ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interior and exterior world of Kashmir in the days and months after August 5, 2019, when it woke up to the annexation of its land and the abolishment of its statehood, its legal status, its residency rights, and privileges. Through the experience of one family, the chapter evokes the devastating moment in which the seven million people of Kashmir, confined under a military siege and a communications lockdown, learned of their plundered future and legacy. Through the reportage and accounts of several other families, homes, and neighborhoods across various districts of the Valley, it uncovers much of what lay beneath the blindness imposed by the siege: mass arrests, torture, vandalism, and surveillance. In particular, it attempts to unravel the uncertain, unfamiliar silence that plagued Kashmir in the face of its greatest assault. In doing so, it asks: while this silence was structurally imposed by the siege, how much of it was shaped, for the Kashmiri, by fear, by grief, or by disbelief? What did this silence look, feel, and sound like against a landscape otherwise dressed in crowds that march, wail, chant, and pray for freedom? And since the conflict no longer displayed itself in the open, no longer lay naked on the street in the form of protests or clashes, what shape and form had it taken on the inside?
These questions and their answers come together in this chapter to form an intimate, literary portrait of Kashmir during the most significant, decisive moment in its recent history.
