Nadiya Shafi is a social worker, feminist and one of the most promising young leaders in the Kashmir women’s movement. But it didn’t always look like it would turn out that way. The Kashmiri society can be extremely oppressive of young women like Nadiya, who are discouraged from considering a career beyond marriage. But Nadiya wanted more. After completing a Masters Degree in Social Work from University of Kashmir in 2010, she worked with different local and national level social organisations. When VV launched its KashmirUnheard project in September 2014, Nadiya took up the job with the team. Working also as a video editor for VV and a mentor of other Correspondents, she is a role model for all the young female – and male – Correspondents in the KashmirUnheard team.
From her earliest days with VV, she hungered to learn more about the National Women’s Movement. In winter 2016 she traveled to Delhi to intern with her hero Kamla Bhasin, the South Asia Coordinator of One Billion Rising, who in turn was very happy to be able to mentor a young feminist from Kashmir. Their strong bond is evident in this video.
“I think, in Kashmir, which is a conservative society, the gender related mindset is so deeply rooted that people don’t question the traditional thread of society, which is predominantly patriarchal. Instead, they follow the same traditions even if they contradict with the Islamic beliefs,” says Nadiya, talking about the deeply patriarchal Kashmiri society. After her return to Kashmir, post her internship, Nadiya has taken forward her own feminist education by leading a Gender Discussion Club on patriarchy, as part of VV’s KhelBadal campaign. Her Discussion Club is made up of students, artisans, housewives, and shopkeepers, both men and women.
Nadiya has produced many stories on arts and culture, such as stone carvings, crochet, a female Sufi painter, and Kashmiri food. But her bravest work is her extensive documentation of Kashmiri half-widows and the Kashmir Unrest in 2016. She has explored the lives of “half widows”, women whose husbands have gone missing during the conflict, but who are not accorded the rights entitled to widows. But doing this kind of reporting has its risks: due to the pressure built on her by state police and military for her work on half-widows, she had to leave for Delhi for a year and a half.
In summer 2016, when Kashmir experienced one of the worst unrests in a decade, she was back in Srinagar, and traveled with Zuhaib, a VV editor, on her scooter into the conflict zones to document what was happening. She was surely one of the only women to do so. One of her most harrowing videos from this period was shot in a hospital, featuring a doctor speaking out against the army’s use of pellet bullets just after he operated on the damaged eyes of a patient. She also documented cases of state impunity towards young boys and girls. Her documentation of the unrest has featured voices from both sides of the conflict – the stone pelters and CRPF personnel.
In 2017, NDTV is following her as she carries out a case study of women affected by the Kashmir conflict.
