Freda Bedi Looking “From a Woman’s Window” on Kashmir

Abstract

In 1943, Freda Bedi – a woman who was English by birth but who made her life in South Asia – wrote a pioneering weekly column “From a Woman’s Window” for a leading nationalist-minded daily newspaper in Punjab. Four of these columns were about Kashmir, touching on the rising tide of nationalist politics there and women’s participation in the emerging popular movement led by Sheikh Abdullah. This article republishes these four columns and explores who Freda Bedi was, how she came to be engaged in radical Kashmiri nationalism and why her writing continues to merit attention. Some of her observations prefigure the women’s movement which emerged several decades later. “Alone a woman is helpless and knows it,” she wrote concerning the grievances of non-privileged Kashmiri women. “Together with her sisters bound by common trouble and suffering she can show greater strength than she or the world dreams of”. Freda Bedi’s subsequent engagement with Kashmir is also described – including her participation in the Quit Kashmir agitation against princely rule of 1946 and in the Kashmir women’s militia of 1947–1948.

Keywords:

• Kashmir
• Freda Bedi
• women in Kashmir
• Kashmiri nationalism
• Sheikh Abdullah

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Whitehead

Andrew Whitehead is the author of ‘A Mission in Kashmir’, New Delhi: Viking Penguin, 2007 and ‘The Lives of Freda: the political, spiritual and personal journeys of Freda Bedi’, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2019. He is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and an associate editor of ‘History Workshop Journal’. He is a former BBC India correspondent.