WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
INDIA - KASHMIR-JAMMU
- POTENTIAL LAW ON WOMEN'S MARRIAGE OUTSIDE
THE STATE - COULD RISK WOMEN'S
PERMANENT RESIDENT STATUS/BENEFITS
For
the moment the Bill, recently introduced in the Jammu
and Kashmir legislative assembly - that sought to ensure that a woman
who marries outside the state would lose the status of being a
Permanent Resident of the State - has been dropped.
By Rekha Chowdhary
Jammu (Women’s
Feature Service) - While the rest of the world was celebrating the 100th year
of Women’s Day on March 8, 2010, a process of disempowering the women in Jammu
and Kashmir (J&K) was initiated, with the introduction of the J&K
Permanent Residents (Disqualification) Bill, 2010. Introduced as a Private
Member Bill, it laid down that a woman who marries outside the state would lose
the status of being a Permanent Resident of the state. By implication such a
woman would also lose the privileges associated with the status of being a Permanent
Resident, including that of holding property in the state, securing jobs in
state services, voting for the Legislative Assembly, or contesting elections.
While introducing the
Bill, Murtaza Khan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) stated that a female
Permanent Resident acquires the status of her husband and ceases to be a
Permanent Resident on her marriage to a person who is not a Permanent Resident
of the state. The Bill was later dropped, but not because of the unacceptable
position it embodied. It was dropped on ‘technical’ grounds since it required
an amendment to the Constitution, which could not be introduced in the Upper
House of the Legislature.
It is important to
note that this was not a 'freak' Bill, introduced just by an 'odd' member. It
has a certain politics and a history. The Permanent Resident status follows the
State notification of 1927 and 1932 that classified the residents of the state
in various categories and provided them with special rights. However, this
notification nowhere made a distinction between men and women. Through some
administrative fiat, however, a practice was started of stamping on the
Permanent Resident certificate issued to women the words: 'Valid till
marriage'. As a consequence, a woman had to procure an altogether new
certificate of being a Permanent Resident after her marriage. In case she
married outside the state, she automatically lost that status.
In 2004, the High
Court of the state, in the case of ‘State of J&K versus Sheela Sawhney’,
declared that there is no provision in the existing law dealing with the status
of a Female Permanent Resident who marries a non-resident person. The provision
of women losing their status of permanent resident after marrying outside the
state, therefore, did not have any legal basis. This decision was declared as
historic because it corrected an administrative anomaly and brought relief to
women who married outside the state. They were no more to lose their status as
Permanent Residents of the state.
However, the PDP-led
government sought to undo the relief given by the High Court by introducing the
‘Permanent Residents (Disqualification) Bill, 2004’, which clearly laid down
that a woman marrying outside the state would lose her Permanent Resident
Status. The PDP’s viewpoint was revealed in a statement given by Muzaffar Beg,
who was the Law Minister at that time. He argued that it was “universally
accepted that the woman follows the domicile of her husband”. The Bill was
supported by the National Conference and was passed in the Lower House of the
State Legislature. Ultimately, it could not be passed.
It was a similar kind
of Bill that was sought to be passed in March 2010. As in 2004, the logic put
forth in defence of the resurrected Bill was that it was necessitated to
preserve the ‘Kashmiri identity’ facing an onslaught from exterior sources. The
right of women to marry outside the state and retain their status of Permanent
Resident was seen as going against the ‘autonomy’ and ‘special status’ of the
state. There is an on-going campaign that maintains that such a right given to
women would ultimately lead to demographic change in the state.
The issue as it has
been raised so far, by implication at least, seeks to pit the equal rights and
dignity of women against the ‘Kashmiri identity’. The whole debate smacks of a
patriarchal mindset. 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 be a Permanent
Resident to their husbands or children, the men can. In any case, Kashmiri
identity is defined in a very exclusive manner that automatically places women
at a very disadvantageous position as they are required to subordinate their
rights to the larger Kashmiri identity.
There are many in
But there are women
in the state who decry this hierarchical ordering of rights. They argue that
Kashmiri identity is inclusive and a woman is as much a part of this identity
as a man is. When the Bill came up this time, they questioned its patriarchal
bias which renders women as secondary members in society. They demanded to know
how there could be a full empowerment of the Kashmiri ‘people’ without the
empowerment of women? And, most importantly, how can the Kashmiris as ‘people
in movement’ negate the issues raised by the women’s movements and deny women
their rights. Isn’t the empowerment of Kashmiri women very much part of the
‘greater cause’ of ‘empowerment of Kashmiris’, they ask. Although their
arguments are forceful, the voices of these women have been drowned out in the
passions aroused on the issue of Kashmiri identity.
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.
(The writer is
Professor, Department of Political Science,
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