Nearly 70 days after the abrogation of Article 370 and the subsequent shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir, a report titled #KashmirCivilDisobedience – A Citizens’ Report was published by a four-member team at a press conference today at the Delhi Press Club. The 75-page report compiles anecdotes of “trauma, resistance and resilience” from the area. 

The team comprised Ludhiana-based psychiatrist and writer Anirudh Kala, Mumbai-based academic and public health activist Brinelle D’Souza, journalist Revati Laul from Delhi, and social activist Shabnam Hashmi. The team visited Kashmir from September 25 to 30, and Jammu from October 6-7. All four were present at the press conference.

Hashmi explained that the report was about “the implications of the abrogation of Article 370 in the Valley”. Laul said the report reflects the fact that the people of Kashmir are in no mood to talk about the clampdown by the establishment. “Kashmir ke logo ki chuppi bohot kuch keh rahi hai (the silence of the people of Kashmir says a lot),” she said. “We spoke to around 350 people of the Valley and they are not going to speak unless the Supreme Court puts a stay order on the abrogation of 370.”

Laul said the government is trying to “set” a narrative that the people of Jammu are happy with the removal of Article 370. “But during our visit, we came across a lot of people who were not happy with the move,” she explained. Laul claimed that this unhappiness is especially present among Gujjars and students of Jammu University, but they are “forced” by the government to be happy about it. 

Notably, Laul also alleged that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is opening shakhas in many colleges under Jammu University. She said a press conference speaking against the abrogation of Article 370 had been planned in Jammu but it never took place because the police had “disapproved”.

The report emphasises this: “In all, we met about fifty people and the big picture emerging from Jammu, is one of confusion, disorientation and in many cases, far greater fear than in the Kashmir valley. People were so scared of giving their opinion even anonymously that about half the people we contacted refused outright to meet with us. This in itself was telling.” It quotes a transporter who said that after the abrogation of Article 370, “Kashmir has had one eye taken out, Jammu has had both eyes removed.”

The team at the press conference.

The report is divided into sections which include “The Big Picture”, “Radicalization, Extremism and the loss of a middle ground” and “Trauma”. A section titled “Civil Disobedience” includes a story about a journalist the team met at Srinagar Press Club. The journalist told them: “There are two kinds of resistance at work — opening shops for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. And the silent resistance of not protesting.”  

The journalist had continued: “Officers are asking why people are not coming out now. Do you want them to come out? Then you want to trigger a law and order situation and kill people? Government of India, governments across the globe should respond to this silence. They have not been responding to the shouts, to the slogans, to the cries, to the screams. But for the first time they have to respond to the silence…They have to acknowledge and understand the silence. Silence speaks something, you have to listen to it. You have to give words to this silence.”

At the press conference, D’Souza talked about the Christian community in Kashmir which, according to her, is left out of the narrative of Kashmir altogether because they only make up 0.3 per cent of the total population. “However, the best schools across Jammu and Kashmir are still run by various denominations,” she said.

On that note, D’Souza mentioned an anecdote from the report about an 85-year-old teacher who had taught at a “reputed Catholic school in Srinagar” for 45 years. According to the report, the woman died at 4 am on September 27 while on her way to the hospital. The report said: “She is survived by her only son who is the head of Radio Imaging at a public hospital. The parish priest said that in normal times her funeral service would have been attended by 100s of alumni but because of the communication blockade, her son [was] unable to inform people.”

The report also quoted the priest as saying there were difficulties in even finding someone to dig the woman’s grave, and to obtain a shroud for the body. 

Hashmi shared a story told to her by a woman living in an upmarket neighbourhood in Srinagar. The woman said her daughter, a Class 9 student, had said that climate change activist Greta Thunberg could “speak and condemn world leaders for not doing enough on climate change but we are not in a position to express our feelings about what has happened”. The report also has quotes from women citing how despite China not being a democracy, people in Hong Kong still have the right to protest. “And yet the people of Kashmir have not been given the right to peacefully protest,” one woman had told the team.

One of the sections of the report is titled “Love and Resilience” which, the report says, encompasses “the mundane all-important tasks of getting married and the not so mundane adventure of love, courtship”. In that context, Laul spoke about a Kashmiri custom to sprinkle lime powder outside the main entrance of a house during a marriage or funeral as a symbol of purification.

She said, “Now, there is a young couple in Srinagar who could not communicate due to the communication blockade. When the boy was passing by the girl’s house, he saw limestone powder outside. He could not understand whether his girlfriend had broken up with him, or married someone else.” Later, she said, the boy discovered there had been a death in the girl’s family — and he had not been able to find out.

As the press conference drew to a close, Kala brought up mental trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which he said people in Kashmir deal with on a daily basis. “All of us have stress in our life like work stress, family stress, marital stress, etc — but not PTSD. PTSD does not happen to people easily. It only happens when a person has to undergo stress of severe magnitude, which is beyond the pain of the usual human experiences. The PTSD rate has always been high in Kashmir even before August 5, but after August 5, the chance of people from Kashmir having PTSD has increased.”