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Abstract

This paper explores the lost stories of the precarious lives of thousands of migrant women from the community that the Indian government officially calls Displaced Persons of Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (DPs of PoJK). We examine the stories of those who survived the painful migration that followed tribal raids in the western parts of the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, which ceased to exist after its accession with the Union of India on October 26, 1947. Drawing on the concept of precarity as propounded by Judith Butler, this paper critically examines the torturous experiences of women in Kulvir Gupta’s autobiography, Embers the Beginning and Embers the End of Mirpur (2018). The paper also employs Agamben’s conception of “camp” to analyze the unlawful and inhumane treatment these women received in migrant camps such as Kalghar and Alibegh. It shows how their life was relegated to “bare lives” while being differentially subjected to gender-based violence amidst the territorial conquest in the region. This paper concludes that these migrant women from Mirpur and the entire western region of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir were highly vulnerable to sexual exploitation in the contemporary political order of the region. This paper, being the first of its kind on the select migrant group, attempts to voice the pains and struggles of these courageous migrant women of whom only a few are alive today.

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