Social Conflict and Personal Suffering: Narrating a Mother’s Experience in Half Mother

Abstract

This article examines Shahnaz Bashir’s The Half Mother as a literary articulation of social conflict and maternal suffering in conflict-ridden Kashmir. Focusing on the experiences of Haleema, the narrative foregrounds the trauma of enforced disappearance and its enduring psychological and emotional impact on women. The article situates personal grief within broader structures of militarisation, state violence, and socio-political repression, arguing that the novel transforms individual loss into a collective testimony of resistance and remembrance. Through close textual analysis, the study highlights how Bashir employs motherhood as a narrative strategy to humanise political conflict and expose silenced histories. The article underscores literature’s role in documenting lived experiences that remain marginalised in official and political discourses.