“Darkness! Darkness!”: Existential Trauma of Kashmiri Pandits in Siddhartha Gigoo’s The Garden of Solitude
摘要
The research article discerns the adverse effect of forced displacement experienced by Kashmiri Pandits, from the perspectives of existentialism and trauma by analysing Siddhartha Gigoo’s novel, The Garden of Solitude. Trauma, a psychosocial phenomenon which is often undermined as a psychological concept, projects an imbalance in the cognitive behavioural pattern that is negatively impacted by the society. Conflicted society, experiencing instability and existential crisis, is highly prone to traumatic experiences. In order to understand the impacts of trauma over memory, individual and community existence in a conflicted society, the study includes Neil Thompson and Mary Walsh’s concept of trauma as an existential injury. The religious and political conflict in the society of Kashmir during the 1990s provoked the forced migration of Kashmiri Pandits inflicting existential crisis and trauma among them. Siddhartha Gigoo, in his semi-autobiographical novel, The Garden of Solitude narrates the pre-, peri-, and post-experiences of Kashmiri Pandits’ migration which also documents the aspects of uprootedness, alienation, existential crisis, trauma, memory, and resilience. This novel is subjected to a textual interpretation to study the elements of trauma, memory, and resilience stimulated by the existential crisis experienced by Kashmiri Pandits. The research article also attempts to construe the elements of trauma developed over uncertainty of existence.