SRINAGAR: The first all-girl rock band in Indian-controlled Kashmir has decided to disband after only one concert because of threats its teenage members received on social media and a demand from a top Muslim scholar that they stop performing.
The fate of Pragaash, which means “First Light” in Kashmiri, highlights the simmering tension between modernity and tradition in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Separatists criticized the band for what it said was “Western-style cultural waywardness.” Adnan Mattoo, the rock group’s music teacher and manager, said the three high school students who formed Pragaash — drummer Farah Deeba, bass guitarist Aneeqa Khalid and singer and guitarist Noma Nazir — won’t talk about their decision to disband and what led to it.
“They feel terribly scared and want an immediate end to this controversy once for all,” Mattoo said yesterday. “First, the girls had decided to quit live performance due to an online hate campaign and concentrate on making an album. But after an edict by the government’s own scholar, these girls are saying goodbye to music.”
Pragaash performed in public for the first time in December in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
It won third place in an annual “Battle of the Bands” rock show organized by an Indian paramilitary force as part of a campaign to win hearts and minds in the region.
Soon after the show, Kashmiri pages on social networking sites like Facebook hotly debated the band. Some questioned whether the performance was appropriate in the Muslim-dominated society in Kashmir and others raised broader questions on the Islamic approach to music and role of women in the society.
The controversy deepened Saturday after Omar Abdullah, the region’s top elected official, promised a police probe into the threats and wrote on Twitter that “the talented teenagers should not let themselves be silenced by a handful of morons.” The girls then became a political tool for all sides in the conflict.
Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad, Kashmir’s state-appointed cleric, issued a fatwa Sunday ordering the girls to “stop from these activities and not to get influenced by the support of political leadership.”
Kashmir’s main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, criticized Abdullah for selectively supporting freedom of expression and said the band’s concert was “a step toward diverting young girls toward Westernization.” However, the alliance distanced itself from the cleric’s edict and denied the girls were under threat. “Indian media is blowing up a small issue with a purpose to defame the Kashmiri freedom struggle,” the alliance said.
Experts say for most people in Kashmir, neither women performers nor music are a problem. “It becomes an issue when these strings are used to subvert a dominant political reality,” said Wasim Bhat, a Kashmiri sociologist.
Kashmir has a long tradition of poetry and music, and has produced iconic female singers including Raj Begum, Kailash Mehra, Naseem Begum and Shamima Azad, the wife of India’s health minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad.