JAMMU & KASHMIR

WISCOMP’s initiative in Jammu and Kashmir is called Athwaas*. Athwaas (meaning ‘a warm greeting or handshake’ in Kashmiri) comprises a group of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh Kashmiri women who nourish peace constituencies and who explore possibilities for a just peace through a range of activities including active listening, trauma counseling, conflict transformation workshops, articulation of the concerns of women to policymakers and government interlocutors and initiation of programs that facilitate economic empowerment and political awareness.

It was formed in response to the express request by some of the Kashmiri participants at a roundtable discussion titled Breaking the Silence- Women and Kashmir in December 2000 to form a group who could visit each other’s realities, record women’s voices, build bridges of trust and reconciliation. WISCOMP facilitated this initiative in June 2001 following a meeting held in Srinagar, where the purpose of Athwaas and its goals were set out.

The all-Kashmiri group drawn from among the roundtable participants was sufficiently reflective of the diversity of the valley. The core group consisted of Valley Muslims (Sunni, Shia, Ahmedia), Hindus and Sikhs who decided that the guidelines for their work in Kashmir would be networking, awareness, reconciliation and advocacy (NARA). Subsequently, through their trips to Baramulla, Kupwara, Anantnag, Pulwama, Srinagar, and the migrant camps in Jammu, home to the displaced Pandits of the valley, the focus was on listening to women’s narratives on the conflict, identifying support structures, copinging mechanisms and generating awareness about alternatives available to redress genuine grievances. Between November 2001 and March 2004, Athwaas undertook as many as eight field trips to Kashmir.

WISCOMP’s Kashmir initiative has opened up an invigorating process that has enabled its members to negotiate the difficult journey to re-humanization and understanding. Conscious of the empowering potential of “listening/peacemaking circles” (that have been used widely in Canada and the USA), WISCOMP used this methodology to encourage active listening and to facilitate an acceptance of the existence of multiple truths and realities in Kashmir. An important area of shared intervention identified by the Kashmiri women relates to the need to work with young men and women so as to dissuade them from “picking up the gun” since a whole generation had been raised in an environment vitiated by conflict, it had become easy to draw them into violence.

As part of the WISCOMP Athwaas initiative, Kashmiri women travel to different parts of the troubled region to:

• Work towards rebuilding trust between Kashmiri Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and explore possibilities for reconciliation

• Identify and nourish peace constituencies

• Articulate the concerns of women to policymakers and government interlocutors

The initiative which began with a re-humanization process between Muslim, Hindu and Sikh Kashmiri women, representing different truths and narratives and divergent perspectives on the conflict and its resolution, today has had a ripple effect with the women engaging in a range of activities including active listening, trauma counseling, conflict transformation workshops and facilitating an interface with the district administration.

The Athwaas members sought to conceptualize and take responsibility for new initiatives that would improve the channels of communication in areas that Athwaas had identified for intervention. The initiatives were to correspond with the special skills that are unique to each member of the group. At the same time, they were to be driven by the overarching vision to provide a safe physical space for women to come together in order to strengthen the fragile bonds that hold communities together. The centers were named Samanbals, a Kashmiri term used to describe a meeting point for women wanting to share their hopes, joys and sorrows. While certain activities—economic or otherwise—were identified for each center, the objective was defined as the appropriation of a physical space that would be considered safe for reflection and reconciliation. In that, the initiatives also seek to erase the artificial boundaries that demarcate the private and the public lives of these women.