THE crisis of solving ‘Kashmir’ has been a lack of feminine voice and women’s opinion. In the dominant discourse between India and Pakistan, Kashmir is rendered a ‘dispute’, in effect reduced to a depoliticization process for its inhabitants. The dispute is sought to be resolved outside the human agency of the population. Such an approach to Kashmir has thus feminized/oppressed, first the voice of the people of Kashmir and then, among others, their women. In the popular imagination that the phrase ‘border dispute’ evokes, given the complex landscape in India, the fate of millions of residents of Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir has been sealed by this vague imagination represented by nationalistic jingoism of both countries. In this problematic terrain, retrieving Kashmiri women and their political-cultural agency is akin to negotiating a thorny maze. Muslim women across India and the larger world remain immersed in shrouds of mystery and misinformation.

The dominant/mainstream understanding of ‘Muslim women’ as docile, voiceless victims draws on the Orientalist scholarship about Islam. The Oriental expeditions and mastery by the ‘Occident’ through colonial processes and imperialism(s) has led to an acceptance of a ‘mythical’ and ‘mystical’ understanding of Islam, wrote Edward Said. This problematic understanding of Islam has contributed to a biased scholarship that considers Islam essentially as an oppressor of the female sex. This disregards the fact that two contesting narratives on Muslim women have existed in theory, one that ‘Islam oppresses women’ and the other that ‘Islam elevates women’s status.’ No other religion has produced as strong a counter argument as Islam in refuting Orientalist claims of religion’s (Islam’s) gender blind nature.

The claim of Islam’s positive gender understanding acts as a defence mechanism for Islam against the colonial Orientalist attack. The difficulty is that both these claims are ends in themselves and leave us with no actual understanding of the ‘position of Muslim women in Islam’ and by extension give no clear understanding of Kashmiri women. It is thus important to move away from this symbolic stalemate achieved over the question of Muslim women by locating it within larger contexts, such as the churning of culture as such, and not just ‘Islam’. The question of Muslim women is concerned not only with the ideals of ‘womanhood’ in Islam, but also on social constructs of women amidst political conflict, and the fact that Muslim women are facing the twin challenges of modernity and capitalism.

 

In the context of Kashmir, the term ‘Muslim women’ entails and evokes a complex set of meanings; women are in relationship with Islam in diverse ways. They have continuously been a part of the resistance against occupation and militarism. In this process of resistance they have used Islam in two different ways, resulting in two different political positions – Islamist and Islamic feminism. There are women with a Muslim community identity, who may or may not be practising Muslims when they intervene in political action. Yet, though their sources of resistance are multiple, they are almost invariably cast in religious/cultural terms, forgetting that in all these cases, women are both challenging the Indian state/occupation as well as the patriarchy of militarism alongside that of the community. Hence, like women elsewhere they have continually been refashioning gender identity within the community and within the politics of resistance, but in more culturally appropriate ways.

 

Educational elevation has been a fundamental reason for Kashmiri women’s somewhat better position as compared to Muslim women in the rest of India. The early drive for free female education at the time of Sheikh Abdullah’s arrival on the political scene has been one reason women could enter public space with much ease. Nevertheless, in politics, women’s participation remained dismal. This claiming of public space in the 1940-50s by women was, however, fraught with contradiction. The anti-tradition drive rested on an attempt to Indianize Kashmiri women, when slogans were raised against the traditional headgear, kasaabe, as outdated and repressive and salwar kameez was applauded for being modern and progressive. When Pandit women fastened to a saree style Indira Gandhi iconization, Muslim women came closer to their counterparts in Punjab. Even Hindi-Urdu was aggressively promoted as a medium of education, claiming a higher pedestal in Kashmir’s transformation. Though education – both content and pedagogy – remain an area of contestation, it nevertheless helped Kashmiri women to broaden their horizon. Similarly, at the political level, women participated and joined ranks with the National Conference and sang the songs of change. Much should be attributed to the revolutionary zeal that drew on the anti-Dogra regime movement and culminated in the 1960s in the Plebiscite Front protest movement. It saw women roar with the Sheikh’s pronouncements and struggle.

 

When the armed struggle assumed centre stage in Kashmir’s politics, women were excluded from intellectual engagements, reverting to the role of network, support and organization of the community’s social, economic and larger political transformation. The early civil women’s organizations in Islambad and Srinagar such as the Women’s Welfare Association who in the 1980s raised the issue of corruption in political parties, especially the National Conference, also voiced concern over issues such as dowry that directly concerned women. These women articulated and demanded freedom from corruption, political persecution and subjugation of women. Yet, mainstream organizations often sidelined questions relating to women’s ‘problems’ in the wake of changing political conditions supporting the movement that was to change life for betterment of both men and women. This all-inclusive women’s organization comprising of both Hindus and Muslims was soon dissolved. Subsequently, some of its members formed a new organization called Muslim Khwateen Markaz, a moderate support group to the movement. In the early phase of the new war, MKM served as a crucial nursing arm to the raped and wounded.

The militarization of Kashmir as a means of containing the movement has resulted in a tense social situation in Kashmir. Many Third World nations have clearly sought/favoured a military solution – of repression against the rebelling populations. The impunity with which militarism and state have functioned in Kashmir has left people with limited access to justice, unmindful that the subsequent transition to nonviolence has questions of justice embedded in it. Street protest, stone pelting and social media are a new mix of innovative methods of fighting age-old political hegemony. In this phase of the freedom movement, context has played a key role in defining its strategy. Laws like the Public Safety Act (PSA) and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) have been used to curb all manner of dissent, in the process creating adverse conditions for political stability. The sense of alienation of the people has grown, further feeding into the pro-freedom sentiment in Kashmir.

 

A study conducted by Medecins Sans Frontieres, a French doctor’s organization, in 2006 found that the Kashmiri women suffer sexual violence on a large scale. It further pointed out that since the beginning of the armed struggle in 1989, sexual violence has been routinely perpetrated on Kashmiri women, with 11.6% of the respondents confirming having suffered sexual abuse. In the growing literature on Kashmir, rape has now been identified as a calculated strategy used by the military and purposefully perpetrated against the Kashmiri women. It is an attempt to demean the community, for to rape a woman is to humiliate her community and especially the men. Cases of rape and molestation are rampant and most of them go unreported because of social stigma and fear of reprisal by state agencies. The literature dealing with understanding the impact of conflict on women in Kashmir revolves mostly around issues of women’s victimhood.

The interplay of military might and its ethnic biases in Kashmir is often manifested on the site of the ‘woman’s body’. The historical animosity between Hindus and Muslims elsewhere in India, under the rubric of secular institutions such as the army, acquire different meanings. The uniformed soldiers represent jingoistic nationalism clubbed with cultural nationalism, especially when acting on the Muslim woman’s body in Kashmir. The military often uses the woman’s body as a sight to construct national pride. The ‘raped Muslim woman’s body’ depicts not just a shaming of the perceived anti-nationals but an exercise of ultimate control over what is viewed as property of the enemy ‘other’. The Muslim woman’s body, therefore, is also a site where the community rests its honour in the face of occupation hegemony.

The deplorable financial condition of these women has often led them to ‘forced’ or ‘voluntary’ prostitution. In this political backdrop, women have become the centre of attention for all kinds of exploitative practices. The sex scandal involving the Indian Army and bureaucrats that came to light in 2005, underscores the exploitation of the women because of their unstable financial position. Such exploitation has often led the Kashmiri society to react in more conservative ways because of the fear of losing women’s honour. Such exploitation has also led women to don the veil as a mark of resistance, and shut down beauty parlours that are often perceived as breeding grounds for the sex trade in Kashmir.

 

Widowhood is a common state in all societies facing conflict, but the concept of ‘half-widows’ is new and demands attention. The ‘half-widows’ are those women whose husbands have disappeared or have been subjected to enforced disappearance by the state. These women are on their own, helping their families to survive, while dealing with the complicated position of their marital status. They are married and yet not married; it is a chaotic state as the number of such women in Kashmir is really high. Widows in Kashmir are especially hard hit. The low status accorded to widows is embedded in Kashmiri society, cutting across class, and for half-widows the stigma is even worse. They have to take up the reins of running a family, with little or no education. Many have never worked outside their homes before. Moreover, they can neither claim compensation from the government that other widows are entitled to, nor inherit the property of their husbands. In many cases, they have been forced to leave their in-laws house and either return to their parents or try and eke out a living on their own.

 

The Indian national media has remained obsessed with militant ‘burqa’ clad Kashmiri women commonly depicted as potential terrorists. The rise of Islamist women in Kashmir can thus, at least in part, be attributed to the large scale persecution, fear and anger over rampant sexual violence that has forced the women to fight the brutal situation of dominance and hegemony by what is believed to be a military occupation. The burqa has become a liberator(y) weapon of defence where the burqa clad woman is safeguarding her honour, and the possession of weapons is seen as an elevation in feminine autonomy. The Islamist womanist position is peculiar in the culmination of its power genesis into complete parallel autonomy with least male interference.

Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of the Nation) initially began with the Islamist position. In 1981, after differences over several issues with the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership, Andrabi decided to form an exclusive woman’s organization called the Dukhtaran-e-Millat. This organization initially focused on an Islamic awareness for women. Subsequently, in 1987, it began to stage demonstrations and protests against human rights violations in Kashmir. This represents how Islamist women’s organizations draw upon female political power outside male domination, and have succeeded in establishing themselves as a parallel and indispensable political authority, unlike what mainstream Muslim organizations like Muslim Khwateen Markaz inside the Hurriyat conglomerate advocate.

 

The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in Kashmir is the best example of the collaboration between mothers and martyrs. Parveena Ahangar founded APDP in 1994, bringing together a number of parents forced to visit the High Court in order to find their missing sons, husbands and relatives. This was the first Kashmiri women’s initiative that fought against the atrocities of the state, with the result that there is a massive conflict pertaining to their gender roles. Women have also organized in groups to provide economic support and financial continuity. In groups, they are managing to struggle for the existence and survival of their families of which they are now the sole breadwinners, a departure from their traditional roles.

Aasiya Jeelani, a member of the Human Rights Group called JKCCS, was an active defender of the rights of Kashmiri people. A freelance journalist for various local newspapers and television channels, 26 year old Aasiya was preparing a report for an election monitoring team in Kashmir when an explosive device blew up the vehicle she was travelling in; she died en route to a hospital. The driver of the vehicle also died while five others in the vehicle were injured.

The dominant strand of feminism in India has often looked at the Kashmir conflict from a neutral standpoint, suggesting that the state and the resisting population share a power equilibrium. seeks to substantiate the state’s claims of fostering peace; in the process feminist voices are often merged with state propaganda legitimating the war on people. I would like, henceforth, to refer to this as occupational/colonial feminism. Such an understanding of Muslim women that strengthens the process of ‘othering’ contributes to a problematic understanding of Muslim women in general and Muslim women in Kashmir’s resistance movement in particular. The ‘inadequate’ mainstream understanding of Muslim women, clubbed with the occupational/colonial feminism, has contributed to strengthening a robust stereotype of Muslim Kashmiri women. Further, by supporting the ‘peace agency’, it is more or less aimed at depoliticizing the Muslim Kashmiri women.

 

Indian women’s rights groups have either lacked the sensibility of approaching the Kashmir problem or have deliberately maintained a status quoist nationalist standpoint. The departure from mainstream Indian women’s organizations is represented by the demand, ‘Who decides what Kashmiri women want’? In a recent meeting held at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, women’s organizations managed to bring twenty Kashmiri women and the leader of Muslim Khwateen Markaz to protest the human rights violations of Kashmiri women. However, they were not allowed to toe their party line which is ‘demand the right to self-determination.’

In a similar meeting held by the Centre for Policy Analysis in 2010, Muslim Kashmiri leaders struggled to find space to define their rights in political/cultural terms. In the meeting, Anjum Zamarud Habib declared that any attempt to snatch the agency of Kashmiri women in Kashmir’s political resolution is an attempt to depoliticize women’s issues. Muslim Khwateen Markaz (Women’s Concern) in their recent press statement of 30 October 2012 had the following to share:

‘We the women of Kashmir at Muslim Khawateen Markaz, Women’s Concern, in the face of several attempts in place since February 201I to hijack the dominant voice of Kashmiri women by various Indian NGOs, especially New Delhi based Centre for Policy Analysis, have been compelled to discuss amongst ourselves whether the said organization or any other organizations with a clear political agenda have a right to represent us. In our meeting today we have discussed the issues and concerns that the politics of CPA poses to the women of Kashmir.

On 11 February 2011, Seema Mustafa held a CPA seminar in Delhi wherein many sub-groups worked to address various problems dealing with women’s issues. One of the most important sub-groups at this seminar dealt with the problems of women in Kashmir. Kashmiri women were included in a rather half-hearted manner, and it rather quickly became apparent that CPA was being intellectually dishonest in the manner in which the entire problem of Kashmir and Kashmiri women was being presented and the frame in which they had been cubby-holed. There was no mention of any historical context, or the political roots of the conflict, and no suggestion of a political resolution of the Kashmir conflict was entertained.

The organizers absolutely declined to accept that the non-resolution of the political problem of Kashmir should be seen as the root cause of all the problems that women in Kashmir are facing. They seemed to have decided that their starting point would be the present status of the women, irrespective of what brought about that condition in the first place or what perpetuates it. Consequently, the possibility that a political settlement of the Kashmir issue could be suggested to the government as a most suitable measure for the betterment of the condition of the Kashmiri women was not entertained. Thus, exercising the "Right to self-determination or plebiscite" as measures that could improve the lot of Kashmiri women were vehemently opposed by all the organizers of CPA.

After their first meeting, there was a considerable decline in the participation of Kashmiri women, with just one woman attending their subsequent meetings. They attempted to meet the Prime Minister of India who did not show any interest in their proposal despite them trying their best to not hurt the "occupation" constitutional framework of India in Kashmir.

Through our parallel meeting that coincides with yet another CPA meeting in Srinagar, we wish to bring the following to their notice and also to the notice of a wider audience –

The politics that CPA has embarked upon is nothing but damage control for India through appropriation of women’s issues in Kashmir, wherein the Kashmiri woman needs to be rescued from the Kashmiri Muslim man, and the de-linking (and thus depoliticizing) of the issue of women’s rights in Kashmir from the larger question of the Kashmir political problem and, therefore, further breaking the back of women’s resistance and demand of Azadi.

The issue of women’s rights in Kashmir does not appear outside the issue of the larger political crises of the state. Human rights violations at the hands of Indian Army are often the result of resistance that Kashmiri women have shown to Indian rule, time and time again. To call it "women fighting for better governance" is an act of lying through the teeth that intellectual members of the organization are engaged in.

As much as nationalism has been criticized for not allowing equal partnership for women, Indian women themselves have gone through the process of nation building and it gives them no right to deny it to the women of Kashmir. We resist all methods and back-channel policies that tend to depoliticize us from the central important question of Kashmir’s right to self-determination.

We the Women of Kashmir demand the following: (i) Right to self-determination for the people of Kashmir; (ii) Equality for women within the framework of "resolution of the Kashmir issue"; (iii) Perpetrators of rape and other sexual violence are brought to justice under independent international commissions; (iv) Participation and voice in defining and redefining our problems on our own; we don’t want any party to come and talk for us; (v) Rejection of, and disallowing, the use of occupational feminism to define our rights.’

 

The remarkable ways in which Kashmiri Muslim women have exercised their agency has remained mostly unreported and understudied. The discourse that has emerged is indicative of a departure from the ‘known’ and ‘accepted’ discourse about both Muslim and Kashmiri women. Their activism and agency is a small motif of the larger design indicating complete autonomy and resistance to both political oppression and patriarchy within the dominant culture.