Tchær
The Indian security forces have been deployed in Jammu and Kashmir for decades. While officially they are supposed to be there as protectors against violence by armed rebel groups, their human rights violations have gone scot-free in the valley. From 1990 to 2011, the Jammu and Kashmir state government reportedly recorded a total of over 43,000 people killed (According to many human rights groups, this number goes above 110,000 for missing/killed people). Shocking as the government statistics are, human rights activists and lawyers say that the figure of civilian deaths caused by the security forces fails to reflect the true scale of violations by security forces.
Being a Kashmiri but someone who has not lived for longer periods in Kashmir, I can only imagine the fear that has been instilled into the minds of the people living there every day. The fear of being stopped at a checkpoint to show your identification in case you forgot your wallet. The fear of detention during crackdowns. The fear of harassment from a patrolling unit moving through your village. A recent report by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders) concluded at least 93% of Kashmiris have experienced conflict-related trauma, with about 11% of the entire populations suffering from depression and 6% from PTSD.
Tchær is an attempt to shed some light on the conflict in the hard everyday lives of the people of Kashmir.
Tchær follows a path where it is intentionally “unwinnable”. The games structure itself, with its multiple narrative possibilities, is set up in such a way that, regardless of which narrative path you take, beating the game and saving your world is impossible. This is done to highlight the choices and consequences that Kashmiri citizens face in their everyday environment. The choices give the user hope but eventually they don’t matter as the end-game remains the same, which concedes with how the everyday choices are often deadly for Kashmiri citizens.