Three generations

Kalpana Sharma
on the women of
Kunan Poshpora in Kashmir

http://www.indiatogether.org/

September 2002 : "YOU can never understand our pain," shouted a

young woman, head swathed in a black scarf. This outburst came at
the end of an hour talking to students, men and women, at the SSM
engineering college in Srinagar about the current situation in
Kashmir. The young men dominated the discussion; the women,
dressed in pastels, sat quietly in the first rows. Until this woman from
the back burst forth.

What she said cannot be disputed. No matter how much you read
about Kashmir, how many of its people you meet elsewhere, you can
never fully understand their pain, frustration, tension, grief, loss and
the longing for peace and normalcy. Yet, once there, you sense it in
every conversation, in homes, in the market place and even in places
unconnected with the troubles.

At the Ziayarat Makhdoom Sahib Shrine, which nestles below the

imposing Mughal Fort on Srinagar's Hari Parbat, hundreds of women
arrive at an early hour on Mondays and Thursdays to meditate, pray,
ask for a . You don't need to speak to anyone. Just sit there, listen to
the haunting tones of the intonations on the loudspeaker, watch the
pigeons in the courtyard take flight when someone passes by, and
look at the faces. They speak of the grief, of the loss that must be a
part of every life. There are old and young women, some are crying,
some are talking to themselves, some just sit quietly. What are their
stories?

Far away, in the village of Kunan Poshpora near Kupwara, separated

by a range of high mountains from Pakistan, you sense the same
sorrow, although no one speaks of it voluntarily. In this medium-
sized picturesque village, with about 300 families, the women seem
to live in idyllic conditions. Unlike villages in India, there is no
harijan or social exclusion. There are poor families, but all of them
have roofs over their heads and some land. The village grows paddy,
corn, vegetables, walnuts, almonds, some fruit and has a river running
past it. There is plenty of water and low voltage electricity. Firewood
is available as long as there are women around to collect it. And all
the children go to school.

But the sadness in the eyes of the women of Kunan Poshpora is not
the consequence of the eternal burden that women must carry, of
fetching, carrying and caring, tasks that remain unalterable regardless
of location. Their eyes tell a different story; even today they can
barely hide the terror and shame of a day in 1991, when Indian Army
personnel raped over 30 women from this village. These women were
young then. Today, 11 years later, some of them remain unmarried,
others have come back to their maternal homes, and all of them are
scarred for life.

Young Posha was just five when the incident took place. Today she is
an worker earning Rs. 800 a month (paid infrequently and hardly ever
the entire amount). Yet, she is proud that she earns and says she is
luckier than the other girls in the village.

"People come here and promise all kinds of things," she says. "One
lady came and said we should get all the women raped in 1991
married off. But nothing happened."

Young women like her continue to carry the memory of what

happened to their mothers. "Girls here face a lot of problems," says
Posha. "We have to tolerate the taunts of people from other villages
when they hear that we are from Kunan. Also whenever anyone from
the army comes to the village, all the young girls have to hide in their
houses. There are no men around most of the year. Most of them go
off to Punjab or Kolkata to sell shawls. They only return in March to
help in the fields."

Yet, despite this, the grit and determination in these women stand out.
They do not just stand about and wail. The "victims" of the 1991
incident merge with the other women; no one tries to pull them out to
tell their story. All the women are getting on with their lives. The
younger ones are learning to do the typical Kashmiri embroidery on
so that they can find some means to earn. Shamima, just 15 and not
yet a matriculate, is teaching pre-school children how to read and
write. She is determined to get through although she admits that girls
have a harder time than boys do, "because they have to do so much
housework".

There is a whole generation of young women like Posha and

Shamima in Kashmir who have known nothing else than "guns
pointed at them from both sides". What will so-called "normal" life
mean for them given their extreme vulnerability? Being a village
close to the border, the army keeps an eye on them. So do the
militants. And the villagers, particularly the women, have to walk
with care.

What you sense in all of them is a hunger to learn and to earn, to be

economically independent. After a week in the valley, I came away
with a feeling of hope after talking to women like Posha and
Shamima. And Dilafroze, a woman in Srinagar who could have lived
a comfortable, cushioned life. Instead, after her experience of being
targetted by militants, she decided to do whatever she could to help
other women. So she arrived in the Kunan Poshpora earlier this year
on a mission that failed. Far from being defeated by it, she returned a
few weeks later with ideas and funds to help the women help
themselves. Single-handedly, she has set up a pre-school for girls, and
embroidery classes for young women.

You will see plenty of Kashmir in the valley. But most of them are
not "wilting lilies", women who throw up their hands in the face of
the constant violence and terror around them. Young or old, these
women are a Kashmiri version of "steel magnolias".

Kalpana Sharma

http://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/kalpana/home.htm

September 2002
Kalpana Sharma is Deputy Editor with The Hindu, and a regular
contributor to India Together. Her opinions, which appear in a
regular column with The Hindu, are concurrently published on India
Together with permission.