BOOK REVIEW
Gendered Narrative of Kashmir
Rita Manchanda
Militarism cannot capture the crisis of militarisation as evinced in these internal conflicts, asserts Kazi.
First, it connotes military dominance over civil authority and undue emphasis on reli-
| For nearly three decades now, feminist scholars have piloted the study of the political salience of gender in | Between Democracy and Nation: Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir by Seema Kazi (New Delhi: Women Unlimited), 2009; pp 222, Rs 375. |
| expanding theory and empirical under | |
| standing of the traditionally male-centric | appro priate to capturing the conduct and |
| domains of security, armed conflict and | nature of violence in the internal conflicts |
| o rganised violence. Arguably, it still | of the global south, fundamentally char |
| r emains an insider discourse, despite the | acterised by the blurring of the con |
| public and institutional recognition of the | ventional binaries of civil-military and |
| relevance of women in relation to security, | c ombatant-non-combatant. With a crisp |
| conflict and peace-building in such lofty | lucidity, she develops an overarching |
| international commitments as the United | s ingle frame of intersectional analysis that |
| Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolu | posits India’s crisis of domestic discontents |
| tions 1325 (2000) and 1820 (2008). The | as driving militarisation of the state (i e, |
| UNSC Resolution 1820 specifically recog | military consolidation of India by acquisi |
| nises sexual violence in conflict as a war | tion of the icons of global military power) |
| crime and warns against impunity as per | and militarisation within (i e, the domestic |
| petuating domestic and public violence | political deployment of the military and its |
| against women (VAW). The resolution | implications for citizen and society). |
| c onsolidates the International Criminal | “The use of the military for domestic |
| Court’s recognition of rape in conflict as an | r epression by the state is not a phenome |
| instrument of war and as a war crime. | non confined to the military, but a state- |
| It is necessary to reiterate this in locat | society process characterised by the elimi |
| ing Seema Kazi’s ambitious study Between | nation of civil military distinction”, she |
| Democracy and Nation: Gender and Milita | argues. Here enters the gender theory to |
| risation in Kashmir. Kazi is not entering an | draw attention to the social dimension of |
| uncharted terrain, though she does not take | militarisation and the way in which mili |
| cognisance of these international advances. | tarisation is imprinted with meanings and |
| However, her otherwise extensive citations | construction of gender that reinforce |
| demonstrate a cosmopolitan familiarity with | g endered social hierarchies. |
| gendered knowledge that has been pushing | Kazi draws upon her doctoral disserta |
| open the epistemological closures of inter | tion guide, Mary Kaldor’s path-breaking |
| national relations and political analysis based | study of “new wars” that are a “mix of |
| on conventional claims of gender neutral | war, human rights abuse and the privati |
| a pproaches to peace, conflict and security. | sation of violence”. Notwithstanding, my |
| Therefore, it was with considerable eager | own misgivings about Kaldor’s minimis |
| anticipation that I turned to Kazi’s study – | ing the role of the traditional political |
| derived from her doctoral dissertation – to | causes driving even the “new wars”, Kazi, |
| walk with her as she, by placing “women at | following Kaldor, effectively captures the |
| the centre” of the militarisation narrative | particularity of the language or methodo |
| sought to expand theory and empirically | logy of the “new” internal wars, as in |
| demonstrate its explanatory value for cap- | Kashmir, in which rape and sexual abuse |
| turing how militarisation has come to be | of women by the military is as much part |
| embedded in the social fabric of Kashmir. | of the crisis of militarism as the arbitrary |
| and unlawful killings of civilians, dis- | |
| Understanding Militarisation | appearances, etc. “What mandates atten- |
| Kazi brings a succinct and clear under | tion here is not just the institutional abuse |
| standing of the changing historical con | of the military by the state, but also the |
| cepts of conventional “militarism” and its | conduct and the nature of the violence”, |
| morphing into “militarisation” as more | Kazi emphasises. |
| 32 | june 13, 2009 |
ance on military power in foreign policy. However, in the contemporary context of India control of the military rests in civilian hands. Also, the definition does not address the domestic (instrumental) role of military within states. Second, the term does not address the socio-political dimensions of the crisis that flow from such a instrumental use of military. Here civilian targets and violence against women are not an outcome but an integral constituent of military conflict
– a means to inflict defeat and humiliation on the ‘enemy’ through the appropriation of cultural meanings of gender. Militarism does not take into a ccount a contemporary context in which the military functions not only as an illegitimate instrument of state power, but as a violator of the rule of law, the rules of war and citizens’ democratic and human rights. Third, militarism does not address the ideological dimensions underpinning domestic use of military. Domestic repression is justified in ‘national’ terms. Four, militarism categorised women as non-combatants to be protected (often breached). However, in the contemporary crisis of militarism within the state, the military is transformed into a nonaccountable agent not bound by the Geneva Convention rules of war.
Gender Analysis
Bringing in gender analysis, Kazi posits that at issue is not “adding women” but changing the terms of the normative discourse structured around the dichotomies of private-public, militarisation and war as a masculine and male domain and its binary of civilian and peace as a female and feminine domain. (The black hole of feminist politics – women in militarised movements – is beyond her purview.) The social relations of gender are a constituent rather than a consequence of militarisation in Kashmir, she argues. Rephrasing what other feminist scholars have conceptualised as the “continuum of violence”, Kazi reiterates that gender analysis demonstrates “the inter-relationship between violence at the international, national and family levels”. Kazi consolidates our t heoretical understanding of militarisation, in positing that “gender analyses are not as much about women, as they are about militari sation as a process where meanings and interpretations of sexual difference are manipulated and exploited”.
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BOOK REVIEW
The problem with the book is that the high expectations raised by the theoretical scaffolding fall short in translating them into a fresh and robust empirical analysis of militarisation in Kashmir. There is a disappointing reluctance to excavate fresh layers of meaning in our under standing of the social dimensions of militarisation in Kashmir, and gender as an integral category for capturing it. Kazi’s gendered narrative of the social dimension of militarism largely consolidates e arlier studies and sensitively turns some fresh ground in laying bare gender t ransformations in the reinforcement of social hierarchy as evinced in increased social p olicing of women without men and the fate of women/girls deemed to be socially compromised during raids and “crackdowns”.
Kazi focuses on the half widows of the “disappeared” and the raped women as her dominant categories of gendered social analysis. She sweepingly asserts that “The lack of democracy and democratic accountability in Kashmir is synonymous with the denial of justice for Kashmiri widows and half widows”! Curiously, although she emphasises the instrumental use of women in the Kashmiri struggle and the manipulation of gendered meanings, her analysis stops short of problematising “rape in the war story” by grappling with the practical and political difficulties of getting at the “truth”. For example, at one level there are the “credible” reports of women being encouraged by ideologues associated with militancy to exaggerate and publicise sexual violence as the human rights front of the propaganda story. Its flip side is the social opprobrium attached to sexual abuse that remains unquestioned and prevents women from coming forward. At another level, there are army sources (which she quotes), discrediting such complaints. And at a wider level there is the debate (prompted by mass sexual violence in Gujarat 2002 and the Anti-Communal Violence Bill 2007) challenging the inadequacy of existing laws of evidence for addressing the phenomena of mass sexual violence in situations of mass violence and armed conflict.
Lack of Rigour
At issue is the absence of sceptical rigour in Kazi’s use of a varied range of sources – critically necessary as a methodology for establishing credible facts beyond moral and political correctness. It comes up again in what has become a “false” controversy over the statistics of the “disappeared” that is regularly raked up to discredit charges of a pattern of human rights atrocities. Lack of rigour in documenting has entrapped many a well meaning scholar as well as undermined possibilities of pursuing legal action.
Kazi’s emotions tend to lead in impressionistic statements like “In 1991…described Kashmir as an area under military occupation, 2004 there was little difference” (emphasis added). Clearly, there is no d enying that there has been no closure in the experience of the suffering of the K ashmiri people. Moreover, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and the Disturbed Areas Act continue and so does the oppressive presence of the military (paramilitary, renegades, Special Task Forces); the thousands still in jail, the r eports of continuing human rights abuses
– disappearances, arbitrary arrests, extra judicial killings, sexual abuse and civilians trapped between the two guns. But surely over these 18 years, there is a difference from the overwhelming presence of b unkers, endless armed convoys and checkpoints, protracted curfews leaving deserted streets except for the jackboots of the patrolling security forces; the routine crackdowns, mass abductions and arrests, disappearances and killings, massacres r esulting from the security forces firings on unarmed protest demonstrations and mass rapes and sexual violence. Moreover, Kazi provides minimal fresh data to establish this assertion, and largely relies upon some well-documented reports of human rights organisations. But many of these refer to an earlier phase as exemplified in Chapter 3 “Militarisation in Kashmir”, footnote no 64 (p 126) which cites a cluster of reports largely focused on the violations of the 1990s. To claim that “Freedom of expression is not possible” on the strength of the assessment of Rehana Hakim, who was part of a visiting team of Pakistani journalists in 2004, is not parti cularly persuasive, despite the fact that she is one of Pakistan’s foremost indepen dent journalists.
Juxtaposing the recent inauguration of the Tulip gardens and the discovery of mass graves is a dramatic reminder that there can be no closure without addressing gross violations of human rights. But is it an evidence of a continuum of military occupation, then and now?
Arguably, there can be real scepticism about the democratic value of the withdrawal of governor’s rule and the ritual of elections and governments in J&K. Also the sincerity of New Delhi’s commitment to a political dialogue on Kashmir is in serious doubt when the five rounds of talks have amounted to little more than the like-minded talking to each other. But from the perspective of realpolitik, the process produced an important objective of the ruling forces, the splitting of the Hurriyat Conference and the undermining of its strength and significance.
The point is that the Indian state has in its armoury more than the sole use of military means to mediate the crises of disaffection as Kazi argues. This is not to question that the Indian state’s predominant response has been the deployment of security forces to suppress struggles for selfassertion, which, in turn, have become militarised and turned secessionist. It has resulted in the Indian army becoming “one of the busiest peace time armies in the world”
– to quote human rights acti vist and security affairs researcher, Gautam Navlakha.
Praxis of Peace-making
But, equally, the Indian state having m ilitarised these struggles, subsequently, has been busy experimenting with the praxis of peace-making through “accords” that divide and co-opt and often provide for division-based, territorially-focused “ethnically” delimited autonomies and power-sharing arrangements with rebel elite. The north-east is a laboratory of this flawed praxis of peace-making, where “autonomies” have become the reflex of politics – ranging from statehood of M izoram and Nagaland to the recognition of a Bodo Autonomous Area and Karbi A nglong District Council. Take the Indian state’s response to the 60-year old Naga p eople’s struggle for self-determination. It epitomises the state’s predominant s trategy of militari sation, but there is also a genealogy of “peace-making” via accords that spans the 1960 grant of Nagaland statehood and the current agreement for a
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BOOK REVIEW
ceasefire and peace talks (1997) between the government of India (GoI) and the dominant “nationalist”/“rebel” group N ational Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak Muivah). The political dialogue has got stymied, but looked at in a more Machiavellian way, you could argue that the Indian state has succeeded in corrupting and undermining the capacity of the Naga p eople’s struggle, at least in this phase.
Clearly, a praxis of peace-making that does not substantively expand the democratic agenda is flawed and leads to a nother cycle of conflict. The argument that I am seeking to make is that the explanatory framework posited by Kazi does not capture the complexity and contradictions of the Indian state’s mix of militarist and political strategies. This is reinforced further by Kazi’s lack of subtle analysis to capture the steady internalisation of the military’s role in governance in which “generals become governors” (to borrow a phrase from Sanjib Baruah). Also, there is the outcrop of “civilianised” advisers at the state and national levels; and the a rmy’s steady appropriation of the welfare role of the civilian state through its S adbhavna and Sathi Lago programmes. (Several of these programmes are specifically oriented towards women’s empowerment by way of vocational training c entres, including beauty care training.) Kazi, nonetheless, insightfully draws our attention to the permanent nature of the processes of “state-society” militarisation, even if she does not provide the empirical basis for establishing it.
She shifts the emphasis away from analysing overt aspects of militarisation, that is, centring on its bellicose aspects and India’s continuing de jure civilian control of the military. But what is missing a robust profiling of the military’s multi dimensional presence, i e, soldier to civilian population, appropriation of civilian decision-making, takeover of civilian spaces like schools and stadiums to set up camps, the undertaking of social welfare activities inclu ding the r econstruction and running of schools, v ocational training centres for women, r epairing of religious shrines, etc.
Impact of Militarisation
Take the impact of militarisation on education, Kazi draws upon two reports – “Wounded Valley” (Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights 1997) that states that 260 out of 585 schools in the valley have been occupied by the military or turned into interrogation centres; and a Medicin Sans Frontiere Survey of two blocks of two border districts (2005) in which 15.5% of the children feared attending school because of v iolence. A much more subtle and robust analysis was desirable and expected that might have captured a more complex p icture. I remember a 2001 visit to a school in Anantnag which had a common wall with a camp of Ikhwaeen (militants s uborned and co-opted by state security forces), or in early 1990, when a security forces’ camp was located adjacent to S rinagar’s elite Don Bosco school. Then there is the gendered issue of girls dropping out of school in situations of conflict.
A central argument of the book is that the contemporary crisis of militarisation within states transforms the military into an illegitimate and unaccountable agent not only not bound by Geneva Convention’s laws of wars, but empowered to violate both with impunity. In India, there is the legal structure of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and its legitimisation of the culture of impunity. No prosecution has been sanctioned by the government making a mockery of the fundamental right of habeas corpus, which is the cornerstone for challenging illegal detention. As this is a core argument, it could have been made more effective, had Kazi mentioned Common Article 3 that is concerned with the protection of civilians in internal conflict. And also the limits of its application in a situation where the Indian government denies that there is any armed conflict.
In the chapter “Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir” Kazi draws upon a clutch of interviews conducted in Srinagar to poignantly communicate the sense of individual trauma, social dislocation, cultural destruction, socio-economic devastation, ethnic fragmentation and destruction of Kashmir’s civil society. Kazi displays a fine sensitivity in depicting the impact of the military-backed patriarchal violence of the state on the lives of the women.
There is the young and beautiful O’s story. In 1999, the security forces raided
june 13, 2009
her home and she was physically tortured. However, when she wanted to marry, suitors were dissuaded by speculative r umours of what the military had done to her and the risks of marrying someone under suspicion of the military. Eventually, she made a disastrous marriage with a 60-year old man. She is back home and 27 years old. O was dissuaded from filing an FIR by three militant leaders because of social reasons. The authorities offered her a job but she refused. As a result of the social price demanded from female victims of sexual abuse, Kazi quotes O saying –
I have become an untouchable …I do not step out of my house for fear of being identified as the woman who was physically tortured by the army … I do not want to look out of the window… This [she whispered amidst tears] is like a prison for me.
Kazi uses gender analysis to expand our understanding that, while state v iolence against men can be challenged publically and legally in the courts, no such r ecourse is available for Kashmiri women for whom violence and trauma must be faced in silence. Their discrimination and social ostracism are constructed as within the private realm. There is no social recognition that rape as a crime against women as women is not a sequel to militarisation, but a constituent of militarisation.
The patriarchal leaders of the Kashmir struggle have failed to recognise let alone socially challenge the “sexualised contours of coercive nation state building”. Militarisation in Kashmir has generated a “masculinist social environment that subjects women to greater social policing and regressive versions of Islamic identity”.
Kazi’s study Between Democracy and Nation is an important intellectual demarche in successfully contesting militarisation as an all-male arena. It incisively exposes the state’s claim to security when its actions endanger bodily integrity daily. The book consolidates in one place an impressive survey of NGO fact-finding reports on Kashmir. That the book promises more than it delivers also holds out future expec tations of more fulfilling work to follow from an author to watch out for.
Email: ritamanchanda2003@yahoo.co.in
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Antony, Shinie, ed. (2009): Kerala Kerala, Quite Contrary (New Delhi: Rupa & Co); pp 256, Rs 195.
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