It is widely agreed that experiences of political violence are inherently gendered and that violence impacts women disproportionally in comparison to men. However, political violence is often approached within traditional notions of militarisation; violence and conflict are seen as an inherent masculine (public) domain. Whereas, women who exist within these spaces find their active roles, political, or ideological desires to resist violence or even sustain it being brushed away, generalized, or undermined.
What has rather dominated the discussions surrounding gender, violence, and conflict is the ‘victimization’ of women. Women in conflict regions are commonly referred to in relation to men, as being non-violent, household caretakers, mourners, peacekeepers or victims of gender-based violence. Less is spoken about the active role of women during conflict, more importantly as agents of resisting violence. This is especially true for South Asian discourses.
It is critical we examine these sites of gendered cultural production and trace how gendered norms are enacted through localised practices, as such findings can be used to challenge generalized gender binaries in conflict, peace-making, and developmental studies and improve policies.
Indian Administered Kashmir
The Himalayan region of Kashmir was a former independent princely state. The India-Pakistan partition in 1947 and rounds of violent faceoffs on claiming the region, led to a UN Security Council Resolution on holding a ‘plebiscite’ for Kashmiris to decide their own fate. This never happened and resulted in persistent conflict in Indian Administered Kashmir as the majority of Kashmiris ideologically never related to being Indians. This indigenous resistance struggle led to several human rights violations. Today, Indian Administered Kashmir stands as the world's most militarized zone.
The majority of literature on women in Indian-Administered Kashmir has rightfully focused on their victimization. As India’s democratic management of Kashmir echoes British colonial practices, Indian politicians and media narratives are dominated by the patriarchal colonial mindset of saving Kashmiri women from radical insurgents or the neoliberal narrative of ‘freeing’ Kashmiri women from religious and social restrictions by integrating it with progressive mainland India.
Social Structure
Historically, Kashmiri women have always played a pivotal role in politics, economics, and other public realms of Kashmir. Under oppressive monarchies and then falling into conflict in 1947, Kashmir’s economic system always depended on complementary gendered jobs. These jobs allowed for relatively secure masculinities to emerge in Kashmir and exist side by side with traditional femininity. Generations in Kashmir attained education through their mothers’ income from wool-spinning. This socio-economic importance of Kashmiri women gave them a direct public agency that enabled them to play leading roles in dissent-based activities.
Violent Protests
1940 marks the earliest recorded resistance act of Kashmiri women. It was an anti-monarchy protest led by three women, in Maisuma, who beat a soldier after receiving derogatory sexual remarks. Women were said to have poured boiling water on soldiers who violently entered the neighbourhood demanding the girls. This protest was exercised primarily because of threats Kashmiri women felt towards their bodily integrity, personal safety, and own experiences of state violence. It depicted the public support women had in Kashmir to occupy public domains and lead movements.
Similarly, today, Kashmiri women collectively are known to use violence in retaliation to violence being used against them and Kashmiris as a whole. Women lead stone-pelting protests in Kashmir against the police and the Indian army. Whenever atrocities happen, Mosque pulpit; stereotypically recognized for constraining women’s public role, uses loudspeakers to call women to take to the streets to protest. Women occupy the outer parts of the crowd while keeping men in the middle; shielding them from being dragged away by the paramilitary forces. These protesters are met with tear gas, live ammunition, and shotguns firing metal pellets.
Combat
In the 1990s, Kashmiri women are known to have crossed into Pakistan to receive military training. One of the earliest women-led military organizations was the Muslim Khawateen Markaz, founded by Zamruda Habib, an educated, middle-class, Kashmiri woman. Her work and influence over the masses led to her imprisonment. Another, more radical female-military organization, Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM), was founded by Asiya Andrabi. DeM had successfully indoctrinated militancy into women and made them agree to carry the dual burden of the household as well as combat. This female-led organization held an extremist vision of reforming Kashmir as per strict Sharia law. Individually, women also played a crucial role in facilitating combat by smuggling weapons, training, motivating, and aiding militants.
Victimhood to Activism
Women have built NGOs and activism platforms that are often the first and only organizations documenting human rights violations on the ground in Kashmir. One of the prominent organizations today in Kashmir is the UN-recognized Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). It was founded by Rafto Prize winner, Paveena Ahangar, in 1994. This female-led organization has documented and reported over 8000 cases and acted as a primary support system i.e., in financial, educational and medical aspects for families that lost their breadwinners.
Untraditional Work Spaces
Aasia Jeelani, a journalist and human rights defender, was one of the first Kashmiris to take active steps in mobilizing global support towards the Kashmir issue and the plight of Kashmiri women. She was assassinated while participating in the election monitoring team that reported witnessing farce voting exercise by the Indian army to exaggerate voter participation. Inspired by her, today Kashmir has a female Pulitzer photojournalist, a Peter Mackler Award holder for Courageous and Ethical Journalism, and several female human rights defenders. Furthermore, unlike many conflict regions, currently, women represent over 15,000 entrepreneurships and 35% of the healthcare and education workforce in Kashmir.
Despite the conflict, Kashmiri women have firmly occupied public domains to resist Indian State Violence. Women who were leading anti-monarchical protests in the 1940s have normalized and inspired women of today to remain active in ground-level politics, occupy public domains, and mobilize issues critical to them. For over ninety years, Kashmiri women have continued their female agency and leadership by acting ‘beyond victimhood’, as motivators, facilitators, and lead actors in Kashmir’s conflict. Their activities and use of retaliatory violence cannot be gauged retrospectively.
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