‘Curfewed Night’ by Basharat Peer

Kash­miri jour­nal­ist Basharat Peer was born in 1977 in Seer vil­lage and grew up dur­ing the height of the insur­gency that has left about 70,000 Kash­miris dead. Cur­fewed Night is his mem­oir of this tur­bu­lent peri­od, when the rur­al, peace­ful home­land of his child­hood was trans­formed into a vio­lent hotbed of mil­i­tan­cy and state oppres­sion.
A mov­ing and can­did nar­ra­tive, it begins with sto­ries of Peer’s “fairy-tale child­hood of the eight­ies” which gave way to “the hor­ror of the nineties”. Peer was a teenag­er when the insur­gency explod­ed in Sri­na­gar and writes of how the bru­tal response by Indi­an troops rad­i­cal­ized large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion and gave an impe­tus to mil­i­tant groups who recruit­ed thou­sands of frus­trat­ed Kash­miri youths. He describes the crush­ing occu­pa­tion of the val­ley and the unend­ing ordeal of check­points, arbi­trary deten­tions and dis­ap­pear­ances — the ”frisk­ing, crack­down, bunker, search, iden­ti­ty card, arrest and torture”-that Kash­miris have to live with. Kash­miri Islam was Sufi-inspired rather than fun­da­men­tal­ist, and Kash­mir was a peace­ful home to Hin­dus, Mus­lims and Bud­dhists. Peer reports how he returns to school after the insur­gency begins and his school­room is half emp­ty, with the Hin­du stu­dents hav­ing fled the vil­lage as part of the mass exo­dus of Pan­dits from Kash­mir.

What makes this book so remark­able is the fact that Peer shares the expe­ri­ences of ordi­nary Kash­miris like him­self, giv­ing voice to those who have been ren­dered voice­less, cre­at­ing a people’s nar­ra­tive of the con­flict. The sto­ries told here are deeply touch­ing, whether about his par­ents nar­row­ly escap­ing a blast intend­ed to kill his father or about the wide­spread use of tor­ture by Indi­an secu­ri­ty forces, some of which has caused cas­es of impo­tence amongst young Kash­miri men. But Peer does not write the selec­tive sto­ry of Kash­miri Mus­lims alone. He shares with read­ers the bru­tal­i­ty of the Indi­an troops but also that of the mil­i­tants and describes how ordi­nary Kash­miris are caught between the two. Despite the per­son­al nature of the top­ic, Peer’s writ­ing is not accusato­ry or polem­i­cal; he writes with clar­i­ty and a ded­i­ca­tion to Kash­mir and its demand for jus­tice.

Cur­fewed Night is an extra­or­di­nary book, where mem­oir and reportage seam­less­ly come togeth­er to pro­vide a refresh­ing account of the Kash­mir con­flict, from the brave per­spec­tive of a young Kash­miri who grew up amidst the polit­i­cal strife and armed con­flict that has torn Kash­mir apart.