INDIA/ KASHMIR: Fifteen years of militancy in northern India's disputed Jammu and Kashmir province had killed off or chased away eligible bachelors, leaving thousands of local women unwed, frustrated and a burden to their families in this highly conservative region, writes Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Over 65,000 people had died in Kashmiri's Muslim insurgency, a large proportion of whom could have been eligible grooms for middle and lower middle-class girls.
But these young men had either joined the militant movement for an independent Muslim state or had fled, fearing they would be targeted by the security forces or various tanzeems (insurgent groups), always seeking fresh recruits to bolster their fast depleting cadres.
A large number of those who had joined the insurgency had mostly been eliminated in encounters with the security forces, or were members of various terrorist groups operating from neighbouring Pakistan that controls a third of Kashmir and lays claim to two-thirds of the state that has been administered by India since independence 57 years ago.
India accuses Pakistan of fuelling the Kashmiri insurgency, a claim that Islamabad tacitly admits and has pledged to end.
According to Women in Conflict, a survey conducted by Kashmir university and the UK-based Save the Children, there are over 300,000 widows in the state of which around 85 per cent were of marriageable age and wanted to wed again. Not more than 1 per cent had managed to achieve that aim.
Suraiya Khan, a 40-year old resident of Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, said she was engaged to a young man who had become a militant and died in a fire-fight with the security forces several years ago.
"Ever since then my parents have been looking for a suitable match but with no success," said Suraiya, one of three unwed sisters, who even attempted suicide once out of frustration of being a burden on her penury-ridden family.
Dr Mushtaq Marghoob from Srinagar's psychiatric hospital said he had encountered many cases where single women, eager to wed, had attempted suicide out of sexual frustration and the feeling that they were an encumbrance to their families.
Before militancy erupted this phenomenon was rare in Kashmir, he added. Even the handful of eligible grooms who had renounced militancy, were a risky proposition, as they were constantly being picked up by the security forces for questioning.
"I gave up militancy in 1996, but nobody wants to marry me as the police frequently summon me for interrogation in the mistaken belief that I can help them," Zahid Manzoor said in Srinagar. "At times they keep me for days and my family fears that, like many others, I might never return," he added ominously.
All, however, was not well for Kashmir's young men who were becoming increasingly dependent on Viagra, the anti-impotency male pill, as many had been rendered sexually dysfunctional after years of living under stress and violence.
Doctors in Srinagar said the Kashmiri insurgency had spawned a generation of youngsters suffering from "psycho-sexual malfunction".
Meanwhile, "foreign" terrorists from Pakistan-administered Kashmir were also turning out to be a serious health hazard, with their highly promiscuous behaviour under combat stress, contributing to the spread of HIV infection in the state, defence officials said.
According to estimates by the government-run AIDS Prevention and Control Society, there were 28,000 HIV-positive cases in the state.