Brave Arusa, Kashmir’s young achiever, stands up to trolls over Hijab row

 

When results of the class 12th exam in Kashmir were declared by the Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education (BOSE) on Tuesday, February 8, there was unexpected jubilation, particularly among the female students and their families, across the valley. Most of the top merit positions had been grabbed by the girls.

While the girls outclassed the boys in all streams of Science, Commerce and Arts, they grabbed the lion’s share of the first 20 positions as well as the overall distinction categories. Among the girls, 78 percent passed the exam—27,104/34,879. Among the boys, not more than 72 pc—26,971/37,301—qualified.

Arusa Parvaiz Shah (17), the daughter of an ordinary shopkeeper and a student of Kashmir Harvard Naseembagh, secured the first position of merit among all streams. She obtained 499 out of 500 marks i.e. 98.8 pc.

On Saturday, 12 February, Srinagar’s Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Aijaz Assad draped Arusa with the State honours. She revealed her ambition of taking admission in IIT Delhi and becoming a nuclear scientist. Assad, the young IAS officer himself an alumnus of IIT Delhi, counselled her to try for Engineering Physics as it would ultimately lead her to the nuclear science stream.

The unexpected elation at Arusa’s home was quickly dampened by the valley’s unbridled moral Police, enjoying a field day on the internet after the Supreme Court of India read down certain sections of the Information Technology Act. As soon as someone is seen in conflict with a particular secessionist or Islamist narrative, raucously sustained by the militancy’s overarching ecosystem, familiar toll brigades begin to shoot in the social media.

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