UCLA

This dissertation moves beyond an exploration of the gendered nature of communal violence and its traumatic impacts on Muslim women towards radical and liberatory methodological interventions. The Kalaashakti arts and healing workshops, conducted with Muslim women survivors of the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat, India, hold critical and holistic ethnography, the liberatory arts and spiritual activism at their core. I discuss the themes of belonging, connection, and empathy in the Kalaashakti women’s written work and argue that these indications of healing and recovery of the self and collective, despite the divisive logic of genocide, are significant for social transformation. I argue that self-epistemology, or self-knowing, is possible through mindfulness and creative expression and can lead to self-transformation and therefore social change. I conclude with how these women’s stories and poems traveled to the U.S. for a public art and awareness-building event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the genocide. I offer “Gujarat Genocide and U.S. Solidarity” as a hopeful example of transnational solidarity through art activism and evaluate the power of public expression and witnessing to create new critical, public cultures.