A SHAMEFUL WIDOWHOOD
This edited extract looks at the widows of ikhwanis or counterinsurgents in Kashmir
The room is awkwardly clean. There is a walnut wood bed, a few embroidered curtains and deep silence. The sliding glass door of the almirah screeches a little, as Dilshada takes out the only adornment in the lifeless room. It is a neatly framed picture of a young couple, hand-in-hand, shyly posing in front of the Taj Mahal — the monument of eternal love. It is an old picture, taken more than a decade ago when Dilshada was cheerful and her husband, Mohammad Yousuf Dar, was an ordinary shopkeeper with an extraordinary passion for family outings and photography…
Today Dilshada, 55, is a sick and sad woman… ‘I am a widow of a renegade. It is a shameful widowhood,’ Dilshada says. Dilshada is one of the hundreds of widows of the Ikhwanis, ironically the Arabic word for brethren — a term used for renegades who were paid by Indian security agencies to counter militant operations in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Ikhwanis were mostly militants who had surrendered and switched sides, helping to break the backbone of militancy in Kashmir. Their widows feel dumped by the Indian agencies and are ostracised by the rest of society for the terror their dead husbands once unleashed. Until the mid-’90s, Dilshada lived a peaceful life with her husband and their four children. But one day everything changed. During an ordinary afternoon’s conversation Dar broke the bad news: ‘I have joined Ikhwan.’ Ikhwanul-Muslimeen, or Ikhwan in short, was a progovernment militia counter-insurgency group formed in the early ’90s. The group was formed by the infamous counter-insurgent Mohammad Yousuf Parray alias ‘Kuka Parray’, after he surrendered to the Indian government. Prior to joining hands with Indian government forces, Parray was an active militant who had received arms training from Pakistan. Ikhwanis, under the supervision of Parray, acted as informers, leading soldiers to militant hideouts and revealing details of their activities and movements… Besides receiving a monthly stipend ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 Indian rupees, they were also allowed to keep the weapons that they had possessed as militants.
‘They ruled the state. It was the most dangerous group because they followed no rules and had no identified enemies or friends. Brutal men were let loose to kill and terrorise people, no matter who they were. Everybody was equally vulnerable,’ says Khurram Parvez, Programme Coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). With the sentiment of azadi (freedom) and resistance in the air, Ikhwanis were intensely hated... The Ikhwanis were vicious not only to militants but to unarmed civilians as well. It was during this counter-insurgency operation that some of the worst human rights violations occurred in Kashmir.
Whenever Dar visited home, Dilshada argued with him about his wrongdoings… Dar did not listen… From a man who loved family outings... Dar became a killer. He spilled blood and talked about death. Dilshada resisted and tried hard to keep her distance. But one day she became a part of it... It was a sunny morning in the late ’90s... A neighbour came running towards her. Militants, he gasped, had murdered a relative in revenge for Dar killing one of their associates. The relative was eighteen-year-old Bashir Ahmad Wani, Dilshada’s youngest brother... At her father’s house, Dilshada was not received as Bashir’s sister but as the wife of his killer... Dilshada at first tried to... prove her innocence, but when she saw her elderly parents tightly hugging their son’s dead body, she froze. ‘I was too ashamed to explain…’ A few months after their son’s killing, Dilshada’s parents died of grief... Dilshada too wanted to run away from her husband. ‘Only my death can wash away that memory.’ After the birth of counter-insurgency operations, militancy showed a sharp decline. New Delhi was able to hold the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections in 1996...