Agonies of a town of crying widows

At the end of the day, what matters is that Dardpora is a success story that reinforces the belief that women, however soft and vulnerable, have the ability to confront all that is strange and transform not only their own lives but those of others. those around them. .

Whereas until a few years ago, the name, Dardpora, itself symbolized pain and suffering; today it is one of the best examples of empowerment and change for the better of women.

Until a few years ago it was just “a village of weeping widows” near the Line of Control, but today, like a phoenix, it is slowly but surely rising from its own ashes. It is showing positive signs of recovery and moving forward on the path to peace, progress and prosperity. Thanks to your women.

For many years, Dardpora, a small town in the Kupwara district of northern Kashmir, was like a battle zone with fierce clashes between militants and security forces. Another factor worth mentioning is that, at the height of the militancy, three radical groups: Al Barq (made up mostly of Gujjars); Hizbul Mujahideen; and the Kashmir Liberation Force, active in this area, were constantly fighting each other. Thirdly, as a result of the ongoing bloody rivalries between Gujjar and Kashmiris, the two main communities, a situation eventually came where there were hardly any men left in the village and it came to be better known as a “village of widows”.

Most of these widows were young, between 21 and 45 years old. Most of them were illiterate and had never worked for a living before. On top of that, there was the fact that they were extremely poor. So the big question was how they were going to support their large families and multiple children. Thus, driven by low self-esteem, they got used to living on help and handouts.

That was until some well-meaning social workers came to the area and began a long campaign to teach these women the value of self-respect and self-sufficiency. Thanks to these efforts, the women of Dardpora have slowly started to earn money to repay the loans they took out to buy livestock or seeds. At this rate, it seems that the day is not far off when Dardpora will be able to fend for herself, thanks to the power of women.

Elsewhere in the state, tears roll down the cheeks of thirty-eight-year-old Gulshan Ara as the widow from Trehgam, Kupwara district, recounts her experiences after her husband’s death in 1991 His is a story of poverty, pain and hunger with six children. and absolutely nothing to feed them and no relatives willing to support the family. As a result, Gulshan was forced to do menial jobs in neighboring houses, but still she was unable to earn a sustainable income. There were times when she, too, worked as a casual day laborer without even being paid a double-figure amount at the end of the day, and as such, she and her six children had to go to bed with their bellies full of water just to satiate. hunger.

Today, a large number of women in Kashmir can identify themselves as ‘half-widows’ (women whose husbands are presumed dead simply because there is no evidence to show where they really are), widows, mothers who have lost their children, or those whose daughters have been raped, young women who do not dare leave their homes, women who have been made unemployed by fear and uncertainty created by the conflict, and those who suffer from medical and psychological conditions related to emotional stress and trauma.

Faced with the option of survival and its economic consequences, remarrying is the only option left for most widows& But that also has its side effects as there are several difficult decisions to be made regarding child support and the transfer of ownership. The magnitude of the problem is that at least 25,000 women have been widowed in Kashmir since 1989; this is in addition to thousands of others whose husbands have been disabled or lead lives as fugitives from the security forces as active militants or from militants as ex-militants.