“This is rape culture language”: Activist Kavita Krishnan on Modi’s rhetoric toward Kashmiri women

Since India enforced a crackdown on the disputed territory of Kashmir on Aug. 5, people in the region have been under a severe communications lockdown and experienced shortages of food and medicine. Kashmiri women and girls have expressed particular anger about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statements implying that the change in territorial rights would liberate women, according to feminist activist and member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Kavita Krishnan. Krishnan, who recently visited Kashmir on a fact-finding mission, says the rhetoric is part of the Indian government’s ongoing efforts to dehumanize the people of Kashmir, as if “Kashmiri people didn’t count.” In response to Indian politicians expressing derogatory comments about imposing marriage on Kashmiri women, Krishnan relayed that Kashmiri women say they’re “being talked about as though [they] are the spoils of war, as though [they] are apples and peaches of Kashmir for somebody to just steal. This is rape culture language coming from the ruling party toward the Kashmiri girls and women.”

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