After debating the matter for a moment, Iltija Mufti decided to say it. “I don’t identify with this country anymore. I feel angry and let d...
After debating the matter for a moment, Iltija Mufti decided to say it. “I don’t identify with this country anymore. I feel angry and let down by what the government is doing. And how are people celebrating our pain?”
The 33-year-old knows the risks of making such an admission. Since August 5, when the Centre revoked special status guaranteed to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and split the state into two Union Territories, her mother, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, has been incarcerated in Srinagar. In February, the government invoked the Public Safety Act, a preventive detention law, against her and other politicians, all of whom had sworn their fealty to India in a region where separatism is the dominant sentiment.
Mehbooba Mufti was deemed a threat to public order because she spoke out against the government’s proposal to remove special status from Jammu and Kashmir and for being a “Daddy’s girl” when she entered politics. Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, her father, had been chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir until he died in 2016 and Union home minister before that.
Iltija rose to her mother’s defence. How was it a crime to be devoted to your parents, she demanded.
“If she’s her...
