Camera: Mukul Bhandari
Editor: Mohd ibrahim
Hours after Home Minister Amit Shah effectively revoked Section 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, social media was abuzz with sleazy videos of men revelling in the fact that they will finally be able to marry Kashmiri girls.
Then, Vikram Saini, a BJP MLA from Muzaffarnagar, was caught on video actually asking his Muslim workers to start celebrating as they can now marry ‘gori’ or fair girls from Kashmir.
First things first.
Have these guys met someone called consent?
You may wanna marry Angelina Jolie, but she ain't gonna marry you, right?
Secondly and most importantly, you first need to understand that women's lives are not your proxy battlefields. You cannot use them as props to further your agenda.
Revoking the Article has simply offered some Indian men a bizarre sense of entitlement – for some, the law basically means that they have the ‘right’ to anything and everything that is Kashmiri. Including women.
While there has been a surge in misogynistic posts online, I wondered, who ever told these men that women in Kashmir were banned from marrying non-Kashmiri men in the first place?
News flash – they are no damsels in distress, and their life's primary motive isn’t to get married.
Also, check out what Google Trends say:
It showed that Indians were searching most for 'Kashmiri girls photos' and 'how to marry Kashmiri girls’ and ‘how to buy land in Kashmir’ as the most searched items after Section 370 was effectively revoked.
TikTok too wasn’t far behind. Several users made videos about having a sasural in Kashmir or ‘getting’ girls from Kashmir. In another, a TikTok user has posted posters of films with titles like "Bahu Kashmir Ki" to express what the Bill means to him.
Twitter too wasn’t far behind in spreading this misogyny. Men doubled up the micro blogging website for a dating app.
I mean, really guys? Is this what Article 370 is for you? You should probably read this article and this article and this article to understand what the situation is really like for the Kashmiris living inside and outside the Valley.
What's obvious is that no matter what race, religion or community we're talking about, we never seem to be able to stop appropriating women's bodies. Take a look – in most tweets and posts, Indians are equating property/land with women. In short, women in Kashmir are once again being silenced, without a choice in the matter.
Oh and lastly? Your saviour complex is your problem. Your racist ideology is your problem, your patriarchal mindset is your problem. So fix it before you make TikTok videos or maybe stand in line to be a politician.
And if you still have problems understanding women's rights, then Google will probably be able to help you.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)