Section 144: Fieldwork in a Curfew

Reflecting on the complexities of conducting research in a region gripped by administrative upheaval and political uncertainty, I write to open up this forum to fellow anthropologists and scholars to share personal experiences and emotional challenges and its impact on the well-being and safety of both the researcher and our interlocutors.

Jammu City in the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), once considered the city of faith and of temples, is now beginning to be known as the city of drug users and unemployed youth.  Mired in the shadows of neighboring Kashmir’s political instability and conflict, the Jammu region is experiencing an addiction crisis.  According to local mental health professionals and officials at the Health Department of Jammu, feelings of loneliness, despair, loosened family and social connections, a sense of loss in social esteem among men in particular due to lack of jobs, declining education opportunities, and failing marital prospects, have fed the phenomenon of addiction.  To understand the occurrence of addiction and recovery and the everyday impact of Jammu’s complex socio-political history on its youth, I decided to examine the administration and provision of substance use services and subjective experiences of recovery in Jammu.  I began observing de-addiction services[1] (a colloquial term for drug use treatment) at the Mira Lok Psychiatric Hospital[2].  Mira Lok is the sole state-sponsored psychiatric hospital in Jammu City, J&K, providing treatment to young men recovering from substance abuse.  The hospital provides three kinds of services: a de-addiction ward for detoxification that admits patients for up to 15 days with a family member accompanying them at all times; an outpatient department where only male psychiatrists consult and follow up with clients and write symptom-based prescriptions; and an Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) Center that dispenses buprenorphine tablets to injecting drug users (IDUs) to manage their heroin cravings and dependency. 

In early August 2019, I was going to move to Jammu City for long-term dissertation fieldwork.  However, a series of unusual events began to unfold, disrupting the region and my relocation.  It began on August 1st when then-US President Donald Trump suddenly offered to mediate between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue[3].  On August 2nd the Government of India (GoI) abruptly halted the Sri Amarnath Yatra, an annual pilgrimage in J&K, citing intelligence of a potential terror attack.  The next day, media channels began broadcasting GoI’s appeal, urging tourists to leave.  Schools and colleges were shut down and thousands of military and para-military forces descended upon J&K.  A rush ensued at petrol pumps, ATMs, and grocery stores as people engaged in panic buying.  On August 4th, close to midnight, J&K’s former chief ministers tweeted about being placed under house arrest.  Other political leaders and their sympathizers were picked up from their homes and placed under arrest at hotels converted to subsidiary jails.  There was a blackout of internet, telephone, and other means of communication.  Under Section 144[4], a curfew was imposed on the state.  And then on the morning of August 5th, I watched the Home Minister of India introduce the Jammu & Kashmir Reorganization Bill[5] in Indian parliament.  Chaos and uproar ensued as the bill was neither mentioned in the parliament’s order of business nor were other parliamentarians privy to its contents.  Holding my breath, I watched these events unfold on television and imagined their long-term consequences for J&K residents.

My research site was placed under immediate and indefinite curfew.  All the unprecedented events began to make sense.  My mind raced to understand the impact of this lockdown on de-addiction services and clients whose recovery had suddenly been halted.  I had heard stories of police brutality in J&K and wondered about clients who were dependent on their daily dose of buprenorphine and who may now meet the wrath of the police if they broke the imposed curfew.  I worried about their families and caregivers.  For now, they would be responsible to manage their withdrawals.  I thought about Kashmir[6] and its residents, who were at the epicenter of this political debate and facing a much bleaker outcome of the Indian government’s decision.

I delayed my trip to Jammu until the day after August 15th – India’s Independence Day.  On August 12th that year it was also Eid – a Muslim religious festival and holiday marked in J&K.  Everything was quiet and somber, or at least that is what my interlocutors told me.  In the initial days following the introduction of the Bill, residents of Jammu lauded the GoI’s decision even though their daily lives had been upended.  I arrived to a city with no internet, streets patrolled by armed personnel, curfew in effect with minor flexibility, schools and colleges shutdown, and restricted movement.

The hospital itself was crumbling with leadership crises.  The principal was transferred and a replacement was being frantically sought.  The psychiatric department’s medical superintendent was dividing her time between the hospital in Jammu and her home in Kashmir, trying to meet her husband who was placed in a subsidiary jail in Kashmir.  Hospital staff was being transferred with immediate effect.  Medical supplies were hit as funding was stalled and the decision makers were in jail.  Additionally, roads were blocked by security personnel, and trucks carrying goods were entering the city slowly or diverted.  Free medicine disbursement at Mira Lok was suspended to conserve the limited stock.  The de-addiction ward was empty.  An Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) Force was re-directed from patrolling the India-China border and deployed at the psychiatric hospital.  They and their artillery occupied the hospital’s defunct canteen area[7].  In return, ITBP personnel provided 24/7 security to the hospital.  They patrolled the hospital corridors, frequently interacted, and intervened in doctors, clients’, and caregivers’ interactions.  Their presence complicated matters in an already strained environment for they began to supervise OST services and reprimanded clients for relapsing.  ITBP personnel interacted with me throughout fieldwork, and I observed their interactions with clients and their caregivers.  OST services were also hit.  Clients were forced to re-register and could only enter the hospital with new identification cards that were checked at the gate by ITBP personnel.  Relapse and illegal heroin use increased, as I learned from clients and clinicians.

These were the tumultuous conditions under which I began my fieldwork.  While the day-to-day circumstances in Jammu City were not as challenging as compared to those in Kashmir, I was unprepared for the physical, psychological, emotional, and financial challenges of this fieldwork.  Even as curfew restrictions began to ease, I was still disconnected from the larger world due to the internet shutdown.  I listened to the state-run radio channel every evening, and kept myself apprised of current events and shifts.  Moreover, as any anthropologist is aware, I continued to navigate several grant submission deadlines in the early months of fieldwork.  With basic amenities like internet – at least for scholars in institutionalized academia – suspended, I struggled to check email and often traveled back home to Delhi over the weekend to submit grants and attend zoom meetings with my supervisor.  The back-and-forth travel temporarily disrupted my fieldwork stability and health.

Psychologically, I battled a constant sense of fear and uncertainty.  I vividly remember my palpable fear when fighter jets and helicopters flew in day and night in the early days of living in Jammu.  I stayed awake at night, catching only a little sleep as the heavy sounds of aircraft filled the eerie silence of the night.  All around me, everyone talked of a war with Pakistan, a retaliation to the Indian government’s decision.  Watching those jets and helicopters filled me with foreboding, which never truly dissipated as I continued fieldwork.  The eventual presence of para-military personnel at the hospital, on the streets, regular movement of army convoys on the road, and constant media scrutinization of J&K’s political instability always kept me on edge, as if “something wrong” was incumbent.  Amidst all of this, I continued going to the hospital every day and befriended local residents to learn their ways of adapting to this uncertaintyI sought interview appointments with bureaucrats at various health departments; however, the dilution of state legislature, arrest of political leadership, and upheaval in the bureaucracy heavily impacted these interactions and I faced long delays in securing meetings with government officials.

All these events also added an unexpected financial strain to my fieldwork budget, the material consequences of which are byond the scope of discussion in this piece. Due to the events of August 2019, the real estate agent in Jammu informed me that my landlord refused to rent me the apartment if I did not pay the new, significantly increased amount.  Why was this so?  Because the landlord anticipated that the curfew would impact his business and he needed to secure his savings.  For a month, I could not get a gas connection to get my kitchen running because a suspended government meant all paperwork and bureaucratic movement was stalled indefinitely.  After this long wait, I had to pay three times more than the regular market rate to purchase an LPG cylinder on the black market.  

Finally, things began to ease in mid-February 2020.  The communication ban had been partially lifted, and schools and colleges were open to in-person education, but before any sense of normalcy could be established, the COVID-19 pandemic began.  The August 2019 lockdown’s consequences on the region had barely passed and yet once again, it was shrouded in silence.  This time, the psychiatric hospital was converted overnight into a COVID-19 isolation unit, and all de-addiction services were suspended. Clients and their families, once again, felt abandoned.

As an anthropologist, the events of my fieldwork make for a compelling narrative.  However, it is not without its complexity and the toll it took on my mind and body.  I got COVID-19 when I was in the field and in the early days of the pandemic. Falling sick far away from home, in a region that is already under-resourced in clinical infrastructure, was terrifying.  Frequent travels out of Jammu due to internet suspension impacted my budget.  Working in a region that is seemingly not under direct conflict, but always on the periphery, experiencing terror attacks and targeted killings, exacerbated my sense of distrust and suspicion.  I began embodying a sense of precarity and uncertainty towards the Indian state that residents of J&K have been experiencing for several decades. I felt angry and helpless at the state of affairs in the region and the hospital: seeing patients suffer the verbal rebuke of paramilitary personnel; psychiatrists struggling to procure medicines; and the hapless medical superintendent working for a state that put her husband in detention and prohibited her from meeting him for over three months.  

I lived in a paradoxical duality.  I knew I could escape to Delhi (and I did) but I also knew my responsibility to be an engaged participant-observer and always returned.  I struggled and responded to the pushback that I received for being a single woman working with young men recovering from substance abuse.  I dealt, sometimes with grace and sometimes with irritation, at the many flirtatious advances and offers for help from men, who perceived me as an unmarried, and therefore “available” woman.  I felt tired under the weight of the “honor” that I had to constantly carry as a single, unmarried woman, even if I had many privileges by way of caste, class and being Hindu.

I anticipated sorrow and remorse from my interlocutors; however, I witnessed joy and hope even in these moments of despair, forcing me to reassess my outlook towards the clinic and the region of Jammu.  Over time, I was no longer a distant observer, but immersed and mirroring the rhythms of the everyday lives of my interlocutors.  As I left to reflect and introspect, I see how the field of the ‘fieldwork’ became embodied in me.

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[1] In India, substance abuse recovery centres are often called de-addiction centres or in Hindi, Nasha Mukti Kendra, which can be translated as a Centre for Freedom from Drugs.  Often, the public perception of recovery from drugs is to be free of drugs instead of viewing recovery as a journey with relapses as acceptable parts of the recovery.

[2] In order to preserve the anonymity of the various organizations and protagonists mentioned, the names used in the article are fictitious, unless otherwise indicated.

[3] Conflict over J&K has reigned supreme with the Muslim-majority Kashmir being the epicenter of conflict.  Pakistan and China, bordering J&K on the west and east, have been staking claim on the region. This geopolitical tension has resulted in wars, long-term terrorism, insurgency and counter-insurgency, and day-to-day battle along the J&K border amongst the armed forces of the three nations. Pakistan claims J&K for its Muslim-dominated population, whereas for India, J&K is integral to its representation of a secular and a democratic identity.

[4] Section 144 is a legal statuette within the Code of Criminal Procedure in India that empowers authorities to curb public gatherings in specific situations temporarily. It is usually invoked in situations where there is an imminent threat to public safety or a likelihood of a breach of peace.

[5] Under this bill, the Indian government revoked J&K’s semi-autonomous status (maintained since India’s independence from the British empire in 1947) and split it into two federally governed territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. See Maansi Verma (2019) discussion about the parliamentary proceedings.

[6] Conditions in Kashmir have always been more strained and challenging than conditions in Jammu City.  Saiba Varma (2020) describes the early days of lockdown in the opening chapter of her book.

[7] See Gupta (2021) A Shifting Hospital and Shifting Dependencies in Jammu & Kashmir. Somatosphere. https://somatosphere.com/author/sugandh-gupta/ January 26, 2021

Bibliography

Berry, Maya J., Claudia Chávez Argüelles, Shanya Cordis, Sarah Ihmoud, and Elizabeth Velásquez Estrada. 2017. “Toward a Fugitive Anthropology: Gender, Race, and Violence in the Field.” Cultural Anthropology 32, no. 4: 537–565.

Gupta, Sugandh. 2021. “A Shifting Hospital and Shifting Dependencies in Jammu and Kashmir.” Somatosphere: Hospital Multiple Series.

Varma, Saiba. 2020. The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir. Duke University Press.

Verma, Maansi. 2019. “Diminishing the role of Parliament: The Case of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill.” Economic and Political Weekly (Engage), 54 (45): 1-8.