Kashmir as i see it !

Sunday, March 08, 2009

A Mothers Lap !

.......on women's day

 

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world. There are many ways and words to explain what a mother is like but what is more important is whether we really obey one.

 

In this part of the world we have seen enough bloodshed, crime and criminals but generally it has always been a woman who has borne the brunt of the 19 years of tumult.

 

If we look at any house in the Rural Kashmir one can find thousands of Mothers, Half widows or young females have found themselves living under such de facto house arrest since the tumult began. They have been forced into this situation time and again leaving them at the mercy of religious or fundamentalists who have made it sure that they do not prosper .If you talk to women throughout Kashmir , from the brave few who have really started to free themselves from the intractable quagmire they are into, some of which are now being targeted by fundamentalist groups "They call it right to live ?" .The females of our society be it a mother , a wife , a sister or a daughter have stories about husbands and sons, fathers and brothers   who disappeared into mass graves and torture prisons under god knows who,  than tales of cousins and neighbors who have gone missing since 90's. If this was not enough then the sexual violence which even now haunts all of us, its simply shameful   yet we call ourselves the citizens of a great democracy. These days the sheer unpredictability of violence is what makes the fear so pervasive. Then, women may have been afraid to step out of line, but now they're afraid even to step outside their homes alone.

 

What people on all sides of this conflict fail to realize is that the ripple effect of all these cases of human rights violations is that the whole fabric of society gets torn apart. The infamous sex scandal, in my opinion, is a direct consequence of oppression by different agencies. There have been in excess of 100,000 deaths in the 19 years of violence; and twice the numbers are in jails in various parts of India. Many of these victims left behind young families with little or no financial security. In most poor households in Kashmir, it is the husband or father who is the sole bread-earner in the family, and his unfortunate death or arrest brings devastation to the family. Not only is the next of kin emotionally devastated, but they usually also have little or no economic security, which compounds their grief.T he loss of the husband or father is even more heart-wrenching if he is survived by young daughters or a young wife. No sooner the victim of the security forces is buried or arrested, the women of the household come to realize the enormity of their loss. They have to find work and feed the family. Support from the extended family and friends is usually meager. This is when sharks in the government and police stoop to the lowest a man possibly can; they prey on these innocent victims by promise of class IV jobs, or release from jail of their loved ones, or outright solicitation of prostitution.

 

The above observation, even though most of us would want to be incorrect, cannot be much deviated from the truth. No one ever predicted that the insurgency would precipitate prostitution as one of its off-shoots. The usual knee-jerk reaction is to blame all those involved for not doing enough to prevent this scourge from rearing its head. There can be many opinions about who the victims of prostitution are, but very few will disagree that it is a consequence of oppression by security forces, indifference by successive state governments and above all being neglected by the society .

 

As they rightly say, All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysis and to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defense. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health. Although my intention was not to bring the issue of violence against women but we have seen enough and the mental trauma that is evident from the face of an average mother, a sister or a daughter , should be an enough indicator to all humans that we really need to respect a female in a shape of a mother,and not only celebrate the woman's day


3 comments:

Naveed Qazi said...

A painfully honest expression.I expect this from you more often :)

A lot of poor, uneducated Kashmiri women have endured hardships of life, the slights and disdain of our society.The circumstances which you tried to portray muse with unhappy families, abusive marriages, oppressive governments and repressive cultural mores.Nice piece.

Take care

Rachna said...

Insightful, humane piece for women's day.

It captures the angst of women in a conflict-ridden area with rampant human rights abuse. In conflict zones,where everyone is suffering, discrimination, suppression, and danger are further compounded for women. And this piece brings that out well. It reminds me of a book on gender in conflict zones that I had worked on.
Purposeful writing. Super Like. :)

Rachna said...

Insightful, humane piece for women's day.

It captures the angst of women in a conflict-ridden area with rampant human rights abuse. In conflict zones,where everyone is suffering, discrimination, suppression, and danger are further compounded for women. And this piece brings that out well. It reminds me of a book on gender in conflict zones that I had worked on.
Purposeful writing. Super Like. :)

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