Two Kashmiri Girls Want Their Daddy Home

David Devadas, The Quint 
Suzanne and Sundas are about the most intelligent, courteous, and self-possessed pair of sisters one could find anywhere.
If one called at their home over the past few years, one of them was likely to run to the door, usher one charmingly into the sitting room, and bring water and then juice or tea, while their father sat down to receive one.
I have seen the girls off and on since they were toddlers, and their behavior has always been impeccable, enough to make the most exacting parents proud.
They are the sort of girls that the designer of a campaign for ‘social value for daughters’ might want to conjure up. They would be perfect poster girls for a campaign to counter patriarchal biases towards sons.
On Thursday, the sisters came into the limelight for a sad reason. Their photographs were published alongside their public letter to Prime Minister Modi.
It is heart-wrenching for the sensitive, but the letter is nonetheless poised and dignified. In it, the two girls describe their meeting with their father in Tihar Jail—from behind a wall of glass so thick that voices could not penetrate. When their time was up, the intercom went dead, and the lights were suddenly switched off.
They could not even say goodbye. Their father, who suffers from diabetes and arthritis, had lost 15 kilos, they wrote, and had sores from insect bites on his face.
Here is the full text of the letter:
A Long Way From Home
Their father is called Shahid-ul Islam, and he has been media advisor and secretary to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq for the last two decades, since long before the girls were born. Shahid has kept up with various sections of society and has been so readily responsive to the media that it is little wonder that his daughters’ letter received wide coverage.
Shahid is among the secessionist leaders the National Investigating Agency (NIA) arrested last July. Like the others arrested, he has languished in Tihar for more than ten months.
His wife claims that there is no evidence linking him to terror funding, the reason behind these arrests. In fact, the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat is well-known as the ‘moderate’ faction of secessionist politics in the Valley.
A couple of its leaders have covertly met Dineshwar Sharma, the Centre’s interlocutor for talks over the past several months. And one of the group’s leaders—Abdul Ghani Bhat, a former chairman of the Hurriyat Conference when it was united—has publicly stated that there is nothing wrong in engaging in talks. No wonder, the girls state in their letter that their father is ‘pro-dialogue’ and belongs to the ‘moderate’ group.
They end the letter with the hope that the prime minister will personally intervene.
No Scope for Dialogue
Shahid is among the many ‘leaders’ in Kashmir who have fallen victim to the shifting sands of government policy. Around 10 to 15 years ago, representatives of the Centre encouraged them, even gave them perquisites. But over the past couple of years, they have been reviled as promoters of terrorism. The irony is that many of them are equally reviled by large sections in Kashmir, for being too flexibly disposed towards the state. They are especially targeted for abuse by the more radicalised youth, who now control the militant struggle.
In fact, Shahid is among the many prominent figures in Kashmir who live in fear of being gunned down on the streets—for being ready to engage in dialogue.
His daughters point out that he has been targeted twice.
Investigating agencies have taped conversations with some of the more ‘hard line’ separatist leaders, in which the latter admit to receiving large amounts of money from Pakistan to organise riots, arson, and other kinds of destabilising actions.
But Shahid’s relatives say there is no such evidence against him. Since he is the only one from the ‘moderate’ camp to have been arrested last year, it is possible that he was included among the arrested as a result of political calculations.
(The writer is a Kashmir-based author and journalist. He can be reached at @david_devadas.This is an opinion piece first appeared on The Quint.)