“His disappearance is still a mystery,” confided 54-year-old Begum Jaan, a resident of Kashmir’s Dardpora hamlet, whose husband Shamsuddin Pasal left his house in 1998 for evening prayers, and never returned. While the story of her husband being missing for 17 years is a tragic one, it’s not isolated in its existence, as her circumstance is mirrored by hundreds of other women in this village precariously located in the northern part of India-administered Kashmir.
Dardpora, which means ‘abode of pain’, is located 140 kilometres away from Srinagar, and is home to approximately 200 women whose husbands have disappeared, but not been declared deceased yet, slotting them into the specially coined category of ‘half-widows’. As per a 2011 report titled Half widow, Half wife? Responding to Gendered Violence in Kashmir by the human rights group Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies (JKCCS), the estimate of half widows in Kashmir is now about 1,500 women and growing.
Disappearances in the conflict zone
“When the movement broke out in Kashmir it came as a doom for this village,” said widow and mother of four, Haseena, referring to the 1989 insurgency.
Since 1989, insurgencies and rebel conflicts have engulfed Kashmir, with civilians often ending up as collateral damage. As one of the most militarised regions in the world, protests and unrests erupt across the state regularly, and Dardpora’s men are often caught in this crossfire. Either by joining rebels, being taken away by unidentified forces, or being killed amidst conflicts breaking out, husbands of half-widows disappear into the violent air of this war zone, and are left unaccounted for.
India-administered Kashmir is home to thousands of unnamed mass graves, where bodies lie unidentified. In the past, JKCCS has urged Indian authorities to account for the dead in these graves for the sake of several families looking for their missing relatives. For instance, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, an organisation started in 1994 by Parveena Ahangar along with human rights activists, puts together protests to bring justice to those who disappear owing to this conflict, and their families.
“We have several cases in which a civilian was buried after authorities labelled them foreign rebels. This is because if the troops kill a foreign rebel, they are paid higher rewards and honoured with medals and promotions. No soldier was ever punished for killing civilians in these cases,” stated Khurram Parvez of the JKCCS regarding troops being accused of murdering civilians. Still, the husbands of Kashmir’s half widows are still to be found or declared dead, leaving these women neither here nor there.
Between here and there
Caught in a limbo of property and custody rights, Kashmir’s half widows, along with emotional turmoil, face a range of economic and resource problems. Since their husbands have not officially been declared dead, they lack death certificates - an important document required for economic relief such as ration cards, transfer of husband’s bank accounts and property, and so on. So after losing the bread winner of the family, these women are left to fend for themselves, and they don’t even qualify for Jammu and Kashmir government’s compensation scheme for people killed in the conflict.
While women in this circumstances come from a background of already limited social and economic independence, their half widow status leaves them open to exploitation. As the JKCCS report elaborates, “Further, the uncertain nature and duration of the absence opens women to scrutiny and policing by their society as well as threats, extortion, and manipulation by those in external positions of power. For example, a class of ‘messengers’ has made a business out of taking money (up to hundreds of thousands of rupees) from families to convey (ostensible) information from the captors. In their desperation, many half widows visit pirs, fakirs, darweshs (‘holy men’), make offerings at Sufi shrines, and some even patronize fortune tellers.”
“It has been years since he is missing and I am too old to remarry now.”
Quoting Begum Jaan on the question of remarriage, we turn to acknowledge the difficulties Kashmir’s half widows face in their social setting. Having religion as well as family elders to answer to, for most of these women whose husbands might never return, marrying again is not a viable option, even though it is legally permitted.
22 years after Kashmir’s first custodial disappearances, on December 26 2013, six religious clerics decreed that these half widows could remarry on the condition that their husbands didn’t return four years after going missing. “A women can remarry after this time. But if the first husband appears, the second marriage will automatically break. She will have to abandon her second husband and live with her first husband,” explained Islamic scholar Mufti Qamar-ud-Din. As an initiative by the civil society group Ehsas, this solution dilutes the religious and social barrier against remarriage of half widows, but for many women, it came too late.
“Look at these girls. They are my granddaughters. And you ask me about remarriage? Does this ruling mean anything for me?” Dilshada Akhter, whose husband disappeared in 1992, told the Indian Express in 2014 upon hearing about the decree.
“We have become specimens.”
As Begum Jaan continued, “Hundreds of people with cameras, pen and copies have visited our place, interviewed us and then never returned—like our husbands. They have sold our tragedies. We are fed up with giving interviews. Will your report bring back my husband?” Adding to the much-too-late decree on remarriage and government apathy in an already war-torn zone, these women are frustrated with attention given to them, but no relief or effective solution coming out of it. As Govind Acharya of Amnesty International observed, the most important aspect of the JKCCS report was the, “sheer volume of hardship that the ‘half-widows’ face above and beyond having to deal with the disappearance of their spouse”.