It was the glimpse into the minds of those 7 to 14-year-olds that brought home the reality of what it means to be a child in a conflict zone.
Commenting on the human need to daydream, Bruno Bettelheim, one the world’s greatest and most articulate child psychologists, saw in the young person’s reveries a counterpoint to a certain inherent helplessness. Unable to control her environment – the legitimate realm of the adult – she lapses into a world of her own making. Often, such dreams find expression in painting, writing and even violent behaviour. That the evocations of such emotions say far more than the `official’ adult re-telling of events and situations, was poignantly brought home in the recent display of 300 drawings by school children from Kashmir. Apart from the linking narrative of terror, violence and displacement, the exhibition was an excellent example of the little-explored field of art therapy in India.
Brought to Delhi by the Sadbhavana Trust in equal partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the brightly coloured images in imaginatively coordinated frames conveyed more than much of the reams that have been written on that benighted land over the last 14 years. In part, it was the power of the visual; but more than that it was the glimpse into the minds of those 7 to 14-year-olds that brought home the reality of what it means to be a child in a conflict zone.
Over 10,000 women have been widowed and there are an estimated 25,000 orphans in the region – many of whom are victims of trauma and deep distress. A fraction of this pain came through in the drawings from the children of Doda that has witnessed extensive violence; crossed swords and drops of blood in the background as tears roll down a young boy’s cheeks as he says plaintively " Mujhey jeenay do"; a tiger lurks in a tree, beadily eyeing a gun pointed at it; gun-toting men bear down on hapless figures.
A child’s visual world is incomplete without the orange sun, rounded green hills, water and serene ducks floating along amidst meadows abloom with five-leaved flowers, the stuff of fairy tales and daydreams. There were plenty of these happy drawings particularly from the children in Baramulla – who also drew many images of the Indian flag! Interestingly, it was also these picture-book drawings that were bought in large numbers – a reflection perhaps of the Delhi viewers’ disinclination to engage with the real issues in a region far removed from home.
Ethnic strife and its incumbent alienation came through with a stiletto-like insistence in a drawing of a nice, airy building with "School is the Temple of Knowledge" written across it; except, just above was the message – "No Admission for Kashmiri Pandits". The story of internal displacement, of people unwanted and homeless in the land of their birth has many faces, be it in the up-market housing colonies of Ahmedabad or in remote schools in Kashmir.
The most telling comment on the State’s attempts at rehabilitation were the children’s views on camp life in Udhampur district. That lack of water and other facilities are major issues punctuating camp life was evident in many pictures – the most evocative being one of a dying tree with "camp life is just like a dry tree" etched on it. "Lamp is available but light is not available. Tube well is available but water is not available" said another one as a child looked up at the ceiling and a naked bulb and his mother queued up for water. It was "better to live in hell than in camps" was the considered opinion of many children who found incarceration an ordeal and longed to return to their homes – a hope lived out in many expressions of sylvan surroundings and happy moments.
The poetry of the drawings were fractured with photographs and short first-person accounts of mothers and sisters raped, fathers tortured and hacked to death in front of a son’s eyes. Careful