Weaponizing women

Abstract

In the Indian national imagination, Kashmiri women have been reduced to the stereotype of being poor, desperate and oppressed in the society. The agency of Kashmiri women is erased, and they are cast as hapless victims of the male-dominated resistance. This chapter will illustrate how gender has become a factor in discrediting and maligning the Kashmiri movement. In recent years, some feminist literature in India has emerged that presents a more nuanced analysis of Kashmiri women’s experiences. However, most feminist discourse, analysis and solidarity can be categorized as imperial or colonial feminism. Kashmiri women are cast as victims, who must be saved from their oppressive Muslim men, while little is done to address the military patriarchal occupation of the bodies and land of Kashmiris. Such feminist praxis becomes complicit in propagating the Indian nationalist project and appears as yet another form of imperial feminism or specifically as imperial brown feminism.