Stories from the Margins: Exploring Gendered Memories of the Leh Flash Floods in 2010

Abstract

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32444/IJSW.2018.79.1.65-82

Through a narrative ethnographic study in the district of Leh in 2013, three years after
the disaster (flash floods), the article argues that post-disaster memories are contoured
by gender, religion and spatiality. This study explores counter-memories which puts
aside the populist reading of the disaster and gives insights into the ‘Missing voices’
of the disaster affected material practices that inform and sustain the disaster experi-
ences; world-view and life of those who have been ignored in the mainstream disaster
discourse; and issues of poverty, exposure to risk and new kinds of vulnerability that
arise in a post-disaster context.