CONFLICT AND WOMEN IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR: A STUDY OF SELECTED SHORT STORIES FROM SHAHNAZ BASHIR’S SCATTERED SOULS

Abstract

Jammu and Kashmir have been a disputed territory between India and Pakistan since the sub-continent partition in 1947. The history of any conflict zone is filled with ambiguous, gloomy and unresolved stories that are the outcome of violence. Such conflict zone violence has severe results on the common masses, who are the silent victims of such conflict. The period of '1990s was the most horrendous in Kashmir when insurgency was at its peak. The sufferings and brutalities evoked literary writings where the indigenous writers tell the painful past from the suppressed people's perspectives, which are otherwise not recorded in the nationalist narratives. Women are the silent sufferers of any conflict, and women in Kashmir are the most victimized. Over the last three decades, the Kashmiri women have undergone severe trauma; their sons have been killed, their children orphaned, husbands disappeared. This paper attempts to analyze selected short stories from Shahnaz Bashir's Scattered souls where he retells and recounts pathos and loss of women caught up in the conflict of Kashmir. These narratives are recorded as history seen and experienced by Kashmir's who have been silenced and marginalized.