“The activist women who form the Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP) keep public attention focused on the 8,000 to 10,000 Kashmiri men disappeared by the Indian government forces since 1989. Surrounded by Indian troops, international photojournalists, & curious onlookers, the APDP activists cry, lament, & sing while holding photos & files documenting the lives of their disappeared loved ones. In this radical departure from traditionally private rituals of mourning, they create a spectacle of mourning that combats the government’s threatening silence about the fates of their sons, husbands, ” fathers.
“Drawn from Ather Zia’s ten years of engagement with the APDP as an anthropologist & fellow Kashmiri activist, Resisting Disappearance follows mothers & “half-widows” as they step boldly into courts, military camps, & morgues in search of their disappeared kin. Through an amalgam of ethnography, poetry, & photography, Zia illuminates how dynamics of gender & trauma in Kashmir have been transformed in the face of South Asia’s longest-running conflict, providing profound insight into how Kashmiri women & men nurture a politics of resistance while facing increasing military violence under India.”
–a new book by Ather Zia available on Amazon