Special Issue: Writing about Kashmir

In a world that continues to be carved up into the false binary of West vs. East, there is an abundance of scholarly work on history and memory, history and gender, and trauma and art in Europe and the United States (Khan 2021, 2). But such substantial and scholarly work on Jammu and Kashmir – which connects the past with the present by weaving the nuances of history, fiction, and poetry into threaded concepts – is lacking.

Recent trends in writings on the region have foregrounded the repercussions of the armed insurgency and counter insurgency in Kashmir, while relegating academic content to the background. I would argue that in an interdisciplinary space, academic content can enhance the depth of knowledge that is required to understand the potential historical implications of the conflict in the region, particularly in the Valley of Kashmir. I would just as strongly argue that the complexities and nuances of contemporary issues cannot be discerned without historical knowledge. Scholarship on Jammu and Kashmir should reflect the changing nature of the conflict and promote multidisciplinary approaches to resolving issues of significance to the populace of the region. The knowledge and skills that are necessary for doing so must be grounded in concepts that weave, as I said earlier, history and contemporary issues into an intricate tapestry. This tapestry would comprise conceptual threads and enable those who study the region to examine the intricacy of every aspect of it.

Educators strive to create conceptual frameworks for facilitating students’ ability to critically analyze the past and connect events of past eons to the contemporary world. How can we connect the concept of periods of progression and regression in Kashmiri society to the students’ world in thought-provoking ways? How can we connect discussions and academic debates about the richness and erosion of Kashmir society to the students’ world in ways that would enable them to not just identify contemporary problems, but to provide solutions as well?

To that end, in this special issue of South Asian Review on Kashmir, we have sought to include voices that have steered clear of unidimensional readings of the region. On the contrary, those scholars whose writings we have included in this issue have plumbed the depths of the multidimensionality of the region. The articles that this special issue comprises foreground the plight of those craving a world in which social justice, political enfranchisement, cultural pride, and self-realization are the order of the day. The authors of these articles acknowledge, either explicitly or implicitly, the yearning of the people of Jammu and Kashmir for a world in which the living tradition of legends, myths, fables of yore is resuscitated and their imaginative life is revived. In the greatly circumscribed “narrative public space” of conflict and war-torn zones, the multi-genre and multilayered narratives that we have included provide a much needed breath of fresh air. These narratives are interdisciplinary interventions that could potentially bridge ethnic, religio-cultural, and political divides.

While the ethereal beauty of Jammu and Kashmir has, historically, drawn mystics, seekers of spiritual wisdom, poets, warriors, and emperors to it, the region, I underline, seeks political, legal, and democratic avenues of escape from forces that have sought to stifle it for the past three decades. In these years, the space for young people in Jammu and Kashmir to reflect on strategies, dialogue, and accommodation, which would bring every stakeholder to the table, has been seriously conscripted. As I’ve underscoredin my book Educational Strategies for Youth Empowerment in Conflict Zones: Transforming, Not Transmitting Trauma, the current state of affairs in several parts of the world is challenging, so it is crucial to have spaces of inclusion and pluralism within which citizens of all ages, but especially young people, can productively contribute to the re-building of their society through academic discussions and activism. Pluralism, I would underscore, is an antidote to the orthodoxy of ethnocentric politics. My hope is that a study of the articles in this special issue will enable students to envision fresh strategic interventions that would take cognizance of people’s experiential knowledge as well as lived experiences.

It is not, I believe, an unrealistic expectation that the study of narratives such as the ones in this issue with enhance the ability of students to connect the past of Jammu to Kashmir to its future in new geopolitical realities. To that end, the articles that I chose to include in this issue provide instantiations of how historical and analogous reasoning can be employed to process historical implications of problems and foster problem-solving ideas.

Although we live in a world that is becoming increasingly polarized, the richness, heterogeneity, and multi-layeredness of Jammu and Kashmir cannot be eclipsed or denied. It is a region that defies unwieldy attempts to homogenize and reductively describe it. While the geographical terrain of the mountainous region is undulating and challenging, the historical and political aspects of the region are just as arduous and difficult to navigate. Puerile readings of the historical contexts, political leanings, cultural and gender ideologies, religious traditions, and linguistic heritage of Jammu and Kashmir are a dime a dozen. Such reductive readings have been terribly damaging, but the damage is not irreparable.

The articles in this special issue of South Asian Review eschew dogmatic, reductionist, and deterministic readings of the region. I chose to divide them into three sections: “History, Memory, and Fiction: A Critical Dialogue;” History, Gender, and Politics: A Critical Dialogue;” “History, Trauma, and Poetry: A Complex Relationship.”

The articles in section one explore history and memory, offering a critical dialogue between these phenomena and fiction. The analyses of the authors offers an interchange between fiction and the history it encounters, using history to interrogate fiction and and using fiction to think through historical issues. The authors also examine the intricate relationship between history and memory, which produces intersectionalities between different cultural spaces, times, and ways of knowing the self in relation to the family, society and the larger cultural landscape. Mainstream history has done a rather inadequate job at configuring Kashmiri identity. The scholarly pieces in this section seek to rectify that lacuna.

The articles in section two offer a critical dialogue between history, politics, and gender, analyzing historical and political discourses to underscore the agential capacities of Kashmiri women, which are, traditionally, subsumed within masculinist discourse. Did the historical and political lens of Kashmiri women, pre- and post-Partition, challenge the contours of traditional roles for women and domesticity? Was the search of these women for parity with men inundated with patriarchal contradictions? I have underscored in my work on Kashmiri women that women are conditioned to wipe away their footprints and end up leaving very few traces of the kind that historical exploration would accept as legitimate. The recognition of the self-actualization of Kashmiri women, as I have said in my book The Life of a Kashmiri Woman: Dialectic of Resistance and Accommodation, hearkens back to my suggestion that plurality, heterogeneity, and dissidence adorn the architecture of Jammu and Kashmir. The ability of such women to be alert to how their aspirations for personal emancipation were mediated by their responsibility toward their respective communities, and the ways in which this sense of responsibility inflected their own emancipatory thoughts, underscores their importance for me (Khan 2014, 21). But the articles in this section of highlight some little known aspects of the history and politics of Jammu and Kashmir.

The article in section three foregrounds the complex relationship between history, trauma, and poetry. The author of this scholarly piece considers the disrepair and deterioration of the history and society, which is pervaded with trauma. She analyzes poems written by contemporary Kashmiri poets in English and published on an online platform called “The Kashmir Tales.” I have always had great respect for the resilience of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, which enables them to rebuild their lives time and time again. The populace of the region has been denigrated by laws that legitimize horrors inflicted on them, particularly since the revocation of the autonomous status of the region on August 5, 2019, and freedom from indignity and ignominy seem like a distant dream. In that stifling environment, young Kashmiri poets break their silence about their life experiences and create a framework for their personal narratives through the genre of poetry. The creativity of these young people enables them to engage with multiple subjectivities and historical understandings through “the recurrent motifs of prisons and the interplay of love and death.” In a volatile and uncertain world, these poets are empowered with a sense of agency. Their traumatic experiences have become stories of strength through enabling them to change their languages and understanding their geographical and spatial spaces. Subsequently, a trauma survivor transitions from being the wounded and mutilated person to the impactful and constructive poet/raconteur. These young people, who have known conflict their entire lives, are survivors of trauma and transform their vulnerabilities into strength, making a giant leap toward healing through a creative medium. This piece, which underscores the transformation of trauma, celebrates resilience and enables me to close this special issue on a note of hope.

Students will, I have no doubt, study the interdisciplinary narratives and later extrapolate each of them to build theory and solution-oriented application. As I’ve said elsewhere, trauma – historical and structural – as well as losses must be worked through. Otherwise, in the words of Historian Dominick LaCapra, one faces “… the impasse of endless melancholy, impossible mourning, and interminable aporia in which any process of working through the past and its historical losses if foreclosed or prematurely aborted” (2016, 46).

Lastly, it has been an honor and a privilege to work with the authors, Dr. Nalini Iyer, Chief Editor of South Asian Review, and Dr. Robin Field, Managing Editor of South Asian Review, to bring out a, I can proudly claim, stellar issue on a region that restores my soul and remains as close to me as my jugular vein.