Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night is a moving memoir of an ordinary, middle-class, Muslim Kashmiri who has witnessed the destruction of his homeland. Writing on and from Kashmir has increased in the last few years–Urvashi Butalia’s Speaking Peace, Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator and Anjum Zamarud Habib’s Prisoner No. 100 (reviewed earlier by me) come to mind–but there is still a dearth of first-hand accounts from this region that is difficult to report from and relatively cut-off from the rest of India, psychologically as well as geographically.
Peer recounts his relatively peaceful early childhood in Kashmir, followed by his teenage years which saw Kashmir becoming increasingly militarised, his move to Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh, to attend university, his time spent working as a journalist in Delhi, and finally his return to Kashmir. Despite his good job in Delhi, Peer felt the overwhelming desire, an obligation, to return to Kashmir and write about what he experienced in the state. As he writes:
“I had shared some stories with a few friends in Delhi, but I could never say everything. I would find myself stopping in the middle of a sentence, rendered inarticulate by memory. The telling, even in the shade of intimacy, was painful. And a sense of shame overcame me every time I walked into a bookstore. People from almost every conflict zone had told their stories: Palestinians, Israelis, Bosnians, Kurds, Tibetans, Lebanese, East Germans, Africans, East Timorese, and many more. I felt the absence of the unwritten books of the Kashmiri experience. The memories and stories of Kashmir that I had carried with me could fade away. I had to find the words to save them from the callous varnish of time. I had to write. And to write, I had to return and revisit the people and places that had haunted me for years.” (page 95)
This belief in the power of words, literature, reportage to help rectify the wrongs is repeated throughout the book. One cannot but help feel that it cannot make much difference to the situation, but that it is still necessary to expose the crimes in the hope that one day, enough people will be horrified by the brutality that some change can be made. Either way, the written and spoken word is all some people can do to try to make a difference.
The most poignant and horrifying tale that Peer tells in Curfewed Night, in my mind, is the story of Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani. A teacher of Arabic at Delhi University, Geelani was wrongly implicated in the attacks on the Indian Parliament in 2001. Despite a strong defense which, from Peer’s account, unequivocally proved that the evidence upon which his charge was based was extremely flawed, Geelani was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was acquitted after appeal, and allowed to return to his teaching job at Delhi University, but one cannot imagine the effect that such a false accusation could have on a person’s life. Many other horrifying stories of torture, mistaken identity and sheer terror are recounted by Peer, imploring the reader to wonder, however naively, what on earth the Indian government thinks they are doing with Kashmir.
Peer finds, however, that the injustices are not all one-sided, and that however horrifically “India” has behaved in Kashmir, the Kashmiri militant separatists have been guilty, too. Peer speaks to one ex-militant who had been imprisoned and tortured, badly damaging his eyesight and ability to conduct a normal life. Once released from jail, the support he receives from the organisation he fought for, the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) is inadequate. Meanwhile, the leaders of that organisation live in big houses with fancy cars, with no understanding or little compassion for the torture that the men fighting on their behalf have suffered.
It may be one of the biggest cliches around, but Curfewed Night demonstrates, first hand, that in war there are no winners.
