[Reader-list] Second posting April 2007

[Shafia Wani]

Hello Vivek,

Here is my second posting for the SARAI Independent Fellowship, titled '*The
Aesthetic of Resistance and Women in Kashmir'. *Please excuse the delay as I
am putting this in a day late.
*



2nd Posting, SARAI
*

Aasia Jeelani, born 9 February 1974, died 20 April 2004, was a student at
the Media Education Research Center (MERC) at Kashmir University; while she
was there she showed an energy about her which was noticeable to friends and
acquaintances. When she finished her course from the University of Kashmir
she looked about for an opportunity to work in the media. She began her
professional career as a trainee cum researcher with the Agence France
Presse (AFP) Kashmir bureau in 1998; in 2001 she started working with the
Times of India as an intern. This phase of a 'regular' professional
engagement did not last as there was something else that was pulling her,
she was appalled by the deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and
wanted to do something that would contribute in some way to addressing this
issue especially vis a vis women.

She joined the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (CCS) which is
an umbrella of several organizations that have come together to bolster
civil society efforts in a variety of ways.

She was an energetic activist for the CCS and within some time of her
joining she along with a few friends founded the Kashmiri Women's Initiative
for Peace and Development. (KWIPD) This initiative ran within the ambit of
the CCS but had an autonomous mandate of its own.

The initiative started by documenting the issues of women and how the
violence of the past many years had affected them. This loose documentation
took the form of a newsletter that the KWIPD took out by the name of Voices
Unheard. This newsletter came about to represent the voices of women who
were at the receiving end of violence and their stories of courage and
sometimes despair. Aasia was the editor of this newsletter.

Aasia in time came about to became a key representative on the civil rights
movement in Kashmir and especially a representative of the issues of women.
She represented these issues at many international and national conferences
that she attended; she attended conferences on peace management notably the
one on Peace Management organized by the CM Partners Negotiation and
Conflict Management Advice at the Roger Fisher House, Cambridge,
Massachusetts in August 2003 and the one organized by the Netherland based
NGO Inter Church Peace Council (IKV) in 2003 in Amsterdam.

Talking of her experience in Netherland, Aasia wrote in an issues of the
Voices Unheard, that in the numerous trouble spots of the world women alike
were are at the receiving end of the consequences of violence and that in
these numerous cases the "causes may be different but the repercussions the
same. One of the aims of attending this conference as a woman activist was
to have interactions with women from other conflict regions and see the way
thy work. And the feeling of isolation that we experience would be to an
extent surmounted."

This effort at finding a community in the experience of other people, who
share similar experiences and situations, is something that is a productive
endeavor not only in that we learn from the experience of others but that we
also find a community and support. This community is crucial to alleviate a
condition of general and pervasive loss.

This is then what Aasia was looking for in her work, an active agency that
shaped, defined her concerns and a community that shares these concerns and
supports them. This for her was an effort that could in some measure address
the repercussions of violence for the countless women who have suffered
through the years of conflict that Kashmir has seen.

As time would tell her efforts and her subsequent death instilled a
confidence in others to contribute and shape a discourse on the position of
women in this society.

These are the final lines of her last editorial for the Voices Unheard, for
the quarter January March 2004, just before she died, " circumstances demand
that confidence has to be instilled in women who have been victims of rape,
torture, molestation and widowhood so that they can rethink and restart
their lives with a new spirit. We will continue with our efforts."

In time other young women attracted and inspired by the work that was being
done by the KWIPD joined the initiative. These young women were from diverse
backgrounds and in their own way sought to contribute to an initiative that
they though was addressing a crucial need. Some were pass outs of the
department of mass communications at the University of Kashmir and others
were students from the university and some professionals as well who became
a part of this initiative.

Among these was a young woman named Rafia. When she joined the KWIPD she was
still a student of mass communications at the University of Kashmir. She
came to know of the KWIPD through a senior of hers at the department and
joined it because it represented for her a forum where she could contribute
to something that had always been close to her heart.

"As the fight for human rights has always been something that has touched my
heart, I saw in KWIPD an opportunity to get to know and work for the victims
of the conflict, especially women and children."

At the KWIPD she used to contribute to the publications of the KWIPD and did
many case stories for these publications highlighting the women victims of
the conflict and their families. She got to travel a lot to far flung areas
to meet the victims of conflict and to know their stories first hand. She
also coordinated workshops both at national and local level with other
organizations in India, that focused on conflict resolution, management and
reporting.

For many women in Kashmir this kind of work presented an opportunity to
engage directly and creatively with their own context and have an active
agency in interpreting and shaping the discourses within this context.

In addition, this engagement also provided for opportunities where these
young women represented these issues at different fora, recently Rafia was
one in an team where there were other young women as well who had an
opportunity to travel to Pakistan for the World Social Forum that was held
at Karachi in 2006.

There they had an opportunity to highlight the plight of the victims of
conflict. They achieved a comprehensive representation of the condition of
women and children in conflict at the forum. Discussions, debates and
interviews with the Pakistani media and intellectuals from all over were an
engaging and greatly productive experience for these women.

This kind of an agency is crucial in general terms but at a different level
such an engagement also is very significant as it strengthens and
establishes a feeling of efficacy and significance at an existential level
especially for somebody who comes from a context that is dissipative of
energy and initiative. In her own words, "I consider my generation as
children whom grew up with the conflict; I was 7 years old when the turmoil
started in Kashmir, in a way my generation of people haven't experienced
what is known as a normal childhood. We went through curfews and bombs and
bloodshed. The education system was in shambles".

This kind of an evocation of a lost childhood produces a feeling of
pervasive loss and that seeks to consume everything within itself. It is in
this context that an active engagement with ones owns situation becomes all
the more crucial not only as expression of ones desire to represent the
condition of others but also to establish a sense of coherent agency within
ones own state of being.

The story of Aasia makes her a martyr to some and a heroine to others, while
her story is yet unheard by so many. She represents the possibility that the
story of women in Kashmir though difficult is nevertheless one of courage
and determination against all odds and not necessarily of only despair and
neglect.

Other young women who have participated and joined these initiatives are a
part of an initiative that is bound to gain in importance and significance.
The initiatives of the KWIPD and many others that will be narrated will give
us the stories that will make for the pegs around which a new discourse of
women in current times will be woven. A discourse that will be global in its
resonance though one that is rooted in the contextual and the local.
*

Ends
* Regards,
Shafia Wani.
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