On March 24, a Delhi court sentenced Asiya Andrabi, the founder of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, to life imprisonment under India’s anti-terror law, years after her 2018 arrest and months after her conviction in January. Two of her associates, were also handed long prison terms. Andrabi, known for her pro-separatist views and advocacy for women’s rights within the context of Kashmir’s political struggle, has become a significant figure in the narrative surrounding Kashmir.The verdict will be presented by the Indian state as proof of resolve. Its supporters will call it the triumph of law. Yet politics, especially in Kashmir, has never been contained by judicial finality alone. The long-standing conflict in Kashmir, which began in the late 1940s after the partition of India and Pakistan, has been marked by significant human rights violations, ongoing violence, and a complex interplay of nationalism and regional identity.
That is the deeper point her imprisonment raises. Andrabi is not politically significant because she is free. She is politically significant because, for many Kashmiris, she has come to represent a stubborn refusal to yield under pressure. The more relevant question is what repeated incarcerations do to a conflict already shaped by memory, grievance, and the feeling that force has been allowed to substitute for persuasion.
Andrabi is not politically significant because she is free. She is politically significant because, for many Kashmiris, she has come to represent a stubborn refusal to yield under pressure.
Like Yasin Malik before her, Andrabi now enters that difficult space where a political actor ceases to be merely an individual and becomes a symbol. Malik’s 2022 life sentence did not close the Kashmir question; it merely shifted it further into the language of repression, endurance, and unresolved anger. Malik, a prominent leader of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, has long been an influential voice in the Kashmir separatist movement.
The same question looms large on Andrabi’s case.
History has shown this repeatedly. Confinement often suppresses organisation in the short term, but it can deepen emotional identification in the long term. This is especially true where the imprisoned figure is seen not simply as a politician, but as someone who absorbed personal loss without abandoning the cause she espoused.
In Andrabi’s case, that symbolic weight is amplified by gender. Kashmir’s political icons have overwhelmingly been male.
According to reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, women in Kashmir have faced unique challenges during the conflict, often being subjected to violence and loss but denied spaces in political narratives.
Her prominence has therefore carried an added charge, especially for women who see in her not merely a separatist leader, but a figure of endurance in a conflict where women have often borne the burden of loss while being denied political centrality. That does not make her beyond criticism. It does explain why imprisonment alone cannot dissolve her place in the Kashmiri political imagination.
India may believe that another high-profile conviction strengthens its hold by demonstrating that separatist politics has been reduced to the courtroom dock. Yet the record of modern conflicts suggests a more sobering lesson.
That is the contradiction at the heart of Kashmir. Every new sentence may reinforce the state’s control. It may also reinforce, among many Kashmiris, the belief that dissent is being answered not politically but punitively. Reports suggest that the ongoing crackdown on separatist leaders and activists has only intensified calls for self-determination among various segments of the Kashmiri population. Thus, we have before us, the start of another bloodied chapter in Kashmir’s journey towards freedom!
The writer is a freelance columnist