J&K’s dispossessed daughters

Last week, when the entire country was awaiting the fate of the controversial Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Resident (disqualification) Bill t...

Last week, when the entire country was awaiting the fate of the controversial Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Resident (disqualification) Bill to dispossess women who marry non-Kashmiris, I was thinking how fortunate it was that I was a journalist. If I had been a clerk, a doctor, or teacher in the J&K government, I would have lost my job since my husband is not a Kashmiri.

I first experienced the discrimination women in the state faced when I was mulling over buying a plot of land in Jammu. A clerk in the deputy commissioner’s office had handed me the required forms. I was required to produce my permanent resident’s certificate (PRC), as well as my father’s, as evidence of my being a ‘state subject’. Before handing my PRC back to me, the clerk stamped it with a ‘valid till marriage’ marking. My father’s and brother’s PRC bore no such marking. This had upset me at that time but I could not have perceived the implications it would have for women like me. Today, I am virtually being told that I am no longer a daughter of Kashmir — something I cannot accept.

Leave aside the issue of women staking claim to ancestral property, if Mehbooba Mufti and her ilk had their way, we would not even be able to complete our education in the state. Look at what happened to a daughter of a top Hurriyat leader. The girl was married by her parents to a Muslim from UP when she had just completed her 11th standard. She returned to finish another year of schooling and wrote her exams. Somebody lodged a complain with the J&K school board that she was not a J&K resident. She did not go to court to avoid the political fallout the case could have on her father’s career. She has since given up her battle with the school board and has joined her husband in Jeddah.

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Unlike her, another woman I knew — Rubina Malhotra nee Nassarullah, a doctor by training — fought back when her marriage came in the way of her prospects of doing a post-graduation course in medicine from the Jammu Medical College. The court ruled in her favour. However the new bill, should it become law, would only ensure that the Rubinas won’t win in the future.

Mehbooba Mufti, with her brilliant oratory, recently defended the bill. This was nothing short of shocking. Her stance will certainly help her emerge as an astute leader capable of whipping up emotions for electoral gains. But, frankly, if she had only asked her doctor sister, Rubiaya, who is married into a Tamil Muslim family, what she felt about having her Kashmiri status being taken away from her, she may been more nuanced in her response. Or maybe Mehbooba Mufti should fly to Leh and meet Tresing Angmo. Angmo, a senior executive with Prasar Bharti, married a Gharwali army officer 20 years ago. She returned home with three toddlers after her divorce and was shocked to realise that the law forbade her from settling down there.

Now I am being told that my loud protests constitute an assault on the sanctity of Article 370. This is just propaganda meant to create confusion. Nobody is challenging the state’s special powers to enact its own laws. But why should these powers always be used to create retrogade laws like the current one? It is this — and not women’s legitimate demand for their rights — that gives a handle to those gunning for Article 370.