Women at the contested borders of Kashmir

The territory is one of the primary elements of the state; others are the population, government, and sovereignty. It is because of the existence of borders that the territory of a particular state gets legitimacy. Borders do not have mere physical values but it imprints a strong influence over the psychology of people and thus constructs a feeling of the “other”. The border brings different vulnerabilities for every section of the society. Vulnerable groups like women, old age people, and children easily become victims of border conflicts. But Border altogether creates different challenges for women because a woman suffers at different levels; family level, societal level, and in the public sphere also. The objective of the paper is to analyze the condition of Kashmiri women along the Line of Control (LOC). Since LOC is not an international border, it merely acts as a “de facto” border between India and Pakistan giving birth to unending conflictual situations (Sokefeld, 2015). This paper attempts at analyzing the popular narratives through which a careful understanding of the “process of othering” and the mechanism for mapping the vulnerabilities in the case of Kashmiri women at the borders can be drawn.