Asiya Andrabi, the 36-year-old head of the Valley's largest women's militant organisation Dukhtaran-e-Milat (daughter of the nation) affiliated to the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, suddenly emerged from the shadows to make an impassioned protest recently. A low-profile firebrand, she normally shuns publicity of any kind. So when she broke convention to meet me (minus the veil too!) in September 1990, it was a scoop of sorts.I was escorted to her rather decrepit hideout in downtown Srinagar and asked to seat myself in a sombre room decorated with Arabic and Urdu posters and pictures of the Prophet. Given my surroundings, I expected Asiya to be grim, masculine and aggressive. When she entered, I got a shock. For the lady with a demurely covered head was quite the antithesis - fair, petite, soft-spoken, with tip-tilted nose and large grey eyes. Purely by chance, I was wearing a bottle green dupatta. At the sight of it, she smiled approvingly: ``You are wearing our favourite colour, the colour of Pakistan.''After that the ice was broken and the words flowed. In a mix of chaste Urdu and English, Asiya explained that she founded the organisation in 1987 for a social cause: ``We wanted to regain the rights of women given to them by Islam. Women were being exploited for business, their dignity had been eroded.'' In its avatar as a bold, social organisation, the Dukhtaran fought for special reservations for women in buses and enforced a social boycott of families who made dowry demands. In March 1987 came the outfit's most audacious act - they staged a rally against pornographic film posters, plastering black paint all over them. This provoked the wrath of the government. Their office was seized and warrants issued for their arrest. Thereafter, they remained under strict surveillance.The metamorphosis to a full-fledged militant outfit was gradual, with their primary activity confined to staging rallies and protests against excesses.Although Asiya claimed that the organisation mainly confined itself to nursing injured victims a la Florence Nightingale, she admitted rather reluctantly that they did a spot of intelligence and espionage work as well, ferrying messages to and fro. Not to mention house-to-house visits to whip up support for the movement.Asiya is the product of the political environment she grew up in at home. One of her uncles, Ghulam Mustafa Alvi, fled to Pakistan in 1965 to escape a death sentence, while another was a member of Alfata, a '70s militant outfit. Her brother, Dr Inayat Andrabi, was chief of the students' militant wing, the Jamaat-ul-Tulba.As a teenager, Asiya was a brilliant academic sans a revolutionary streak. At 18, she graduated in bacteriology, diet therapy and biochemistry, keen to go to Baroda or Dalhousie and earn a doctorate by the age of 24. But her brother detained her with the words: ``Don't go outside Kashmir as people there are very anti-Kashmiri.'' Convinced that her dreams were shattered, Asiya locked herself in her room one evening. And then fate intervened. Her hands fell on a book titled òf40óKhawateen Ki Dilon Ki Baatein (words from the hearts of women), a compilation of the writings of Islamic women revolutionaries. Eyes inflamed by religious fervour, she recalled, ``From that day I decided, I will live and die for Islam.''Despite the fury while talking about ``Hindustan'', Asiya revealed her softer side too. She spoke about her engineer fiance with stars in her eyes, and waxed emotional while relating an incident when innocent women and children were knifed. ``Even a woman who has never lifted a knife would feel like killing after seeing parts of human bodies strewn all over the place,'' she cried. But soon her guard was up again.
