Narendra Modi told in a meeting that If Omar (Abdullah) married outside Kashmir; his rights of being a citizen remain whereas his sister Sara loses the right for the same. Is this not discrimination against the women in the state, This is a factual fallacy of Narendra Modi, as many of his statements show. In 2004, the state high court, in the case of State of J&K vs Sheela Sawhney, declared that there was no provision in the existing law dealing with the status of a female PR who married a non-resident. Yes, it is true that patriarchal mindset are always trying to make an amendment in such PR laws. In 2010, the J&K Permanent Residents (Disqualification) Bill was introduced as a private member’s bill on the floor of J& K Legislative house and it was later dropped, but not because of the unacceptable position it embodied. It was dropped on ‘technical’ grounds because a bill which required a constitutional amendment could not be introduced in the upper house. The bill has been dropped for the moment. But in the absence of a women’s movement in the state and given, in particular, gender insensitivity within the political class, politicians in search of emotive issues can at any point rally once again around this biased and retrograde bill. Though I am apolitical and never find my self on the same bench with either BJP or RSS, I am thankful to Narendra Modi for raising this gender equality question in Article 370. Now I think it will be harder for patriarch lead Kashmiri politicians to dream for such misogynist bill. I wonder how they can think that if demographic change is the issue, then it is men rather than women who need to be debarred from marrying outside the state because unlike women, who exit the state and cannot pass on this right to their husbands or children, the men can.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 06:36:15 +0000