sealed inside the mind of the families of the victims.
Testimonios given years after the event have all the freshness and vividness of the first account.
Victims evoke clearly the place, date and time of the abduction of their loved ones. Tracing the
whereabouts of the missing males is a difficult task for most of the families in the absence of
cooperation from various state agencies. These testimonios of grief, depression, helplessness,
undoing, anger and rage “could go a long way toward motivating writers, readers, and critics to
consider their own answerability” 5 to aid in efforts to obtain justice through social change.
The Kashmiri Muslim women due to the conflict in the Valley have been the silent sufferers.
Besides violence inflicted directly on women’s bodies, women have also experienced indirect
violence in the Valley. Direct violence is excessively inflicted on males because they are anticipated as
threatening, females suffer indirectly when they lose their spouse, or the men disappear and all
familial responsibilities fall on their shoulders. Many a time militant organizations are also
responsible for killings /disappearances. There are also instances of inter‐group rivalries as well as of
revengeful killings and abductions of surrendered militants or informers of the state by the militants.
It is estimated that there are “15000 widows and thousands of half‐widows” 6 in Kashmir.
For those women, whose spouse died and the body was recovered one part of their struggle/story
ended at that moment. They reconciled to the fact and accepted the reality of widowhood. However,
a large number of women in Kashmir are facing an identity crisis owing to the phenomena of
enforced disappearances, which has lead them to a miserable fate of being half widows, a term
coined for women whose husbands have disappeared but not yet been declared dead. Many young
girls carried away by the romance of militancy eloped with militants and found themselves
abandoned as widows/half widows with little children. The testimonios cited provide insights into the
lives of women caught between the security forces and the militants, and thus, the mental makeup
and resilience of those who suffered disappearance/ death(s) of the male member(s) of the family.
These widows/half widows are mostly not educationally qualified or socially prepared to begin
earning for their families. As a result they and their children become dependent on the in‐laws, who
see them as constant reminders of the family’s loss and as additional mouths to feed. In the in‐laws’
family, relationships often turn unpleasant and the testimonios of Zainab, Sakina Bano and Shazada
*
University of Jammu - India
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