Aasiya Andrabi, aides icons of Kashmir resistance

2026-03-26 - 01:30

Raies Mir Aasiya Andrabi, 64, a scholar and teacher of Islam, a prominent resistance leader, is a founding chairperson of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, the largest all-women socio-political and religious organization that advocates for Kashmir’s accession with Pakistan and liberation from Indian colonization. Her organization was helping widows and orphans of those martyred by the Indian state in the occupied territory since 1989. She was born in 1961, graduated in Biochemistry from Women’s College, then completed her post-graduation in Arabic and Islamic Studies from University of Kashmir. In 1983, she endured an Indian army raid inside her college premises in Srinagar. It was an attempt to curb growing student protests; students were dragged out of their classrooms and hostel rooms and beaten mercilessly, including female students. The treatment meted out to the students of her college by the Indian forces of occupation agitated Aasiya Andrabi. She climbed up to a pedestal and while addressing her fellow students questioned the Indian army’s high-handedness inside educational spaces. Thousands of students gathered around her, echoed her sentiments, and raised slogans in favor of liberation and Islam and against the human rights violations. In the charged atmosphere, she led the protesting students from college to the central city’s Lal Chowk where more civilians joined her, emboldening her voice. She became one of the most important women Hurriyat leaders in the valley. She married Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, known as Dr Qasim Fakhtoo, in 1990. Sentenced in a fabricated murder case by Indian agencies, Dr. Muhammad Qasim Fakthoo, a scholar, has been in jail since 1992. He has completed 36 years in jail. Aasiya Andrabi has two sons; younger is Ahmed bin Qasim, while elder is Muhammad bin Qasim. Andrabi founded her religious beliefs on the teachings of Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith. In pro-Pakistan and activism, Aasiya in 1982, was associated with a Madrassa ‘Talimul Quran’ for women which was later turned into Dukhtaran-e-Millat. She started inviting women to read, understand and practice their faith. She was helping poor families and education women about the Kashmir in its historical background in context with two Nations Theory and Indian occupation. The inspiration behind formation of “Dukhtaran-e-Millat” she said is, “I was an ambitious girl. I was shocked by this objection on my wish to study outside. But in that disappointed state Mayil Khairabadi’s book ‘Khawateen ki Baatein’ came to my rescue.” The cover story of the book was of Maryam Jameela, a Christian woman who converted to Islam after studying the religion thoroughly. For Aasiya, Jameela’s story was “an eye opener” to practice Islam. She started inviting women to read, understand and practice their faith. “This was the aim of my life now. We mobilized to bring Islam in our society,” she added. One of the campaigns of the Darsgah was to demand reserved seats for ladies in local buses while other was to remove posters of nude women across the cinema halls – before the era of massive armed struggle started in the valley. It was only after five years of the formation of her organization, the government objected. “After the elections were held in 1987, darsgahs were locked throughout the valley. When they reached us, our women resisted. I was young and full of passion to resist,” Aasiyaadded. “But police raided my house and office. They told my father that I was mobilizing women against India but he retorted saying that I was just trying to bring social reform,” she recalls. In 1985, the Ministry of Culture, New Delhi, flew a troupe of Kashmiri female dancers to Delhi, to perform in a cultural program. These dancers, from poorer sections of society, were compelled to take up this work. Aasiya and her women contemplated the situation of the dancers and organized a full-fledged movement against it. They discussed women’s exploitation and their sexualized use only for amusement in colonial government circles. Aasiya drafted her first pamphlet, ‘A Message to the Daughters of Fatima’, and distributed it among young women in various places in Srinagar. Questioning the state’s role in the exploitation of women, Fatima Zahra RA, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), was presented as an alternative symbol of piety and womanhood as against Bollywood’s construction of women. The Kashmiri community applauded Aasiya Andrabi and her follower for their work on the issue. The daily Aftab, a Srinagar-based newspaper, called them ‘Dukhtaran-e-Millat’ (Daughters of the Nation), a name that they happily adopted. The single Ḥalaqah branched out in every district of the Kashmir valley—women from the middle and lower classes became part of the movement. Dukhtaran organized a media cell, and Aasiya’s lectures were recorded and made available as CDs and cassettes in the local market for wider consumption. In 1985-1986, Aasiya took the movement further by making certain demands to the government; the first was a demand for separate, reserved seats for women in public transport as they suffered daily due to men overcrowding the buses. Aasiya who did not believe that anything could be gained by meeting ‘corrupt, pro-India politicians’ even decided to meet the then chief minister Farooq Abdullah along with fifty other women and impressed upon him the need for separate buses for women but he rejected their demand and mocked it, saying that we were living in the 20th century and Asiya, with this demand, was trying to take a regressive step which would take Kashmir back to 1400 years ago. To this, Aasiya responded that as far as she was concerned, it would be best for humanity to return to the just Prophetic values of that era. Aasiya Andrabi was 25 years old in 1987 when the elections were held in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. She believed strongly that the movement for liberation couldn’t be sustained through the process of sham elections and that it was a political blunder and a moral contradiction to want liberation from India on the one hand and swear by the Indian constitution, on the other. She believed that the solution to the Kashmir issue can emerge from within the Indian apparatus and instead requires an international intervention. Aasiya supported the armed resistance against the occupation and considered it a UN-acknowledged legitimate right of the oppressed people to resist oppression by any means necessary. In 1987, Aasiya decided to take her politics against women’s colonial exploitation to the next level. They organized a street procession of about ten thousand women and armed with brushes and black paint they blacked out posters of scantily clad movie stars. The idea was to challenge the normative and exploitative commodification of women which the Indian state promoted as progress and liberty. Everything about commodification perturbed Asiya, “to sell a single matchstick even, they use a nude woman”, she said in one of the interviews. The movement wanted to put across the point that Muslim women were not commodities and justice is against normalization of such exploitation. The government saw these protests as an expression of anti-occupation politics. Her office and home was raided, and religious books including the copies of Quran were desecrated. Aasiya faced monthly arrests from 2007 to 2009. During the mass agitation and unrest in 2010, she was held for two consecutive years.