Pheran ban in Kashmir led to the rise of two social media stars

Shazia Bakshi (left) and Roohi Nazki (right)| Twitter

Kashmir’s Shazia Bakshi and Roohi Nazki show how to use social media for a good cause.

The ban on the pheran, the result of a supposed misinterpretation of a Jammu and Kashmir government order asking officials to “be attired in proper formal dress”, may have been withdrawn, but not before it created a storm on social media.

The local education officer who had issued it subsequently withdrew the order, but lovers of the pheran were already pouring out their anger on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by posting their own pictures wearing the state’s best-known fashion creation – one that it has been most identified with since Sharmila Tagore dimpled her way through Kashmir Ki Kali in 1964 wearing a pheran with flowers in her hair.

Leading the online storm were two Kashmiri women – Shazia Bakshi (@shazia on Twitter), granddaughter of former Jammu and Kashmir prime minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, who runs a travel agency in Delhi, and Roohi Nazki (@chaijaai on Instagram) in Srinagar, the brain behind the well-known tearoom, Chai Jaai (tea place in Kashmiri). Bakshi tweeted under the hashtag #Saynotopharanban and tagged well known Kashmiris and her close friends, among them IAS officer Shah Faesal and R.J. Nasir. Nazki, the wife of former PDP powerhouse and well-known economist Haseeb Drabu, started a contest on social media with the hashtag #pheranlove asking people to post pictures of themselves wearing the pheran on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and add a line on why they love their pheran.

Bakshi says she started her campaign after noticing former chief minister Omar Abdullah’s tweet on 17 December, which said the “regressive order” made no sense. “Pherans are a very practical way of keeping warm during the cold winter aside from being part of our identity,” he tweeted along with pictures of himself and his father wearing pherans. Indeed, pherans are practical because they are large enough to carry the kangri inside, which can only be described as a portable coal heater. Bakshi who asked people to post their pictures wearing the pheran with the additional hashtag #proudtobeakashmiri is delighted the “stupid ban” has been revoked. The Lady Shri Ram graduate was an administrator with Delhi Public School Srinagar and founder member of the youth wing of CII in Srinagar.

Nazki, whose intricately designed cafe sits atop the famous Mahatta’s photo studio, says the “Pheran is not just a garment for us, but also a piece of history and heritage that we wear on our sleeves as it were”. She says she wanted to make the point that the ban is socially unacceptable and culturally offensive but in a “positive way”. The contest asking people to express their love for the pheran has been flooded with entries. “We are sharing 24×7 because we want to honour the sentiment of all those who have shared their beautiful memories with us,” she says. And indeed from cherubic babies to pretty girls in red lips to cool kittens, the photographs say it all. There are over 800 posts hashtagged #pheranlove so far, while Bakshi’s #saynotopharanban post on Twitter has over 660 likes.

Proof that even in these times of social media being used to divide and deride, some good can come out of deploying it for a just cause. So, the next time Bollywood’s half-Kashmiri rising star Alia Bhatt decides to wear the pheran, as she did in Imtiaz Ali’s Highway (2014), it won’t be merely a fashion statement, but perhaps also a political expression?