The burqa wars

It’s a grand betrayal by Kashmir’s leaders

WILL the women of Kashmir retreat behind their burqas from today? When four weeks ago the little-known militant group, the Lashkar-e-Jabbar, set a September 1 deadline for women — and girls and children — to adhere to an ‘‘Islamic dress code’’, it was dismissed as a mere aberration. The threat of acid attacks and worse for offenders was seen as a senseless attempt at Talibanisation that would be resolutely countered by a society fiercely protective of its unique culture, its legacy of Kashmiriyat. Today, as that deadline expires, a sense of impending doom is inescapable. While the tailors of the Valley gleefully work overtime to assemble nifty new burqas for the female populace, outrage from the community is so pathetically feeble that one cannot help but fear that this time the women may be in for a long sentence. Be it spokespersons for militant organisations or be it the ever loquacious members of the Hurriyat, their condemnations are splattered with far too many buts for them to inspire confidence.

Two questions are being asked in Kashmir and elsewhere. One, who are these Lashkar-e-Jabbar hooligans patrolling the cities and countryside for sartorial transgressions? Two, what do they hope to achieve by terrorising innocent girls? The first query, as it happens, matters little. Whether the group is a convenient offshoot of one of the main jehadi groups or not, it is the response to its diktats that’s important. Police escorts have been posted at schools and colleges and at thoroughfares to offer protection to women desirous of baring their face to the sweet summer sun. Clearly this cannot be enough. But even if a successful military operation were to be initiated, the responsibility for thwarting the Lashkar-e-Jabbar must also lie with the Kashmiri community as a whole. Even a cursory appraisal of Afghanistan’s experience and the spread of Taliban elements eastwards must surely indicate that once women are coerced behind the veil, the next step could be slow alienation from their other rights — to freedom of movement, to the best education on offer, to equality in employment. This is why the quiet acquiescence to the Lashkar-e-Jabbar’s orders is so distressing.

But what is the motive? It is said that militants want to nudge women into their burqas so that they can themselves seek refuge in copious robes — so that once the security forces commence checking the faces behind the veils, thousands of women will be provoked into chiming allegations of human rights violations. That may be. It must, however, also be noted that rigid dress codes are alien to Jammu and Kashmir, that women here have traditionally enjoyed a host of freedoms. In effect, then, the current endeavour amounts to forcing Kashmiris to repudiate their history and their legacy. A decade ago, ludicrous attempts by the female warriors of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat to force women to adopt the burqa met with complete failure. Now the group is back in the news with its fervent pleas to militants that the deadline be extended by 10 days, pleas that are being echoed by petrified teenagers. Were these girls to be actually sentenced to a lifetime behind the veil, they would lose much much more than a chance to get a nice sun tan.