In Anecdote, History and Kashmir, the writer explores the profound power of personal narratives to reshape our understanding of history. Through a compelling personal encounter on a highway, he captures the shared struggles of individuals caught within rigid systems, shedding light on the deeper, often-overlooked layers of authority, duty, and humanity. By juxtaposing this anecdote with broader historical narratives, the essay delves into how anecdotes serve as counter-narratives, challenging dominant historical accounts and opening windows to individual experiences that history tends to overlook. It draws on literary examples from George Orwell, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Basharat Peer to reveal the nuances anecdotes can bring to complex socio-political contexts like Partition and the Kashmir conflict. This essay argues that by embracing anecdotal storytelling, we can enrich historical discourse, deepening our empathy and understanding of human experiences that otherwise risk being lost in sweeping narratives. A must-read for those interested in the intersections of history, literature, and the lived experience of conflict.

An anecdote is a concise, frequently personal narrative that communicates a certain point or idea. Anecdotes are frequently used to shed light on a person, location, or occasion and can help make difficult concepts easier to comprehend or remember. They often add a humanizing or engaging element to writing and conversation. In their famous book Practicing New Historicism, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt assert that anecdotes provide a sense of authenticity and “the touch of the real” that exists both within and outside the mainstream historical succession. The mainstream historians, who usually view individual or small-scale events in relation to a broader historical background, find anecdotes insignificant and “mere rhetorical embellishments” or sometimes “as brief moments of respite from an analytical generalisation”. In contrast to the common assumption that considers anecdotes as methodologically inconsequential, Gallagher and Greenblatt propose a theory that regards anecdotes as equally significant as the grand historical narratives. They claim that anecdote could be conceived as a tool with which to rub literary texts against the grain of received notions about their determinants, revealing the fingerprints of the “accidental, suppressed, defeated, uncanny, abjected, or exotic” – in short, the non-surviving – even if only fleetingly. This interest serves the “effect of arousing scepticism about grand historical narratives, or essentialising descriptions of a historical period”. They further argue that anecdotes function as parallel narratives that have the potential to puncture the grand narrative sequence of historical explanations and become significant narratives in their own right. Anecdote, therefore, can sometimes be used as a methodological and counter-historical tool to assimilate the multiplicity of voices and discursiveness of memory.

Let me recount an anecdote. I was speeding along the highway, knowing I had just ten minutes left before the biometric attendance system at my workplace would lock me out. After 10 o’clock, the stern officer in charge made no exceptions. Even arriving one minute late meant submitting what he emphatically called “short leave,” leading to a deduction from our salary. It was a rigid rule we had grown accustomed to, just as we had grown used to the frustrating halts for army convoys on the road. But that day, desperation gripped me, and I gathered the courage to talk to the army man who had stopped me.

“I’m sorry, but could you please let me through? Our officer doesn’t allow us to mark attendance after ten, and if I’m late, my salary will be cut,” I blurted. He didn’t acknowledge my plea. Whistle in hand, he was focused on directing the vehicles into a line that stretched seemingly for miles, as if the road itself had surrendered to the endless convoy.

Just when I thought my words had been lost in the wind, the soldier, now weary from his whistling, approached my car. He spoke softly, a stark contrast to the authority he wielded with his whistle. “You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “I never want to stop anyone like this. I understand your situation. But I have to follow orders, just like you. Our officers are strict, and so are the rules. Sometimes I feel awful when I have to stop ambulances, but there’s no choice.”

He went on to tell me about his own life—his family back home working on sugarcane fields, and his recent marriage, a flicker of personal warmth amidst the mechanical reality of his duty. The convoy, slow and deliberate, began to pass. Meanwhile, I typed out my “short leave” request, ready to submit it as soon as I reached my office.

Before he returned to his post, the soldier, still holding his whistle, said in a quiet, almost apologetic tone, “I’m sorry.”

As I continued my journey, I found myself confused, unsure of whom to blame. Was it the soldier, who had politely disallowed me passage despite his own reluctance? Was it me, for leaving home a few minutes too late? Or was it the rigid, faceless authority on both sides that enforced such inflexible rules? Or the convoy itself, groaning defiantly on the road, indifferent to the small struggles of those caught in its path. In that moment, it felt as if we were all trapped in a system of invisible forces, each of us playing our roles, unable to break free. The soldier’s apology echoed in my mind long after I had driven away, a reminder that sometimes, in the grand machinery of life, none of us truly have control.

This anecdotal occurrence disrupts the usual flow of history, adding a personal dimension that counters its tendency to generalize and sum up complex events. In considering who writes history and the methods they use, we realize the limitations of historical narratives in capturing individual experiences. This anecdote humanizes a critical aspect of history, bringing in emotions and empathy while challenging simple categorizations of “dominant” and “oppressed.” For instance, the soldier who stopped me is part of a dominant power structure, yet he himself is subject to authority and rules beyond his control, revealing the disparities in power even within the dominant ranks. Such narratives puncture historical generalizations by focusing on lived experiences over broad assessments of the collective condition.

Symbolically, such incidents don’t aim to counter history but offer alternative perspectives, running parallel to official narratives and preserving the nuances of individual experience. Methodologically, the anecdote leans more toward literary expression than historical; it captures unique, singular moments that history often excludes. Where history concerns itself with the powerful—the structural frameworks of governance, policy implications, and broad societal changes—anecdotes reveal how these structures influence individuals, their relationships, and ultimately, their consciousness.

Literature’s strength lies in handling such anecdotes as, for example, demonstrated by George Orwell’s essay Shooting an Elephant. In this personal narrative, Orwell, a British officer in colonial Burma, describes the internal conflict that compels him to kill an elephant against his better judgment. The essay serves as an anecdotal critique of colonialism, showing how the colonial system oppresses both the colonizer and the colonized. This perspective on colonialism is unique to literature, which captures the emotional, internalized cost of imperial power that history’s structural approach may overlook.

The history of Partition in India illustrates this gap between historical records and anecdotal literary depictions. While history provides dates, statistics, and geopolitical causes, literature captures the visceral human costs of Partition, giving voice to individual stories often lost in official accounts. Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories, for example, delve into the chaos, trauma, and moral ambiguity that Partition inflicted on ordinary people. In his story Toba Tek Singh, Manto portrays the absurdity of Partition through the eyes of a mental asylum inmate who cannot understand the new lines drawn across his homeland. By focusing on a single character’s plight, Manto reveals the emotional and psychological dislocation that numbers and policy discussions fail to capture. Similarly, Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan uses a fictional village to depict how communal harmony was shattered by the violent upheavals of Partition. Through the lives of villagers who are suddenly divided along religious lines, Singh explores the betrayals, guilt, and unexpected kindnesses that emerged amidst the horror. These personal stories humanize the statistics of Partition, making us feel the tragedy on an intimate level.

Closer to home, our regional literature also uses anecdotes to offer powerful counter-narratives to mainstream historiography. Basharat Peer’s memoir Curfewed Night gives a brief anecdotal account of a 19-year-old militant in Shopian who, inspired by the Bollywood movie Tere Naam, grows long hair, frequently follows a girl to her college whom he admires and desires a romantic escape with for a life of peace. Yet the “militant tag” makes this impossible, highlighting the limits and personal sacrifices embedded within such a life. Peer also captures the longing that militants face for ordinary joys, like watching the moon while relaxing in their own homes. Peer writes, “Being a militant wasn’t only about getting arms training and fighting; it was also about being excluded from the joys of life. Being a militant was also about the near certainty of arrest, torture, death, and killing.” Similarly, The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed offers a fictional yet immersive exploration into the life of a young Kashmiri man in a heavily militarized zone. Through his collection of ID cards from fallen militants, Waheed’s protagonist serves as a haunting testament to both the personal and collective trauma of living amidst conflict. The “militarized wilderness” metaphor is powerful in underscoring not only the physical violence but also presents a different context to revisit history. On the other hand, writers like Arvind Gigoo, Siddhartha Gigoo, Rahul Pandita, Varad Sharma, and Chandrakanta offer an alternative perspective by documenting the displacement and struggles of Kashmiri Pandits. Through anecdotal depictions that go beyond polarized historical narratives, these writers bring forth the diversity of experiences, reflecting the profound pain of losing one’s home and culture, as well as the empathy needed to navigate the layered identities. Both approaches—Waheed’s focus on the militarized experience and the empathetic recounting of Pandit displacement—highlight the unique role of literature in capturing complex human dimensions. These narratives challenge monolithic perspectives, revealing how individual stories intersect with broader socio-political narratives, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the conflict and its deeply human repercussions.

In this way, the anecdote does not contradict history but enriches it, filling gaps and offering perspectives that historical accounts alone cannot convey. By bringing these experiences to light, literature and anecdotal accounts reveal the human realities behind historical structures, creating a fuller, more empathetic understanding of our shared past.

Ghulam Mohammad Khan was born and raised in Sonawari (Bandipora); an outlying town located on the wide shores of the beautiful Wullar Lake. Ghulam Mohammad believes that literature is the most original and enduring repository of human memory. He loves the inherent intricacies of language and the endless possibilities of meaning. In his writing, he mainly focuses on mini-narratives, local practices and small-scale events that could otherwise be lost forever to the oblivion of untold histories. Ghulam Mohammad considers his hometown, faith, and family to be the most important things to him. He writes for a few local magazines and newspapers. His short story collection titled The Cankered Rose is his first major forthcoming work.

You can find more of Ghulam’s work here on Ink Pantry.