Women On The Ballot In Kashmir

This story was published as part of Outlook Magazine's 'Future Tense' issue, dated October 11, 2024. To read more stories from the Issue, click here.

As Nilofer Sajjad, an independent candidate for the Chadoora assembly seat in central Kashmir’s Budgam district, distributes her leaflets bearing her election symbol, a pen nib with seven rays emanating from it as if from the sun, men at a nearby food cart exchange sarcastic glances. “As if men have done us enough favours and only women are left now,” one of them quips, looking at the words on the leaflet: “Don’t waste your vote. Vote for change.” Indeed, it isn’t easy for the 43-year-old homemaker taking her first steps in the very public sphere of electoral politics in Kashmir to evade the long shadow cast by decades of insurgency that made ‘mainstream’ almost a pejorative for many in the region.

“The stigma attached to mainstream politics makes it less appealing for women,” says an analyst, adding that Kashmiri women have been at the forefront of popular protests such as in 2010 and 2016. In the separatist camp, however, there have been no women in leadership positions except Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation) founder Asiya Andrabi, who spearheaded a campaign against cinema halls and beauty parlours in the early 1990s and enforced diktats on purdah. She has been in Delhi’s Tihar Jail since 2018 for allegedly waging war against India.

Nilofer is among 43 female candidates (out of 872 vying for 90 seats) as Jammu and Kashmir goes to polls after 10 years—the first time as a Union Territory since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. Twelve of the 17 female candidates in the Kashmir region are independents who remain largely unknown to voters and are believed to offer little opposition to their male rivals. In 2008, only three among 67 female candidates—the maximum in J&K—made it to the assembly. Nilofer, whose declared assets amount to Rs 1 crore, draws crowds of 50-100. She chose to contest because “instead of blaming the system, I want to be part of the solution”. “By breaking the silence of Kashmiris in the assembly and raising overlooked issues such as unemployment, roads, electricity and water, I will make Kashmiris really smile, not just pretend to,” she says. “Why must we live like caged birds forever?” Like most candidates, she doesn’t mention “women’s issues” specifically as issues cutting across genders seem more apt for election campaigns.

“This election isn’t about men’s or women’s issues…it’s about Kashmir’s future and our identity,” says Basharat, a 35-year-old woman at a booth in south Kashmir’s Bijbehara during the first phase of polling. Almost every woman in the queue spoke of “the children’s future” as the motivation for voting. “Our society expects women to put themselves last,” says Iltija Mufti, former J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti’s 37-year-old daughter who is debuting as the People’s Democratic Party candidate in Bijbehara. “Women mostly discuss the issues they hear their male kin discuss. They are made to think that speaking up for themselves is selfish.” She hopes her foray in politics will “empower women to make their voices heard.” Iltija emerged on the scene after her mother’s detention in 2019, when she started using the former CM’s Twitter account to criticise the Centre’s actions in J&K. The prominence of women like her mother has been linked to dynastic influence—Mehbooba’s father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was a central home minister and J&K CM. The first woman to make a name as a politician in J&K was two-time MP Begum Akbar Jehan (1916-2000), whose husband Sheikh Abdullah was the state’s first prime minister after accession.

Among the veterans is former minister Sakina Itoo of the National Conference, who is contesting from Damhal Hanji Pora, a hilly constituency in Kulgam district. Her 28-year journey as a female politician was far from easy, says the 54-year-old who survived 20 assassination attempts. “If you do good work, you represent more than your gender,” she says. Sakina was a medical student in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, when she was thrust into politics after the assassination of her father, former MLA Wali Mohammed Itoo, in 1994 by militants in Jammu. Two years later, she became J&K’s youngest MLA. “I wouldn’t have chosen politics if not for the circumstances,” she recalls.

Just three years short of the age at which Sakina became MLA, Ayesha, 23, chatting with female college students in Srinagar’s Pratap Park, says she will vote because her community needs a local government. “The Centre dictates everything, even how we should feel about its decisions,” she rues. Much-touted claims that the end of J&K’s autonomy would help empower women cut no ice with these young women. “While Kashmiri men were shown as misogynist, the women were commodified on social media as prospective brides for other Indian men,” Ayesha says. Qurat, 22, points out that she feels the greatest threat from the armed personnel who are everywhere in “the most militarised place in the world”. Recalling that a soldier once flirtatiously gestured at her and commented on her body, she says, “If he were a local, I could have stood up for myself, but he was a uniformed man with a rifle.” The mere presence of armed personnel from elsewhere, largely seen as hostile, often causes discomfort among local women as a threat to their privacy and possibly honour.

Around 85 km from Srinagar, inside a wood-and-clay house in Kulgam’s Kalaroos village, Shaheena, 23, is making rotis on a mud chulha. “Politicians ask for votes and never come again,” she says. Her mother walks to a stream with a plastic pot on her head 16 times every day to fetch water for their daily needs. “I wished to study more, but we are poor,” says Shaheena who dropped out after Class 12. In 2011, J&K had 67.16 per cent literacy and only 56.43 per cent females were literate.

Khursheeda Begum, 40, who is contesting independently from north Kashmir’s Langate, never went to school—her family was too poor and she went to Srinagar as a domestic worker. She saw how villagers from hilly areas living in the city were insultingly called “Gujjar” even if they didn’t belong to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) shepherd community known as Gujjar-Bakerwal. Khursheeda belongs to the Pahari community—a social and linguistic minority recently listed as an ST. The mother of four, with assets worth a mere Rs 40,000, decided to contest so that women like her “at least don’t have to beg”. She walks the hills with her husband from village to village for her campaign that focuses on lack of roads and basic amenities. It has already cost her Rs 1.3 lakh in debt, but she is happy that the impoverished “recognise me as one of their own”.

In north Kashmir’s Sopore, NEET aspirant Uzmat, 18, has only one demand from those who ask for votes: her father’s transfer to a nearby jail from faraway Jammu. Her father, who owned a garments shop, was arrested in 2020 for alleged ties with militants. “It forced my mother to manage the shop and visit courts, but our kin criticise her for working in a market surrounded by male strangers,” Uzmat says.

Indeed, even Parveena Ahangar—co-founder in 1994 of the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons, which demands justice in cases of alleged “enforced disappearance” of Kashmiri men enabled by the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act—had to negotiate the social pressure to be <asal zanaan> (“good woman”, who behaves the way the community expects her to). Parveena’s spectacular visibility in the public sphere along with other women like her who lost their sons, husbands or fathers was justified by invoking her duty as mother of the disappeared son.

(A shorter, edited version of this appeared in the print as 'Men On The Side, Please')