Postcolonial disjuncture: Kashmir as the other in Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night

Abstract

Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night (2008) is a perspicacious commentary on the violence, exile and dispossession that have wrecked the lives of ordinary Kashmiris since 1947. Peer compellingly ruminates on the gradual loss of the Kashmiris’ belongingness in the last few decades that eventually curtailed their sense of individual and collective selfhood. The present article aims to analyse how Peer’s memoir emerges as a crucial intervention in focusing on the othering of Kashmiris in postcolonial India. This article will examine how Peer’s personal story shapes his creative expression of homeland and uncovers the gradual stymieing of Kashmiri Muslim citizenship and identity under Indian statehood, perhaps most alarmingly manifested in the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. This article will look at how Peer’s narrative interrogates the predominating imaginations of Kashmir as the other in the pan-Indian psyche and engages with the inherent "ambivalence" of the nationalist discourse of India. Accordingly, the article will also study how Peer positions Kashmir as a "heterotopic space" that transcends any form of monolithic comprehension. In so doing, Peer’s memoir emerges as an alternative and autoethnographic chronicling of the Kashmir story undercutting the dominant assumptions, reinforced by the Indian nationalist project. Pertinently, the concepts of "ambivalence" and "heterotopia" are drawn from the theoretical perspectives of Homi Bhabha and Michael Foucault, respectively.

Introduction

Basharat Peer is undoubtedly one of the most powerful contemporary voices from Kashmir. Peer’s Curfewed Night (2008), a personal memoir, vividly chronicles his experiences as a Kashmiri Muslim in and outside Kashmir. Offering an intimate portrayal of the Kashmir inhabitants’ precarious lives, Curfewed Night brings to sharp focus the issues of Kashmiri Muslim citizenship, representation, and identity. This article aims to examine how Peer’s memoir emerges as a perceptive commentary on the violence, exile, and dispossession that have wrecked the lives of ordinary Kashmiris. This article seeks to engage with Peer’s mourning for a peaceful homeland and his conscientious understanding of the Indian state’s repression as well as the workings of Islamic militancy in Kashmir. I argue that Peer’s memoir deconstructs the inherent “ambivalence” of Indian nationhood and interrogates the predominant imaginary of Kashmir as the other in the postcolonial pan-Indian psyche. In so doing, Peer’s narrative posits Kashmir as a space that is “heterotopic”, characterized by temporalities, discursiveness, and heterogeneities. Pertinently, the essay draws on the concepts of “ambivalence” and “heterotopia” from Homi K. Bhabha and Michel Foucault to substantiate this argument.

Highly influenced by Agha Shahid Ali, the great Indian-American poet who wrote nostalgically about lost harmony in Kashmir, in Curfewed Night Peer laments the Kashmiris’ loss of freedom that coincided with the rise of Indian regimentation and the radical militant forces, especially in the last three decades. As an adolescent in 1990, Peer grew up witnessing the transitional times that ripped apart the Kashmir population and forced many to leave Kashmir for their safe survival. Peer also left Kashmir to pursue his studies in Aligarh, Delhi, and New York City, and later worked as a journalist in Delhi. Haunted by memories of his disturbed homeland and shocked by the majority of India’s indifference to the Kashmiris’ fate, Peer has recourse to write about Kashmir and the distressed lives of those who still live there. Peer makes the following heavy-hearted declaration: “I felt the absence of our own telling, the unwritten books about the Kashmiri experience from the bookshelves, as vividly as the absence of a beloved” (2008: 95). ¹ Alongside a foregrounding of the unfortunate fate of innocent Kashmiri Muslims, Curfewed Night thus also highlights the psychological alienation of thousands of youth who, even after staying outside Kashmir, could never give up the hope of returning to their cherished homeland. Interestingly, Peer’s memoir published in 2008 seems to set forth a new terrain of Kashmiri writing in English that depicts the functioning of the Indian state as the new colonial power, and its victimization of the Kashmiri Muslims. Mirza Waheed’s novels The Collaborator (2011) and The Book of Gold Leaves (2014), Malik Sajad’s graphic novel Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir (2015), and Shahnaz Bashir’s novels The Half Mother (2014) and Scattered Souls (2016) resonate with Peer’s delineation of political oppression in Kashmir and the tumultuous lives of ordinary Kashmiris.

Peer’s memoir as an autoethnographic narrative

Peer’s memoir is at once a personal recollection and a compelling commentary on the wretchedness of Kashmir. This is evidenced in his narrative style, which displays a subtle literary grandeur and moves beyond mere documentation. Befittingly, Meenakshi Bharat (2013: 79) observes that “although journalist Basharat Peer may not be a novelist, his memoir of growing up in insurgent Kashmir, Curfewed Night, thoughtfully and imaginatively taps the rich possibilities of fictional techniques”. Curfewed Night begins with his childhood days, followed by his departure from Kashmir, and then ends with his revisiting of the homeland. While the return visit that inspires Peer’s memoir is inescapably a quest of rediscovering his identity in postcolonial India, his narrative is also a record of the crippling sense of un-belongingness and un-homeliness that plagues the lives of Kashmiris, especially the Muslims. His narrative is interestingly not only atttendant on his memories of loss and dislocation but significantly enunciates the cultural myths, communal trauma, and collective oppression of the Kashmiris. Peer meets and interacts with fellow Kashmiri men and women to know more about their suffering and hopes for a peaceful Kashmir. Peer’s thoughtful portrayal and detailed understanding of the violence-ridden Kashmir eventually make his memoir come close to an autoethnographic narrative. Autoethnography, a relatively new genre or technique, relies heavily on the personal experiences and stories of the researcher–author. Andrew C. Sparkes defines autoethnography as a “highly personalized account that draw[s] upon the experience of the author/researcher for the purpose of extending sociological understanding” (2000: 21). Laslett notes that in autoethnographies, the “intersection of the personal and the societal offers a new vantage point” for a comprehensive social study (1999: 392). Autoethnography as a tool and a method is widely in use in the sphere of the social sciences, and there can be no denying the fact that it is appropriated to construct a personal connection through the shared narrative (Frank, 2000) and also investigates personal issues in the context of a social ethos (Holt, 2001). Overall, it can be best understood as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience [ethno]” (Ellis et al., 2011: 273). Encompassing his own personal journey, Peer’s narrative importantly reflects Kashmir’s deeper socio-political conditions from an insider’s perspective. Peer conjures his growing-up years to shine a spotlight on the harrowing experiences of the Kashmiris after 1990. This was a decisive year that saw the imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) by the Indian state. In so doing, his memoir unwittingly aligns with that of an autoethnography. Peer carefully situates himself as a Kashmiri Muslim to provide an intrinsic picture of the Kashmiri Muslims’ disjuncture under Indian state oppression in the postcolonial era. Before analysing Peer’s text in detail, I provide a brief overview of the Kashmir conflict and a discussion of the pan-Indian imagination of Kashmir. This helps to explore how Peer bifurcates the stereotypical perceptions regarding Kashmir and pinpoints the hidden “ambivalences” of Indian nationalist discourse.

A brief overview of the Kashmir conflict

The two-nation theory, based on which the South Asian subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, not only left thousands homeless and beleaguered but had a crucial impact on Kashmir, the state that declined to join either of these countries. Religion was the determining factor in dividing the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Despite being a dominant Muslim state, Kashmir resisted becoming part of either nation. It remained a princely state under Maharaja Hari Singh, a Hindu ruler. However, the Maharaja could not retain his autonomous stance for long. Some Pashtun tribesmen began an invasion of Kashmir, and the ruler sought military help from India. Soon after, he signed the Instrument of Accession with then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Kashmir acceded to India on 26 October 1947. Nehru incorporated Kashmir, the land of his forebears, into India and accorded it a special status through Article 370. This new settlement allowed India to control only defence, foreign affairs, and telecommunications, while Kashmir continued to have its own constitution and local heads presided in authority. The inclusion of Kashmir under Article 370 was considered a temporary settlement, as the Indian government promised a plebiscite. Contrary to expectations, this plebiscite found itself endlessly deferred. Consequently, the Kashmiris’ demand for autonomy aggrandized; radical politics reared up; and, finally, with the imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) by the Indian government in 1990, the political climate became highly volatile. Gazala Peer and Javedur Rahman (2012: 73) aver that “despite the guarantee envisaged under the Constitution, the approach adopted by India towards the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir [was reflected] in its demographic relationship with India” and “it is not only surprising but also unpleasant to see how the Constitution of India has been grossly misused to encroach upon the autonomy of Kashmir”. While the AFSPA attributed the Indian Army further extraordinary powers to restore law and order in the region, the Kashmiris experienced this as a breach of promises made by the Indian government in 1947. The AFSPA led to an infringement of Kashmiris’ fundamental rights. And the subsequent decades have witnessed an escalation of militancy and ethnic hatred in retaliation against the forces of the Indian state that dismantled peace and normalcy in the everyday life of Kashmir.

The pan-Indian image of Kashmir and its inhabitants

Intriguingly, for the rest of India Kashmir existed as an almost utopic space, as if with its unadulterated atmosphere and idyllic natural beauty it were an ideal and immortalized realm, collectively desired and treasured. In earlier days, Hindi mainstream movies such as Junglee (1961) and Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) featured Kashmiri girls as the protagonists and captured the pastoral beauty of the Kashmir valley. Later films such as Roja (1992), Mission Kashmir (2000), Yahaan (2005), and a few others depicted the conflict between the Indian forces and Muslim militants. These films generally depicted Kashmir as a dangerous hotbed of terrorism, and represented the Indian Army as indomitable heroes fighting relentlessly to salvage Kashmir. Most of these films offered a romanticized version of the Kashmir conflict, neglecting to explore its root causes and complications. Such films, informing a significant section of the Indian psyche, imbricated the Kashmir story unilaterally as a geographical entity that is an integral part of India and needs to be rescued from the draconian grip of the Muslim militants who, sponsored by Pakistan, are its illegal claimants. Another recent film Fitoor (2016), based on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, has a Kashmiri Muslim boy as its protagonist. However, the movie mainly foregrounds his love and attraction for an upper-class elite Kashmiri girl and then dramatizes his unflinching quest for her. What do the Kashmiris want? Why are they demanding political autonomy? What is the role of the Indian state in Kashmir? Moreover, how far is the Indian state responsible for the turmoil? For the majority of Indians, these questions remained sidelined and unanswered. Haider (2014), an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet scripted by Peer, perhaps stands as the only exception in Hindi cinema. The film lambasts the authoritarian attitude of the Indian state, bringing this together with a critique of the ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Muslim militants. More humanely than other depictions on the silver screen, Peer’s script lays bare the disastrous politics preying on the common Kashmiris.

Nevertheless, an emerging body of writings probe the multi-layered histories and political aspirations of Kashmir. Some of these notable volumes include Chrisopher Snedden's Kashmir: The Unwritten Story (2013) and Understanding Kashmir and the Kashmiris (2015); Until My Freedom has Come (2011), edited by Sanjay Kak; Kashmir: The Case for Freedom (2011), edited by Tariq Ali et al.; and Kashmir’s Untold Story: Declassified (2019), by Iqbal Chand Malhotra and Maroof Raza. Another significant volume is Ananya Jahanara Kabir's Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir (2009) in which the author examines how the “representations and ideas of Kashmir” were continually being used to stimulate the “popular nationalist imagination” and “render it into a territory to be desired” (qtd. in Zutshi, 2012: 1038) on both sides of the border. Salman Rushdie also critiques the nationalist desire in his novel Shalimar the Clown, published in 2005. Despite such critical outpourings, “for the rest of India, [mostly, the image of] Kashmir is not a region where people live. It is a museum piece, something they can display (without having to visit there or talk to the people who live there) as the prize trophy of India’s secularism” (Desai, 2011: 118). Through the decades, the “Indians [remained] muddled and ill-informed about Kashmir” (Desai, 2011: 120) and, tragically, “the Indian Government has failed to recognize its role in creating the alienation and suffering of the Kashmiri people” (Chenoy, 2006: 26). Barring a group of rare historians, educators, and (social) media reporters, all too few commentators “humanize [Kashmir] and reflect the true realities” (Chenoy, 2006: 26). Basharat Peer’s memoir assumes particular significance against the backdrop of such bullish perceptions in majoritarian India. His first-person account of what it means to grow up in a violent and trauma-stricken environment invites a rereading today, after the abrogation of Article 370 in July 2019.

The scrapping of Article 370 annihilated the special status that was once conferred on Kashmir, converting it to a Union Territory of India and thereby accomplishing its integration in the Indian nation-state. Of course, this political move continues to be controversial and is contested by many people, as it was done without the collective consent of the Kashmiris. Dibyesh Anand (2019: n.p.) observes that while the Indian Government justified the abrogation of Article 370 “in the name of development, equality, and national unity”, the real sense of nationalist triumph stemmed “from the humiliation of Kashmir’s Muslims for daring to be different and the thought that this is a warning signal to all of India’s Muslims that the Hindu body politic is resurgent and unstoppable”. Now that Kashmir has been incorporated geopolitically into the Indian state, exploring what happened there in the last few decades is an even more urgent task. To study Kashmir and the Kashmiris through Peer’s memoir becomes intensely meaningful, as he deconstructs the nationalist project of the Indian state and provides a close-up lens on the victimization of ordinary Kashmiris.

Peer’s deconstruction of the colonial temperament and his reading of ambivalence

After Independence in 1947, India chose to remain constitutionally secular. However, over the years, the meta-narrative of nationhood that evolved was notably Hindu-oriented. In his article “Bharat’s Kashmir War”, Gautam Navlakha puts it in this way: “In India attempts at constructing a nation has [sic] proceeded along the lines of carving out ethnicity built around cultural artefacts of Hinduism howsoever defined or understood. And it is this Hinduism which informs the very notion of ‘national mainstream’” (1991: 2951). The Indian state’s mission was to bring together the diverse population by reinstating a unified mantra of Hindu-dominated nationhood. This led to a surreptitious process of marginalizing religious and ethnic others. Many thinkers, including the great poet–philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, had attacked the idea of a monolithic nation-state for the pluralistic cultural fabric of India. For instance, Tagore (1917: n.p.) emphatically claimed that:

we have to recognize that the history of India does not belong to one particular race but is of a process of creation to which various races of the world contributed — the Dravidians and the Aryans, the ancient Greeks and the Persians, the Mohamedans of the West and those of central Asia.

Contemporary social analysts and historians such as Partha Chatterjee and Ashis Nandy also speak about the pitfalls of appropriating Western-modelled ideas of nationhood and nationalism. Partha Chatterjee in his Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (1986) and The Nation and its Fragments (1993) discusses how the “traditions and the insights of [the oriental] cultures have been smothered” by the postcolonial Indian elites in their project of building a new nation (qtd. in Blackton, 1990: 1610). Analysing the ideology of the modern nation-state in India, Nandy (1989: 4) observes that the “post-Independence elites tried to function with an imported concept of statecraft, legitimated in terms of the traditions of India’s high culture and adjusted to suit the country’s needs, as the elites read those needs”. This had far-reaching consequences, as Nandy (1989:4) insightfully puts it:

Two expectations grew as by-products of this process of adaptation. […] The first expectation was that, with modernization, a more coherent form of Indianness would emerge and the diversity of the country would diminish, to make India more governable. The second was that, over time, the compromised form of the nation-state would give way to a nation-state working according to the universal principles of statecraft and able to persuade, mobilize, or coerce the society to adjust to the state’s ideology.

Curfewed Night attests to this view of the Indian nation-state’s overarching project which over the years has emerged “as an institution that should have absolute priority over all other aspects of Indian civilization […] [and] resist all demands of Indian society that clash with the needs of the state” (Nandy, 1989: 4). Peer categorically unfolds how Kashmir, with its cultural particularities and largely populated by Muslims, became the conspicuous other in the grand narrative of the Indian nation-state.

In his memoir, Peer undercuts the colonial attitudes of the Indian state vis-à-vis his critique of the AFSPA and reassertion of the subjectivities of the Kashmiri Muslims. As remembered by Peer, there was a time when the Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir practised their own beliefs and traditions yet stayed in harmony. The demand for an autonomous and sovereign Kashmir was a dream that had its expression in the celebration of a symbiotic culture — the “Kashmiriyat”. Kashmir’s fight has long been for its right to self-determination. So, when in 1989 the Indian government gave in to the demands of Yasin Malik, a 21-year-old political activist of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Peer, like many other young boys, was fascinated by the return of this Kashmiri hero. Despite his “ignorance about the political history of Kashmir”, Peer, like his classmates, could share those feelings of “alienation and resentment that most Kashmiri Muslims felt and had against Indian rule” (10–11). For the JKLF, it was a nationalist struggle that sought to preserve “Kashmiri identity, as separate from Indian, both politically and culturally” (Gangahar, 2013: 37). This is a distinction tellingly conveyed by Peer in a violent image: “[the Kashmiris] call it Kalashnikov and the Indians call it AK-47” (23). The JKLF fought to recuperate an independent Jammu and Kashmir, including Azad Kashmir or what India refers to as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Naturally, the sense of antagonism mounted, as Peer recounts, when there were confrontations and the Indian Armed Forces “open[ed] fire on pro-independence Kashmiri protesters” (14). Subsequently, the AFSPA was declared in Kashmir in 1990, after which the Indian Army was deployed in large numbers and normalcy was perpetually disrupted. Under the AFSPA, the Indian forces could arrest, deport, and even shoot any individual in Kashmir on suspicion of treacherous and criminal activities. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act can be read as one of the most disturbing manifestations of the “ambivalence” which Peer’s narrative stridently calls out.

“Ambivalence”, as elucidated by Homi Bhabha, refers to the internal ambiguity of the colonial activity of othering. Elaborating on Edward W. Said’s critique of colonial discourse (which discusses the West’s creation of the “Oriental other” to justify its own dominance and hegemony), Bhabha argues that there is an inherent play of anxiety and threat in the colonizer’s perception of the colonized other. In his essay “The other question…”, Bhabha remarks:

[Colonial discourse] is an apparatus that turns on the recognition and disavowal of racial/cultural/historical differences. Its predominant strategic function is the creation of space for a “subject’s peoples” through the production of knowledges in terms of which surveillance is exercised and a complex form of pleasure/unpleasure is incited. (1983: 30)

According to Bhabha, the paradox of colonial discourse lies in arresting the identity of the colonized as a “fixed reality which is at once an ‘other’ and yet entirely knowable and visible”. Bhabha continues by observing that “fixity, as the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference of colonialism, is a paradoxical mode of representation” (1983: 30). First, by confining the identity of the colonized to certain stereotypes — inferior, bizarre, degenerate, wild, and exotic — the colonizer cherishes a desire which culminates in “cultural mummification”, a term which Bhabha borrows from Franz Fanon. ² Second, Bhabha states that colonialism is loaded with overlapping binaries — attraction for and repulsion towards the other, as well as a desire to civilize the colonial subject but retain its otherness. More significantly, as Bhabha contends, the mitigation of otherness is threatening to the colonizer since if this were achieved it would invariably devaluate the colonial project by nullifying the need to “civilize” or domesticate the other.

The AFSPA exemplifies the inherent “ambivalence” of the Indian state’s colonial temperament. The act was justified as a necessary step “towards the maintenance of law and order and [to] ensure nationalist interest” — one that was claimed essential to decimate the terror elements and restore peace in Kashmir. Nevertheless, the law assumed the face of “state terror” vis-à-vis “the check-points, crackdowns, and interrogation” (Gangahar, 2013: 39) that underpinned each Kashmiri Muslim’s rendering as the dangerous and resistant other. Much like colonial discourse, the AFSPA has been an enactment of state-championed objectives of peace and development, and is simultaneously a reflection of othering too. Since 1990, the Indian state has been corroborating the AFSPA for the sake of Kashmir’s security and the preservation of secularism in the country. However, under the veil of this act, an inexorable process of othering has been carried out on the Kashmiris. On several occasions Nandy has questioned the secular framework of the Indian state, opining that while it claims for an integration of religious communities in the nation-state, it “guarantees no protection to them against the sufferings inflicted by the state itself”. As Nandy sharply goes on to comment:

To accept the ideology of secularism is to accept the ideologies of progress and modernity as the new justifications of domination, and the use of violence to achieve and sustain the ideologies as the new opiates of the masses. (1988: 192)

Peer’s memoir gives a vivid account of the horrors that have been unleashed on the Kashmir Muslims because of the AFSPA. Peer recapitulates the rampant search operations, the inhuman torture of young Kashmiri Muslims by the Indian forces, and the bereavement of the thousands of families who are incessantly harassed and humiliated. Normal life has been permanently upstaged in Kashmir, and the Kashmiris stripped of their dignity, as Peer narrates:

More military camps were being set up in Kashmir. Military vehicles, armed soldiers, machine guns poking out of sandbag bunkers were everywhere; death and fear became routine like going to school, playing cricket and football. At times we forgot about the war around us; at times we could not. (47)

The relentless search operations, encounters, killing, and harassment became a part of everyday life in Kashmir. The Kashmiris were turned into second-class citizens in their own land. Peer recalls how even children were issued with “identity cards” which had to be shown to soldiers on numerous occasions, including “every time [they] entered or left school”. Moreover, he shows how all “visitors wrote their names, addresses, and other details in a register and entered the school after a body search by the soldiers” (57). This strict surveillance and monitoring of Kashmiris by the Indian Army usurped ordinary people’s dignity and independence in the beleaguered valley.

The Kashmiris had to exhibit their submission in every way possible. They had to open up their houses quickly whenever there was a crackdown, as well as unlocking “every cupboard for the soldiers looking for militants, guns, or ammunition” (51). More damaging still was the need silently to carry the pain of alienation in a land they had long lived and breathed in. It was as if the Kashmiri Muslims were doubly punished — in the first place for being Muslim in the Hindu majoritarian Indian nation-state and, second, for challenging the powers of the state with their demands for autonomy. The AFSPA insidiously gave “the Indian military all-encompassing control over the region and the lives of Kashmiris […] [and] what is considered to be the world’s first mass blinding, occurred in Kashmir” (Zia, 2019: n.p.). Animosity against army excesses made the political situation worse in Kashmir. Over time, as Peer laments, the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahedeen pushed aside the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. Other pro-Islamic militant organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and later Jaish-e-Mohammed encroached and, consequently, Muslim youths were being viciously radicalized. Violence also forced most of the Hindu population to migrate from the valley, after which the Indian state’s attitude towards the Muslim population became draconian. With the army’s increasing coercion, the fight for Kashmiri independence also changed its face. Peer’s memoir tells about young boys who joined the pro-Pakistani secessionist groups and mindlessly took up arms against the Indian state. The Kashmiri Muslims were either being repressed by the Indian Army or used as pawns by the pro-Pakistani militants, and ordinary Kashmiris found themselves “caught between the guns of the terrorists and guns of the government” (Dole, 1990: 979). It is as if “defying curfew order, protesting against the establishment, pelting stones at everything that symbolises state, all bec[a]me for Kashmiris act[s] for freedom […] [that somehow] put an end to the helplessness” (Gangahar, 2013: 41). Sadly, as Peer mentions, instead of checking state extremism, the champions of Indian nationalism condemned Kashmiri Muslims as the irreconcilable and malignant other.

Subsequently, the Kashmiri Muslims’ identity in India was ascribed stereotypical tropes — as the distanced, violent, and treacherous other. After coming out of Kashmir, Peer feels at several moments in Curfewed Night that most of the Indian population, even many Indian Muslims, perceive Kashmiris as the other. For instance, when Peer joins Aligarh Muslim University, he is appalled to find that “most of [his] Indian Muslim friends […] disagreed with the Kashmiri ideas of secession from India and saw the secession of a Muslim-majority Kashmir from India as bound to make life worse for India’s Muslims” (65). Again, after the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament in 2001, Peer is aghast to see how the Kashmiri Muslims are indiscriminately smeared as notorious enemies to the Indian state — those who cannot be trusted or befriended. Nobody in Delhi is ready to rent accommodation to Peer. He is dismayed to find suspicious eyes staring at him wherever he goes. Despairingly, Peer realizes how a Kashmiri Muslim is always at fault in India — either seen as a troublemaker or condemned as a dreadful terrorist. Peer locates this as the deeper “ambivalence” in the colonial attitude of the Indian state which though it proclaimed its responsibility towards Kashmir nonetheless incessantly considered the Kashmir Muslims as the perilous other. To undermine such dominant perceptions, Peer on his return visit makes a tour of the different corners of his homeland and provides a compelling account of many individuals whose lives have been ravaged by the interminable violence. On Peer’s part, it is as if to assure the Indians that “Kashmiris by nature are not violent” (Gangahar, 2013: 37). His narrative evidently obtains an auto-ethnographic structure in its interweaving of his personal experiences with those of his community.

Through Peer’s memoir, we learn about many individuals who are not hateful or threatening towards the larger society. Despite all ruthlessness, thousands of Kashmiri Muslims have neither taken recourse to violence nor given up their hopes for humanity. One such example is that of the young couple Mubeena and Rashid. When Mubeena and Rashid were returning from their wedding, a fight broke out between paramilitary forces and Kashmir militants. The Border Security Force soldiers stopped their bus, and what followed was devastating. Violent confrontation and firing started, and in the middle of it all, Mubeena was dragged by a group of soldiers “to the mustard fields beside the road”. She was raped so horrifically that she “lost [her] senses”, and even years later she “could not remember how many they were” (154). Rashid was hit with five bullets, which stayed in his body life-long, as surgery was too risky and could have taken his mobility. Mubeena and Rashid fought trauma, lived through social ostracism with resilience, and “made a home” together (158). Another example is Parveena Ahangar, whose “sixteen-year-old, speech-impaired son, Javed, was taken away from their house in 1990 during a raid by the army” (132) and was never returned. Similar is the case of Noora, a 70-year-old woman whose son was taken by the paramilitary, and even after numerous interviews about his disappearance, no information was gleaned and nothing changed. Noora has become piteously habituated to her loss; she has accepted this reality, and so when Peer meets her, “she seemed tired of repeating her story and getting nowhere” (132). Parveena, however, found a different way to battle against her tragedy. Along with a lawyer, she formed “the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons to campaign and fight cases in the courts” (132). Peer is full of reverence to see her healing of other women “whose husband or son has gone missing” (132). It is as if “she is a mother to them all, holding them, consoling them, scolding them [and] egging them on” (132). Astounded by her stoicism and patience, Peer applauds Parveena as a “crusader for justice” (158).

Many broken men such as Ansar and Shafi told Peer about the tortures in “Papa-2" — “the most infamous torture centre run by the Indian forces in Kashmir” (137). Ansar had joined the People’s League in the mid-1980s, and Shafi was a member of JKLF in his youth. Both were arrested by the Indian military and taken to Papa-2, where merciless tortures as grotesque as “inserting copper wire into [… the] penis” (143) were inflicted on them. When released, these men were physically and psychologically devastated. Shafi shares his disappointment and fury with Peer, murmuring that “[n]one of the leaders except Yasin Malik had to go through what the boys [arrested militants] endured. They cannot even imagine what being tortured is like” (142). Like Shafi, Ansar was hurt to realize that the separatist leaders are extreme opportunists who “live in big houses and drive big cars brought from the money that came for the movement” and neglect to “help those who destroyed their lives for the cause” (141). These broken men realize the futility of their committed struggles, but despite everything have “built new lives” (158), somehow surviving. Through these poignant details, Peer corroborates Kashmiris’ heart-rending experiences in the last few decades and registers how Kashmiris long for their voices to be heard and their freedom to be assured. With their loss and suffering, as Peer emphasizes, the Kashmiris resist being perceived as a distinct group of disturbing elements, the demonic or foreign other. Instead, they want to be recognized as individuals with aspirations, ambitions, resentment, and of course indomitable resilience. Through the stories of these ordinary men and women in Kashmir, whose lives have been wrecked by political hazards, Peer also enunciates how difficult it is for the Kashmiri Muslims to vindicate themselves. Mainstream India perceives them as turbulent others, and they assiduously continue to resist this othering.

Representing Kashmir as a “heterotopic” entity

Significantly, Peer’s memoir also ushers us into a new vision of Kashmir that transcends the political definitions of the Indian state. Peer establishes Kashmir as a lived reality which overspills its spatial markers. India and its nationalist project regard Kashmir as a mere geographical territory, to be desired and acquired for a unified nation-state. The pan-Indian categorization of Kashmir has always been in terms of its geopolitics, as a territory that unquestionably should belong to India. The cultural defiance of Kashmiri Muslims has been always viewed as sabotage, and Kashmir seen as a land that is to be conquered for the sake of Indian nationhood. Peer reaffirms Kashmir as a historical and living entity that emerges to be “as much real as imaginary” in his writing. Kashmir is not sheer territoriality but a “heterotopic” entity. Kashmir, replete with a rich and heterogeneous history, has its ambiguities, discursiveness, temporalities, and pluralities.

In his essay “Of other spaces: Utopias and heterotopias”, Michel Foucault describes “heterotopias” as:

Real and effective spaces which are outlined in the very institution of society, but which constitute a sort of counter-arrangement, of effectively realized utopia, in which all the real arrangements, all other real arrangements that can be found within society, are at one and the same time represented, challenged and overturned: a sort of place that lies outside all places and yet is actually localizable. (Foucault, 1997: 332)

As examples, Foucault refers to prisons, bars, cemeteries, and brothels, all of which are relegated to subversive and discursive spaces within the boundaries of a given society. While the term utopia denotes an imaginary space of an ideal social order and dystopia refers to the negative extreme of the prevailing social system, “heterotopia” spills over the bifurcations of desirable and non-desirable. “Heterotopic” spaces can be real or mythic or an amalgamation of both. In Foucault’s worldview, “heterotopic” entities and spaces are compulsive and full of contested meanings.

Kashmir, in Peer’s vision, emerges as a unique and heterotopic space that breathes a rich history and simultaneously stands as a dilapidated and decrepit land. As Peer’s narrative mulls over, Kashmir is a living phenomenon — witness to royal glories, imperial invasions, artistic endeavours, and cultural fusions. Peer writes: “Kashmir is older than our memory, older than the memories we have inherited” (111). Peer’s quest, translated in his memoir, beautifully recuperates Kashmir as a place that has borne political ravages for years and still has an aura of its own. Through his rewriting of Kashmir’s story, Peer contends that to conceptualize Kashmir through the “horrors of the nineties” (111) or categorize it as a Muslim-dominated state that defied acculturation with mainstream India is a superfluous way of understanding Kashmir or its culture. In Peer’s version, Kashmir has a mythic beauty that is overpowering. Kashmir has an abiding charm as much as the trauma hanging everywhere. Distinctively, Kashmir is “heterotopic” — fantastic, desirable, and frightening.

Through his memoir, Peer justifiably establishes Kashmir’s mythic, imaginative, and subversive realities. For instance, he alludes to the “Pari Mahal — the Palace of the Fairies — built in the seventeenth-century by the liberal Mughal prince Dara Shikoh” in which learned men were invited “to translate texts of Hindu philosophy, religion, and literature into Persian and Arabic” (111). This palace once had been “a place of multiple religious traditions” (112) and, at present, stands as a reminiscence of splendid times. Another such living memory is the Sri Pratap Singh Museum, which still preserves various “Buddhist idols and images of Hindu Gods” (113), among which the most exquisite is a “granite sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva” (114). Peer is amazed to meet Mohammad Iqbal, “a middle-aged local archaeologist” (113), and come to know of his love for Kashmir history. Iqbal regularly “publish[es] booklets about the ancient monuments of Kashmir” (113), as if to preserve the dying stories of Kashmir’s art and culture.

By contrast, Peer’s memoir simultaneously records Kashmir as a place of invasions, defeats, erosions, and, above all, violence. Peer is disappointed to visit the Gawkadal Bridge, which is now broken and has only “two dilapidated pillars standing in a canal full of filth” (118). Another such place is the crowded bazaar of Maisuma. This place, once famous for its spice shops, has now become a common ground for protests. Called the “Gaza Strip of Kashmir” and smelling only of “burning tyres and tear gas” (118), it is no more a beauty spot but a site that reminds of the heavy military presence, curfews, and policing. For Peer, Kashmir evokes memories of a time rich in culture and glory, nostalgia and desire; but contrastingly it also embodies disruption and desolation. Peer touchingly notes that “Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war […] It is staring back or looking away, resigned. [But] Srinagar is never winning and [also] never being defeated” (71). Altogether, with its inherent ambiguities, Kashmir, as Peer paints, is essentially heterotopic — mystical, worn-out, and volatile.

The notion of heterotopia is more pronouncedly expressed when Peer writes about those people for whom Kashmir symbolizes a cherished memory, a deep sense of attachment, and a yearning to return. Peer tells about Ramesh, a Kashmiri Hindu whom he meets at the Delhi bus stop. Ramesh, though he “had migrated to Delhi in the early nineties”, mused about “his village in Kashmir” (97), longing to see “the shady willows, the crystal-clear streams and the apple orchards where he had grown up” (97). Ramesh is one of many individuals who migrated after 1990 but have never relinquished their love for Kashmir. For Ramesh and many like him, Kashmir not only persists in having an encompassing presence in their memories but also propels reimaginations. For the migrants, Kashmir signifies a psychological hunger, a hope to “return home someday” (193). Moreover, for those who are “too old to return [to Kashmir] and begin life anew” (195), Kashmir overwhelms as a perpetual loving reminiscence. The other side of the coin is that, for those who have suffered brutalization, Kashmir is “a city of absences [which] has lost its nights to a decade and a half of curfews, and de facto curfews” (128). Peer movingly delineates Kashmir as a psychological and cultural attachment to those who inhabit it and those who have left it. Surpassing Kashmir’s geopolitical definitions and pan-Indian view as a utopia turned to dystopia, Kashmir, in Peer’s vision, is a much broader and more complex entity. If Kashmir evokes an eerie feeling of void and estrangement, it nevertheless stimulates a profound sense of enchantment too. Appropriately, Peer re-introspects Kashmir’s unique history and contextualizes it with the ongoing atrocities to represent his homeland as “heterotopic’ — one that intermingles reality with imagination, awe with nostalgia, sadness with belongingness, and fear with love.

Conclusion

In Curfewed Night, Peer insightfully explores the disjuncture that Kashmir and Kashmiri Muslims suffered in postcolonial India. With decolonization, India began its march to attaining a homogeneous nationhood attendant on a politics of muffling many communities and parts of the country. Kashmir, with its particularities, declined the governance of the Indian state. For their dissent, the majority Muslim population in Kashmir became the malevolent other. Peer’s writing seems to implore readers to reengage with the Kashmiris’ demand for their rights to political self-determination through an alternative lens, sloughing off the claims of the Indian nation-state. Recounting his formative years, describing the horrors of the AFSPA, and debunking dominant assumptions regarding Kashmiri Muslims, Peer’s memoir shows how “the attempts at Kashmir demonstrate most sharply the official nationalism of the Indian state” (Navlakha, 1991: 2951). Peer rehistoricizes Kashmir through the narratives of the masses who have been victims of state excesses and secessionist powers; as well as the displaced people who lost their homes due to such strife. Needless to say, he too valorizes those intricacies of Kashmiri culture that are eroding. Inescapably, Peer’s memoir mounts a rigorous and telling critique of the Indian state and nationalism’s celebratory narrative. He describes his fellow community members’ subjective experiences but more penetratingly summons Kashmir by moving beyond its geopolitical markers.

His recapitulation drives one to reexamine the deep-seated reasons for India’s triumph in converting Kashmir into a Union Territory in 2019. Discerningly, Peer’s memoir expresses hope for a dialogue between the Kashmiris and the Indian authority, as that could perhaps repair the chasm between them. At one point in the narrative, Peer is reminded of his father who staunchly believed that “any movement that seeks a separate country takes a very long time” and that meaningful negotiation can produce viable solutions (30). Later, when Peer takes a tour in his homeland, he too ponders that “the conflict might not have turned so fatal if India had allowed peaceful demonstrations” and the heinous strife could have been resolved if “Indians and Kashmiris could have talked” (136). Peer ends his memoir wishing that someday the “processes that reduced individuals to suspects or military targets, shorn of all human complexity” (233), will be eradicated. If that happens, the Kashmiris will be treated with dignity and their fundamental rights to choose a government of their own recognized. As an alarming testimony to the coercions against the Kashmiri Muslims, Peer’s memoir unfailingly pushes one to reenvisage the removal of Article 370 as a reflection of the Indian state’s one-upmanship. With its autoethnographic style, Peer’s Curfewed Night lays bare the hideous ambivalences of the postcolonial Indian nation-state that incrementally failed to acknowledge Kashmir’s multitudinous socio-cultural fabric.