Mind The Gap| In her words: Harinder Baweja
I spoke to Harinder Baweja, one of the first women conflict reporters in India, who has covered militancy in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Read on...
When she was leaving on assignment to Kabul, my friend Harinder Baweja came to me with a strange request: Could she borrow some of my long-sleeved kurtas? Shammy, as she is known among friends and family, famously wore only sleeveless blouses, even in winter. But she was off to meet the Taliban who had just taken over after shooting president Mohammad Najibullah and then stringing up his body from a pole. Then they issued a series of edicts that included severe restrictions on women, including how they dressed.
One of the few women conflict reporters of her generation, Baweja cut her professional teeth in Punjab at the height of militancy in the 1980s and witnessed insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir from her first trip in 1989 following the kidnapping and subsequent release of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of then union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in exchange for jailed militants.
She was there in Kargil in 1999. She went off to interview underworld don Chota Rajan after the Mumbai blasts of 1994 and his falling out with Dawood Ibrahim. And she remains the only Indian journalist to have visited the Lashkar-e-Taiba headquarters in Muridke, just weeks after the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai and in the news again after it was destroyed by the Indian Airforce in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror strike.
Baweja’s book, They Will Shoot You, Madam: My Life Through Conflict, published by Roli Books was released earlier this week and I caught up with the woman who has had a ringside view of the most tumultuous events in India’s history.
Let’s start with your rather sensational disclosure of how you were propositioned by Yasin Malik, the then 28-year-old hero of Kashmir. He had called you for an interview late at night to his hospital where he had been admitted. Why did you decide to go public by naming him and providing details of not just that encounter but a second one with him?
I would not call it ‘propositioning me’ but a case of sexual harassment. When I sat down to write that chapter, I did ask myself the same question because it has been a few decades since that happened. That memory is so deeply etched within me, I needed the cathartic comfort of words to perhaps tell it now.
When you’re writing for a publication, your personal stories never get recorded. The book gave me the liberty of sharing my personal journey through conflict. I’ve spent four decades moving from one conflict zone to another, meeting a cast of characters. Yasin Malik was an important voice in the nineties. He was called the Che Guevara of Kashmir, the hero of Kashmir’s liberation movement. But I discovered a very eerie side to him.
Malik had been arrested for the killing of four Indian Airforce officers and for kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the then union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who was returned after the release of five jailed militants. But he was released as part of a deal with the government in 1994. I had booked my ticket on the same flight as him as I wanted to see the reception he got back in Srinagar. The drive from the airport to Maisuma that normally takes no more than 45 minutes took seven hours because he was mobbed. When he reached Maisuma, he collapsed from exhaustion and had to be admitted to hospital.
A few days later, the promised interview still pending, I was asked to meet Malik late at night at the hospital. Anyone who has covered Kashmir in the nineties would know that it was a complete no-no to be out after sunset. But, I was not prepared for what happened. I sat down on the stool and he extended his hand and asked, “Mujhse dosti karogi (will you be friends with me)?” I actually froze.
I did not go to him as a woman journalist but as a reporter. All I wanted was professional treatment. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt when I went back to Kashmir – I was then visiting two or three times a month—but the second time, the harassment was worse. I was sitting face-to-face with him in a room. He had armed gunmen outside the door. It was scary. He said, “Can we talk about the moon and stars? Why is it always work?”
I talk about work because that’s why I was there. He told me, “Kal raat ko aap bahut aayashi kar rahin thi army walon ke saath (you had a good time at an army dinner last night).” I don’t think journalists need to be taunted like this or made to be scared.
He was projecting himself as a man who believed in the principles of Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence. And there he was sitting and trying to make a pass at me. It was a cringe moment in my career.
As I wrote the story I came to the understanding that there was no need for me to not tell the story because why should women whitewash what they go through?
When you’re writing about the Taliban, you say that the gender lens was crucial to understanding the militia. Yet throughout your book you insist that you do not wish to be identified by your gender, but simply as a professional journalist. Why not own your gender as a woman?
I am not ashamed of being a woman. But I’m not attracting attention to myself by saying “I’m a woman journalist.” People who meet me know I’m a woman.
In my chapter on the Taliban, the gender lens was crucial because 50% of the population of that country was under the strictures of the turbaned army and had been invisiblized.
I had always worn sleeveless blouses, but the first thing I packed for Kabul on my first trip in 1996 was a burqa. Within a few hours of the Taliban taking over, women who till then were wearing miniskirts and going to dance clubs were placed under severe strictures, forbidden from even attending school.
So how do I tell this story of 50% of that population without experiencing what they are going through? That is the one time that my gender really worked to my advantage. It helped me understand what families were going through without food. Afghanistan is full of widows. And they were the were the ones, many of them employed by NGOs, who were bringing in the money to feed their children and to feed themselves, to keep their kitchens running.
Today the Taliban is back in power and the edicts have become worse. One of the new edicts is that women should not even pray loudly within their own homes. They can only whisper prayers, and the whisper should not carry to any other male member of the family.
Imagine a country like that. My problem really is with how the world is not focusing on 50% of this population, which is the one that needs help. In 1996 when I went, the Indian embassy had shut down and everybody had left. Now, India is willing to talk to the Taliban and to home minister Sirajuddin Haqqani who was once part of a terrorist network and outlawed by the UN Security Council, a man responsible for one of the most heinous blasts at the gates of the Indian embassy where 37 Indians were killed. I’m sorry to say we don’t have a problem with that.
I don’t hear enough voices, saying, let’s please think about the women of Afghanistan.
There’s a lovely bit in your chapter on the Taliban, where you’re returning from the Panjshir Valley and you tell your driver to let you take the wheel of the car and how free and empowered you felt at that moment. Where did that impulse come from?
That impulse was a gender impulse. I needed to cure the claustrophobia. I needed to tell myself that I cannot be governed by rules that are meant for only for women. I was suffocating even though I never wore the burqa which I had packed. I just needed to breathe. Even though I was there only for two weeks I’d come close to losing my sanity.
Each time I leave a conflict zone, I feel guilty because I have the liberty of taking a flight and physically removing myself from that pressure zone. But I keep thinking of the women who continue to live there, who do not have the liberty of moving out. They just have wretched lives to lead and it’s just getting worse and worse because women are the ones who take on the emotional pressure of losing husbands and sons. I’ve written about Parveena Ahangar whose son disappeared one night in 1990. She became the active face of the group of what Kashmiris refer to as “half widows” and set up an organization called Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons.
The only concession I’ve ever got is from the women themselves in conflict zones. They feel comfortable talking to me because they feel that maybe another woman will understand their pain and grief a little better than a man would.
The women want to live with dignity and a sense of justice. But they just continue to live cloistered lives and so when I leave, I feel guilty because I can come back and go out to a nice dinner. But there are so many like us who are claustrophobic and cloistered and continue to be..
In your field of conflict reporting, there are still in 2025 just a handful of women. How have things changed since 1984 when you started out?
In 1984 I took a two-year posting to Punjab. Frankly, I was an oddity and there was only one other female reporter. At the largest newspaper, the Tribune, there was an unwritten policy of not hiring women reporters. Today, as we speak in 2025, that same newspaper has a woman editor-in-chief, Jyoti Malhotra.
We need to see more of this happening. The number of women covering conflict has definitely gone up.
But the controls are still very male- dominated. I’ve been part of several newsrooms and have seen what happens when women speak up about sexual harassment. The first instinct is always to not talk about it. In one paper, some 10 years ago, there was a complaint, a committee was set up, and the punishment was not that the man would lose his job if he was found guilty but a cut in his salary.
The good thing is we’ve learned how to fight and raise our voice. So that’s a change from the time that I began my career. We need to make more strides and I hope that we can do that because honestly, there are now a lot of women and a lot of them have spoken very bravely.
That’s it for this week. If you have a tip, feedback, criticism, please write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com
