A fact-finding delegation of women has come across accounts of night curfew in Kashmir that forces residents to keep lights turned off after sunset prayers even while taking children to toilet.
A young girl who kept her lamp lit to read for her exam on the off-chance of school reopening soon had her father and brother taken away for questioning, according to the report of the five-member team that went to Kashmir last week.
The father and brother were yet to return when the team met the family, the report added.
Some of the residents told the team members, who went their separate ways to meet as many people as possible, that it was risky for men and boys to venture outside after dusk; so it was women who stepped out of homes if absolutely necessary.
A mother told the team that she was even fearful of using the phone light to take her daughter to the toilet for fear that it could be seen by the security personnel.
The team — Annie Raja, Kawaljit Kaur and Pankhuri Zaheer from the National Federation of Indian Women, Poonam Kaushik from the Pragatisheel Mahila Sangathan, and Syeda Hameed from the Muslim Women’s Forum — were in Kashmir from September 17 to 21.
The delegation has returned haunted by the vacant eyes of mothers awaiting the return of their teenaged sons and the sense of a community caged and feeling betrayed by India.
The team came back with searching questions of how they would feel if they had to live without the Internet in this day and age. The Valley is witnessing an unprecedented communications blockade for over 50 days now.
The five women from Delhi had no ready answers for the people they met during their visit to villages in Shopian, Pulwama and Bandipora where they also went to hospitals and marketplaces. The names of the villages they visited and the people they met have not been revealed in the five-page report released here on Tuesday to protect those who spoke out from the possible ire of the State.
The report said: “Shops closed, hotels closed, schools, colleges, institutes and universities closed, streets deserted… (this) was the first visual impact as we drove out from the airport. To us it seemed a punitive ‘mahaul’ (atmosphere) that blocked breathing freely.”
And, there is no denying the desire for “azadi”.
“They want nothing of either India or Pakistan. The humiliation and torture they have suffered for 70 years has reached a point of no return. Abrogation of (Article) 370 some say has snapped the last tie they had with India. Even those people who always stood with the Indian State have been rejected by the government. ‘So, what is the worth in their eyes, of us, ordinary Kashmiris?’ Since all their leaders have been placed under PSA (Public Security Act, which allows detention without trial for up to two years) or under house arrest, the common people have become their own leaders. Their suffering is untold, so is their patience,” the report noted.
At Lal Ded Hospital in Srinagar, young women doctors expressed frustration at the hurdles that had been placed in their way since the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status as they have had cases where women could not come in time for deliveries, resulting in complications.
“Conversely, we were told that several women are delivering babies prematurely due to the stress and khauf (fear) in the present condition. ‘It feels like the government is strangling us and then sadistically asking us to speak at the same time,’ a young woman doctor said as she clutched her throat to show how she felt,” the report said.