When she was going on assignment to Kabul, my friend Harinder Baweja came to me with a strange request: Can she borrow some long -term sleeved kurta? Shammi, as she is known among friends and family, wore only sleeveless blouses even in winter. But she left to meet the Taliban, who took over only after shooting President Mohammad Najibullah and then snatched his body from a pole. He then released a series of addicts, including serious sanctions on women, in which they wore clothes.
One of her generation female struggle reporters, Baweja cut off her professional teeth in Punjab at the height of extremism in the 1980s and saw militancy in Jammu and Kashmir with her first visit in 1989 and later Rubaiya Saeed’s daughter, the then Union Home Minister Muft Mohammed’s daughter sent Said to Jail.
She was there in Kargil in 1999. She left to interview underworld don Chota Rajan after the 1994 Mumbai blasts and to fall with Dawood Ibrahim. And she remains the only Indian journalist to visit the Lashkar-e-Tabiba headquarters in Muridke a few weeks after the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai and was again destroyed by the Indian Air Force after the Pahgam terror strike in the news.
Baweja’s book, They will shoot you, Madam: through my life strugglePublished by Roli Books was released earlier this week and I caught with the woman who saw a scene of most events in India’s history.
Let us start with sensational disclosure of how you were proposed by Yasin Malik, the then 28 -year -old hero of Kashmir. He called you late at his hospital for an interview where he was admitted. Why did you decide to nominate him and provide details of each other with him, not for that encounter?
I would not call it ‘propose me’, but a case of sexual harassment. When I sat down to write that chapter, I asked myself the same question because it has happened that it has been some decades. That memory is so deeply engraved within me, I needed the catentic comfort of words so that maybe it can tell it now.
When you are writing for a publication, your personal stories are never recorded. The book gave me the freedom to share my personal journey through struggle. I have spent four decades from one struggle area to another, meeting an artist of characters. Yasin Malik was an important voice in the nineties. He was called Che Guevara of Kashmir, the hero of Kashmir’s liberation movement. But I discovered a very terrible side for him.
Malik was arrested for the murder of four Indian Air Force officials and the abduction of Rubia Saeed, daughter of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Saeed, who returned after the release of five jail militants. But he was released in 1994 as part of a deal with the government. I booked my ticket on the same flight as I wanted to see the reception returned in Srinagar. The drive from the airport to Mesuma, usually not taken more than 45 minutes, did not take seven hours because it was crowded. When he reached Massuma, he fell from exhaustion and was admitted to the hospital.
A few days later, the promised interview is still pending, I was asked to meet Malik in the hospital late at night. Whoever covers Kashmir in the nineties, would know that it was not a complete to be out after sunset. But, I was not ready for what happened. I sat on the stool and extended my hand and asked, “Mujes will be friends (Will you befriend me)? “I really froze.
I went to him not as a female journalist but as a reporter. I wanted me to get professional treatment. Nevertheless, I gave him the benefit of doubt when I went back to Kashmir – I was 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 does 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 wanon ke saath (You had a good time in an army dinner last night). “I don’t think journalists need to taunt or scare in this way.
He was presenting himself as a person who believed in the principles of Mahatma Gandhi and non -violence. And there he was sitting and trying to make a pass on me. This was a ciring moment in my career.
As I wrote the story, I understood that I had no need to not tell the story because why women should do WhatsApp which they pass?
When you are writing about the Taliban, you say that the penis lens was important to understand the militia. Still during your book you insist that you do not wish to be recognized by your penis, but just as a professional journalist. Why not her penis as a woman?
I am not ashamed to be a woman. But I am not paying attention to myself by saying that “I am a female journalist.” Those who meet me know that I am a woman.
In my chapter on the Taliban, the gender lens was important as 50% of the population of that country was under the strictness of the turban army and was involved.
I always wore a sleeveless blouse, but in my first visit in 1996 I was the first thing for Kabul that there was a burqa. Within a few hours of the Taliban, women who were wearing miniskirts till then and going to dance clubs were kept under severe strictness, even forbidden to go to school.
So how can I tell this 50% story of that population what they are doing? This is once when my penis actually worked for my profit. This helped me understand what the family were doing without food. Afghanistan is full of widows. And they were, many of them were employed by NGOs, who were bringing money to feed their children and to feed themselves, to run their kitchen.
Today the Taliban has returned to power and the addicts are worse. One of the new versions is that women should not pray loudly inside their homes. They can only pray with whispering, and whisper should not be taken to any other male member of the family.
Imagine that kind of country. My problem is actually with the fact that the world is not focusing on 50% of this population, which requires help. When I went in 1996, the Indian embassy was closed and everyone left. Now, India is ready to talk to Taliban and Home Minister Sirjuddin Haqqani, once part of a terrorist network and announced by the United Nations Security Council, a person responsible for one of the most heinous blasts at the entrance of the Indian Embassy where 37 Indians were killed. I am sorry to say that we have no problem with it.
I do not listen to enough sounds, say, let’s think about the women of Afghanistan.
Your chapter on the Taliban is a cute a bit, where you are returning from the Panjshir Valley and you tell your driver how free and power you seem to take the wheel of the car and at that moment. Where did that impulse come from?
That impulse was a penis impulse. I needed to fix clustrophobia. I needed to tell myself that I could not be ruled by the rules that are only for women. I was suffocating, even if I never wore a burqa that I packed. I just needed to breathe. Even though I was there only for two weeks, but I will come close to losing my purity.
Every time I leave a struggle area, I feel guilty because I have the freedom to take flying and physically remove myself from that pressure field. But I keep thinking about women who live there, who do not have the freedom to go out. They have raised life only to lead and it is getting worse and worse because women are those who take husbands and sons on emotional pressure to lose. I have written about Parvina Ahangar, whose son disappeared one night in 1990. He became the active face of a group of Kashmiris, which Kashmiris referred to as “half widows” and established an organization to the Association of Parents of Dukeing persons.
Whatever concession I have received is from women themselves in the struggle areas. They feel comfortable talking to me because they feel that perhaps another woman will understand her pain and sorrow a little better than a man.
Women want to live with a sense of dignity and justice. But they simply live a clown life and so when I leave, I feel guilty because I can come back and go to a good dinner. But there are many like us which are clustrophobic and closters and remain.
In its area of ​​conflict reporting, there are still a handful of women in 2025. How have things changed since 1984 when you started?
In 1984, I posted for two years to Punjab. Frankly, I was an asymmetry and only another female reporter. The biggest newspaper, in the tribune, was an unwritten policy not to hire female reporters. Today, as we speak in 2025, the same newspaper has a female editor-in-chief, Jyoti Malhotra.
We need to see more about this happening. The number of women covering the conflict has certainly increased.
But controls are still many male. I have been a part of many news rooms and have seen what happens when women speak about sexual harassment. The first instinct is not always to talk about it. In a paper, a few years ago, there was a complaint, a committee was established, and the punishment was not that if he was found guilty, but his salary was cut, the person would lose his job.
The good thing is that we have learned how to fight and raise our voice. So this is a change from the time when I started my career. We need to make more progress and I hope we can do this because honestly, now there are many women and many of them have been talked about very bravely.
This is for this week. If you have a tip, response, criticism, please write me: namita.bhandare@gmail.com
