Violence and atrocities embody the social fabric of Kashmir where the truth of brutal tortures, mass killings, sexual violence, the ever-increasing toll of fatalities, and disappearances are distorted and denied by the Indian state. These instances to annihilate Kashmiri spirit amount to crimes against humanity. Kashmir, where none is untouched by the mass violence surrounding them, is a conflict zone between India and Pakistan. In August 2019, the Indian government revoked nearly all of Article 370 and thereby forcefully assimilated Kashmir against the consent of the Kashmiris.
In this paper, I will try to explore and understand the silencing of identity in occupied Kashmir from the perspectives of memory studies and trauma studies. Both fields are delineated by similar themes regarding issues of representation, socio-cultural power relations, and the role of narratives in the process of the social construction of meaning. This fundamental inter-connectivity between the two fields enables us to point at key concepts, questions, and characteristics that bind these two realms of inquiry to look at each of them through the prism of the other. The personal nature of memory rests upon the assumption that every social group develops a memory of its past. Forms of collective memory signifies its uniqueness and allows it to preserve its self-image and pass it on to future generations. Specific events of trauma or of special significance act as a trigger to initiate a dialogue between the personal and the universal. In a world where repression in thought, creativity, language, and emotion is condoned by the state and an entire society is a victim of paranoia, distrust and fear, narratives center upon collective memories. This paper will bring into focus the larger discourse of possession, state-sponsored violence, and the resistance of the people where trauma is the result of continuous occupation of the Valley through instances which are interwoven web of suffering and endurance. It will also examine the dialectics of memory and identity in the 1990's-generation, that walked on the path of militancy as response to the military occupation. Memorialization and reparation are distant concepts in the context of Kashmir as state-society relations are complex and largely shaped by media representations. Whereas many of the Nazi concentration camps have been turned into memorial sites to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, the torture centers in Kashmir are obliterated. The youth of Kashmir try to find other ways of commemorating their dead to preserve the memory of the violence and defiance.
