South Asia Citizens Web

As the recent killings in Handwara underlined, peace, to the detriment of the people, remains elusive in Kashmir. The people of Kashmir have tried, time and again, to translate themselves from passive recipients of violence, legitimated by legislations of the physically and psychologically removed parliaments of India and Pakistan, into subjects who recognize that they can exercise agency and take control of their destinies.

Gurmehar is the 19-year-old daughter of an Indian soldier who died fighting Pakistanis in the Kargil war. She was only two years old at the time. Growing up required grappling with terrible demons. And so the young girl arrived at her anti-war worldview through a tortuous maze of hatred and distrust, primarily of Muslims and Pakistanis who she blamed for her father’s loss. It was her mother who pulled her back from the destructive journey.

Think about the depth of vulnerability that a great majority of Bangladeshis are in right now. For them, fear and compliance to the wishes of the fascists from the below is an understandable strategy. And this survival strategy may snowball into the dominant norms of a society.

Afghan women’s rights activists as well as activists outside Afghanistan known as intersectional feminists, who by definition understand how complex the oppression of women can be, often say that Western feminists have willfully misrepresented the plight of Afghan women; Spogmai Akseer has even written that a portrayal of them as “silent and passive victims of their culture, their men and their politics” has served only to justify an imperialist invasion disguised as a humanitarian rescue mission.

Women in India do not appear to be active participants in the debate around the chanting of the slogan ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. Even the debate in the media is dominated through discourse by men. The chanting of this slogan – necessary to prove ‘patriotism’ – is an obsession only of the so called ‘patriotic’ men.