Saleem Pandit from Srinagar

From Times of India: “Kashmiri women on the streets”

“Last week, as the government in Delhi was busy blaming “outside” forces for provoking young children to throw stones at police and paramilitary forces, the women came out of their houses on one Srinagar street, bringing their pots and pans with them. They beat on the utensils, used them like cymbals and ran down the street, picking up stones and taking aim at a column of troops. The scene was replayed on other streets. The women — mostly housewives and young girls — had emerged from their homes to throw stones at the security forces and burn government jeeps. For a change, the police, which has felled 51 people in almost as many days, couldn’t fire their SLRs.

Is the Kashmiri woman’s new ‘movement’ all that new? Not really. Kashmir’s women have been coming out onto the streets since 1990, when the insurgency began in the state. But this is the first time they have chucked stones, burned vehicles and led demonstrations against the police. In the years the militancy was at its peak, the women in villages, towns and cities across the Valley routinely emerged from their homes to shout slogans for “Azaadi”.

There are no urgent announcements from the mosques but the women are coming out in large numbers, on their own. They are not serving as human shields. They are leading the stone-pelting crowds. As the roads outside their houses boil with rage, many mothers and sisters have become street-fighters, joining husbands, sons and brothers in the demonstrations that have been erupting for weeks.

Asiya Andarabi, the separatist leader, believes part of the reason is because Kashmir’s women can no longer ignore the death and mayhem outside their homes. “Every woman is affected by the turmoil here. Hundreds of Kashmiri women have their husbands in jails. Their husbands have been killed by security forces. So their anger is genuine,” says Andarabi, who founded the separatist Dukhtaran-e-Millat or Daughters of the community.”