The recent threat telling a Sopore college principal to enforce an “Islamic” dress code on his 3,000 girl students has brought the purdah debate back in focus. Especially after the threat led to the number of veil-wearing students in the college rise from a modest 29 to around 300.

Now, does this mean that purdah will soon become a Valley-wide reality? That other colleges and schools will follow the Sopore example? The answer cannot but be an emphatic No. Even in the Sopore college, 300 students are a small percentage of the 3,000 girl students who’re enrolled with 4,000 boys.

It has more or less been like this in the Valley over the past two decades. That may have been an exceptionally turbulent period but Kashmir’s social orientation has by and large emerged unscathed. Truth is, the Valley doesn’t easily fit the newfangled stereotype of an Islamic conflict zone.

Even so, talking about purdah in Kashmir requires a certain degree of caution. Appreciating the tendency of Muslim women to discard the hijab could run afoul of religious sentiment — that might well, ironically, be shared by women who wouldn’t normally wear the veil. So, it is essential that we have an antiseptically neutral approach in our engagement with the issue.

Neutrally, the dominant impression is that while there may not be a study on the purdah in Kashmir, it is rare to come across a burqa-clad woman in the markets. This is in spite of the fact that the place has intermittently been witness to some determined moral policing campaigns.

... contd.