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She Speaks The Azadi Tongue

Fed up with troubled marriages, women in Kashmir are seeking divorce and getting it—from regular and Sharia courts

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She Speaks The Azadi Tongue
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Standing on a pile of rubble in the verdant landscape of Lolab Valley flecked with apple and walnut trees, Shaheena, a 34-year-old social worker with hazel-green eyes, says she’s happy to be finally free—of the fetters of yesterday in Lolab town, the land of sweet water, in northwest Kashmir. Her confident gait and exuberance mark her out in the little village of Lalpora as she des­cends from a pile of debris wearing a thick black coat on a freezing January morning. “You see, that’s where I live with my son,” she says, pointing to the burnt-orange building that has been her home for the few years since she declared independence.

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Later, sipping kahwa in rusty silver cups, Shaheena pours out her story. Married to a distinguished maulvi from her village in 2001, she had hoped for a contented life after a year-long courtship. “I thought he’s well-read and would keep me happy, but within six months of marriage, I realised he’s two-faced,” she says. “Manzoor would abuse me physically and was having an extra-marital affair.” She took matters to the Kupwara district court to help dissolve her marriage and seek custody of her son, who was then six years old. With no support from her family, she held her flag aloft. The marriage was annulled. “He agreed to give me Rs 1,000 per month as maintenance and Rs 2,500 for my son’s requirements. I made no further demands, because I just wanted to be free,” she says. In her Kashmiri-laden Hindi, Shaheena, who brooks no sympathy, tells us this is the way forward for women in the Valley. It seems other women have heard her.

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About 125 km from Lolab, tucked away in the mundane neighbourhood of Sohra on the outskirts of Srinagar, the Supreme Court of Islamic Shariat is crammed with women anxiously awaiting the Grand Mufti-designate’s arbitration. The court, set up in 1571 during Akbar’s reign, has a rich history of handling civil cases—property disputes, inheritance, marital discord. Its lofty rooms are stacked with books on Islamic law; the opulently carpeted floors take one back in time. The court is recognised by Kashmiris as a popular platform of arbitration and grievance redress.

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Photograph by Narendra Bisht

Saadia 26 Dentist | Baramula

Saadia, a Baramulla-based dentist, was married to a paediatrician in 2013. The very first night, she discovered he was impotent. Extremely articulate, she says the marriage was one of betrayal. “I knew him for a while before we got married, but he concealed this from me. And even after discovering he’s impotent, I kept persuading him to treat himself. But he wouldnít agree. He would abuse me physically and mentally,” she says, adding that he was also financially dependent on her, making the marriage a burden. Feeling trapped, she appealed to Mufti Nazir’s court in Srinagar last year, and her marriage is about to be dissolved. Saadia says she won’t ask for maintenance as it may delay divorce. For now, she wants to end this bitter chapter and look ahead. “I want to grow in my career, marry when the time’s right and let life take its own course.” She says she has learnt that a relationship that starts with a lie can never last.

Nasir-ul-Islam, a quiet man with an easy disposition who took charge from his fat­her Mufti Mohammad Bashiruddin Farooqi barely two months back, has been instrumental in bringing quick justice to many women. “I’ve disposed of 45 cases so far of women from different parts of Kashmir who have sought divorce. It’s an interesting trend in a conservative society,” he notes. Till 2006, he worked for the government of Abu Dhabi, and then lived in Canada and the US before moving back to the Valley and taking up women’s rights with a missionary zeal. “In regular courts, cases drag on for years. But now, women want speedy dissolution of marriages. They are independent-minded and like to assert themselves,” he says (see interview). Many heated exchanges are witnessed in his courtroom, but one that stands out is that of Nazira, a petite, 31-year-old woman refusing to reconcile differences with her husband. “He messed up my mental peace since we got married three years ago, so divorce is the only way out,” she screams.

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Why are women seeking divorce from abusive husbands with such conviction in a conservative society? Officials and ordinary citizens we spoke to give many reasons: women’s education, awareness through social media, women leaving small towns in search of jobs and learning how it is in the cities, rising aspirations.

True, Kashmir teems with the problems posed by terrorism and violent reprisals against ordinary people by militants, the separatist movement and the brutalities of the state and its troops. All the same, there is hope in a changing social milieu in which women are setting new standards by leaving bad marriages behind, unworried about the stigma traditional society attaches to divorce. Nayeema Ahmad Mahjoor, chairperson of the State Women’s Commission, says, “There’s act­ually an alarming rise in divorces sought by women. Earlier, she would endure the circumstances, but now she’s asking for refuge and escape openly.” She says some five cases are registered daily at the commission by women seeking divorce. While men are willing to go through reconciliation or counselling, most women say they’ve weighed all options and are firm about making a complete break. Even at police stations, it’s easy to find women coming forward to seek help. Gulshan Akhtar, a police officer from Srinagar, says she gets about 20 cases a day of women demanding escape from violent, addicted or even just incompatible husbands.

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According to the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, a woman is entitled to divorce if her husband is untraceable for four years, or if he fails to meet conjugal obligations or inflicts mental or physical cruelty. A marriage may be dissolved through talaaq-i-tafweez, in which a husband delegates the power of divorce absolutely or conditionally to his wife; lian, in which a woman may seek divorce on facing character assassination or false charges of adultery; khula and mubarat, where div­orce is reached through mutual consent. In such instances, she could petition a qadi or an Islamic community panel to grant her divorce if her husband refuses. She is also entitled to keep her mehr (original gift specified in the marriage contract) and get maintenance for three months and ten days. After that, she’s free to marry again.

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Photograph by Narendra Bisht

Aarifah 35 Tailor | Sopore

Tears well up in her eyes as the diffident, soft-spoken, burqa-clad Aarifah recalls how her husband, a labourer, abused her for six long years in her 16-year marriage. He was an addict and would sell her ornaments to buy drugs. “He’d never come home, and soon my father-in-law started assaulting me...those were nightmarish days,” she says. Initially, she went to the mohalla committee, seeking support for her two children. But her husband kept threatening her, and the committee couldn’t do much. She went to a Sharia court in 2014 and had her marriage annulled after a year. Now she lives with her sister and earns from embroidery to support her children. Her faith in marriage is jolted, but she believes there’s enough to keep her going. “No one has really supported me, but walking out of this traumatising marriage was possibly the best decision I could have taken.”

But in reality, it’s not so easy: financial and legal hurdles stand in her path. In many cases, she is required to surrender the mehr to her husband’s family; and if the child is older than seven years, she may be asked to forfeit custody. The 1985 Shah Bano case, for instance, wasn’t the first in which the judgement granted a woman maintenance. But a vociferous orthodoxy deemed it an attack on Islam. A national survey released last August by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, a rights-based organisation led by Muslim women, found that more than 92 per cent of the 4,710 Muslim women surveyed across 10 states wanted a total ban on verbal talaq by men and felt their former husbands must pay for children’s maintenance. An overwhelming majority also wanted reforms in laws governing alimony and polygamy.

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Interestingly, it is a largely conservative society like Kashmir that has led the way over the last decade, with many Muslim women—from all social strata, dentists to homemakers, and age groups 18 to late 50s—going to court or Islamic panels for annulment of marriage. Ishtiyaq Khan, a Srinagar-based lawyer, says, “A lot of Kashmiris are travelling to other parts of the country and becoming conscious of their rights. The media has a big role to play in women’s emancipation by making them aware of the goings-on in the world.” He says, earlier, women opted for reconciliation or out-of-court settlement, but now, “the moment they feel discriminated against, they voice their grievance”.  Massarat Shaheen, a chief judicial magistrate in Srinagar, identifies independence of women and incompatibility with their husbands as two big reasons why divorces are on the rise. Herself a divorcee, she says she faced verbal abuse and mental cruelty. “I decided not to live with him in 1995, and filed for divorce in 2007,” she says. “For eight years, he paid a meagre Rs 3,000 per month as maintenance, but I was independent and didn’t need it.” She asserts that more women should stand up for their rights. Even PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti gave khula to her husband Javed Iqbal and returned to her parents as a single mother of two toddlers, Iltija and Irtiqa.

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Photograph by Narendra Bisht

Tabassum 22 Student | Wanabal

After her rukhsati (last ritual at the bride’s house) in 2015, Tabassum’s husband fell ill and was hospitalised. Tests showed his liver was irreparable—he was a long-time drug addict. “Aftab’s family didn’t disclose this, for I’d have never married him. It was a fake marriage,” she rues. Her father was initially against divorce, which she obtained from a Sharia court, but now supports her. She’s keen to continue her studies. “There are enough peo­ple to encourage women who come forward, so they should speak up against injustice.”

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Shabana 18 Housewife | Pulwama

Shabana, who’s from a Banjara family in Pulwama, was married against her will to a man in his late 40s. There was no compatibility, he accused her of having numerous affairs. Calm and forthright, she says, “I was married for three years to a man I had no love for. He’d abuse me physically, lock me up.” After the freedom in her Banjara community, she found marriage stifling and without peace. She sought divorce and Nasir-ul-Islam’s court annulled the marriage in three months. Confident, she has her family’s full support and says she won’t tolerate abuse from a man any more. “I’m happy and hope to marry again when I find the right person,” she says. She’s the rare divorced woman in her community but wants to be the change other women look up to.

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But for women from poor sections, breaking out of marriage is a formidable challenge. Shabnam, a demure girl from Sopore, was forced into nikah by her father at the age of 18. A couple of months later, she learnt that her husband was a drug addict and interested only in pilfering her finances. “So I went alone to lodge a div­orce petition at a Sharia court in Srinagar and fight for maintenance,” she says.

Mufti Nasir says that now progressive families are standing by their daughters—even daughters-in-law—who seek divorce. What is most refreshing, even reformist, is that religious heads have nodded in agreement with aggrieved women. Abdul Khaliq Haneef, an executive member of the Muslim Personal Board, Jammu and Kashmir, says Islam has guaranteed women certain rights and they are rightly asserting themselves. “Quite a few women have sought my intervention to annul their marriages. There’s a rapidly growing awareness and exposure, and women are ready to take the leap.”

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Among the many divorced girls we spoke to, one of the major causes was addiction in husbands. Rubaiya, a 28-year old woman from Chanpora, on the outskirts of Srinagar, says her marriage was arranged because the families knew each other. “I could never guess he’s an addict. Mushtaq sold all my ornaments and spent hours doing drugs by locking himself up in the bathroom,” she says. It was hard to convince her parents, owing to the prejudices attaching to div­orced women, but finally she told them she could no longer take the physical and mental trauma. Her father Abdi, who’s still recovering from the shock, says the family was at first not in favour of Rubaiya’s decision to split but later gave her full support.

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Along with the rising divorces, the need for counselling has risen too: women need help in handling the emotional and psychological stress of enduring (or having end­ured) abusive, addicted or incompatible husbands and also for coping after the split. Dr Mushtaq Ahmad Margoob, a clinical researcher in Srinagar, says lots of women find they could do with some medical help (with prescribed medicines) to handle the stress of bad marriages and divorce. “So now,” he says, “many are seeking professional, familial or organisational support to move out of abusive matrimony.”

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Photograph by Narendra Bisht

Pariza 55 Nursing Supervisor | Sohra

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Pariza’s is a harrowing tale: after her first marriage fell through, she was forced into a second alliance in 2005. At the time, she was working in Saudi Arabia as a nurse and her husband Hilal duped her into believing he was a government officer. “I trusted him blindly. Soon after marriage, he started locking me up, lacing my food with drugs and stealing from my substantial savings, money I’d saved from my Saudi days.” Disconnected from all her family members, Pariza had no one to lean on, or share her problems with. But the biggest stab came when she learnt that her husband had molested their maidservant. “I had to find a way out of this marriage, so I filed a divorce petition at a sharia court nine months back. It’s now just a matter of time.” Pariza asserts that she will demand maintenance and extract recompense for the abuses inf­licted on her by her husband.

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Not all are happy with the turn of events, of this trend of women asserting themselves and demanding justice. Prominent Kashmiri writer Zareef Ahmad Zareef bel­ieves independence to this degree doesn’t bode well in a traditional society, and that women should learn to adjust, be patient and not run to court for trivial reasons. “A lot of them are victims of depression because of the political turmoil, lack of jobs and drug addiction issues in the state. Those in legal circles should make women understand the importance of reconciling differences and not take an extreme step,” he says. Indeed addiction—to narcotic substances and painkillers or other medication—is a problem. Prof Hameedah Nayeem, chairperson of the Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies, says women have become assertive no doubt, but generally don’t want to see their marriages disintegrate because the stigma is still there. Advocate Bashir Sidiq, general secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, says divorce laws are sometimes misused by women to fulfil their own agenda. “Earlier, fights would be settled within homes and mohallas, but now with the changing social fabric, women are frequenting courts, citing lack of compatibility or temperament.”

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Yes, things are changing, and it is perhaps time everyone took notice. In a survey last year in Uttar Pradesh’s Rohilkhand region, eliciting the views of 100 Muslim women on personal laws governing them, 60 per cent said they wanted to have the same right to divorce as Muslim men, 50 per cent felt that the mere payment of a token amount at the time of divorce was grossly insufficient, and a whopping 80 per cent said they wanted equal property rights. Divorces so far dealt with by qazis, muftis and maulvis are now being taken up by women Shariat  courts across many states. Despite opposition from some quarters, women are certainly speaking up against unhappy marriages all over the country. For Shaheena and many other women we met in Kashmir, leaving their husbands wasn’t an easy decision. “It’s still a big leap of faith,” says Massarat Shaheen. But these bold women are taking the leap, det­ermined to handle the struggles ahead.

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(Some names have been changed.)

By Priyadarshini Sen in Srinagar and Lolab; Photographs: Narendra Bisht

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