Asiya Andrabi, leader of the separatist Kashmiri women's group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation) -- she reveals the Talibanesque mindset of a woman who's known as Malka-ul-Maut (Angel of Death)

Asiya Andrabi, leader of the separatist Kashmiri women's group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation) -- she reveals the Talibanesque mindset of a woman who's known as Malka-ul-Maut (Angel of Death)

Courtesy source : http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?232194

It is in downtown Srinagar that I meet Asiya Andrabi, leader of the separatist Kashmiri women's group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation). One has heard stories about her spraying paint on women who do not wear burkhas. She is known to have sent burkha-clad activists to burn Valentine's Day cards and posters, raid liquor shops, and restaurants boasting special seating arrangement for couples. 

Her organisation was banned in the '90s and Asiya was underground till 2004. Meanwhile, she married a mujahideen, currently serving life sentence in an Indian jail. Yet, despite this record, when she takes off her veil, Asiya looks like a middle-aged woman who'd be more comfortable in a kitchen rather than painting anti-America and anti-Israeli placards. In Asiya's first major interview to the mainstream Indian media, she reveals the Talibanesque mindset of a woman who's known as Malka-ul-Maut (Angel of Death) and represents the extreme Islamist fringe of the homegrown militancy in Kashmir. 


Excerpts from an interview to Aditi Bhaduri: 

Tell me about yourself. What made you launch Dukhtaran-e-Millat? 

In 1981, I started a school. I gathered women—it was a door-to-door campaign. I wanted them to know the tenets of Islam and the status accorded to women. From one school, we went on to have units in six districts of the Valley. In 1987, we called upon women to come out and protest peacefully against the portrayal of women in the nude. But I also questioned the accession of Kashmir since I strongly believed that Kashmir is not a part of India. So, my office was raided and sealed. The police had an arrest warrant for me. I went underground for 21 days. 

When I resurfaced in '88-89, the anti-India movement had started. We were the first to join that movement both morally and politically. But as far as the militancy was concerned, we gave a call to our men that this was their job and not ours. As far as my ideology was concerned—if the men want to fight India militarily, they could do that, we women would be with them—we would look after their houses and their children. But practical military action cannot be carried out by women. 

Then, in 1990, our organisation was banned and in 1993 I was forced to go underground. Meanwhile, I got married to a mujahid with a militant organisation fighting against India. I was underground till 2004. 

What kind of support was your organisation providing to the militants? 

It was moral support that we gave to the mujahideen. We mobilised the people and told them of the problems faced by the Kashmiris. How India has occupied it illegally and how we must treat India as an aggressor. This is something we have to educate the people about and this is the work our women were doing. 

What is Dukhtaran-e-Millat all about? 

My organisation has a religious basis. It all started with my reading the Holy Quran, and the Holy Quran tells us that there is only one Lord. We believe in the oneness of Allah the Almighty. The whole universe has to be governed by the laws of Allah the Almighty. 

So, the strong belief of Dukhtaran-e-Millat is that we want the whole universe to be governed by the laws of Allah the Almighty. Based on Islamic teachings, we are fighting against India. I am telling you that this is Islam, this is my religion. 

  

'I don't believe in Kashmiriyat or nationalism. I believe there are just two nations, Muslim and non-Muslim.'

I don't believe in Kashmiriyat, I don't believe in nationalism. I believe that there are just two nations—Muslims and non-Muslims. I am a Muslim; I am least bothered whether I will be called a Kashmiri. I'm Andrabi, I'm from the Syed dynasty. I'm not actually Kashmiri, I'm Arab, my ancestors had come from Arabia to Central Asia. I believe in Islamic nationalism. 

So as far as our ideology is concerned, Kashmir is not a part of India because united India was divided on the basis of religion. No one can deny this fact. We want our future too to be solved on the basis of religion. 

This means you don't believe in nationalism, but in the ummah (the concept of a global Islamic community)? 

Yes, very much so. 

Don't you think that that is a big farce now? And what would be your contribution in creating an ummah? You can see how ineffective even the Arab countries are in solving the problem in Lebanon... 

You know there are hundreds and thousands of movements. It's not only Dukhtaran-e-Millat which is working in this field. There are movements working locally, everywhere. But they should be united. Islamic teaching says there should be one ummah and we have one leader—Prophet Mohammed. The ummah is one unit and we are working on this. This is not just the job of Asiya. It may not be completed in my lifetime. It may be Asiya's son or grandson. It is a goal which has to be achieved and it may take time, it may take hundreds of years. 

This, then, is your long-term goal? 

Yes, this is a long-term goal. And the short-term goal is that we want accession with Pakistan. Not with the idea of Pakistani nationality but inshallah Kashmir will become part of Pakistan, if not today, then some day, it may take decades. However, I do not call myself a Pakistani but a Muslim. Maybe if one day Kashmir will be liberated, I will not be in Pakistan, but somewhere else—part of the Muslim ummah. 

What is the approximate numerical strength of your organisation? 

I can't tell you that for security reasons. We have a president, I am Dukhtaran-e-Millat's president, we have a general secretary and then we have our central Shura in which we have two members from each district. Then, there are district presidents and district councils. We also have a publicity secretary. 

And you have links with other similar organisations outside India? 

Yes, we have links with those who are close to us as far as our ideology is concerned. We have interactions with them and regular contact with them. We can't travel outside Kashmir and we don't have passports. 

Under the PDP government, people feel that there has been a change for the better. Do you feel you have become irrelevant? 

I don't care whichever government is in power. I don't think there is any difference in governments—PDP, Congress or the National Conference. Because they are puppet governments taking orders from Delhi. So, I don't think that there will be any change. 

People accuse you of being a RAW agent. What would you say to that? 

Who has said this? Where have you heard this? I have said that I am against India, how can I be a RAW agent? I am neither an Indian nor a Pakistani agent. I am not anyone's puppet.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?232194

Asiya Andrabi, leader of the separatist Kashmiri women's group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation) -- also known as 'malika-e-maut' or 'malika-ul-maut'

Rethinking Kashmir Politics---Dr. Yoginder Sikand-the political project of Kashmiri nationalists-of a separate, independent state of Jammu and Kashmir-has absolutely no takers among the Hindus (and other non-Muslims) of the state

Rethinking Kashmir Politics

Dr. Yoginder Sikand-
the political project of Kashmiri nationalists-of a separate, independent state of Jammu and Kashmir-has absolutely no takers among the Hindus (and other non-Muslims) of the state

Many Kashmiri Muslims vociferously insist that the demand for independence of Kashmir has nothing to do with religion. Instead, they argue, that the conflict in and over Kashmir is essentially 'political'. What is conveniently ignored by those who make this claim is that religion and politics, particularly in the case of the Kashmir dispute, involving as it does the rival claims of Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-dominated India, can hardly be separated. 

As the current spate of violence in both the Hindi-dominated Jammu division and the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, triggered off by a controversial decision of the state government to allot a piece of land to a Hindu temple trust, so starkly indicates, religion and communal identities defined essentially in religious terms have everything to do with the basic issue of Jammu and Kashmir and its still unsettled political status. Kashmiri nationalists, in contrast to hardcore Islamists and the Hindutva brigade, quickly dismiss this point, finding it, perhaps, too embarrassing, afraid of being labeled as religious chauvinists or 'communal'. But, no longer, it seems, can the crucial role of religion in shaping the contours of the on-going conflict in and over Kashmir be denied.

That the on-going BJP-inspired agitation in Jammu has marshaled considerable support among the Hindus of Jammu clearly indicates that the political project of Kashmiri nationalists-of a separate, independent state of Jammu and Kashmir-has absolutely no takers among the Hindus (and other non-Muslims) of the state. Kashmiri nationalists insist that in the independent Jammu and Kashmir of their dreams, religious minorities-Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists-who would account for almost a fourth of the population, would have equal rights and no cause for complaint.

Some even boast, without adducing any evidence, of commanding the support of the non-Muslims of the state for their project. At the same time as they roundly berate the Dogra Raj as a long spell of slavery for the state's Muslims, they insist that the boundaries of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, as constructed by the same Dogras, against the will of the Kashmiri Muslims, be considered as sacrosanct, as setting the borders of the independent country that they demand. If, as they argue, Dogra Raj was illegitimate, then surely there is nothing holy about the state boundaries as laid down by the Dogras, bringing Jammu and the vastly different Kashmir Valley in a forced union. 

If, as they rightly insist, Kashmir was conquered against its will by the Dogras of Jammu, there is no reason why the forced union of the two should continue in the independent Jammu and Kashmir that the Kashmiri nationalists dream of, particularly given the Jammu Hindus' resentment of alleged Kashmiri hegemony, a sentiment shared even by many Jammu Muslims.

Kashmiri nationalists, however, would refuse to recognize this basic contradiction in their argument. The reason is obvious: To do so, to recognize that the Jammu's Hindus (and Leh's Buddhists) would resist, even to the point of violence, the agenda of an independent Jammu and Kashmir would clearly indicate the obvious, but embarrassing fact, that this agenda represents the aspirations and interests largely of Kashmiri Muslims, and is a means to legitimize Kashmir Muslim control over the rest of the state. 

The analogy with pre-Partition India is useful. The Muslim League insisted that because the Hindus of India were in a numerical majority, a united, independent India, no matter what safeguards it gave and promises of equality it made to the Muslims, would be dominated by the Hindus, and would, for all its secular and democratic claims, be untrammeled Hindu Raj. Hence their demand for a separate Pakistan. 

The Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Leh find themselves in precisely the same position as did supporters of the Muslim League in pre-Partition India, only now the actors have reversed their roles. Kashmiri nationalists insist they want an independent, united Jammu and Kashmir, just as the Congress did when it talked of a united and free India. And, like the Congress did with the Muslims, they promise the non-Muslim minorities of Jammu and Leh that their rights would be fully protected in this state of their dreams. Yet, just as many Muslims refused to accept the promises of the Congress, fearing that they would never be honored, the non-Muslim minorities in Jammu and Kashmir refuse to buy the arguments of the Kashmiri nationalists, which they rightly see as a thinly-veiled guise to justify Kashmiri hegemony. 

I have heard Kashmiris, including some of my closest friends, come up with the most ingenious arguments to counter the above point. 'Kashmiriyat, the teachings of love and peace of our Sufis, unite us all and would ensure that non-Muslim minorities will be safe and protected in a free Jammu and Kashmir', some of them say. A laughable claim, unless all Kashmiris suddenly decide to shun the world and trod the mystical path, an unlikely prospect. Sufism is in a rapid state of decline in Kashmir and elsewhere, as is the case with all other forms of mysticism. 

Then there is another bizarre argument, which I heard, among others, from none less than one of the chief ideologues of the Jamaat-e Islami in Kashmir and a fervent backer of Kashmir's accession to Pakistan, which runs like this: 

Islam lays down the rights of non-Muslims and insists that Muslims should respect them. The Prophet Muhammad himself did so. So, if Jammu and Kashmir gets freedom and becomes a truly Islamic state, the non-Muslim minorities will have full freedom and equality. That the Islamists whom he led had hardly done anything to promote anything even remotely approaching that sort of confidence among the state's minorities-in fact doing almost everything to completely alienate them-did not even cross his mind. 

The late Sadullah Tantrey, once head of the Jammu branch of the Jamaat-e Islami, even went on to insist, in all seriousness, that 'Indeed so happy will the non-Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir be in this independent Islamic state that even Hindus from India would line up to settle in the state.' I squirmed in my seat as he went on, stunned at his evident ignorance or hypocrisy or, as seemed more likely, both. 

I itched to tell him, as I sat before him in his house in Gath, up in the mountains of Doda, that the 'Islamic state' hardly outlived the Prophet Muhammad and has been completely extinct ever since; that the fate of minorities in scores of Muslim countries, even those like Saudi Arabia that claim to be 'Islamic', was deplorable, that even Jinnah had promised full equality to the non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan but that had not prevented them from being reduced to virtual second-class citizens, and that, simply put, he was lying or else living in a fool's paradise. I kept my mouth shut, however. After all, I was there to learn what his views were, not to preach.

Clearly, any forced union of the disparate nationalities in Jammu and Kashmir in the form of a separate, independent state that Kashmiri nationalists champion (as now do even some Kashmiri Islamists, former passionate advocates for union with Pakistan, who, flowing with the tide, have realized that their earlier stance has increasingly few takers among Kashmiris, given their mounting disenchantment with Pakistan) would be a sure recipe for civil war. The current agitation in Jammu is ample evidence of that. It is time, therefore, that pro-'Azadi' Kashmiri leaders admit this publicly. 

This is not, however, to plead the case for the division of the state, as the RSS has been advocating, for surely that would further harden communal boundaries and rivalries in just the same way as would the project of an independent Jammu and Kashmir. Rather, it is to recognize and publicly acknowledge the very plural character of Jammu and Kashmir, and the concerns and sensitivities of all its peoples, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others.