Description
In conflict zones, the home-outside binary is often washed away as violence enters people’s lives and personal spaces, diluting any distinction between combatants and non-combatants, even as International Humanitarian Law and Geneva Conventions highlight the distinction. In Kashmir, a popular armed rebellion against Indian State since 1989 has had the latter respond with brutal suppression. Making use of militarized masculinity to inflict violence on bodies and psyches of the people seen to be the ‘other’ has been a norm of State’s repressive measures. The frontier is no longer the border where skirmishes occasionally break out between Indian and Pakistani troops; it is not just the place where gunfights between militants and the Indian forces occur. The frontline is the home where women are subjected to harassment, physical and/or sexual violence; it is the check-post where they have to show their identity proofs; it is also the space and span of time when women gather to protest. The paper attempts to use the case of Kashmir conflict to highlight how women’s bodies have been turned into ‘ceremonial battlefields’ under militarized state control, which makes violence in everyday lives so normalized, especially the presence of male militaristic gaze in a place where seven lakh troops are stationed. In extending the understanding of frontline to homes, actions, bodies, and the everyday reality of life in conflict, the paper seeks to problematize the victimhood narrative by placing women as front-liners as they witness, survive, and resist.
