THE WEAPONIZATION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THE KASHMIR CONFLICT

Sexual violence on women has been a regular feature of warfare throughout human history. In both civil and
international armed conflicts, sexual violence has been perpetrated on women in the form of rapes, sexual slavery,
molestations and forced pregnancies. While the perpetrators are men from groups like state forces, political and
insurgent groups, the victims are women from the largely non-combatant civil society. Such offences cause immense
psychological, physical and emotional trauma in the victims, their families and their societies. Yet despite the increased
awareness of these negative impacts and its widespread global condemnations, sexual violence has still largely
remained prevalent in modern conflicts and has been regarded as an unavoidable consequence of any conflict. Recent
studies, interrogating the causes behind these offences, have been mostly limited to feminist socio-cultural perspectives
that stress on the influence of patriarchal gender identities. However, the systematic patterns of sexual crimes in recent
conflicts also point to other vital factors and some scholars have highlighted how sexual violence is willingly committed
in conflicts by the combatants to achieve specific political and strategic objectives and influence the outcome of the
conflict in their favor. Additional research is crucial to identify how and why sexual violence is strategically used and
weaponized in conflicts. This paper seeks to contribute in this regard by analysing the significance of sexual violence
in the Kashmir conflict. By using data from oral and literary narratives, this paper explores the impact of sexual
offences in Kashmir and makes the argument that sexual violence, particularly rape, was used as a deliberate,
intentional strategic weapon of war in the Kashmir conflict for securing political objectives.