Embodying Azadi: Conscious and Unconscious Womanhood in Indian occupied Kashmir (original) (raw)
Chapter 5
EMBODYING AZADI: CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS WOMANHOOD IN INDIAN OCCUPIED KASHMIR
Inshah Malik
This personal essay documents an intimate process of self-examination triggered by the 2019 annexation of Jammu & Kashmir through the removal of Article 370 of the Indian constitution by India’s Modi-led government. Drawing on Carl Jung’s analytical psychology as explored in his 1916 work on the psychology of the unconscious, I engage in an exploration of self by connecting it to the Kashmiri collective unconscious. Informed by Sufism (Islamic mysticism), daleel wanen (story-telling), Zindagi hund tajrube (lived experiences), and Zindagi hinz dastan (life narratives), I show how the collective unconscious of Kashmir holds embodied refusals and reclamations.
Exploring the “unconscious” offers insights into what Jung calls the common “bond of desire and longing.” For Jung, these deep-rooted aspects of human nature connect individuals at a profound level, crafting a collective unconscious of humanity—containing memories, experiences, and symbols common to all humans across time and cultures. In this essay, I do not look at his work strictly from a psychological perspective, but my aim is to explore the notion of bodily refusals. What role does the unconscious play in reclaiming coherent self-knowledge under cataclysmic political upheavals? Do such events induce “non-being” through undemocratic imperial statecraft, violent militarization, and extermination? What does such induced “non-being” mean for a Kashmiri feminist political theorist rooted in such an inheritance?
Living far from Kashmir, I piece together memories triggered by the 2019 annexation and how it blurred lines between home and academic study. I grew up in the political community of downtown Srinagar, the heartland of rebellion against Indian rule. I explore my own self-construction through relaying and reviewing the lives of kin and community members who embodied, performed, and improvised womanhood. I reflect on my childhood and adolescence during different political periods, in different contexts, and intergenerationally, to explore how Kashmiri womanhood is entangled with the collective unconscious to reveal a site of decolonial praxis and knowledge generation. I review the inter-relational
life of my mother (mae), my maternal grandmother (Bobe), and especially my paternal grandmother (Raje or Dadi) as templates of womanhood in the Muslim matriarchal cultures of Kashmir. I also map manhood relationally, as depicted by encounters with men in my life-my father (Abu), brother (Boi), a medic (Muzafer), various counterinsurgents and Indian Army soldiers. As figures, each offers a relational understanding of self, morality, and virtues that shaped my character. Exploring these daleels (stories), I underscore both the violence of “nonbeing” and show how it is being resisted through the dialectical experience of Kashmiri womanhood.
The Daleel of the “Miracle” Birth
The race against forgetting subjection and suffering makes the people of Kashmir keen storytellers. As a form of sense-making, storytelling is mired in a dialectical merging of the known and unknown. This merging accommodates the “loss of control” over life. The daleel, in a traditional Kashmiri sense, was a figure who imparted moral lessons. The word daleel came into Koshur (Kashmiri) from Persian (in Persian/Arabic it means evidence or proof, but in Kashmiri, it means a story). This traditional use of the daleel methodologically borrows from Qassas-al Quran (Stories of the Quran), making daleel an idiom of a Kashmiri mystic aesthetic. Unlike the English word story, daleel attempts to evoke a “narrative of truth.” In its colloquial use, when asking a friend where they have been, we usually say, “tse kya daleel, tse kati” (what is your story, where have you been)?
In the 1980s, at the beginning of the armed conflict in Kashmir, in downtown Srinagar, everyone narrated their daleel as an assertion of bodily sovereignty. It intrinsically afforded ownership of our personhoods. The instinct to have control over oneself through a daleel makes you unique, much like influencers on social media today (see Yahaya, this volume). Mae (mother) poetically narrated the daleel of my birth. I recall my excited voice, when I would ask her, be kethpeath za’ayas (How did I come to be)? She would narrate how Bobe (my maternal grandmother) prayed specific tahajjud (nightly prayers) asking for my birth. Mae was certain about her inability to conceive another child, as one of her explosively infected ovaries was removed through an emergency operation right after my brother’s birth. Doctors told her to give up wishing for another child. She had to learn to accept reality.
However, Bobe was relentless in her prayers, and to her doctor’s surprise, Mae conceived. It was a miracle and proof that Khoda (God) answered the prayers of the pure ones. For Mae, my existence was proof enough of her faith. She repeated this daleel throughout my childhood, working it into a cohesive psychological bond between us. It was a sign that I was sought, desired, and wanted. As a relic of my desirability, this daleel contrasted with the reality of the political undesirability of Kashmiri bodies, who were being actively eliminated by military forces in our
neighborhood lanes, and also undermined the social preference for a male child. I realized the daleel of my miracle birth bore a metaphorical quality, offering hope in a desperate political turmoil.
Identity, Names, and Zaath
AbuA b u (father) chose my name. He called me Khansha (an Arabic word that literally means snub-nosed)-an epithet for a gazelle, a metaphor for beauty. Boi (brother) called me Daanish (the Persian word for knowledge and wisdom). Khansha was shelved because people would conflate it with the Koshur word khanun (which means to dig). Daanish was shelved because it was a name for boys. After some discussion, Inshah (Arabic: to create, express, and write, modern Persian lexicon: an essay) was agreed upon by Mae and Abu. Inshah was a Koshur, Persian, and Arabic word, familiar to everyone in Kashmir, an amalgamation of cultures, accommodative, and reflective of our collective condition and our cosmopolitan past. In this condition of co-acceptance, there was no rupture between Arabic, Persian, or Kashmiri. My name was spoken in diverse pronunciations: Bobe would call out in a formal and respectful manner, Inshahav; our neighbor, Noore, who was the daughter of our milkman, would call me in a more personal, intimate, and endearing manner, Inshae. 1{ }^{1} There were other variations of my name, such as Insa, which I heard from an Indian army soldier stationed in the bunkers near our lane. The inability to pronounce the syllable " shs h " bemused me. Whenever I treaded near the army bunkers stationed by our house, on looking out from a window, Bobe alerted me, “ye chu panjaeb mintary wol” (It’s a Punjabi military man). Kashmir had historical trade relations with Punjab; to her, every outsider from the Indian plains was essentially a Punjaeb.
Bobe, Child marriage, and Intergenerational Trauma
Bobe was a pious woman, a widow, and clad in a black burke (veil). She was a regular visitor to the Jamia Mashid, a historically significant central mosque in the city. Her deeply impressionable spirituality and the boundaries that she constructed for herself and by extension for me occasioned my asking probing questions. Bobe
- During social-cultural interactions or space-sharing, caste or zaath is not generally explicitly discussed in Kashmir. But endogamy is still widely practiced, despite political and social movements, education, and increased awareness. While the politics of caste were reintroduced during Hindu imperialism since 1847 CE, they were preserved by Muslim nobility. The Koshur language has caste markers of this social inequality. The educated or clergy families (of all religious denominations) practice endogamy and contribute to the precariat of the masses, who are at various periods of the history freed from land labor.
was a strong supporter of the conservative Islamist politics of Mirwaiz Farooq Shah. Mae grew up as an orphan, without her father, in a family of four headed by Bobe. Bobe came from a wealthy family of Mahingars (traditional gold carvers). However, by the time Bobe reached her teenage years in the 1930s, her family had lost everything.
Bobe became a child bride to Ghulam Mohammad Mir (my deceased grandfather). At the age of sixteen, she was shown a picture of a young man and agreed to a nikah (marriage). On the day of her wedding, she felt embittered because she wasn’t married to the man in the photo. Ghulam Ahmad Mir, her husband, was older, with two deceased wives and sons the same age or even older than Bobe. Hurt and anguished, she returned to her family. Bobe’s father arranged for an istamfaroush (notary) to have her divorced. As Bobe vividly remembered this, her eyes welled up with the same anguish that this experience had caused her. She narrated how, on a fateful Thursday, she waited for Ghulam Mohammad. She had twisted and turned in anticipation the night before, and her eyes were fixed on the door, waiting for his arrival. She asked God (Khoda) to intervene and help her make the right decision. When he entered through the gate, she was moved by compassion. She empathized with him, felt the loss of his wives, his unhappiness, and loneliness. She reasoned Khoda had chosen her to take care of this man. She called off the divorce and decided to return with Ghulam Ahmad Mir.
When I heard this story, I wasn’t sure if her exceptional empathy and selfsacrifice in the face of injustice were an extension of helplessness rather than courage. Did consideration for her poor father inform her decision? She justified this situation through a moral metaphor: her sacrifice would please Khoda, as He is the disposer of all affairs and beholder of Justice. Khoda will ultimately book those who commit injustice and deceive others. When I heard this story as a child, it angered me. It sounded like fiction, a way to justify her decision to herself. Her choice to return to live with an old man did not make any sense to me. Growing up, I often pestered her, questioning her choice to return. As I revisit Bobe’s daleel now, as a middle-aged woman, I become aware of the relational and circumstantial difficulties she must have experienced, and how her navigation through calm piety and acceptance of her life circumstances symbolized love.
For Mae, Bobe was a helper and a caretaker. After work, Mae often took me to visit Bobe. On one occasion in early 1988, on a crowded bus, Mae stood holding me in her arms. A man who was seated offered to put me on his lap. We arrived at Bobe’s, to a fun-filled day with cousins, toys, and treats. In the evening, upon our return home, I complained to Abu: “Are you a poor man? Why can’t you afford a bus seat for me”? Mae realized I was uncomfortable about the incident on the bus. Crowded buses in Kashmir are not safe for women in general, and for children in particular, as prying sexual harassers find this an easy place to assault and escape. Mae equated my “hypersensitiveness” with Bobe’s. My acute sensitivity to abusive words, touch, and my quickness to anger came from an unconscious inheritance of responding to injustice in the social milieu. While Bobe chose piety as a response, within such a culture of hierarchical social injustices, I confronted people, discarding traditional wisdom and challenging the status quo.
What Do We Want? Azadi (Freedom)
In the late 1980s, student politics and mobilizations signaled an intense political contest between the Islamist groups of the Muslim United Front (Bakre) and the nationalists of the National Conference Party (Sher). In the landmark elections of 1987, the mass political mobilizations pushing for larger democratization and selfdetermination took an ugly turn.
Seated on a taakhshe (embrasure) of a window, mae fed my toddler self bowls of rice mixed with saffron, sugar, and milk. I sat in the embrasure for hours, spotting birds that might be interested in competing with me for my rice pudding. The scenes of war, carrying the dead, and the wounded might have crossed my path. Over the years, I have realized how I have repressed painful memories. With Abu always away and working, Mae was dealing with uncertainty, and the possible looming death of any one of us. At every turn, in our downtown Srinagar lanes, ambushes occurred, and uncanny bunkers and checkpoints appeared. Meanwhile, Mae maintained strong ties of kinship, caring for less fortunate children in our extended family.
Unlike the general lack of interest or casual approval I saw from other children about our collectively inherited social world, I stretched and broke down the accepted norms. Mae was shocked by my questions that righteously sought logical explanations. At the age of five, I asked her the ominous question: if God created everything, then who created God? Her colorful imagination and faith couldn’t engage my rational mind. Her life of service, frolic, emotion, and sensory experience, was too difficult to touch with the preciseness of rationality.
In the 1990s, ghastly images of the dead in the newspaper, Daily Aftab, entered our house. I wonder now what symptoms of dysfunction appeared in me, after seeing them. The pictures of mutilated dead bodies captioned with Koshur inscriptions form my memorabilia of the past. These memories appear as indicative currents rather than visual memories. I remember Mae concernedly speaking to our neighbors about my inability to sleep during those nights. Not much else comes to mind; perhaps Mae did a phoukh. 2{ }^{2} It is during those days that I first encountered the word Azadi (freedom), and it was the most desperate of pleas of the people among whom I was raised, as a slogan, wall graffiti, and a plea.
Growing up during a raging armed struggle in the 1990s marred my own selfactualization. While at home, I spoke fluent and poetic Koshur; at school we spoke Urdu and English, both languages of imperial impositions. Our grandparents inherited Persian as a second language, a remnant of our medieval past, since it served as a lingua franca and a court language since Kashmir’s Sultanate Muslim rule began in 1346 CE. Urdu, on the other hand, was introduced by the Dogra rulers of the Indian plains in 1846 CE, and English, though introduced by the
2. Phoukh is a ritual performed after praying Islamic prayers in Kashmir. After the prayer is complete, the prayer sayer turns to a loved one and blows on their face with pure breath. This is a ritualistic custom seen in Muslim cultures of Kashmir.
British imperialists, did not become a popular language until the 1990s. Naturally the question arose: if Indians and Pakistanis were fighting the British, what were Kashmiris doing? We only knew that we were fighting for our own freedom. In the Kashmir of the early 1990s, many Kashmiri languages were banned, while Urdu was promoted as a state language, and Hindi was spoken by the minority students of Sikh or Pandit (Hindu) backgrounds. Growing up in such a context meant that most of us struggled to make sense of who we really were and felt a sense of loss, as we were less rooted than preceding generations in Kashmiri language(es) and culture. As a result, mapping the experiences of Indian rule over Kashmir can also be mapped through an intergenerational daleel.
At home, we were fully ourselves, but within administrative and institutional spaces, our identity was always contested. Are we Indians or Pakistanis? Do we have a more nuanced Central Asian past? What is our connection to the Slavs of Eastern Europe? Our schools avoided teaching the history, culture, or native language(s) of Kashmir. We were constantly making sense of ourselves through the prisms of the popular leaders of the independence movements of the Indian subcontinent. In our imagination, they were nebre (elsewhere or outside), in Delhi or Lahore. Our language is laden with markers that demarcate the boundaries of a nation: panun means our own, wopar means stranger, kaeshir means Kashmiri people, kasheer means home, andar means inside, neber means outside. The word for India was always Hindustan, and later Hindustan te Pakistan, referring to the great plains of Punjab and onwards, Russia is Rus, China is Cheen, and Iran is Eeran.
Muzaffar: a Medic and a Bright Light
In April 1995, amid the heightened armed militancy and civilian movement restrictions, desperate AbuA b u, with the help of a cousin, secured admission for me to the SMHS hospital burn ward. Upon arrival, I found myself in a special room resembling a personal office. A young man dressed in a white robe, with shining beautiful eyes, appeared. Muzaffer became my healer, tending to my burn wounds for the next twenty-seven days. I eagerly anticipated his daily morning visits at 8 a.m., where his bright presence, fragrance, and calm voice accompanied our one-hour wound-dressing sessions, gradually transforming them into a space of meaningful daleels (stories).
I was healing, and curious to peek into a mirror. Muzaffer incorporated my curiosity into his daleels, carefully narrating the depths of my facial scars, areas filling up and those needing extra care. It was a comforting yet dreamlike experience, filling me with hope for a brighter future outside the hospital. His narratives spoke of Azadi (freedom), the blossoming of flowers, and the beauty of novbahar (new spring). It was April, typically spring in Kashmir, and his daleels served as a metaphor for hope, the promise of peace, and a dignified future.
Approaching the end of my treatment, I decided to satisfy my curiosity by hiding a spoon under my pillow, using it as a makeshift mirror to catch a glimpse
of my reflection. My face appeared swollen and orange, leading to a moment of petrification and profuse tears. The next morning, Muzaffer spoke of my calmness. It was the first time someone had observed my development as an individual. As he dressed my wounds for the last time, he wished me luck and promised to be there the next morning to get me discharged.
The following morning, we waited, but Muzaffer did not come. My persistent inquiries revealed his absence. I wished to express gratitude and convey a desire to stay in touch. I later learned that he had offered his own office to be my ward in the absence of a children’s burn injury ward at SMHS hospital. His sensitivity and psychological insight healed not only my burn wounds, but also my psychic scars. A few days later, Abu delivered the shocking news that Muzaffer had died in an ambush with the Indian army. The revelation left us all in surprise and uncertainty. Was this gentle physician also a militant, part of a network of Kashmiri men fighting the Indian state? Or just caught in the crossfire? We would never know.
Coming of Age, Witnessing, and Scarring
In our household, regular conversation about the ghastly horrors, tyrannies, and oppressions of ordinary people by various militarized forces, particularly by counterinsurgents, abounded. The newspapers, radio stations, and television sets relayed nonstop reminders of our collective subjection. A war was raging in the streets, men were mujahid, 3{ }^{3} shahid, 4{ }^{4} and begonah 5{ }^{5} and women were spoken of in hushed tones, as behurmati 6{ }^{6} and roisiyahi. 7{ }^{7}
By 1993, our home in the downtown Srinagar neighborhood of Khankah Moulla was an epicenter of war. Curfews and crackdowns were used as counterinsurgent tactics to suppress the popular armed rebellion. Every “crackdown” (cordon and search operation) in our neighborhood caused Bobe emotional distress. She would send my uncle, who was endearingly called Papa, to check on us. During this time, Abu had started a business to provide a better level of education for my brother. Boi was admitted into one of the top-ranking schools for boys, Burn Hall School, a remarkable feat. My uncle insisted that Mae move into the maternal house, because it was unsafe for her to raise us, as Abu was often away, and Indian army soldiers had a free hand in entering our homes at will, in search of militants. We moved to the maternal house, closer to Bobe. This helped Mae continue working since Bobe could watch us. In those years between 1993 and 1998, our family grappled with many difficulties, including poverty and Abu’s absence.
3. The one who strives for truth (in Islamic context a religious truth but in Kashmiri context a political truth).
4. A martyr who is a witness.
5. Someone not guilty of crime, especially crimes against humanity or the state.
6. Dishonor.
7. To be left black-faced in dishonor.
Still, azadi or freedom had a strong imprint in our subconscious. Experiencing and witnessing the intense desperation for political freedom, I learned the most bitter lesson about my existence: to be free is to not be without rights, to be without rights is the state of being Kashmiri, to be Kashmiri is to be weak, to be weak is to be a woman, to be a woman is to be emotionally fragile. These subconscious messages from my environment made me distance myself from my mother’s emotional world, a world crafted through patience, tolerance, acceptance, and living through immense difficulties. I anxiously internalized a political reality of living and growing up under a patriarchal military occupation, a world crafted through an endless lack of freedoms.
The Counterinsurgents
We returned to our home in Khankah in 1998. I had begun going through puberty during yet another difficult phase of the armed conflict. As I turned sixteen, the Indian state was containing the popular armed struggle through the use of counterinsurgency forces. Even walking on the streets was unsafe, yet I walked from my home, in the heart of downtown Srinagar, to various locales where teachers offered private tuition. Private tuitions compensated for missing regular school days due to government-imposed curfews and strikes called by pro-freedom leaders to resist participating in public life. Under those circumstances, neither buses nor roads were safe. Gun-wielding men on motorbikes called Naabid 8{ }^{8} abounded; they were informal counterinsurgent groups of Kashmiri men who chose to surrender and assist the Indian state in curbing the popular armed uprising.
My first encounter with a Naabid and my own coming of age are mired in unusual circumstances peculiar to downtown life. For many months, I walked from my home in Khankah Moulla to Zaine Kadel where I would meet my friend Asra. From her house, we walked across Zaine Kadel toward our chemistry tutor’s house in Karan Nagar. For months, an AK47-wielding Naabid followed us, in order to start a relationship with Asra. She was clearly as terrified as me. After many months of tolerating his harassing behavior, which included holding our paths, passing sexist comments, and terrifying us in a very local hooligan style, I finally had enough of him. Without letting Asra have any inkling of my intentions, one day, as he began casting sexual innuendos at Asra and circled us on his bike, I became furious to the point that I almost blacked out. Losing control, I shouted at him to the point that the shopkeepers in our locality, who had barely ever dared to speak to him and his gang, felt encouraged to support us. His gang of Naabid, sensing the collective anger rising, began to disperse, but he did not retreat without first threatening to kill me if he saw me again. I returned home shaking and terrified, resolved to never leave home again.
8. They derived the name from the place of their origin in a village called Nawabidipour in Bandepour district.
The next morning, I woke up but couldn’t muster any courage to get ready for tuitions. Boi noticed my unease. As I got out of bed to greet him, he came up to me, looked sternly in my eyes and said, “You have to go, if you die, I will be proud of you, but you can’t stay home.” Later on in life, the memory of his intervention exemplified to me an alternative world of freedom that was possible through the friendship of men. His intervention at such an early age testified that the lack of freedom in our social and political world could only be tackled by becoming fearlessly free ourselves first. When I think about what encouraged him to instill such fearlessness in me then, I could only think of one fearless woman who had perhaps subconsciously impacted him too.
Dadi, Memories, and Resistance
Our paternal grandmother, Raje Begum, affectionately known as Dadi, was a matriarch. Despite standing at a modest 162 cm , her presence exuded strength and self-respect. She wasn’t someone who simply received commands; rather, her mere presence effortlessly commanded the respect of those around her. She was vocal and walked with a quiet confidence, as if untouched by the travails of life, despite having had her fair share. Unlike Mae, who adhered to a strict routine, Dadi floated through her days. Her life was marked by leisure, song, poetry, and gardening. She impressed upon me the importance of fighting for a place in this world by embracing vulnerability.
Dadi’s spirituality relied on Kashmiri Sufi poetic traditions. She profoundly impacted my personality development in ways I am conscious of, and I have reflected upon her exemplary life and teachings throughout my own life, both consciously and unconsciously. These reflections have helped me in reassessing, healing, and addressing my own traumas and difficulties. I felt a deep belonging with Dadi. As one of her youngest grandchildren, I frequently found myself in her presence. Out of all her grandchildren, I was more often called Rajenzur-a term used to signify a granddaughter who closely inherits her grandmother’s traits.
My fondest memories with Dadi are centered on her braand (balcony). Culturally, braand serves as a station to behold Kashmir’s scenic beauty, where one can witness the snowfall in winter or the cheerful chirping of birds in spring. Women clean vegetables, sort rice and grains, or sit leisurely, sunbathing by lifting up their trousers to the knees. They engage children in feeding their proverbial curiosity about nature, life, and the mysteries of the world. It is here that Dadi narrated delightful daleels and fed me bowls of rice mixed with lamb soup. In these moments, she drew my attention to the chirping of the tsare (sparrows) and kantar (bulbuls), and let me take in the fragrance of her garden’s golab (roses) and at night, engaged me in gazing at the zoon (moon) and tarakh (stars).
The primary theme of her daleels was morality, and her method of narration evoked in us an ability to discern good from bad. Dadi’s spirituality was unshakable, revolving around tawheed (monotheism), praxis, and service. Her
narrations about Mir Seyed Ali Hamdani, a Central Asian Islamic mystic of the Kubraviya Sufi order, followed by life daleels of Kashmiri mystics, darvaishs, or reshis, such as Hamza Makhdoom, Sheikh Noorudin Wali, or Nund Reshi, Sheikh Hanifudin Reshi, Sheikh Hamza Maqdoom, and Lale Ded (most of whom are either Brahmans or were formerly Kashmiri Brahmin convert to Islam), and their later successors such as Soch Kral, Wahab Khar, and Ahad Zargar shaped a syncretic, monotheistic mystical tradition where these figures were claimed by Kashmiris, despite their apparent religious identity.
Dadi supported her five children by spinning pashmina threads, which she would sell to shawl weavers. Through this enterprising activity, she managed to educate all her children, who went on to serve in different sectors of Kashmir’s economy. Dadi deeply valued education; she would always advise us to learn. Owing to her enthusiasm, it was always a question for us: how did she not receive formal school education? All of us, her grandchildren, often knew her answer verbatim. She had repeated the story to each of us so many times, with so much anguish, that it had become our collective anguish.
In 1931, impromptu mass protests erupted in support of Abdul Qadeer, a rebel seeking rights for Kashmir’s Muslims. His trial became a landmark political event. His fiery speech at Khankah Moulla Shrine, the center of Kashmiri Islam, marked a turning point against the Dogra regime. Sheikh Abdullah, a Kashmiri nationalist leader, emerged at the helm of this national uprising against the Dogra regime. Since the early twentieth century, Sheikh Abdullah and groups of Kashmiri Muslims had invested in a massive mobilization for education. From all downtown locales, children were taken away to be enrolled in government schools to receive primary education. These schools were notoriously called Zabri Zaet (forced humiliation) since most parents were unwilling to send their children away and were satisfied for them to only have religious education. Dadi’s poor parents hid her from government officials and informed them that they “didn’t have any daughter,” which is how she missed getting enrolled in the school. Her parents later justified their decision by asking, “In her absence, who would wash the dishes?” The anguish on her face and the grief seeping through her words always felt deeply personal to me. It was an anecdote of grave injustice meted out to her, and she fought throughout her life to undo the harm that a lack of education did.
Nearing ninety years of age, she retained around 3000 Kashmiri beaths and poems. Her marital life was not a prominent subject in her anecdotes; she briefly mentioned her husband, Mohi-ud-din Malik, describing his physical appearance, gentle character, his long battle with tuberculosis, and early death. The details of her marriage remained obscure, leaving room for speculation on the dynamics of strong matriarchal women in successful intimate relationships. She embodied Kashmiri nationalism, and was exposed to politics through speeches Sheikh gave at mimbers (mosque pulpits) and Jaloos (public gatherings), which offered her an opportunity to learn. However, her cousin’s killing by the Dogra police forces during the 1931 protests-whose grave lies in the martyr’s graveyard in Khoje
Bazar in the courtyard of Astan Naqshband 9{ }^{9} —offered her real insight. She learned firsthand about the oppressive nature of the Dogra regime. The denial of basic freedoms and the repressive politics of containment of dissent inflicted trauma. She resolved to keep the memories of her experience alive.
During cold winter nights, she would gather her grandchildren around, and recount daleels about the conduct of Dogra police forces, who, upon entering market spaces, demanded that people bow and kneel in respect. Noncompliance resulted in flogging. The people of Kashmir were restricted in practicing their Islamic faith, as Dogra rulers imposed Hindu customary laws. For instance, the consumption of beef was criminalized, despite the fact that even among native Kashmiri Pandits, meat-eating was an accepted dietary practice. The fear of consuming beef was deeply rooted in the community psyche, particularly for Dadi, to the extent that she prevented us from eating it. Even when legal restrictions on beef-eating were not enforced in the 1980s, Abu, who was fond of it, consumed it in secret.
Dadi’s concept of azadi (freedom) encompassed the freedom to practice her faith, the right to education, the right to land and resources, and the ability to cultivate a political consciousness. In the 1990s, she believed many of those freedoms were won; however, the question of the right to self-determination was stymied. Due to her struggles, the right to education was granted to me, and my parents became upwardly mobile, middle-class individuals with substantial social networks. However, Dadi did not anticipate a massive armed uprising against the Indian state. In the new Kashmir, I had no right to disagree with our political system, militarism, or politicians. The political system that replaced the Dogra regime had successfully evaded the question of Kashmiri political will—a politics about which Dadi was acutely aware. There were no free or fair elections; one could not disagree with subcontinental politics by rejecting the “two-nation” theory that had partitioned India and Pakistan. I could not situate my own history, languages, culture, or knowledge in this newly inherited system.
She was particular about her five-time obligatory nemaz (prayer), and yet, her spirituality had a strong social and cultural angle as well. I could only piece together an understanding of it many years after she passed on, when, at a wedding ceremony in Kashmir, I saw her sister. As I entered the venue, she signaled for me to come close and whispered, “Are you sakhav like Raje (dadi)”? The Kashmiri word sakhav is used for someone who is generous, a helper, or a healer in the community. This reminder about my grandmother’s character brought back many memories. I recall people coming to her with hajat (needs). When someone expressed financial needs, she simply signaled for the person to sit close to her, and when no one
9. A sufi shrine built by Soltan Sikander in 1389 for Baha-al-Din Naqshbandi, founder of Naqshbandi Sufi order where one of his descendants Mohi-ud-din Naqshbandi is buried. Sufi Shrines in twelveth-century Kashmir played a pivotal role in the cultural, linguistic, and spiritual propagation of Islamic mysticism in Kashmir.
was looking, asked him or her to take the money from her pheran (Kashmiri traditional tunic) pocket-a gesture she would make so as not to embarrass her borrowers. The social and cultural aspect of her personality as a healer, helper, and a leader centralizes the psychotherapeutic value of Sufi spiritual practice. She offered safe spaces for grief, mourning, and grievances. Her leadership, guidance, and counsel were sought after not only by her children, but also by the community of extended family, relatives, neighbors, and friends. Her mashvare (consultation) centralized the needs of those who asked and tailored solutions that resolved the underlying issue. Her interventions respected the boundaries of those who sought her help; she never discussed things told to her in private. Her resolutions often revolved around the words darguzar karun (forgiveness), pardeh karun (hiding others’ limitations), and khodayas afu mangun (seeking God’s forgiveness).
In the 1980s, when new Islamist movements emanating from Pakistan made their way into Kashmir through discourses predominantly published in Urdu, she continued to practice her own understanding of Islamic mysticism. In 1996, Mae was sprayed with color by extremists, in order to force her to wear a long Indian/Pakistani-style burka. Dadi was visibly upset. She had worn a Kashmiri burke modeled around the Afghan burka all her life, but this new wave of Islamism smacked of cultural imperialism. New Islamist women intervened in cultural politics, teaching Islam in Urdu as the medium of instruction and employing materials emanating from Pakistan. Veiling was adopted, not only to allow for public and cultural inclusion of women, but also to resist the neoliberal Hindu cultural homogenization propagated by the Indian state’s imperialism.
Before her passing, I had the honor of meeting Dadi one last time. She appeared frail, and something moved me to inquire about my grandfather. She repeated the anecdote, “Your grandfather was a handsome man; he was everyone’s favorite.” She paused briefly, and I sensed that was all she intended to say. Lifting her frail body, she leaned in toward my ear, ensuring no one else was listening, and continued, “But he always made me feel inadequate.” Her admission exposed the deep-seated trauma she had carried within her. It prompted me to reflect on how Kashmiri women, for generations, have forged robust personalities despite their lack of political, social, and individual Azadi (freedom), and how these traumas permeate into intergenerational experiences and legacies.
Conclusion
As I make sense of my own unconscious inheritance in this essay, Mae and Bobe provided a blueprint for how to lead from the heart, and that by accommodating, accepting diversity, and leaving room for error and forgiveness, one could live a dignified and disciplined life. Dadi impressed upon me the need to fight against injustice through her memorization and narrations; she centered remembrance as an important motif. Her approach sought to prevent normalizing injustice by passing on the memory of trauma caused by subjugation to Dogra rule or the difficulties of navigating an interpersonal relationship with her husband.
Many of her teachings that live in my unconscious guide my own interventions into the political world that I have inherited. This deep-rooted understanding of a Kashmiri Islamic mystic’s life has involved a self-reflexive view of my own selfformation, a view complicated by a tumultuous political history. The more I bring this unconscious mystical life that was impressed upon me into consciousness, the more I understand the nature of the unfreedoms women and men continue to experience in our part of the world. Just as Dadi’s personality had developed through grappling with a plethora of unfreedoms, her active struggles made possible my own intellectual life. Through the stories of how the rights of women are easily deprioritized, such as the story of how her parents preferred her to wash dishes instead of going to school, she was cautioning me all along. She had planted the idea that brutal authoritarian regimes should not be respected when she narrated stories of her participation in protests against Dogra rule.
Early on, her stories pushed me to actively dedicate my life to writing about Kashmir and its politics. I became one of the first women in my family to travel abroad to receive an international education. If she had witnessed the kind of education I have gotten, perhaps it would have soothed her, and maybe she would have wanted a similar level of education for herself. However, it would have pained her to know that life for an educated Kashmiri woman was not necessarily much better in terms of their freedoms. Educated women and men like myself live through an on-and-off war, face the risk of extermination, curbs, restrictions, removal of rights, and exile, in addition to grappling with a fast changing social and cultural milieu that imposes imperial social and cultural practices and accentuates materialism to displace Indigenous cultural bonds and networks. In this milieu, Kashmiri womanhood emerges as a site of decolonial praxis and knowledge generation, through exploring the intergenerational traumas and resilience within matriarchal Muslim cultures. Kashmiri women have for generations crafted robust personalities from their lack of political, social, and individual azadi (freedom). These traumas are intergenerational in nature and they inform the agency and personal development of Kashmiri women like myself.
