Gender, Conflict and Peace in Kashmir: Invisible Stakeholders by Seema Shekhawat

Abstract

Kashmir! Who has not heard or seen the images of violence, trauma, distress and pain. The struggle to maintain autonomy over the princely state began with the partitioning of Muslim India (Pakistan) and Hindu India in 1947 after freedom from British occupation. Kashmir caught in “the boundary conflict” with a Hindu ruler and majority Muslim subjects; Hari Singh decided to go neutral. This was the inception of an ongoing protracted territorial war (almost seven decades) that has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people. Unfortunately, what many do not know today is that this was a war that Kashmiri women and girls claim full participation, ownership and sometimes victory in. No one has been able to fully capture the interwoven complexity of women’s engagement in peace and conflict in Kashmir other than Seema Shekhawat. Shekhawat’s Gender, Conflict and Peace in Kashmir: Invisible Stateholders sets a leading trend on the conundrum of the feministic role in politics, violent conflict, and peace-building. A pressing issue forsaken yet in dire need of unravelling in contemporary discourse, will invoke provocation, internal conflict, cognitive dissonance as it pertains feminism premise of gender equality and women’s empowerment, human rights and social justice and fairness, and crime and punishment.