Narrating Fear,Tracing Landscape: Memory and Militancy ka Daur in Doda,Jammu and Kashmir

Abstract

Jammu and Kashmir has been a theatre of conflict for almost three decades now. After the outbreak of militancy in 1989–1990 in the Kashmir valley, Doda belt was the first area outside the valley where armed conflict made inroads and affected lives variedly. Based on ethnographic field work, this paper addresses three interrelated questions about the manifestation of militancy in Doda: first, how did the armed struggle for the control of landscape invoke fear (dehshat) in people and affect their way of living? Second, how did the violence by both non-state and state actors to seek control and assert power transform the local landscape itself? Third, how did the locals negotiate with shifting landscapes embedded with fear and memories of violence? I approach these questions through memory ethnography of the times of militancy (militancy ka daur). Based on conversations, narratives and participant observation, the article shows that militancy and resultant armed conflict sowed fear in people’s lives and altered their relation with space and time in multiple ways. Actors involved in the armed conflict shaped the local landscape by resorting to spatial strategies to control territory and exercise power through fear. As a consequence, locals negotiated with the landscape of fear by conforming to outright commands and through silence. Although militancy ka daur has passed in Doda, the paper argues that it has left deep imprints upon the collective memory of the people.