Category: Democracy

Uncuff India Episode 5: Caste violence, resistance and justice

by admin ● Posted on

Episode 5: Caste violence, resistance and justice

Through the fifth episode of the podcast, we aim to unpack caste violence, its agents and its various manifestations. Our insightful guest, Dr Swati Kamble, also speaks to us about the history of Dalit resistance, the role of women in the movement and also how writing became the medium for seeking justice.
Dr Swati Kamble is an anti-caste intersectional feminist and independent researcher-activist whose research broadly focuses on human rights and social justice movements, decolonisation and intersectionality. Currently, she is researching the digital activism of Dalit women and middle-class Dalit women’s mobility in the Indian neo-liberal market and is also collaborating with Dalit, indigenous and marginalised groups and organisations in India for the mapping and archival of indigenous forms of knowledge and decolonisation.
Content warning: mentions of caste violence and genocide, untouchability, physical abuse, gang rape, rape, sexual assault

Transcript

[Intro]

 

Abhinaya

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Uncuff India Podcast. I’m Abhinaya and my pronouns are she and her. 

 

Uttanshi- My name is Uttanshi and my pronouns are she and her. We are your hosts for today and it’s lovely to have you all listening in. 

 

[Intro ends]

 

Uttanshi

In this episode, we aim to understand the processes which inform writing and sharing about violence by the State, particularly by and about people from Dalit communities. We will do this by exploring how the State treats their writing and reporting of state violence, and will critically assess the challenges that the Dalit communities face, including the institutional violence embedded within the process of speaking up. 

 

Abhinaya

And State agencies are modeled on existing, unequal social systems. In practice, this can look like replication and aggravation of existing forms of violence. This becomes possible for the State due to the socio-political, and oftentimes even legal sanctioning of the actions of these agencies. Moreover, given that India’s ranking in the Press Freedom Index has only dipped consistently in the recent past, the silencing and erasure of marginalized narratives is often the outcome. Given these circumstances, through this episode, we aim to understand what’s speaking up against the State and or even speaking out about one’s lived realities mean for people at the intersections of these multiple vulnerabilities. 

 

Uttanshi

Thanks Abhinaya for that. To discuss this and to share their insights on this very important topic with us, we have with us Dr. Swati Kamble. Swati is an anti caste intersectional feminist and independent researcher activist. Her research broadly focuses on human rights and social justice movements, decolonization, and intersectionality. She has a PhD in Socio Economics from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Geneva and her doctoral research focused on the political mobilization of India’s caste affected, caste oppressed communities, their movement history and how this movement has shaped oppressed caste women activists into agents of change. In this research, she studied how Dalit women activists influence policy processes by negotiating and navigating androcentric upper-caste bureaucratic spaces of power. Additionally, she has studied Roma women’s movement in Hungary and how the European Decade for the Roma Inclusion Plan policy did not reflect the issues of Roma women that the Roma civil Society has been advocating for. Currently, she is researching the digital activism of Dalit women and middle class Dalit women’s mobility in the Indian neoliberal market. She is also collaborating with Dalit indigenous and marginalized groups and organizations in India on a project around mapping and archival of indigenous forms of knowledge and decolonization. I am so thrilled to have you join us for this episode, Swati. It’s been phenomenal to be learning from you and to be hearing your thoughts on this very, very important topic. Thank you for being here.

 

Swati

Thank you so much, Uttanshi. I’m looking forward to this conversation.

 

Abhinaya

Thank you so much Uttanshi and  Swati. I think to start off Swati, I think that there’s a tendency to generally deny that caste violence even exists in our society. So would you be able to shed some light on instances of violence that Dalit communities have experienced in India?

 

Swati

Yeah, Thank you very much, Abhinaya. Absolutely. There is this tendency due to the constitutional safeguards that exist today-  be it on paper most of the times that within India, Dalit communities marginalized communities in general be it also the Adivasi Scheduled Tribes Vimukta and (NT and DNT)-nomadic tribes and denotified tribes communities that who are protected, who have affirmative action, you know, reservation ensured through affirmative action or there is atrocities Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989 that ensures that you know any form of atrocities against these marginalized communities would be punishable offense. So, and untouchability is constitutionally abolished within India we have these, you know, very very strong legal frameworks that address these injustices, historical injustices meted out against the untouchable communities of yesteryears who are named now Dalits and other vulnerable communities. But our society has not caught up to the constitutional morality that we have. And as we know that the fabric of our society, our Indian society, is a caste fabric, it’s woven in caste. So, all around us we see instances of violence right from institutional violence where students going into higher education or for that matter primary schools, you see that students experience casteism, students are told I mean they’re they are told about their caste while they are asking difficult questions. So, you are always told that you know be grateful for the favor that is done to you by the State. So, State and the society thinks that you are this protected category and are now benefiting from these fruits and you’re not deserving of these fruits. So you have case very, very famous case of Rohit Vemula in 2016 where not only was he a very brilliant scholar, we got to read him only through his suicide note which caused fervor in our our Indian society. And it led to a very strong momentum of student movement within India. A student movement of anti-caste communities, anti-caste students were when he asked difficult questions in the institutions around the Hindutva nationalistic rhetoric that is going around him and other anti-caste students were not allowed to enter the university premises. And when they protested by staying outside the university premises, it’s almost looked at as you know, the very symbolic performance of caste. Where you are ousted, you are ostracized in the similar fashion as written in the scriptures, like you’ll be punished if you have dared to read the Vedas, you will be punished with molten lead in your ears or your tongue would be chopped off. This is what scriptures prescribed, some 2000 odd years ago, 2005, 500 years ago and these archaic rules you see being played out in contemporary times too very very much. Where as a form of protest, Rohit Vemula committed suicide and the anti-caste community’s term it institutional murder. You have this very strong instance where his suicide note talks about his birth being his fatal accident that a human is not acknowledged for his shared humanness. But there will be these labels of caste, of gender, of how much money you have, what is a social cloud that you have, what are your social networks. These are the ways in which humans are graded. And that’s what we see time and again in our Indian society and it’s not only in this direct form of violence that we can not only it’s not only in this direct form of violence where people are murdered, people are killed, but also structurally because you’re not expected to be in these spaces, you’re not allowed to be in this spaces. So when you be there, you be amicable, you be docile, don’t ask questions, follow the norms, norms prescribed by the caste. You don’t do that. You are going above what you’re supposed to do. So this very strong power dynamic conflict arises when subversion takes place within the marginalized, when marginalized ask difficult questions, when marginalized ask truth. Speak truth to the power- the power be it educational institutions, power be it the State, political institutions, judiciary, you get confronted, yet you know Dalit communities have been very, very assertive asking for their rights because there is a 200 years long legacy of movement social movements and that really sort of has emboldened, emancipated a whole lot of Dalit communities. You have other very recent instance of Hathras gang rape in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which is, I dare say, one of the most feudal states in India, most populous state and very divided state in the contemporary Hindu nationalistic State that we are in and you have three years ago, this young woman who was gang raped by the Thakur caste men and her mortal remains were burned by the police. So, police and judiciary worked hand in hand in covering up the entire atrocity that was meted out. Not only that, when the verdict comes out, you see acquittal of the four out of three of the accused and only one of the accused convicted and convicted under the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Despite the dying declaration of the victim who named clearly that she was forcibly sexually violated. So you see that our Indian society is very much steeped in this brahmanical patriarchy where Dalit communities are also taught lesson by controlling women sexually by, you know, doing this. So, Dalit women bear the multiple burden of violence. So you see, educated masses, the critical mass within the community gets the strong bowl blow. The women get the strong blow and these are the ones who are at the forefront of the movement too. So, their assertion on top of the violence that is over, like omnipresent, you see that when they assert, when they dissent and when they ask difficult questions is when they also experience violence. Yes. So these are two instances, but there are multiple of them. In Maharashtra you have Khairlanji that happened in 2006 and I was 20 year old who had just come abroad to study in Sweden. And I remember this very clear, clear as day September of 2006 when we heard of how the entire family was hacked to death, death, how the women of the family were raped, brutally dismembered and the violation is beyond, you know, it’s such a monstrous act. The violation is so extreme that one disbelieves. So I think the majority of society also plays an ostrich. It puts head under the sand and says, oh, look what all we have done. They had only reservation for 10 years. It was meant to be 10 years. It’s been prolonged and it’s been prolonged and it’s been prolonged all the while forgetting that the reservation is not an act to just remedy the, you know, class of poverty. It is an act to reparative justice, you know, all those in historical injustices need to be turned. That’s when we can say that this form of reservation can be ended or when the violence is like not only absence of direct violence, because absence of direct violence can be created by snifling the voices, but you could also, I mean you have to focus on restorative, reparative justice.

 

Uttanshi

 Yeah, no, definitely, Swati. I think there’s so much to unpack in your answer to our question and I think.

 

Swati

There is, yes, yes, it’s very complex.

 

Uttanshi

Yeah, definitely. And you know, I’m very intrigued to also step in to just break down some of this complexity a little bit more for our listeners. And I wanted to understand from you, you know, you shared experiences and examples of people from the Dalit community speaking against this form of violence and, yeah, you know, not being silent in the face of this sort of violence. And I wanted to ask. You, you know, what are, what are some of the ways by which we can start thinking about the challenges that a Dalit person faces when they come out and they speak truth to power, right?You of course mentioned some of them, but if you could just highlight, say two or three for our listeners to get that understanding and to be able to really empathize with the challenges that members of the Dalit community may face, it will be really, really fantastic.

 

Swati

Definitely. So you know I can go back to 2007 and eight when I was a master student and I decided to look at the constitutional guarantees or amendment that’s were made to ensure political participation of women and schedule caste and scheduled tribes. So because and this is also in the background of the 90s where we were really looking at decentralization of government and when we look at decentralization, it looks like ideal panchayat Raj where people have power or to true democracy where, you know, people collectively make decisions about their ways of living in the village. It sounds very sustainable and it sounds very romantic also. But looked at from the caste lens, the villages small, you know, closed knit communities tend to be the dense of, you know, casteism and violence. So, my research was looking at the violence experiences experienced by  Dalit communities, specifically Dalit women in the in Maharashtra in beed district- Marathwada region of Maharashtra, which is also within Maharashtra context is one of the very kind of a state region where Dalits have experienced extreme forms of violence also because of the existing movement of existing vibrant Dalit movement there. So, you see side by side the existence of Dalit movement and violence. The Maratwara region experiences the NAMANTAR ANDOLAN server, you would want to look that up. Namantar Server is changing the name of Maratwara University to Dr. Ambedkar University. Now Dr. Ambedkar had contributed tremendously in building educational institutions and, you know, laying out a framework for educational upliftment of marginalized folks. And so, therefore, it was only logical for the state of Maharashtra to lend that honor to him by giving the name of the university and symbolically, it’s not a very huge act, but when the society is casteized, when the society does not acknowledge the revolutionaries and leaders of the communities and when these symbols become, you know, markers of creating histories, taking spaces, acknowledging laying claim to these public spaces, universities, roads and so on, statue building, all these become contested issues. How do they become contested issues? That’s, you know, you rewriting that you were here, you are marking, you’re creating a signpost and then that signpost is not accepted by the dominant society. So, Marathwada region is a very unique region and that’s why I chose to go there to work with a Manavi Haqq ka Abhiyan, which means Human Rights Campaign organization led by late advocate Eknath Awad and there I was looking at how Dalit women are trying to participate in this constitutional amendment of 73rd and 74th Amendment, where you can participate in the Panchayat Raj as a chairperson. You can go for elections and become the chairperson or be the members. Now what was happening in 2006 and seven is that a lot of reports were coming forth. What kind of reports were coming forth of the political participation after a decade, decade and a half of this amendment implementation is that women are merely while women’s participation has increased, they are merely proxies or beti bahu brigade as in beti bahu and wives, daughters, wives and daughter in laws were made proxies to the seat of chairperson. So, the whole business would be taken care by the men of the family and within the Dalit communities it would be the landlord. So, the power dynamic in the villages were playing out and so this was the reporting that was going on in the newspapers and so on. On the other hand, I was also reading civil society organizations, reports, reports of assertion of Dalit communities to exercise the chairmanship and and then the violence meted out to them. So, you had NCDHR bringing out a report called Dalit Women Speak Out and there they mapped out violence against women who were participating in politics. In that research, I looked at 20 women who were participating in politics and, as a young researcher, I saw that you know I went with this feeling that our I went with this knowledge because, you know, you are also studying in educational institutions which are highly colonial, highly upper caste institutions. So you sort of take in what is told to you and I thought that I will have narratives of women experiencing extreme form of violence and I did encountered a lot of, you know, experiences of violence, but what intrigued me further was how these women were in the face of violence still going ahead, claiming their rights. So how did they claim their rights? They were not allowed to sit on the chair. So I wouldn’t be sharing the names of the women. This was already a decade and a half ago, but one of the women that I interviewed, she ensured sitting on the chair by having two police personnel around during the meetings. Another one invited during the flag hoisting of 26th January. She was not allowed to hoist flag for first two years. The third year comes, a whole team of police who stand there and she hoists flag in the presence of police. Now, she tells me these both women told me with amusement, but  to have these mere simple symbols of your citizenship as your as being a chairperson being played out you you are sort of having to have police protection. You have someone who went up to Supreme Court because she had a no confidence motion against her because she was asking too many difficult questions during the her chairmanship and she went ahead from High Court to Supreme Court and in the end the President of India felicitated her and she was very proud, but the ordeal that one goes through to sort of claim your simple citizenry rights that should be just ensured to you and it’s it’s quite intrigued me and it sort of turned my attention to look at what are the factors that facilitate the marginalized communities to sustain against all this backlash against all this violence and that’s what my research kind of tried to bring forth. You have many, many famous cases where you know a tribal community person, Mathura Mathura’s case or you look at the Bhavri Devi’s case, you see that these victims of violence, rape then become sort of face of the movement. BhavrI Devi in fact became so very active in her like trajectory after being the survivor of violence. So, these are a few instances from the like your yesteryears, you have the whole strong movement that has come up in recent years against the institutional violence that is taking place, student groups emerging. So, these are the instances where members of the Dalit communities are kind of and writing sort of like intellectually engaging, keeping the discourse going, talking over and over and over again that look around you violence happens because it can be easily forgotten to the point that, you know, Dalit communities are accused that you are crying the same cries all over again and you’re playing a politics of this caste discrimination to forward your own interest. These are the sort of accusations that are slapped at Dalit communities, leaderships and yeah we can even further talk about, you know, other sorts of allegations that the lit women face, Dalit men face, the question of Dalit patriarchy- the term that is introduced by the lip scholar Gopal guru. But how it is used, misused, twisted. How intersectionality is misused and twisted in our future questions.

 

Abhinaya

Thank you so much for your insights on that question, Swathi, and also for. Also, for depicting what forms Dalit resistance has taken over the years and what it manifests as as well, and since you also specifically mentioned the role of Dalit writing in sustaining and nourishing the Dalit resistance movement, I wanted to understand from you if you could elaborate on that a little bit more and also shed light on the value continuously writing about violence against Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi folks bring the brings to the table.

 

Swati

Thank you Abhinaya for that question. Dalit writings in recent years and even in the past years, like you know if you go you’ll have to trace back the history of the one of the first sort of documentation of Dalit writings you you look at  Mukta Salve was one of the students of Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule, the first educators of in India of indigenous, you know, background and Mukta Salve writes very critically about the plight of Mahar and Mahan communities in Maharashtra and you see her ask very, very critical, pertinent questions and she talks about the multiple burdens faced by the Dalit women. She talks about intersectionality. I mean, of course, intersectionality came into being just 30 years ago, but the intersectional way of thinking already existed in Dalit writings. So she talks about how Dalit women bear the burden of labor. So, they are laboring classes, but laboring intellectuals. You see that they are, you know, in her writing she talks about how they have to give birth to their babies without a roof and the grueling labor that the men and women continue and that education is going to emancipate them. So, this emphasis on education is already there right from the beginning because she’s the one of the first ones of the community who has received, you know, the benefits of it and has gained her own voice. You come to the 60s and the 70s and you see Dalit writings taking much more revolutionary edge in terms of, you know, the Dalit Panthers movement, which led to literally movement to use literary movement. You look at Namdev Dhasal’s writing, it’s so explosive. One of the poem that touches me to the core is man- you should explode and you you get so uncomfortable by the way he is pouring out this sort of, you know, destruction and towards the end, he says once you are done with all this destructive way of being man, you should become human and that, like you know, is the essence of  Dalit writing. I feel Dalit writing invites us to find our humanity. It democratizes our, you know, social fabric which is, you know, very graded. So, you see in the 60s, 70s, 80s, much more Dalit literature coming up, which is it was coming up in such a sort of form that the label was attached to it-Dalit literature. You have Arjun Dangle’s Poisonous Bread, you have the Yapawars Baluto in Maharashtra, you have Urmila Pawar and Urmila Pawar writing. We also wrote Histories, a book where she’s documenting the activism of micro organizations of the little women in the city of Bombay in Maharashtra and she’s trying to unearth and uncover all these unnamed unsung heroines and heroes in her writing. Across India, writing sort of became an exchange within the communities to come together to mobilize. It was sort of a kind of creation of manifestos. What are we experiencing? What are we aspiring to? And it’s so it’s a very radical form of kindness, if I may say so. It’s a radical form of asking critical questions. It’s brave. And I don’t want to romanticize because there are a lot of issues within Dalit and other marginalized communities, but you know, women have been also at the forefront of asking these critical questions through their right things. They have also talked about the way Brahmin Brahmanical patriarchy has affected the Dalit Solidarity or Dalit household. You have Bama’s writing Karukku and you have U-turn by Omprakash Valmiki in the north. So these are very, very interesting books and thoughts produced in them kind of give way forward to Dalit communities. It’s a venting and you know the literature gets sort of accusations that it is descriptive, that it is experiential, that it is anecdotal and that there is no analysis, but if you read through, you see greater philosophical thoughts in those writings. My Mukta Salve is talking about education as emancipation. I mean that’s that’s so profound- like Jyotirao Phule talks about truth seeking society where he’s talking he he invites you to have a critical mind and you know this is way before Pedagogy of Oppressed which invites you critical consciousness came into being and I it’s it’s it’s really for me I feel that it it has made- I mean in in the the the 70s, 80s literature has kind of given a foundation for Dalit communities. And you you see in contemporary times, Dalit women mostly engaging in writings on digital platforms, art, they’re using digital platforms to communicate through their art forms, through their writings, by talking to each other, they’re coming together and internet space, which is also where you know now talking about marginalization, talking about racial discrimination and sort of has kind of garnered some attention- you see Dalit women hypervisiblised in a certain way and Dalit women try to challenge that. They try to challenge the victimization that is their victimization imposed on them. They are they have been victims of the violence, but that is not the only narrative that defines the lit women, Dalit women’s multiple, multiple ways of being are showcased in these forms of writings or communication and knowledge creation and in fact, you know, writing is a contemporary form relatively new to our human society, but before that, there have been indigenous ways, anti-caste ways of being. You know, to the point where I would even say that the dissenting communities of the yesteryears got this and I think I know that Ambedkar writes in his book Whoever Who were the untouchables, Who were the shudras– he’s in fact trying to say that the, you know, when the human divisions happen, those who were defeated or those who were asking who were dissenting were graded lower in the hierarchy. And so it was very important for the caste norms to in fact Ambedkar’s writings are also so very important. It’s no, it’s like, you know, intellectual work and I would also take it as very important literature. And he’s talking about castes in India, their genesis, the mechanisms and so on. Early in the 1930s, already in 1960s, sixteen is his first essay caste in India, then he in 30s, he writes Annihilation of Caste. So, in that 20 years of span he’s already thinking of how these mechanisms have worked to divide our society and how we have sort of ways to annihilate. I we’ll just briefly for a minute talk about someone who is sort of scholar of conflict and peace from Norway- Johan Galtung who, in fact, talked about triangle of violence and this this scholar in fact talks about how a structural violence, cultural violence and the direct violence clubbed together intensifies and creates this whole you know strong wall and I think Dalit writings have been trying to take off brick, brick by brick this structure and in his works around aspiring to peace, Galton also talks about, you know how we should focus on not merely in absence of violence as achievement of peace or achievement of conflict being resolved, but we have sort of have to envision this world of cooperation coexistent Co have like co creating justice. So we need to weave a new fabric of justice, and that’s what, you know, indigenous communities, Dalits have been trying to write.

 

Uttanshi

Yeah. And I think especially when you are speaking about, you know, how powerful their voices can be, reading about their work can be. It’s really something that makes us reflect a little bit more on, you know what, what kind of literature or what kind of stories are we listening to when we grow up? And what kind of stories are we sharing with the people in ours?

 

Swati

Precisely. Precisely.

 

Uttanshi

Yeah. And I think it’s so powerful to listen to you and especially the final thought that you shared with us and our listeners about about, you know, we need to weave a collective understanding of justice and what that means for us and it’s just, you know, the entire time you were speaking Swati, I’m just constantly thinking about. How insightful this conversation has been for both Abhinaya and me, but also I’m sure it will be for all our listeners as well. I also know that there is so much to talk about, but thank you so much, Swati, for the time to do this, for, for talking about this, with this much patience and and and with this much care. It’s really been phenomenal to be listening to you.

 

Swati

Thank you so much, Uttanshi. I really look forward to this episode and comments of the listeners too.

 

Uttanshi

 Yeah, definitely. Swati, I also want to just take a quick moment to thank our listeners. 

 

[Outro]

 

Uttanshi-Thank you so much for tuning in today. Please leave us any questions you might have as voice notes on Anchor or in our Dms. We’d love to hear from you and hear your thoughts on this episode. This podcast is brought to you by One Future Collective. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook At the Rate One Future Collective and One Future_India on Twitter. And keep an eye out for future episodes.

 

[Outro ends]

Mapping and negotiating power

Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world

Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice

Uncuff India Episode 4: Invisible Wars and Vulnerability in Kashmir

by admin ● Posted on

Episode 4: Invisible Wars and Vulnerability in Kashmir

This episode examines the nature and sites of warfare and the changing definitions, experiences of war itself. The hosts and the guest also discuss the diverse ways in which the State encourages and benefits from gender minority groups becoming agents of war. The episode also looks at the role of women in peace building movements or as peacemakers. The perceptive Dr. Ather Zia features in this episode.

Ather is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies Program at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. She has published a poetry collection, The Frame, and another collection is forthcoming. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region.

Dr Ather Zia, the guest for this episode

We are again accepting submissions for the Uncuff India Prize, a creative competition where listeners can submit creative pieces basis the theme of the episode and they stand a chance to win a cash prize of INR 1500. You can find more information about the competition here. What are you waiting for?

Transcript

[Intro]

 

Sanchi

Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast,  Uncuff India by One Future Collective. My name is Sanchi and my pronouns are she/her. 

 

Uttanshi

My name is Uttanshi and my pronouns are she/her. We are your hosts today and it’s so good to have you all listening in. 

 

[Intro ends]

 

Uttanshi

In this episode, we will attempt to understand the gendered notions of State sponsored violence in the form of war, particularly through an assessment of the ways in which it affects different genders, particularly gender minorities -as both victims and agents of this violence. We will also discuss the role of gender minorities in peacemaking and in peacekeeping. 

 

Sanchi

Yes, thanks Uttanshi. We know that States and State agencies are ultimately drawn from, and therefore, extensions of existing unequal social systems. In practice, this can look like heightened forms of violence, which stem from the socio-political and cultural sanctioning of the actions of these agencies. In these circumstances, what does it mean for people with multiple vulnerabilities to challenge perpetrating agents? It is these themes that we try to understand today. 

 

Uttanshi

To discuss this and to share their insights because of their research and in the context of their own background, we have with us Ather Zia.  Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances, Military Occupation, and Women’s Activism in Kashmir, which won the 2020 Gloria Anzaldua Honorable Mention Award; 2021 Public Anthropologist Award and the Advocate of the Year Award in 2021. She has been featured in the Femi List 2021: a list of 100 women from the Global South working on critical issues. She is the co-editor of Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak, Women Unlimited 2020, Resisting Occupation in Kashmir and A Desolation Called Peace. She has published a poetry collection, The Frame, and another collection is forthcoming. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region. Ather, thank you so much for taking the time out to be able to have this extremely important conversation with us. We are very excited to learn from you and to hear from you over the course of this episode. And we really want to welcome you here. 

 

Ather

Thank you so much, Uttanshi  and Sanchi for inviting me. I am really glad to be in conversation with you and looking forward. Thank you. 

 

Sanchi

Thank you so much, Ather. Thanks a lot for making the time to join us today. We are absolutely delighted to have you for this conversation. And let’s begin right away. To understand the gendering of war, Ather maybe you could first have us look at warfare itself. So, can you tell us a bit about the nature of warfare and shed some light on maybe the sites where this can occur? What is a state of war and how has what we define as war changed over the decades? And can we necessarily see war and peace as strict categories anymore? 

 

Ather

That’s a very important question, Sanchi. I think, especially in context of Kashmir, we really need to see where the battlefield begins and where the sort of like, you know, the home and the hearth starts; or are they just meshed into each other. So, if you think about Kashmir from 1947 onwards, I’m going to talk about the case study of Kashmir. If you look at what’s been happening after 1947- when the two countries were created and when Kashmir emerges as a dispute between the two countries, but also through the eyes of its own people who wanted self determination and when this issue goes to the United Nations, what happens after, inside Kashmir, also forces us to think in the larger context of when we think about war and violence and battlefronts. It really forces us to think about what does war look like – especially in the modern, what is known as the “post colonial era”. Is it just soldiers? Is it just, you know, battles between two armies or does it really spill into civilian populations and does it spill into everyday life? And I think that’s what’s happened in Kashmir. You know, a lot of people, when they think about Kashmir or they talk about Kashmir, they’re like everything was good before 1989. And most of the times, you’ll see that a lot of people make 1989 a milestone year for the armed violence (which started in 1989)and then it kind of became, what they say, “violent”, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. And that makes us think about the idea of peace as, is peace absence of immediate and direct state and military violence? Is that what we call peace? And also the fact that, you know, what was happening inside Kashmir after 1947 was also the utilisation of or the weaponization of democracy or democratic symbols, especially electoral: the process of elections and all of that. So, I’ll try to talk a little bit about that because that gives us a perspective into how you can have a war happening and this can be so invisible and people are not even going to fathom what exactly is happening to these people who kind of rise into this armed struggle in 1989. And with most of the political analysts, especially in India, saying everything was good before that. So that’s something that we need to understand. So, right after the creation of two countries- In 1947, Kashmir emerges as a dispute between the two, of course, but also through the eyes of Kashmiris, who had seen themselves as part of some sort of a sovereign democracy where they probably had some kind of a deal with the monarch who was ruling them, but they were also a separate nation. So what happens in that moment is very important because we also see right from the get go, the weaponization of democracy that India did and for the next 74 years it was able to tell the rest of the world, and it still is, that we are doing or “we are being very democratic inside Kashmir”. Despite the fact that there is, there are several laws in place that suspend the civilian administration, which for all practical purposes is a client politician administration. So, what happens in 1947? Let’s kind of jump to 1951, when India decides to hold the elections with the help of client politicians. At that moment, the United Nations says that you can’t hold elections in a place that is disputed and that is subjudice, but India goes ahead anyway, says that we’re going to do the plebiscite. Now the people have been forced into partaking in the elections and the client politicians are the nominees. They are the ones who are going to be the politicians of the future, but all of this is done in the name of governance: that these disputed territories, both of them, need elections and they need to be governed and that’s when the actual violence starts happening. No one really talks about elections as violence, but I think when you think about Kashmir, the very weaponization of democracy and symbols of democracy, they become very violent. When you ask people who, for all practical purposes, are living in disputed territory, to partake in elections and telling them that this is going to be for governance – your politics of self-determination still stays, but the moment those elections happen, the moment “the government is elected”, something else starts happening, which is coups and, you know, rigging starts happening. The people who took part in elections, the client politicians, are thrown into jails. So, that is Kashmiri destiny with India from 1947 – through the 50s and 60s and early 70s and you see this politics of coercion happening. And you see on the other side, the civil administration also utilizing symbols of not just democracy, but also feminism as state feminism. And then bringing that all together and telling the rest of the world that we are actually conducting and we are executing democracy inside Kashmir because we are holding elections; and not making it seem like the battlefront it is because now they’re playing with the hearts and the minds. They are trying to win people onto their sides and that’s kind of the battle that India was fighting, but it also had military inside Kashmir, which was already doing the direct military aggression. It was already occupying lands. In fact, from 1947 onwards, till this present moment, the amount of land that is occupied by the Indian military, it’s the size of Dallas and the entire Kashmir is the state of Utah, slightly smaller and maybe, you know, as big as Britain. So you can kind of guess how much land is occupied by the army and that’s something that we really need to consider like- how does a battle look like inside a situation like this. And I think the bigger question there also is what does post-colonialism look like for places like Kashmir? I think that’s the bigger question. Does it even hold? Is it even a valid school of thought for places like Kashmir? Because when we talk about post-colonialism, I think one of the most violences that has occurred to people like Kashmiris is that post-colonialism hasn’t even talked about them. So, it’s completely quiet about such situations. So, should we say before 1989 that there was peace? What kind of peace was it? If you are doing this with the people, you’re steadily criminalising the movement for plebiscite or self determination. At the same time, you are engineering consent and you’re putting laws into place that is going to be, right from 1949 itself, even 1947 itself, put them behind bars for even asking the questions about plebiscite or self determination, but you’re not actively seemingly battling them because they haven’t taken up arms. So, in 1989, when Kashmiris actually take up arms also because of a lot of geopolitics that’s happening and they also took up arms in the 60s, but that movement was kind of suppressed within a decade. Are we saying that the armed violence is now erupting and Kashmiris are violent? Or are we saying if we look at it through the lens of what was happening from 1947 onwards, is this something that they have been pushed into a corner? And now they are taking up arms? So, I think when we look at war and battle and violence through such a lens where a democracy, “India”, is trying to coral these people into consenting for integration: how do we see pre 1989 and how do we see from 1989 till this point in time? I think there’s a lot of questions that arise as to what violence is, and how violence can look like. Sometimes the absence of direct violence might be construed as peace and quiet and calm and normalcy, but it is not because you’re doing violence by other means, while having a direct military aggressor in the region as well. I know that’s a long answer, but nothing is short about Kashmir. When we talk about Kashmir, you really have to talk about a lot. 

 

Uttanshi

Thank you so much for that, Ather. And just while you were speaking, I’m really interested to hear more about how the definition itself has changed over the years and how, you know, and I’m just thinking as someone who’s done law as well, is just how this also becomes a way for us to move away from the protections available under, which can be available under, a “wartime situation”. When the meaning of war itself changes, and when what war itself looks like changes, these protections also become very difficult to be able to grasp and to imply and to ask for as a matter of right, which then also makes me think, you know, war is generally seen as a larger universal phenomenon. Do you think that these situations also affect people of different gender identities differently? Women, queer folks – do you think that there is a difference in how we perceive it and how it impacts us? And is there a difference in the public sphere? Is there a difference in the private sphere of how different genders experience and deal with the impact of war? 

 

Ather

I think the impact of war on genders, definitely, all genders experience it in a different manner. Because of the political, social, intellectual, economic status that the genders inhabit, they are different. Mostly women are the most vulnerable, old people are very vulnerable, children are very vulnerable in a war. So, I can again, you know looking from the lens of Kashmir, I do want to just flag this answer that I’m about to give, by saying that the Eurocentric academia or the Eurocentric school of thought often pushes us to think about gendered ways or gendered impacts of war as if the genders are, you know, inhabiting different spaces. Even though they are at different social, political hierarchies, but at the same time our societies, you know, I’d like to see our societies as South Asian societies. I think even if we are different countries, we are different peoples and cultures, there is a rubric that we share. The close knit communities, where men and women – they exist and coexist in different ways. Of course, there’s a patriarchal structure where the men, hierarchically, are stronger and they have a lot of power over women, they have a lot of power over old people and children and that is true for all our societies. So in that sense, yes, the impact of war and the way war is felt and experienced is different, but we also have to understand – when war comes to a certain community, like it did in Kashmir: the first victim and the first discrimination that it did bodily was against men. I’ll give you the example of the disappeared, the forcibly disappeared in Kashmir, we have more than 10,000 disappearances currently and these are mostly men, majority of them Muslim men, who were bearded from 8 to 35 to 40. So, what you see there happening is that these men left early in the morning. Some of them were commutants, most of them were non commutants. They left in the morning, never returned, maybe detained, jailed, killed, imprisoned. We don’t know.  So, I get asked this question a lot. There’s this movement called Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, which was founded by a mother and a human rights lawyer. The mother whose son Parveena Ahanger, whose son was disappeared by the Indian Army and it’s been a strong movement for the last 33 years and the question that gets asked about is the gendered resistance and the gendered impact of violence. Women suffer a double bind, you know? They have to fight the occupation, they have to fight the patriarchal military industrial complex, which is disappearing them in; and then they also have to fight the society because they have to push through certain societal norms to really become active and become these activists, which they have in the last 30 years. But at the same time, I always remind people, and my students, and whoever I’m talking to, that we have to understand that societies in South Asia, we experience war as communities – which is also true for other places. It’s the men who disappeared and women who were pushed into public. So, the first and foremost impact is kind of like the men were taken away. So, a lot of people are like, “so this is not a feminist movement, APDP, because these are women, they’re looking for their old patriarchal structures to be back, like their husband to be back, their father to be back”. So is that what it is? It’s not a feminist movement? And that kind of pushes us to think further. Like, what does feminism mean for our societies? Because I think for a long time, and not for the lack of decolonial literature that has been making rounds in the last 10-15 years, where we are thinking through our own cultures as to what feminism means for our culture, as what decolonization means for our culture. I think if you look through those lenses, there is a lot more generative debate that can occur and also we can kind of think through our own cultural problems because war also is a cultural problem. You might use the same technology that the Israeli settler state uses in Palestine as India does in Kashmir. You might use the same war technologies that, you know, American imperialism uses in the rest of the world: more than a 100 conflicts and violences and wars that it’s been part of. But at the same time, war is very cultural. How do people experience war? War also becomes culture. It’s like in Kashmir – war has become an invisible war. It has different names. People call it an unconventional war. They call it a low protracted conflict. They call it conflict, they call it dispute. But I really like to see it as a war that’s happening. It’s an everyday war. It’s not very new, but a very cultural notion of war, where people prepare for the war every day. They go out of their homes, they know they are facing a certain situation, they know they can’t move freely, they have bunkers, they have checkpoints. So it’s a very sensorial way of understanding war, in which women do suffer differently, men suffer differently, and other genders also suffer differently – not talked about – and in the end they all suffer together. So, I think because these are South Asian cultures, no doubt, you know, different cultures, different religions, different ethics and people. But at the same time the way war comes to Kashmir, the way people are experiencing war – that’s really nuanced, that’s really cultural, that’s also in ways fought back through religion as well. Like people are very religious, how prayerful they are. I’m not talking about the other aspects, but people have a different way, like women have a different way of fighting this war. And in my case study, which was the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, I really saw the different hierarchies that women inhabit. How they become active against the occupation; how they even implement the politics that they have garnered and gleaned in the last 30 – 33 years, which is based around mourning. So, it’s basically the politics of mourning. How they utilise the social norms and kind of like make them into activist norms; how their feminine consciousness becomes feminist consciousness; and also how their feminine consciousness is a feminist consciousness in the first place. So, I think while we need to pay attention to the gendered impacts and gendered experiences, I feel like our South Asian contexts would also be benefited if we did not pit men against the women, even inside the situation of war. If we really took them as part of the same fabric and how the dynamics they share and kind of began from there, which is not to say that we have to negate women’s very special double buy-in situations, but these have to be parallel processes. 

 

Sanchi

Thank you so much for bringing out all those brilliant points, Ather. I think I have learned so much from the last 10 minutes that you have spoken to us. I think the perspective that you offered is so nuanced and it makes me think of so many things that, like you said, does a postcolonial theory even apply to a context like Kashmir for us? How in different contexts, for example, if we talk about the global north, then the gendering that might happen in wars there is so different from our South Asian societies and we indeed face wars as communities and other communities also might face this. But your whole contextualization of how a South Asian society faces war, it’s been so insightful to listen to. Something that you said really stood out for me, which was, yes, genders suffered differently in a warlike situation and, especially, when you talked about Kashmir – but they ultimately suffered together. And I was just wondering if you would like to talk to us about how then does the state encourage and benefit from different genders and how do different gender minority groups, but also like you said, men, become agents of war and how does the state actually benefit from it? 

 

Ather 

I think that gendering really, really benefits the State, especially if the state is also portraying a sort of a feminist consciousness, if it can be called consciousness. I remember there was this one incident in around 2007 – 2008. I think the listeners are going to benefit more from concrete examples than theory. Sonia Gandhi came to Kashmir. And she actually addressed women separately, and she talked to them as Kashmiri sisters who had withstood the violence of the Kashmiri armed violence, which we call armed struggle- it has a definite colloquial name for it, which is tehreek, meaning revolution. But the Indian states portray it as terrorism to the rest of the world. And then Sonia Gandhi had this very specific speech that she talks to – I forget, I’m just summarising – but she was addressing Kashmiri women. She was telling them that you have suffered for the last so many years through this armed violence and she wasn’t talking about military violence. She wasn’t talking about the Indian states’ violence. She was talking specifically about how women in Kashmir have suffered their own men. So it was 2007 I think, and that made me think about brown imperial feminism. And brown imperial feminism is essentially-I know that you inhabit Indian identities, and I have complete respect for that as people belonging to a certain nationality. Of course, you should be proud. You should be who you are. But of course, we also have to be humanists more than we have to be patriots in that sense.  So that made me start thinking about brown imperial feminism that a lot of Indian feminists were bringing into Kashmir. That also made me think about state feminism, the history of state feminism in Kashmir. So, when I have been part of a lot of feminist collectives, especially those that emerge from India. And when I was younger, I used to be part of these conversations where we thought that, you know, as feminists, as women, we have some solutions. We’re going to think about this and then I had some senior activists who would say that this is to no avail, what you’re doing with these Indian feminists. But I had to have my own experiences, right? So, what they meant was that there’s going to be solidarity, but the solidarity is going to be very selective. It will not go beyond a certain point, but I was young and I thought maybe, you know, we can make a difference. These are different feminists. These are not feminists from the older generations, but a decade later I realised that Indian feminists did really have a very selective solidarity with Kashmiri feminists – and that was that until the point you called the Kashmiri problem and the Kashmiri issue as a human rights issue, it was all good. And the human rights violations don’t occur in a vacuum, they’re symbolic of the political dispute because Kashmiris are demanding certain things. That’s why they’re being abused. So the moment you talked about political dispute, your paths would become different because they did not want to talk against their own state. 

So, that became very palpable early on and that’s where you can kind of see where the State kind of makes inroads. And I’ll give you this very important example and I think that might tie this answer together. And that is when the Indian State de-operationalized and militarily took away Kashmir’s autonomy, one of the reasons that they told the rest of the world is that the special status of Kashmir has discriminated against women. It was actually able to get away with it and it told the rest of the world that Kashmir has become this virulent autonomous patriarchy, which is cracking down on its women and it told brazen lies to the rest of the world because one of the things that was happening inside Kashmir for a long time was this debate-what if Kashmiri women married non Kashmiris? What happens to their residency? Because you know Kashmiris had a permanent residency under the autonomy. They were citizens of Kashmir, then they also had a citizenry with India – they had sort of a dual citizenship. So, from the 60s onwards, what was happening was that women had to produce an unmarried certificate if they had to get a job or something, to prove that they were not married to a non Kashmiri. So what happened in case they married a non Kashmiri? So, a lot of people were under the impression that if they married a non-Kashmiri, they lost their dominion, they lost their domicile status, but that was not the case. They still retain the right to property, they still retain their right to franchise. And in 2002 there was a case, and the judgement said very categorically and clearly that women do not lose any domicile status. They still retain their permanent residency and of course the husband also becomes party to the permanent residency, but the only thing that was unresolved, which was done case by case basis with property rights. Like who gets that woman’s property? that couple’s property? It also depends on where children are. There was a committee that was educating this problem on a case by case basis and because of red tape there was no law coming through fast enough and I don’t know if that was even by design. So then the Indian government uses this very thing and dismantles the entire state and says, “there is discrimination against women”, and it’s on record. 

There is a public repartee happening between Indian Prime Minister Modi and the ex-chief Minister of Kashmir, Umar Abdullah, where Umar Abdullah’s sister has actually married an Indian, a non Kashmiri. And Modi tells the Chief minister of Kashmir that “your sister has gotten married, we will take away Article 370 and she can have her rights”. And the ex-chief minister, he talks back, publicly of course, through the media and he says “no, no, no such thing has happened. She hasn’t lost her status”. So, you can actually see the fudging that is happening between these two very prominent politicians and the Indian media is actually running with Modi’s version. I am, by no means, in sympathy with a current politician from Kashmir, but I’m just kind of like using this as an example. So, the “gender discrimination” was actually used as a straw man argument and this entire state was dismantled with the help of Indian feminists, who did not raise any question. And I’m using Indian feminist, the phrase very loosely. I don’t mean a particular group. There have been sympathetic feminists who have looked at Kashmir through a lens of political dispute and not just as a human right dispute. Of course, that goes without saying. But the majority of people, of which you women are also a party, and different genders are also a party: they saw this as gender discrimination. So that has been used. State feminism has been used. A lot of times you see historically people are like, “but women, they have like 42% – 50% literacy rate in Kashmir, so how is it even possible? Which means that everything good has happened from 1947 onwards; women are now in the mainstream and all of that. State feminism was deployed by client politicians in their manifesto. They were actually creating a constituency through women for the Indian government and for integration. So while women were pushed towards literacy, it was like – they could be doctors, they could be teachers, but they were not encouraged to think for themselves. Like if someone would think for themselves, if someone would question the Indian government, that was pure becoming a dissident, and they were thrown in jail. There was a solid, concerted criminalization. That’s not feminism! That’s not feminist practice! So we see state feminism in effect from 1947 onwards, which kind of helps them strengthen the idea of democracy. Which actually is not democracy but weaponization of democratic elements like elections. And then in 2019, we see this brazen use of gender discrimination. And now we see pink washing happening inside Kashmir, as if, you know, the rest of India or other parts of the world are better off than Kashmir and Kashmir is the only virulent patriarchy. And what’s also worsens Kashmir’s argument is the fact that it’s portrayed as – for lack of a better term – Islamic terrorism, which is such a misnomer: that it’s Muslim men who have gotten together, created a patriarchy and they’re cracking down on their women. And it becomes very easy in an anti-Islam, in an Islamophobic world, for the rest of the world to buy it. So I think that’s something that we need to consider about how state feminism, how feminism and how gender discrimination has really been utilised by the Indian state as weapons against Kashmiris. 

 

Uttanshi

Thank you for that, Ather. And I think that just brings me to my last question for you, which is what do you see the role of women, particularly as in the peace building movement, as peacemakers in such situations as well? What do you think is that role? How has that been shaped? How has that influenced situations of violence in the past but also now?

 

Ather

I think after 2019, so women as peacemakers and peace builders again, I think it really takes a society a long time to realise that, especially in Kashmir- I call Kashmir a working class patriarchy, and I think most of South Asia is a working class patriarchy, where women actually are working alongside men, you know, they’re selling fish, they are baking, they are street food vendors. So it’s not as if our women, you know, that’s where I kind of push people and push myself to think with less eurocentrism, because our societies have never been different in that sense, where they have kept women from the public life, women have been part of the economic strata all along. It’s just that socially they have inhabited a place where they were always secondary, always a lower rung, which is also true for the West. But going back to your question – how do we see women as peacemakers in a situation like Kashmir? I would say-I really don’t have a clear cut answer for that because I feel like women have been trying inside Kashmir for the last 74 years be side by side with men and have an equal say. Even if not an equal contribution and an equal share at the table where the negotiations happen, but they have been trying to be in a supplementary role, in a complimentary role, in the role of even playing chaperons to men because, you know, men disappear or are killed immediately. And the women in Kashmir, for the last 33-34 years have been chaperons of their men: if a man goes out, a mother or a sister will go along so that he’s not immediately killed. If they’re walking in the streets, they’re seen as a family, which also is not a guarantee of safety. You know, women are raped, women are killed. So, they have other issues that occurred to them. So, women’s movement or activism or role in peacemaking, I don’t really see it separately, but I do see women getting together and forming a movement, of which the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons is a great example, but again we can’t really look at it only from the lens of being a woman’s movement because these are mothers and these are wives who are called the half widows, for lack of a better term because they didn’t know whether their husbands are dead or alive, whether they’re going to turn up or what. So they’re called half widows. This movement has become formidable, even if after 2019 they’re not able to protest much because protesting has been criminalised inside Kashmir. We see a lot of support that men gave them so that they could form this movement. The co-founder of the movement is a pro bono human rights lawyer. The men from these families help women with paperwork. They help women with learning the legal ways and courts and police and whatever the processes were. It was just that they could not come to the forefront and protest like the women were, because the women were initially allowed to protest because they were just seen as women. You know, they also do not, they don’t inhabit an equal hierarchy with the occupation forces – because they see them as just women so they can gather together and do a sit-in and do a small protest because they’re just seen as mothers. They’re just seen as wives. What are they going to do? But the moment it’s a group of men who are protesting, they’re seen as a threat. So there have been several massacres where men came out in protest. Gaukada massacre from 1991, which was actually done to protest sexual molestation and rape. And so, you kind of see them being directly, becoming a massacre – they were directly shot at and the soldiers surrounded them and killed them, killed a lot of men in that protest, but with women it usually became this kind of a thing where they would get together and they would protest and then they would raise a little hue and cry. Do politics of mourning, basically mourning and crying and utilising the symbols of their social mores that were already present, which was mourning and kind of fashioning their protests like that. 

So in that again what we see is that women are protesting, they are being activists, they are trying to push the social envelope as well as deal with the politics of occupation. But at the same time, I would remind the listeners and I would also try to just stand in the fact that we are close knit societies. We can’t really have our movements separately. And I think that’s what I think of, when I think of peacemaking in Kashmir. And again, what does the word peacemaking do in Kashmir? There can be no peacemaking unless the political dispute is gone. A lot of people say, “Oh it’s a post-conflict society” – No! It’s not just conflict, because conflict is ambiguity between 2-3 people; no, this is a dispute – a territory, where people have their own demands, and you have to listen to them. It’s not just something that’s happening between two countries. So how do we think about peacemaking when we think about Kashmir without thinking that the political dispute has to be solved? And if we do not have 100% genuineness in solving the political dispute, we are paying merely lip service to settling women’s issues and to settling men’s issues, and to settling the issues of other genders on the gender spectrum. So that’s something that I would really foreground. 

 

Sanchi

Thank you so much, Ather. I think it’s been incredible listening to you talk about all things from weaponization of democracy, about situating war and peace, and community in our South Asian societies. And also assessing the situation of Kashmir over the past decades. I think we are all taking a lot, and I think I’ll speak for our listeners as well, that it’s been a truly insightful experience to listen to you today. Thank you so much for that. And before we close, I would like to ask you if you have any closing thoughts on the conversation that you’d like to share with us. 

 

Ather

Yeah, I don’t know what I have to flag, but I do want us to kind of take this moment, this conversation when we’re thinking about Kashmir, per se. I also want to draw the listeners’ attention to the fact that from 1947 onwards, most of us have been quarrelled into following a pattern of living, whether that be political, cultural, or economic. This was left to us by the fleeing colonial powers and I do want us to think through the lens of neocolonialism. When I think about India, I don’t really think through the lens of post colonialism. I think it’s a neocolonial power and not just think, I know it behaves and it has the heart of a neocolonial power. It’s an imperial power that was left in place and not just as countries as, “democracies” that have been imported to our places. These are settler democracies because if we think about, let’s say, the United States – it’s a democracy to whom? It’s not democracy to indigenous people, whose genocide is still so unknown to people in our part of the world – that we still come to America thinking this is the bastion of democracy, but this is a democracy for a group of people, for the white settlers who came here. This is their democracy, but not the indigenous peoples’. And this is the democracy that is imported to the rest of the world, which is why you see so much dispossession happening in India currently: of the indigenous people, of Dalits, of the marginalised, of, “minorities” who are not minorities – Muslims are not minorities- 200 million people, how do you, of course like relatively, but you don’t call them minorities and push them into ghettos and say that that’s where you stay. 

So I think when we are thinking about Kashmir, I would urge your generation, I would urge the generation that’s listening to podcasts and the generation that is coming, I would really urge us to look at not through post colonialism but through the lens of neocolonialism and neoliberalism. And then think about issues like Kashmir and see how simple they are. They’re not intractable problems. They’re really solvable problems. If you get out of the mindset, like, what if Kashmir is granted independence? What happens after that? I mean, nothing is going to happen. And then start thinking about extractionism and thinking about neoliberalism, which really wants Kashmir for all the resources – the water and all kinds of minerals and now you also have lithium mines. And what is what has been happening after 2019 is really, really an extractionist economy that is cracking down on Kashmir. It has less to do with nations and nationalism, it’s more to do with neoliberal, extractionist policies, which is creating ecocide. So, I think that’s something that I would ask us to keep in mind. To broaden our horizons and not just look through issues of prestige and Kashmir being the crown of India and all of that, but really look at it through the eyes of the future rather than the past.

 

Uttanshi

Thank you so much Ather for taking the time out to have this conversation with us. I definitely feel like you’ve given us a lot to think about, a lot of thoughts to go back and to be discussing in our micro communities with each other. So from my end just a very big thank you for taking the time out to do this. 

 

[Outro]

 

Uttanshi

Thank you for tuning in today. Please leave us any questions you may have as voice notes on Anchor or in our DMs. We would love to hear from you. This podcast is brought to you by One Future Collective.

 

Sanchi

Yes, thank you so much. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook at onefuturecollective and at Onefuture_India on Twitter. And keep an eye out for future episodes out every second and fourth Thursday of the month. Until next time!

 

[Outro ends]

Mapping and negotiating power

Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world

Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice

Explorations on Feminist Leadership 2022-23 | S1: Episode 3

by admin ● Posted on

Episode 3: Accountability and Correcting Harm

The occupations taken by the police-military-market-state nexus do not serve the needs of the most vulnerable, and in fact cause harm in most cases. Jasmine, Sarika and Jyotika come together to talk about accountability and correcting harm in the context of their commitment to anti-capitalist and anti-carceral politics. They explore existing abolitionist and transformative ideologies and also discuss the various structures of oppression that shape the politics around harm, danger and violence based on race, caste, class, religion, militarisation, citizenship and borders.

About the hosts

Jasmine Kaur is a punjabi, queer writer/artist. She likes to surround herself with stories and poetics in any medium, including audio, video, still images and performance. Some of her work has been published by VIBE, …ongoing…, streetcake magazine, and Tilt (by QueerAbad). She’s currently working as a Teaching Fellow at the Philosophy Department in Ashoka University.

Sarika Karnad is a Mental Health Professional and Content Head in an organisation that works towards inclusivity & reliable therapy for all. She believes she learns the most about life by talking to people around her – having meaningful conversations and understanding different experiences. Apart from talking and making an extensive list of things to research, Sarika loves spending her day reading books, baking, learning new skills and petting cats.

Jyotika Tomar is an undergraduate student of History at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.

Content warning: Various forms of Violence, Sexual Assault, Rape, Death, Oppression, India-Pakistan Partitition, Communal Violence, Victim Blaming, Racism and Racial Oppression, Oppressive Laws, Casteism, Gang Rape Case of Priyanka Reddy, State Sanctioned Violence, Police Murder of George Floyd, Racial Oppression, Custodial Torture

Transcript

Sarika

Hello and welcome to “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by #OneFuture Fellows2022”, a podcast by the 2022 cohort of the One Future Fellows where we discuss, examine, and learn about all things feminist leadership. I am Sarika, and my pronouns are she/her. I am a Psychologist and a strong advocate for mental health.

 

Jyotika

Hi, my name is Jyotika Tomar. My pronouns are she/her. I am a second year undergraduate student of History at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.

 

Jasmine

Hi, my name is Jasmine Kaur. My pronouns are she/her and I’m currently working as a teaching fellow at Ashoka University at the Philosophy Department.

 

Sarika

And today we will be talking about accountability and correcting harm.

 

Jyotika

So before we begin with the podcast, we would like to tell you about our rationale behind the choice of this theme. We don’t think it can be divorced from our political leanings, which includes among other things, a commitment to anti-capitalist and anti-carceral politics as well as a firm opposition to the various structures of oppression that shapes the politics, that shapes narratives around harm and danger and violence based on race, caste, class, religion, militarization, citizenship and borders.

 

Jyotika

And we think it’s important to talk about it because the occupations taken by the police, military, market, state, nexus, don’t serve the needs of the most vulnerable, but in fact are enactors and causations of harm themselves in most cases. And we think that we need explanations on these issues from the perspective of feminist leadership to discover how we can build a freer world in opposition to the one that exists now and in furtherance and translation of existing abolitionist thought and transformative principles and traditions of transformative justice, which is things that we want to get into during the course of this podcast.

 

Jyotika

At this point, I think it’s important to give you some trigger warnings so we’ll be discussing issues and themes of violence, particularly sexual violence and oppression. So we request you to be mindful of that while you’re listening. I think over to you, Jasmine, for us to get started.

 

Jasmine

Hi, I wanted us to start off with something Ashon Crawley, a teacher, writer and artist, posted about, inevitability of harm on his social media in June 2021. He writes “Harm happens, we harm one another. Many think this saying harm happens and we harm one another to be a value statement and a moral judgement. So instead of thinking about this fact, we pretend we can be innocent, and so too we value innocence as a moral and ethical good. But my garden keeps teaching me my intent to grow more green beans was neither good nor bad, but it appears I have planted too many in too small a space. So though many are blooming, lots of leaves are dying off, and some of the plants too. I have to remove the felled leaves daily. It doesn’t matter that my intent was to grow more food. It actually might even be a noble desire. It certainly was not bad or mean or evil, but the impact is that the growth has still been harmful for some of the plants. What would a claim of innocence ‘I didn’t mean to do it. This isn’t my fault. Maybe I can just keep watering and whooping and wishing’ even mean for the plants. The garden shows me yet again that some concepts, some ideas are deeply insufficient for trying to contend with our world. All that matters is my attempt to repair the harm done. So instead of guilt and shame, which are the underside of and produced by desires for innocence, care, tenderness, handling things, literally putting my hands in the door, pruning, getting messy with my hands. And from this can emerge repair, from this can emerge joy, and from this can be sensed life and love.”

 

Jasmine

I wanted to share this because this is something that really challenged my perspective on associating guilt and shame with harm, and it really forced me to understand how inevitable harm is and how useless it is to think about notions of innocence instead of notions of repairing the harm that you have done. And I wanted to ask what you both think about this.

 

Jyotika

So I think this excerpt was a very, very beautiful and advocative way to put a lot of our thoughts around this. And I think I see it as a way in which we approach relationships with each other. And these can be various kinds. These could be, these could look like friendships, these could look like romantic relationships, these could look like parent-child relationships. And even though a lot of them may be based on principles of love and respect, justice and equality, I think there’s a need to also look at, like the excerpt put it, the inevitability of harm of us enacting harm on the other person and us also experiencing harm. And sitting with the fact that it’s a very uncomfortable place to be. But that discomfort is necessary.

 

Jyotika

And I think it’s also important to look at not just the intention of the actions that we do, the things we say in the context of these relationships, but also look at the consequences of whatever it is that we did, like divorcing it from what we intended to do. And that is where I think we can practice not associating guilt and hurt with it, but looking at the consequences it had for the other person. Especially when things are as contested as the identity or, you know, invasions of privacy or just things that we didn’t mean to be hurtful but did end up being hurtful and grappling with how we deal with that. Sarika, what do you think of this?

 

Sarika

I think I really like the part where you talked about personal relationships, right? Because I think when we move away from guilt and shame that comes with harm, it also means that we realize that we do hold power in different relationships. For example, in the child-parent sort of relation that there is, punishment is something that’s very, very common and it directly sort of associates like there’s zero tolerance to any sort of violence that happens, right. So it immediately sort of creates a binary. So either wrong, you’re either a perpetrator or you are a victim. And that’s, I mean, is that helpful? There’s strict imposition of punishments, but it also comes with really less exploration, really less reflection. There are no alternatives to it.

 

Sarika

And that also means that there’s very little accountability that we give to the we hold to the perpetrator themselves, right? So how do we correct harm with alternative behaviors to ignorance? Or like, how do we find an alternative that’s not so much about ignorance, where they just say I’m sorry and how do we move more towards the actions part of it.

 

Sarika

And I think also adding on to this is that especially as leaders in different sectors, how do we really hold ourselves accountable where even if we do any sort of harm to anybody, even if we have good intentions, how do we prepare for that? When is harm more of an initial response that we work towards and move away from in a way, than something that we sort of just say sorry and move on from, right?

 

Jasmine

I think we do this by de-linking harm from innocence and guilt, by recognizing that even in our aim to do good, we will end up causing harm and to understand that not as something to feel guilty and ashamed about, but as something to repair. But I am also wondering about how we think of harm at the social level, whatever constructs that exist around it. How do social systems respond to harm? And how we have been socialized in such systems such that we also are and have been enactors and acceptors of this harm, of these systems around harm.

 

Jasmine

I want to work here with the example of sexual assault. When a woman is raped in India, it is often construed as harm against a family rather than harm against a person. And many of us have been socialized in this ideology. And not to think that a woman who has been raped has faced a fate worse than death. We often accept this narrative even if we do not believe the victim herself. How then do we contribute to the conceptions of harm when we do this? What are some of the other ways in which we do contribute to this conception of harm? How might we be able to mitigate this harm by changing our notions around sexual assault from the ones we have been socialized and to a notion where we sent to the person harmed and how they would like to deal with instead of imposing how we would like them to deal with it? In other words, how have they been chained to hold people accountable in these systems and how do we move out of that training?

 

Jyotika

Yeah, the very, very important example that you brought up right now, it makes me think of this book on partition narratives, like oral histories of partition survivors written by Urvashi Butalia. So it’s called ‘The Other Side of Silence’. And one of the ideas that she discusses while talking about particularly sexual violence enacted on women during the partition riots was how women’s bodies were used as battlegrounds for contesting groups of like contesting communities and how they were the sites of violence that, you know, these communities used to enact violence against each other, if that makes sense. Which makes us, which puts us in a position where we have to contest with the construction of narratives of harm, of danger and of safety.

 

Jyotika

And so the one recurring narrative is that of stranger danger. And that is essentially being told, like young women and girls particularly being taught from a very young age that they need to be necessary, like particularly careful of their safety when they leave the home and they go outside because of, you know, this, like this construction of the dangerous stranger which I will get into, which will, which is usually and structurally deployed against particularly men from marginalized communities.

 

Jyotika

And what also comes at this point is the construction of a binary of the home being a space of safety and comfort and the outside or the public being a space of potential harm and violence. Which is an obfuscation of facts, because statistically, every single year the National Crime Records Bureau data tells us that in over 92-93% cases, in cases of sexual violence against women, it is individuals known to the survivor who are the enactors of harm, who are the perpetrators.

 

Jyotika

So how do we grapple with this idea of stranger danger, right? And also look at how the entire energy and resources and time of the state and the military have been deployed to sort of give shape and structure to these narratives. And I think that some clarity about that will come when we talk about the disproportionate incarceration of persons from marginalized communities and I’ll take two examples to discuss that.

 

Jyotika

So in the United States it is the African American population along with of course Hispanic people and other communities which are disproportionately incarcerated and face the brunt of police and custodial violence and systematic targeting. So the African American population though it’s only 13% total population of the country, they make up 40% of the incarcerated population. And when we talk about the Indian context and look at under-trials, it is individuals from Scheduled Caste and Tribe communities and from Muslim and Sikh communities who make up 70% of the under-trial population, right, which is disproportionate to the actual population demographic that they have.

 

Jyotika

So and a very, very important way of implicating them is through directives of particularly sexual violence and of course these have legal and political basis. So if you look at say for instance legislation like the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, a colonial era legislation, it sort of designated certain communities as habitual offenders and even though in the context of post independent India, that was like the law isn’t enforced anymore, but it’s not enough to say that it’s simply because it’s not enforced anymore, it doesn’t have any consequence because it’s solidified through narratives and the way state and its institutions function.

 

Jyotika

So the way particularly in individuals from the notified tribes are, you know, targeted by the state now is because of the consequence of what this legislation did, the designation of habitual offenders. And there are organizations that we link in the resources that are working on these issues, which also makes us think about how the level to which violence has been normalized and simply because it is enacted by the state and its institutions, it’s not something that counts for a space of critique or, you know, questioning and it’s just taken as, say, the natural.

 

Jyotika

So if you look at the sexual violence enacted by the military in places where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is in is deployed, that won’t, you know, that that won’t be questioned to the extent to which other cases of sexual violence will be. And to give you another example of how even though a category of the victim is created, so there is a binary creation of the good victim and the bad victim. And the good victim is something that attracts a lot of public outcry, there is mobilization and so on. And the other kind of victim is a space where that’s not the response that we receive.

 

Jyotika

And say for instance though Priyanka Reddy gang rape case that happened in Hyderabad in 2019, it was followed by what is referred to as an encounter, right. It’s an extra-judicial killing of the accused. And I remember being in a legal studies class and my teacher who was teaching me legal studies and ideas of political science, tell us very jubilantly that, you know, an encounter happened and they were killed. And I did not have the vocabulary to really pinpoint why I felt uncomfortable about that. But it points to the same thing that I’ve been talking about, about the normalization of violence and how extremely punitive carceral systems of punishment, is the only thing people rally around right in when a case of sexual violence happens. And not only does that structurally not solve anything, but it also takes away the agency of the individuals who have gone through the harm, right? Yeah I think I’ve been going on quite a bit. So if there’s anything that you want to say at this point or come in, please feel free to do that.

 

Sarika

Thank you so much for that, Jyotika. I think that gives us a lot of context, right, of how this is sort of enacted on a larger ground, like the large perspective of it. And what I also understood is, it is that the power remains with the majority and is and the definition of justice also comes through this majority and is sort of used against the minority a lot more. And I think the main thing that we’re also coming to is that the carceral systems really don’t negate harm caused.

 

Sarika

And it’s not like the amount of harm caused in society is decreasing. Violence remains, theft remains, everything remains. So it’s not particularly negating the harm. Then we also come to the next question, which is then, how do we transform the society? And right now, what factors in society take us away from accountability and what factors actually lead to justice at the grassroots?

 

Sarika

I think Jasmine also mentioned sort of giving the victim the power to decide how they’d like justice or how they’d like the harm to be corrected. That would also be something that’s very important here, right? How do we move away then from that punishment and sort of isolating the bad actions of one person to that one person only? Because what we’re also understanding is that the end of the day is something that’s been taught to us from the very beginning, like we talked about personal relationships. Punishment has been a part of our personal relationships in school, in college, probably also, in a parent-child relationship. I think that’s what I’ve also understood from everything that Jyotika talked about. Jasmine, do you want to add to this?

 

Jasmine

Yes. Thank you again Jyotika for giving us so much context. I also want to add to this through. So something that has really influenced my thought on this is this video that is called “What Should Happen To Abusers If You Do Not Lock Them Up?” And it is by Kimberly Foster on her channel ‘For Harriet’ and features Professor Leigh Goodmark. And it is all about decriminalizing domestic violence and goes into the history of domestic violence and criminalizing it in the US.

 

Jasmine

But I think a lot of thought also applies elsewhere and in our context also, because they are discussing this question of if we cannot lock the abusers up, what should we do? Because I think we can all agree that domestic abuse is this incredibly important issue against mostly women, but also against people of other genders. And it is heinous to have to be abused for any length of time. And also especially in cases of domestic abuse, the abuse lasts for a long time, even a lifetime. And we also know that not a lot of people even come forward with abuse cases.

 

Jasmine

So it is a very unaddressed problem. But what really affected me in this conversation was the concept that a lot of times when we criminalize domestic abuse, we are not addressing what is causing the abuse in the first place. We are just saying, ‘Oh, you did this bad thing, now you’re going to going to go to jail forever and the person that you were in this relationship with is maybe partly responsible for that’ and also from the victim we’re asking that ‘This person that you love and have other positive feelings about also is the one you have to put behind bars’. And that is a lot to ask from someone.

 

Jasmine

And it also talks about how there is correlation between things like unemployment and poverty to domestic abuse. That it is that there is no point if we just put people who are already hurting and people who might have been abused themselves as younger people, to put them behind bars and to hold them further instead of addressing a lot of material realities that are kind of pushing them towards hurting other people around them. And I think trying to focus on this is something that really made a difference in how I think about this.

 

Jasmine

And also centering victims, because a lot of victims do not exactly want the abuser to go to jail, they want them to stop abusing. That is the main thing. And if not, then maybe to get out of that relationship. But that is also limited and what the understanding of Professor Leigh Goodmark’s has been is that a lot of victims when they have this option that their abusers can be rehabilitated, will choose the rehabilitation over getting this carceral revenge or justice that we have been taught is the only thing we can be getting.

 

Jasmine

So that is something that has that’s what I think about this and trying to move to restorative justice instead of this very carceral and very punitive justice.

 

Jyotika

Right. So over here I just want to talk about one thing about to mention on the which is about the reasons abolitionists brought and what and those reasons are foremost and what is an abolitionist and what they think of the issues that we’re talking about. So these are people who call for the complete dismantling of structures such as the prison, the police, the military and so on.

 

Jyotika

And they locate that political position that they take in a politics based on anti-capitalist and anti-carceral ideas. And they see these structures as violent entities, inherently violent entities, constructed by oppression based on race, caste, class, religion, gender, sexuality, citizenship, militarization, and so on. And I got interested in these ideas during the 2020 protests against police brutality in the aftermath of the institutional murder by the police of George Floyd.

 

00:25:43 Jyotika

So the prominent abolitionist thinkers are people like Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. And what they say is that these institutions don’t serve the needs of the most vulnerable, but what they do is they deploy their coercive posts against them. And this takes several forms that we’ve discussed. So it looks like systematic targeting, surveillance, custodial torture and violence, creation of the narratives of criminality, of sexual violence or dismissal, of tool of law in the way in which the process takes shape.

 

Jyotika

And because of these reasons and their analysis of it and the looking of course this is a situation in the American context. So they do a lot of work on how the African American community is targeted by these issues and they say that these institutions will not help us solve crime and must be done away with.

 

Jyotika

And the alternative they offer is things that look like material and structural changes and that comes from a socialist perspective. So they talk about building communities of care and support, They talk about the state funding, of education, of healthcare, better working conditions. And they say that crime is caused in the absence of all of these things. And that is where we should divert our attention, resources and time instead of, you know, furthering the punitive and carceral response.

 

Jyotika

And they also talk a lot about restorative and transformative justice, which over to you, Sarika, for introducing us to that.

 

Sarika

Thank you for that, Jyotika. So I think in terms of restorative justice, right, as a psychologist, I am very used to sort of looking up different researchers and different studies that have been done. And this is something I was honestly really interested in because I really wanted to know how do we implement it right? Because I’m going to say it’s easier said than done when it comes to this because it’s something that has to change at the very grassroots of society.

 

Sarika

So I’ve actually looked up this study that was done in Florida in 2020, where they implemented restorative justice in a middle school and I think that gave me a really good idea of how it could be something that is put forward and acted on and from there on, right. So it was basically sixth to eighth grade students who were, they sort of changed their model of justice. There were no punishment. If there was any sort of problem that came up, any sort of conflict that came up, they were asked to write letters to each other.

 

Sarika

And I think Jyotika, what you talked about in terms of community-building in order to get justice, in order to correct harm was something that they used a lot over here. And I think that was something that really changed my mind on how it is something that can be implemented, right?

 

Sarika

So that’s one. But again, I’m gonna see at the roots of it, restorative justice also comes down to why education is important, why economic stability is important. Having a community around that’s supportive becomes very, very important in this case, because when we see the principles of restorative justice, there’s a lot of what, like a feeling of safety, is something that’s very important. Having stuff that’s accessible is very important. Respect is important and these are things that we also learn when we are children to sort of avoid any bias, to be more neutral and also just having that accessibility of people around who would understand and support you in that space, right, and also hold you accountable more than anything else. I think that is something that is very important.

 

Jasmine

I think we can wrap this up and we can do that by maybe sharing one thing we have learned in this podcast episode. I can begin. I learned that to reduce people to good and evil is very reductive and harmful. That it does very little to repair the harm caused, if it does anything at all. And rather I think it tends to increase the harm in the world. That our focus has to be step out, stepping out of a preoccupation with being innocent and working on repair and to centering people who have been harmed, rather than punishing people who have done the harm who might have been harmed themselves in the past or even in the present. And to just send over repair and care instead of punishing.

 

Jyotika

So thank you so much for this very, very reflective conversation. And even though we had some pointers prepared earlier for what we wanted to discuss, all of the pauses and reflections we took in while we were talking is testament to how much we really learned from activity. And I think my take away from this would be how important it is for us to value complexity and nuance when we approach these conversations, be it at the personal level, when we sit in a position where we confront the reality that we might just be, you know, enactors of harm ourselves and it is important to be held accountable for that and sit with that discomfort and also at the public level where we must create spaces where we approach these conversations with a lot more nuance than we do as of now because the position we are right now because it doesn’t approach these conversations in that way. All it does., like you said, Jasmine, is further the kind of violence that we already have prevailing and it’s important for us to have re-imaginations of our responses. So that would be what I took away from this.

 

Sarika

Thank you so much, Jyotika and Jasmine. I think this was actually a very reflective discussion. And like you said, Jyotika, I’ve also been reflecting a lot more personally on this topic right? And even in the context of feminist leadership. I mean, it’s something that we have to sort of constantly strengthen and work towards in order to be accountable, in order to be kind and empathetic and build that community for people and for each other.

 

Sarika

It’s almost like a muscle that we have to keep sort of strengthening over time, right? To be kind, to be empathetic. And it’s not something that comes easily. There’s a lot of unlearning that sort of goes into it. But yeah, I think that’s what I’m taking with me. There are still a lot of questions that would need more objective sort of answers, but this is a start and I really like this start. So yeah.

 

Jyotika

Yeah, you put that really well. It’s a starting point for questions and we don’t have all the answers, but I think that’s the point.

 

Jasmine

I think so too. I also really like the start, and thank you both for giving such a good reflective conversation, and I think it’s a good place to begin.

 

Jyotika

To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us and listening in. We really, really appreciate your support. If you like this episode, please follow us on Instagram and Facebook @OneFutureCollective and One Future_India on Twitter and keep an eye out for future episodes of “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by #OneFutureFellows2022”. Please leave in your questions, comments or feedback for us on Anchor or in our dms. We really look forward to hearing your thoughts and until next time, take care of yourself and we hope that we can explore more together. Have a good day.

 

Sochcast Ad:

Like this Sochcast? Tune in for more, with the Sochcast app from the Google Play Store. 

End of the transcript

Resources mentioned by the hosts

  1. Ashon Crawley: https://ashoncrawley.com/
  2. The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/49988813
  3. What Should Happen To Abusers If You Do Not Lock Them Up?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmZqyYFudVg
  4. A Case Study of the Implementation of Restorative Justice in a Middle School: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19404476.2020.1733912

Mapping and negotiating power

Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world

Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice