 Hello and welcome to the Indian Cultural Forum and NewsClick. Today we are joined by Sehba Hoseyan whose book on Kashmir has recently come out titled Love, Loss and Longing in Kashmir. The book documents years of Sehba's research and fieldwork in Kashmir as well as our experiences with the people of the state. So thank you Sehba for joining us today. Thanks Surangya, thanks for inviting me for this year. So in your book, in many places, you talk about, you recollect people's memories of the worst years of the insurgents and you also write about the kind of trauma it inflicts on people to witness the killings and enforced disappearances first hand of their loved ones. And in the introduction, you write about the pledge of the aggrieved, which is that the people, that is the Kashmiri people will not forget or forgive the history of violence and that the battle is for justice and accountability. And then we come to the situation today, particularly after the events of August 5 and the imposition of the lockdown. And people are saying that things right now are in fact much worse than they were before. And the government is saying that these things, these events are eventually to bring a sense of normalcy in Kashmir. So what do you think can be the result of all of this? Actually, it is very difficult for me to say what the result would be. But when I wrote in the introduction about the pledge of the aggrieved, because when you see first hand, you know, 30 years now almost of the insurgency and the kind of mass violence and how people have coped with it, you know, and it is really a matter of survival. When we talk about trauma, we also talk about intergenerational, you know, night's three generations. So the pledge of the aggrieved never to forget is, I think, very important in this because you have to remember the history of violence, because children have grown up, those who were five or 10 or now in their thirties more. And now I see small children who are filling the gaps when their mothers or their grandmother, they are quiet because they are weeping and the children give you the details because this is what they've witnessed and this is what they have seen. So I think that memory, it's not just a memory as much as an everyday experience of mass violence where the entire family gets pulled in. You know, numbers can only tell you one part of the story, but it's only when you see people and their everyday experience and their narratives about what it actually means to live in a very politicized, militarized area that they do. And it's unresolved. This kind of unresolved conflict, the violence, the trauma that is collective trauma, it's almost an entire population that is in its grip. So it is not just, it doesn't just challenge India's democracy. It's a threat to India's democracy. And the sooner we resolve it, the better. And regarding what happened post 5th August after the government abrogated Article 370, it's made matters even worse. You see, so here we are talking about remembering what has happened to them. And now it has become even more terrible for the people who are living there because suddenly you are captive, suddenly your whole identity as a Kashmiri Muslim majority state. That was the only Muslim majority state. And suddenly it's taken away from you. And you are told now you are subjects under the central government. You are captive. I mean, unfortunately, since this book I wrote and the first draft, I haven't gone back to Kashmir. And I had planned to go with this book. So the timing has been a bit strange. And someday I definitely want to go back with my book and meet people and discuss. And also important to the sense of normalcy is the sense of Kashmirite, which is very important to the Kashmiri people, the sense of Kashmiri identity. And important to the sense of Kashmirite is the syncretism that was there in Kashmir, was an essential part of the fabric of Kashmir in which Kashmiri pundits, Muslims, Sikhs, all other communities would exist peacefully with each other. So when the question of Kashmiri pundits is brought up, the focus is on them leaving, but not on the reasons why they're not able to return today. So can you tell us about some of these reasons that you've also written about in your book? Why they cannot return today? And now after the conditions, how the conditions are today, when would the return be possible? Actually, one of the reasons it is the first chapter in my book and it is one of the most extensive chapters in my book because when I began fieldwork also, whoever you meet, wherever you go, their absence is felt in very material terms because you have these houses that have been abandoned. Everyone talks about how they had to leave. And the pundits who have stayed back, that is another area which actually has not received the kind of attention it should have because they are the ones who actually stayed back and face the same similar reality and fate as the Kashmiri Muslims. And the whole idea for me to actually begin with this chapter also because my work was in Kashmir and I visited all the Mahallas that had been, you know, left bereft of the Kashmiri pundits because they had already 95% of the community. So this tragedy of the Kashmiri pundits having had to flee out of fear, out of insecurity, out of the reasons that were there. Everybody knows about it is something which is a big tragedy. And I think we have to see it within the larger tragedy of what Kashmir is today. So their return, first we have to talk about 30 years. It's going to be now. And when pundits left in a rush, you know, from 1990, January, I mean I've recounted in the book how they remember that night of grief and confusion where trucks and whole families and when people wake up whether they are Muslims or Kashmiri pundits, suddenly a whole Mahalla is emptied of the whole community. So when we talk about their return, we have to first talk about are you creating the conditions for them to return? What is the government policy? Successive governments. When I talk about 30 years, it's not just today that it has happened, but they have never paid attention to what it would make for the pundits. What is possible to be done for the pundits to return in a normal course of time? Now they are building, the government has built several, you know, camps and houses, pukka houses in Jammu. They have done it in Srinagar, segregated housing, which I visited. Shekho Pura, it is called 200 flats with B.S.F.C.R.P.F. posted outside high walls, barbed wire. No Kashmiri pundit would want to come and live like that. Why are you creating segregated pockets of residents for Kashmiri pundits when they themselves do not want? What they want is to come back to a situation where they had left, which is amongst the Muslim neighbors. So it's a very difficult situation where even if they were to return, the situation has not been created where they could. You keep talking about once it becomes normal and every pundit family, whether those who are resident in Kashmir or the ones who have had to flee, they all believe that it was a very temporary phenomenon, two weeks, ten months, six months, and they would be back. And today it's 30 years, that is the biggest tragedy. And I think the government's duplicity comes out again and again. On the one hand, you have crores of rupees packages starting from much earlier. 2008 was one of the big ones. After that, many more have been. So what has happened? Despite all that money, there is no way that the pundit wants to return. And what I found very moving, there are so many narratives and conflicting things about how pundits left and how Jagmohan, the governor then, had helped them. But talk to anybody. Their honorable return, there is no second opinion, no divided opinion. Everyone would want them to return to where they belonged. Very few people spoke as such about Kashmir. What they did speak about is how the values of secularism, the values of the way they had lived always as two communities but such close ties. So that is what they look forward to, that it should be that. But the more it's delayed, the more communalized, the more polarized. And there are right wing organizations which are also trying to do that. And in the camps, it's a fertile ground to politicize the whole issue. So you demonize the Muslim community and you show the victim of the pundit community. They're suffering. It has acquired a competitive edge. Who suffered more, the Muslims or the Kashmiris? This is the worst that has happened. And talking about the women in Kashmir. So on the one hand, due to the extensive militarization, the militancy, the growth of fundamentalist forces and also the larger movement for self-determination, the ideas of women's rights, the issues of women's rights, those have been sort of sidelined. Those have, there's no such space for them to be brought to the forefront anymore. But on the other hand, because of so many families losing their men to enforce disappearances and killings and torture and everything, women have been forced to occupy more central positions in family life, and also in Kashmiri struggles and movements. So how do you see this contradiction? I would again begin go back to that story of the pundits, because you know, when we talk about women, their victimhood or their agency or the fact that they have been so closely involved with the movement, yet the questions that are specific to women's lives, whether it is children, marriage, divorce, custody, those are issues known as you know what to do with women. So today, if they have not been central to the movement, there are reasons for it. And I used to find it a bit strange in the beginning, but I understood how in such a politicized, militarized terrain such as Kashmir, where your very survival is at stake, you know, it's an everyday battle to stay alive, to stay free of violence, to stay free of the threat of violence to yourself, to your women, to your family, and women acquire a very significant, you know, position and role in this whole thing where it has transformed dramatically. If you take pundit women who left, you know, they may have been teachers, they may have been professionals, the conditions in which they left and the camp life. If you meet a woman who's lived in the camp, along with her family, raising children in cramped conditions with public toilets, how does she make that situation normal for the family? It's a struggle. Similarly, when you come to Kashmir, you will see that this kind of specific violence which women are targeted, and the kind of violence that men face in terms of enforced disappearances killing the very fact that every man is a suspect in the eyes of the state agencies and the law. What happens in a situation like that? So, while many of the women, they're not too many in Kashmir, but same Muslim khawatin markers before that women's welfare society, then MK, the other one, Dr. Ani Millat, it had all begun because particularly MKM and women's welfare society WD, they had all begun with these questions, one to deal with this kind of domestic violence or whatever may be happening inside the homes also to protect the rights of women. But once the movement began and the whole atmosphere was charged with this whole question of self-determination and what the entire, almost the entire population went through, you know, the tumultuous years and very turbulent period of the 90s, where the figures are staggering. I mean, in these years, if you say 8,000 men have disappeared, this is just, I believe, a conservative estimate. It could be many more. You talk about 70, 80,000 people killed. These are staggering figures. And when you look at the records of the psychiatric hospital, it's even more shocking. At the start of militancy, there may have been 1,700 patients annually visiting the site. Now, in the last two years, it has crossed 150,000 people who visit the mental hospital. It's an exponential growth. And it's really the doctors, the psychiatrists who say this is, at 20 years ago, I would hear that this is just the tip of the iceberg. And now with the chain situation where every Kashmiri is captive in his and her own home, where there is no communication, phones and whatever, the internet. So can you imagine the kind of added trauma to their lives and not being able to access the services that are already there? Today, there's much better infrastructure for mental health services in Kashmir than when I had started work. There were two psychiatrists then. Today, there are 50 more than 50 at district levels also. Because on the one hand, it tells you that services are improving. On the other hand, it shows you that the number of patients are increasing. You know, so where does it lead you? That is a big question. So that is why this collective trauma and this unresolved thing and the situation today particularly will carry on for generations. Children I've met Kashmiris who have visited, they are saying we don't know what to do because children are so traumatized, they can't go to school, they can't go out to play and they have no internet, they cannot. So it's really a very peculiar situation within families. So women's issues if they're not being taken up in the manner, many people do believe that first thing you have to address in such a militarized violent situation is how do you keep yourself alive and free from violence? All other issues I think because the women coming out, you know, protesting, demanding accountability, seeking justice, that itself shows that it's not just about me as a woman and domestic violence, there's that violence outside, which is targeting my children, which is targeting my husband, my brother, disappearances. So that becomes one of the most fundamental issues for everybody, whether women or men. And also when we talk about sexual violence, for the longest time, it has been very difficult for women to even bring it up, to even talk about that something happened to them. But now these things are changing. Now they have protests and rallies and movements, demanding justice, demanding accountability for sexual violence. So can you talk about this journey that women have gone through to not, you know, the sense of maybe shame or whatever they were experiencing before that they could not talk about it to now that they are demanding justice for it. And also the fact that the sexual violence has not just come from armed forces, it has also come from sometimes militants who women have given shelter to given, you know, fed in the hand, like kept them in their homes, fed them at great risk to their own lives. Yeah, there are many different aspects to this whole thing. But yes, in any situation that obtains such as in Kashmir, any other conflict situation, you would see that women are specifically targeted to teach the community to threaten the whole community to punish them to say you do this and we do this to your women. So it's something that has always been happening. And here in the case of Kashmir, actually, yes, it is true. In the beginning, when I 20 years ago, if I asked somebody, they would always say, no, these things don't happen, whether it's men or women would say, but too much has happened. You know, silence can be maintained only up to a point, you know, after that, it is too difficult, too painful, too humiliating to remain silent. And that is what has happened in Kashmir. They're not just dealing with their own sexual violence, but also the sexual violence that men suffer from, because once they are captured, once they are picked up, once they are taken away, there are many stories of how torture has become one of the most interesting. And in my interviews, also, men have spoken about how they have been tortured and how their bodies women talk about how a man's body or her husband's would be brought and thrown in front of the house 20 times, 25 times same man being taken and being brought back. And for women, you know, to bring that man back on his feet, whether it's a father, a husband, a brother, children grow up watching all this. So I think this is something which is, what can you say? I mean, women are dealing with it. So today, when they say accountability, justice, this is what they mean. What happens in homes where women are related to militants, you know, their homes are marked. So then that Mujahid that militant may not be inside the house. But women are marked by that. And they can be raided anytime. And even if there is no militant in the house, there are other men, they're all pulled out. And once the soldiers are inside the house where only women are, you cannot imagine the kind of brutality that they can come to and women have suffered for that. And the question about security forces very well known that these are the tactics they adopt. And this is something they have used as a weapon to silence people or to bring them into saying, stop this militancy and gun and we'll show you what we can do. But where militants are concerned, you know, to say militants also do it, one has to also understand that this whole 30 years, militancy has gone through different phases also. There was a period when militancy was so popular and that whole image of the black bandana, the AK 47s, these tall men and people used to, you know, really, it had become such a popular not just the image, but what they were doing, what they represented the question of being Azad, all of that really. I think it was palpable. And people really sort of used to open their homes. I've met people who said it was like a festival, former militants that I met said that it was almost like we were great heroes, the way we were welcomed, the food was cooked, all kinds of things happened. So there is an awareness. And the women that I have interviewed, particularly the leaders, women leaders like Anjum Habib or Asyandrabi or anybody else, or the former militants that you speak to, they acknowledge. One of the former militants told me that, yes, we are also human. We have committed these mistakes. But it's bound to happen in such a militarized thing where militants who have been subjected to torture, to being abducted or so they also adopt the same tactics where they believe that this is a government agent, this is an informer. So actually the whole perception of militants as heroes and validated as, you know, bringing in a certain political change, then this also happens. It's part of the reality where they feel disillusioned. What happened but we have to remember that it's not a pervasive thing as it is from the security forces because they are the ones who have committed most atrocities. And when you talk about the women leaders, the names you just mentioned, you have profiled three leaders in particular Bhaktavar, Anjum Habib and Asyandrabi. All three of them have led amazing movements, struggles for women and in general for the self, as part of the self determination movement. And they have been targeted relentlessly by the state forces. So can you tell us why you chose these three in particular? Actually, it's four women because one chapter focuses mainly on Parvina Ahangir. So the interesting thing is Parvinas I've weaved into a complete story of her own because she epitomizes also many other women who have gone through it. So it's not only Parvina who she was instrumental in forming this whole association of parents or disappeared person, the collective action, how she brought other women together along with pervasive rows of APDP when they established it. So one of the reasons I also concentrated on Parvina is an ordinary Kashmiri woman who hadn't stepped out of her house just as hundreds of other ordinary women who did not have to earlier. But because of the conflict and the violence it generated their first generation women workers that I have met women whose roles have transformed completely. Parvina epitomizes how and not only that. Yes, today I'm traveling and I'm searching for justice. I'm asking for accountability. She's one of the angriest at the same time. Relentless struggle that she represents and other ordinary women also. So I decided that through her story because I've met so many women from families of the disappeared each one unique in their suffering because you know, it's a common phenomenon where so many five, 600 families, I mean, of members of APDP. So you can imagine if it's 8000, it's lakhs of families and individuals that are affected by it. So Parvina, because of that, and it's interesting because Bhaktavar is her sister. And she also started with Parvina a little bit. But before that with Anjum, when they first established the women's welfare society, they used to call it in which pundits women also 100 or 120 of them were pundit women members. So if there are 200 majority of them were pundit women also. So from there to coming on, then militancy begins and then the pundits have left. So that becomes then Muslim Kawatin markers with the constitution with everything and Anjum's journey also and Bhaktavar who happens to be Parvina's sister. So how their lives were impacted, you know, this common thing of justice and for redressing the communities, you know, problems that they were facing, particularly women. So they took up a lot of these issues together and formed this. So I wanted to see how their trajectory sometimes, you know, converged, sometimes diverged during different times of the movement. So it's all nestled in the political context of Kashmir. But how each woman woman looks at her own journey, how her own struggle. So that is why rather than have short stories or little references to lot of women who are very instrumental in, you know, contributing towards the movement, I just thought I would pick these three or four to show how they also represent a collective, you know, it was interesting for me to see how each one and Asyandrabi, none of these women use the word sacrifice or, you know, their suffering as much as pointing out to the state and what it has done and how they were forced for personal reasons, political reasons, Asyandrabi's story is different. Anjum's is very different. Yet at the same time, it tells you how each woman was pulled out of her comfort zone and how they grew into and evolved as very political beings and what their lives represent. As we speak, Asyandrabi has been in jail for the last more than a year in Rohini. She has spent most of her life in jails. The very fact that she had a small child once when who's a grown up now when she was picked up and imprisoned, that child was in jail with her for 22 months, growing up inside the jail. Her defiance, her, you know, being ready. So whether you agree with her politics or not, whether you agree with her very Islamic way of looking at things. So even if she talks about the movement, she will say if it trails off the Islamic path, it cannot be a success. Whereas Anjum is completely political, part of the Hurriyat conference. Now from MKM, she has now come to call it Kashmir Khawatin Marcus, women's Kashmiri women's movement, basically because she also felt that while so many feminists or women come from outside, which is from India, we have our own story, we have our own struggle, and we have to bring it forward and show that this is also our voice, our struggle, our movement, which others can learn from. So these are three stories that I thought to reconstruct their lives. So more readers get to know. And that was the reason, actually. And you talked about mental health care before, and how there's a rising number of patients. So can you tell us more in detail about the sort of mental health care services that are there? Although you had mentioned that there has been a slight rise in number of psychiatrists available, but there are still a lot of difficulties people have in accessing these services and both. You see, there is a lot of stigma also, where you talk about mental health or many people, they wouldn't, for instance, when I visited the hospital, and spend time lot of time with doctors observing patients, you will see how conspicuous by their absence young women, young boys, because they're particularly women because it can jeopardize their prospects of marriage. People can raise their fingers saying, whatever. So faith healers to doctors to neurologists to anywhere. Psychiatric disease hospital is usually the last resort where nothing helps that is where they go to seek help. And as I mentioned earlier, how women's roles have actually transformed so dramatically that a lot of women also as prime caregivers suffer doubly because they're dealing with a missing man maybe they're dealing with no livelihood, there are family where there is not a single meal is left, it's all women. So these are first generation workers, whatever kind of employment you can find. These are female headed households, which is all a new reality, you know, within which they are now negotiating their lives, the women. So mental health becomes a huge issue. And according to the doctors, it's not so much about medication. You see what is happening, the psychotropic drugs, I interviewed chemists also off the counter you can buy. And how do you deal with your prolonged depression? How do you deal with a child who wouldn't stop crying? How do you deal with a young adult who's throwing everything around? So the only thing you think of is giving medicines to calm him down. Parvina hunger. So many women that have met who survive by popping these medicines. But mental health, one of the stress from doctors that I met at the Institute is to say the counseling is more valuable than but there is no time the number of patients compared to the number of psychiatrists. What are the health facilities? What is the kind of awareness? Do you pop in tablets to get better? Or is there an atmosphere, an environment where doctors can spend say half an hour with a young woman who's agitated, a woman who's come because her son refuses to talk or eat. So you don't immediately give them medication. Doctors would counseling. Any psychiatrist would tell you this is what is required. And recently, 2018, when I last visited, I went to see Dr. Arshad. And when I went to see him, he took me around, there is actually visible improvement in the infrastructure. But when I entered where he had gone to sit that day, there were three, four other women's psychiatrists helping him. You won't believe I saw the same number of patients queued outside. So on the one hand, the number of psychiatrists are increasing, but the number of patients, like I said earlier, and it is because of the specific situation of violence, uncertainty, political instability, repression, all of it is taking a toll. And it's very worrisome, you know, when we talk about intergenerational, today's young children. Can you imagine in the next five years, 10 years, this trauma lodges itself. It's not something which is just, you know, it has physical implications. Finally, in all your years in Kashmir, all your experiences, all the conversations you've had with the people there, what do you think it is that the people need for a healing process to begin? What do people need? People need end to the kind of violence that has been inflicted upon them. People need to be free of the threat of that violence. People need to see that when they step out of the house, there is no soldier holding a gun to their head. People need normalcy is that, which they require, peace. You know, I'm not talking about non-violence in that sense, but how do you cope day after day after day for 30 years with the kind of violence that Kashmiris have faced. And most importantly, what they need is a political will from the government. What they need is for the government to acknowledge that too much has happened, too much violence, too much suffering, and we have to correct that situation. And how do you do it by finding a political resolution to it? Not sending more troops. There are thousands more now. That is not the solution at all. And now that made it worse by snatching away whatever little they had. I mean, you dissolve a whole state into one union territory without a consultation. People are being jailed, sent out of Kashmir, PSA is being used against them. So it's it's really a very, you know, I end my book on a hope, note of hope. But today when I see the situation, it's grimmer than what it was. It's worse than what it was. So that is really a tragedy, I don't believe. And what I've learned from them, you know, every act of defiance, it is just amazing that one could survive in a situation. We take a lot for granted, you know, I did, that I could step out anywhere, that I could speak, that I could meet people freely, and we take it for granted. But even for basic things, every Kashmiri has to struggle, you know, to speak, to go out, to be free, and everyone deserves that, and their dignity, absolutely. Thanks a lot, Seba, for joining us today. Thank you, Surangya. Thanks a lot. So this is all the time we have today in this interview. Thank you for watching NewsClick and the Indian Cultural Forum.