Daily Times

Women in Delhi are unsafe but they can learn martial arts. Albeit a little paranoid, she was contented by the fact how little girls as young as eight-nine-years-old come to her for learning self-defence.

“Parents send their teenage daughters, in fact encourage them to take up martial arts as a semi-pro. Some girls even go professional and compete at state-level competitions,” she said to me. Her comments left me thinking.

While sitting on my desk surfing the Internet, television news channels and social media had the breaking news of two babies abandoned by their biological parents in a hospital in Srinagar. Though the Srinagar high court on Tuesday directed the state government to take all necessary steps to look after the two infants, but who will take the responsibility to give them the love and care that one receives as a baby from their parents? This got me thinking that defending oneself from direct physical harm is one thing but what about the unspoken tortures and truths? The issues related to women in Kashmir may not be as openly discussed like in Delhi but they are not any less troubling. Underneath Kashmir’s beauty and simplicity there is an ugly truth of teenage pregnancies. The pristine culture of Kashmir may be a model to many, but in reality the condition of young girls is extremely worrying.

Although, the conservative society in Kashmir may try its best to segregate girls and boys in public but that does not stop intimate relationships from developing secretly at a young age. I called up a family friend and doctor who works at the LD Hospital, Srinagar. While talking to her she explained the traumatising situation some girls are made to go through.

“It is impractical to imagine that a system could keep youngsters under constant supervision. In fact, in a repressive society where people shy away from discussing the dangers of unprotected sex teenagers are at a higher risk. Building taboos haven’t stopped teenage pregnancies in Kashmir.”

In Kashmir, the administration has traditionally struggled to implement any kind of sex education. We haven’t really seen any effort in the past to introduce and freely discuss sex education at the school or high school levels. There is very little awareness among youngsters about the seriousness of this very vital aspect of human life. Those in early teens are exposed to popular media, which mostly offers entertainment and no real information.

While writing this piece, I tried looking up papers or studies around this topic to back up my writing; I was amazed no comprehensive survey in Jammu and Kashmir has been carried out so far. Then I decided to speak to some of my friends back home. After continuous requests they let me speak with their younger siblings who are still in high school about their source of knowledge about sex. Most of them admitted that no one from their family ever addressed them on these matters. Curiosity drives most youngsters to the arms of the Internet, which then becomes the primary source of information.

Most girls also receive incorrect and often misleading knowledge about sex from friends, seniors and other random sources. Not shockingly, lack of awareness among girls is higher than the boys. This is often a dangerous situation leading to disastrous ends.

Another worrisome factor is the increasing use of recreational drugs in the Valley. Dr. Mushtaq Margoob’s book, Menace of Drug Abuse in Kashmir, published in 2008, states that the Valley has 2.11 lakh drug abusers. A study commissioned by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), conducted in 27 states by AIIMS, shows that the inhalants use among children in J&K is seven-eight percent while the heroin usage is 13.3 percent.

A major reason is the ongoing violence and economic turmoil in the region. Often young Kashmiri boys and girls seek refuge in drugs to overcome post-traumatic stress. This is directly linked to the lifestyle. Despite being reported as early as 2008, not much action has been taken to control drug abuse among Kashmiri youth. Children as young as 13-year-olds are falling prey to this menace. The drug abuse is complicated with the other social factors such as employment and changing family structures.

Kashmir is undergoing a sea of economic change and surely the lifestyles of the people of the Valley are bound to change with it. Parents are getting busier and in the cities, nuclear families are on the rise. It is now becoming common to see families where both parents work and they hardly get any time to listen to their teenage children. Puberty and adolescence are complicated for anyone and without parent’s guidance that could be especially tough. Children are often left unsupervised for long hours of the day and it’s hard to track their activities but supervising alone won’t solve the problem. A big part of modern lifestyle is TV and films. Popular media is largely entertainment driven and parental guidance is often absent.

I enquired the younger ones in my maternal family and their friends about their influences at home and if their parents spoke to them about their teenage problems. It was unfortunate to find out that TV and the Internet were more obvious sources of knowledge. Most children rarely had any discussion with their parents about puberty. Moreover, the effect of this was evident in the fact that many girls suffer from low self-esteem. Some teenagers develop body image issues early on as they don’t see themselves fit within the media-fed norms. This will give rise to a psychology that is both recklessly pleasure-seeking and self-harming. It is safe to assume that as more teens get on with drug abuse and television-triggered fantasies, more will be at risk of teenage pregnancies.

When it comes to the health department and social policies in Kashmir, things are always a matter of social limitations. Doctors find these issues increasingly difficult to tackle, as awareness campaigns on contraception, sex education, etc., are never supported by larger society. In Srinagar, one gynecologist I know, working in a private hospital in the Valley while wishing not to be named, told me girls as young as 14-years-old are brought in for abortion.

One time she had to save a young girl who had tried to commit self-abortion by popping some pills. Abortion pills should be administered by doctors only but as families are strictly private about such issues, they often take steps that have fatal consequences. “We often hear of deaths in teen pregnancy cases. Most of the times it means that the abortion went wrong,” says the gynecologist.

On another tangent, rural girls in Kashmir have a different problem to deal with. Underage marriages still happen in the remote parts of Kashmir; in rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir, maximum numbers of teenage girls are married between the age group of 16 to 19 years and this makes pregnancies all the more complex. Gender determination, though illegal in India, is commonplace even among urban families in Kashmir. The female child is still pretty much unwanted. Many medical practitioners are still operating ultrasound clinics for aiding female feticides. Welcome to Kashmir’s underbelly of medical crimes against women.

Lack of awareness on contraception may cause pregnancies but it also gives rise to another and very ugly problem of STDs. Kashmir has seen a lot of unrest over the years but the challenge that the present generation faces is of a more critical nature. Simply making policies will not help. If society fails to open up about teenage pregnancies, child marriages, female foeticides and lack of contraception, all efforts to restore Kashmir to its glorious past would be just superficial.

(A version of this op-ed appeared in print in Daily O on March 19, 2016)

The writer is a Delhi-based freelance columnist, born and brought up in Kashmir