{"id":8367,"date":"2019-08-21T10:32:36","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T05:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=8367"},"modified":"2019-08-21T10:33:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T05:33:16","slug":"kashmir-women-are-the-biggest-victims-of-inhumane-siege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/8367","title":{"rendered":"Kashmir Women are the Biggest Victims of Inhumane Siege"},"content":{"rendered":"

After August 5, when India revoked Kashmir’s special status and followed the move with a military lockdown, Uzma Javed did not leave her house for days.<\/span><\/p>\n

A 20-year-old student who usually lives in Kerala, Javed had returned home to spend Eid with her relatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

But instead of celebrating, she found herself caged in while outside, armed Indian paramilitary forces manned largely empty streets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before announcing the decision,\u00a0<\/span>one of the government’s arguments for scrapping Article 370 was that it would lead to gender equality and the “emancipation” of women in the Muslim-majority region.<\/span><\/p>\n

But days later, a number of the politicians with India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made sexist comments directed towards Kashmiri women.<\/span><\/p>\n

On August 10, Manohar Lal Khattar, chief minister of Haryana, was quoted as saying: “Some people are now saying that as Kashmir is open, brides will be brought from there. But jokes apart, if [the gender] ratio is improved, then there will be a right balance in society.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier, the BJP’s Vikram Saini, a Member of the Legislative Assembly, said “Muslim party workers should rejoice in the new provisions. They can now marry the white-skinned women of Kashmir.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The misogyny also spread online, with posts on social media networks carrying a similar theme.\u00a0<\/span>And according to reports, “How to marry Kashmir women” was increasingly Googled after August 5.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The way women of Kashmir are exoticised and objectified on a daily basis in India, the way their bodies are portrayed as vulnerable and used to create fear and intimidation, has heightened the sense of being preyed upon,” said Samreen, a 22-year-old make-up artist from Srinagar.<\/p>\n

Janees Lanker, a 22-year-old Masters student from Srinagar, blaming the political class for encouraging sexist attitudes, she also pointed to the portrayal of Kashmiri women in Indian cinema.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Kashmiri women are shown as these innocent, naive, dolled up beings,” she said, “which is nothing less than objectifying them.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Her social media feeds, she said, are peppered with memes showing “fair girls with a hijab” as objects of sexual desire, “and it’s disgusting.”<\/p>\n

Nivedita Menon, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said: “These are proclamations of conquest and plunder, and reveal the real intention behind the abrogation of 370.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After August 5, when India revoked Kashmir’s special status and followed the move with a military lockdown, Uzma Javed did not leave her house for days. A 20-year-old student who usually lives in Kerala, Javed had returned home to spend Eid with her relatives. But instead of celebrating, she found herself caged in while outside, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,31,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-news","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8370,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions\/8370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}