Embodying Resistance: Maternal Activism and Alternative Knowledge Production in Kashmir

Abstract (English)

This paper examines how the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in Kashmir forms a subaltern counterpublic that challenges both state violence and patriarchal constraints. Drawing on ethnographic research with APDP members, I introduce the concept of "thakawath" (exhaustion) as a form of active waiting that transforms personal grief into political resistance. Unlike passive waiting, thakawath represents a state where physical and mental exhaustion coexist with persistent hope and strategic action, enabling APDP women to resist the Indian state's attempts to make Kashmiri men invisible through enforced disappearances.
APDP women strategically embody culturally acceptable roles as mothers and wives while simultaneously creating alternative spaces for resistance. Through documentation practices, public protests, and the creation of visual symbols like calendars and memorials, these women contest the state's erasure tactics while challenging patriarchal norms that restrict women's public participation. Their activism blurs the boundaries between private suffering and political claims, transforming maternal grief into a powerful tool for demanding accountability.
The paper situates APDP's activism within a historical continuum of Kashmiri subaltern women's grassroots activism, which has often been overlooked in hyper-masculine nationalist historiography. By examining how working-class, often unlettered women have historically challenged patriarchal structures through community leadership roles as "zyiths" (wise women), I demonstrate how APDP draws on indigenous traditions of women's resistance while adapting to contemporary political contexts.
By examining how APDP navigates the intersection of colonial occupation and gender politics in Kashmir, this research contributes to broader discussions on feminist methodologies in conflict zones. It illustrates how women in politically marginalised communities create alternative sites of knowledge production that challenge dominant research paradigms and redefine the politics of representation, offering important insights for feminist and decolonial scholarship on gendered resistance in contested spaces.