The Untold Story of Kashmiri Women
“Which is the worst
issue on gender justice that you have come across in your career?” A friend asked
me.
“It is perhaps the
atrocities on women in the last one thousand years during the invasions and one
that continued till the exodus of Kashmiri pandits.”
“You are touching
a hornet’s nest,” she said.
“It is always the women
who bear the trauma in any war, in genocide, in mass violence. It is the women
of India who have faced it the most.”
“Are you saying
that the attempt towards the annihilation of Hindu civilization by invaders and
the atrocities faced by women is the biggest gender violence of all times in
India?”
When I replied yes,
she asked, “Then why is it not known? Why don’t women come forward to talk
about it?”
“When a woman
talks she has to deal with issues of shame and humiliation about herself, her
body, and also the men in her life who feel ashamed that they couldn’t protect
her.”
“How often you
come about it in your work?”
“Working with
refugees, it has been a constant reminder. When I was in Sri Lanka, I heard
hundreds of women who said they were sexually assaulted in the last stages of
the war. The social workers who heard that had felt burnt out. Some years ago I
had heard women from Bangladesh talk about Pakistani army men raping their
mothers and killing them. While doing a workshop with Afghan independent human
rights commission, some of their members had broken down talking about the
sexual assault on young girls by the army. One of the counselors was so affected
she wished she was dead.”
“Will Durant, one
of the few historians with a conscience, has written about the invasion on India
as the most brutal in history apart from the numbers. The numbers often hide
the real trauma of the people. After a war or genocide, everything becomes a
number. The sheer number of people killed or thrown homeless or raped refuse to
touch our heart. Perhaps that is why the power of a single story arouses our
conscience and emotions that numbers cannot do.”
“I share one such
story that I heard in the camps of Kashmir. The eyes of the one who told me still
haunt me. It is banal but I can’t forget it because it is a symbol of what
happened to a people and ended a way of life. But it tells me the way women and
especially Indian women hold trauma in their heart, protecting their families
and carry it forward for generations. Often called trans-generational trauma it
goes unsung, unnoticed and bites the dust one day. Except that it is my tribute
to the woman who told me and to Indian womanhood. They have held our
civilization together.”
“The one who told
me had held this secret for over sixty years. She told me I could write it after
she is gone from this world. But there was a question that I couldn’t answer
then. In her words – “It was 1948. Thousands of kabalis were entering Kashmir from
Pakistan. Knowing that they were approaching our village, my father decided to go
away with our family. He gave us three sisters’ three packets and said, “Take
it if you are in trouble or a pathan catches you.” We didn’t have to ask what
the packet contained. We knew what was in it. We three nodded silently. I believe
every girl in those days knew that once she reaches her teens, a day like this
may come anytime in her life. My youngest sister, tried to open and see it after
he left. We stopped her. It was considered a bad omen if you opened it before
you needed it. Two other girls came from neighborhood we all hid together.”
“I am going to
pandit ji’s house,” my father told me. “The men are having a meeting there. Will
be back in an hour. Keep hiding in the attic and don’t come out under any circumstances.
Only if you hear my voice, do come out.” An hour later we heard Girdhari ji’s
voice call for our father. He was a young boy from the neighborhood and we all
knew him. Little did we know a pathan had cornered him and made him call the residents
by name at knifepoint.”
“As I replied, the
pathan caught hold of me and his eyes glowed to see so many girls. He was about
to call someone when he looked at me and said, “This one is pretty and I won’t
leave her for Sardar.” He began to rape me and I could see he was tired. He was
saying he had already raped many that day and it seemed greed had over taken him.
As he rolled over and started to pant with eyes closed and took some water, I
don’t know what came over me but I grabbed him and emptied the whole packet in
his mouth. He gave a loud cry and his body convulsed and he shook violently
calling ‘allah allah’. He even called me a prostitute, a haramzaadi
(illegitimate) and tried to grab my hair but then collapsed. His mouth became
full of foam and his eyes bulged at me. He was no more. My sisters stood there
frozen.”
“Would you say I
am a murderer?” she asked.
“No, I won’t,” I
said. But she didn’t listen.
“One of the girls gathered
some courage and came forward to say, “Benie(sister), we have to hide what he
did to you.” All the girls put a little of their share of poison in my packet
and made it look like I didn’t use it. They all took a vow ‘we won’t tell it
ever to anyone’.”
“Few hours later my
father came and we told him that the pathan had entered, fainted and died.” He
believed us and told us to be careful.
“If I hadn’t
killed him he would have come back with his Sardar and raped us all.”
“You saved the honor
of others and possibly several lives. Was keeping it a secret difficult?”
“Yes. If I did, I
would be talked of as a defiled woman and a one who murdered.”
She had then brought
out the packet, now yellow and crumpled with age. She had opened it to show a
powder now black. “All the other women threw it away long ago. I couldn’t. I
kept it as a reminder. I don’t know why. I open it every time I think of that
to see and remind myself.”
“Can I include your
story in my book?” I asked her.
“No, don’t. You
will get many other stories for your book. I want this story to die with me. Write
it after I am gone and if ever Article 370 goes away. Many may throw away what
they have kept preserved as a symbol of those days.”
“You didn’t tell
anyone at all?”
“Only my daughter
and my granddaughter. When they grew up. I have felt a defiled woman all my
life. I have nightmares. I still wake up perspiring thinking of that night.”
She had stopped
here and we had left after giving our number. I wondered how the other women of
that group had held the story in their hearts. What was their story?
Sometime ago, I received
a message from an unknown source. It was a picture of a packet being dropped in
a river. The message said, “You don’t know me but I want to tell you that my
mother and I threw a packet in Ganges. My grandmother had left it for us
telling us the story and saying she told you. We had found your name and phone number
in her belongings. Hope you won’t mind my sending this picture to you. Our family
felt we will throw the packet in the Ganges. Mother Ganges will absorb the
poison.”
Rajat Mitra
Psychologist and
Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
www.rajatmitra.co.in
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