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Distributed for Zubaan Books

Do you Remember Kunan Poshpora?

The Story of a Mass Rape

On a cold February night in 1991, a group of soldiers and officers of the Indian army stormed into two villages in Kashmir, seeking out militants assumed to be hiding there. Incensed at the villagers’ refusal to share any information, soldiers pulled residents from their homes, torturing men and raping women. According to village accounts, as many as thirty-one women were raped. The Indian army initially carried out cursory investigations before shelving the case without explanation. Kunan and Poshpora have since become known as the villages of raped women, and their residents have found it difficult to escape this stigma.

Then in 2012, the rape and murder of a young medical student in Delhi galvanized a protest movement so widespread and deep that it reached far beyond India’s borders. In Kashmir, a group of young women, all in their twenties, were inspired to reopen the Kunan-Poshpora case and revisit their history and that of the 1991 survivors. Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? is a personal account of their journey, examining questions of justice, stigma, state responsibility, and the long-term impacts of trauma. With rarely heard voices and concerns, this book gives readers an opportunity to know the lives of ordinary Kashmiris in a state suffocated by thirty years of military rule.

180 pages | 5 x 8 | © 2015

Women's Studies


View all books from Seagull Books

Table of Contents

Zubaan Series on Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia: An Introduction
Urvashi Butalia, Laxmi Murthy and Navsharan Singh
 
Boonyi Tal
Afreen Faridi
 
Preface
Sahba Husain
 
  1. Kunan Poshpora and Women in Kashmir
  2. Making Sense of the Kunan Poshpora Mass Rape: Sexual Violence and Impunity in Kashmir
  3. The Night in Kunan Poshpora
  4. Life in Kunan Poshpora Today
  5. Inquiries and Impunity
  6. People Who Remember
  7. The Recent Struggle: An Insider’s View
Notes
Annexures
Acknowledgments
People Involved in the Project
 

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