In the swirling protests over the killing of one more youth during stone-pelting in the city, the murder of a woman by her father in South Kashmir has all but passed unnoticed. The media has branded it as an honour killing to make it dramatic. The word `honour’ has served the dual purpose of lifting the story out of the tag of an ordinary crime and also feed into the larger stereotype about Kashmir: this time the place of woman in a conflict ridden Muslim society.
An alleged honour killing can really paint it worse, even if the incident with all its as yet unconfirmed circumstances may be a very rare case in Kashmir. Or for that matter, even if Kashmir may in the lived experience be just another normal place for the opposite sex. And even if the father killing his daughter may at the end of the day be just another unusual crime. But stereotypes like habits also die hard.  Kashmiri women will continue to be looked at through a certain prism. More so, when the place continues to be a rolling mess of guns, protests and killings. The author Justine Hardy in her recent book on Kashmir In the Valley of Mist she talks agonizingly about her own urgent need to wear burqa to walk around Lal Chowk in what she warns a new Islamized Kashmir. She doesn’t think twice while writing this about a place where a majority of the women don’t cover themselves in veil at all. The book primarily geared to the western audiences has painstakingly projected an anticipated image of not only the women in Kashmir but the place as a whole.
One can cite another example. The women’s Disqualification Bill, for instance.  The bill  whose mere tabling in the J-K House, in a sense, raised such a furore has also strengthened the stereotype of Kashmir as a women-discriminating patriarchal society. The bill was selectively seen in terms of gender debate rather than the politics and the context of Kashmir problem that surrounds it.
These disparate examples bring to light a reality that in any way doesn’t reflect the truth on the ground. But taken together these examples can serve as a jumping off point for a debate about Kashmiri women. That is, if she is really in any sense different from the women in the country. Is she more or less oppressed, more discriminated against or, of course, more prone to honour killing?  The fact is that she isn’t. In fact, one can certainly grant her a degree of emancipation that a large number of her Muslim counterparts in the rest of India will take time to catch up with.
At an ordinary level, speaking about Kashmiri women is like shooting arrows in the dark. It is a play of fleeting impressions we gather in our families, at our work place. There is no body of research that could help understand her condition or create some sort of an image or identity for her. Here by an image or identity, I don’t mean we should have portrait of an undifferentiated, monolithic mass as images or identities are prone to do. Of course, she has an image, identity, location, geography, culture and history of her own. What I mean is the understanding of the specific circumstances of her life. Do we have incidence of domestic violence in Kashmir? is girl child being discriminated against in our families? Do women encounter discrimination or harassment at the work places?  Even allowing for a degree of under-reporting of such cases, things nevertheless appear a lot hunky dory on this front.
Again, is there any serious equality issue between the genders in Kashmir? There is a gut feeling that doesn’t  see anything seriously amiss here. Parents in Kashmir are generally even-handed in their treatment of their sons and daughters. Unlike in the west, discrimination between sexes here is not a scientifically measurable reality. More than the personal preferences, discrimination in our society is borne out of the cultural factors which have traditionally assigned separate roles for men and women. Though this approach is slowly changing, the cultural hangover will take a while to go.
Our idea of an emancipated woman operates in a conceptual framework of its own. For us, it is fundamentally a moral idea as against an intellectual (functional) concept in the west. But there is still a long way to go before all Kashmiri women, like of course the men, approximate a common minimum description of emancipation: as somebody who is educated, knows him or herself, understands the world around him and has mature opinion about the issues.
We have similarly, more or less a notional concept of freedom rather than a functional one.  Freedom, besides an external dimension is a larger spiritual concept. More so, about the women. I think in our societies, it has more an internal value. It is less about freedom to wear and more about self realization or behaving in a modest, refined way. But then freedom is also about opportunity for growth, a room for self-development. And here again, Kashmiri women are in many senses, if not better than certainly at par with the women in India.
However, it is not that the negative stereotyping stops with their religious identity only. Conflict in Kashmir has created an image of its own, that thrives in the reporting in local media. Here the Kashmiri women largely exists in terms of the prevailing troubled circumstances. She is portrayed as a perennial victim. We have reports of general nature talking about her widowhood. We have stereotypes of mothers missing their killed or disappeared children. Picture of victimhood is so dominating and so pervasive that it has obscured the more real aspects of her life. For example, there is little effort to go into the details, to talk about the widowhood as an issue rather than as a stereotype, to talk about how the widowhood is actually lived or the other tragedies begotten by it. Similarly, there has been little reporting on whether government has any credible plan or mechanism to respond to the crisis. And if there is, do these work well and reach the intended beneficiaries.  Women continues to exist as an abstract concept spoken about generally with little attention to detail. It is time there is an effort to tell the real story of Kashmiri women than talk about her in terms of old and set frames.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
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