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The women of Budgam did not carry slogans. They carried steel plates. On each plate, toffees. The man they had come to see was not a religious leader or a local strongman. It was the Lieutenant Governor, leading a padyatra against drugs.
The image is small enough to miss. A group of women, standing at the roadside. Not in the main procession. Not behind party flags. Just there. Plates in hand. Toffees stacked. Waiting.
When LG Manoj Sinha passed, they stepped forward. Offered the plates. He accepted. They stepped back. The march moved on.
What does a toffee signify in a drug war? Nothing in the language of enforcement. Everything in the language of society.
The Nasha Mukt Abhiyan has, until now, been framed as an administrative offensive. Arrests. Asset attachments. Cancelled passports. Sinha has spoken of “narco palaces” and the need to dismantle the supply chain. The language is that of a state at war.
But the women of Budgam were not waging war. They were offering sugar. A domestic gesture. The kind extended to guests, to visitors, to those one wishes to honour.
That gesture, in the context of a drug march, is not ceremonial. It is positional. It says: we are here. We are watching. We approve of this. And we are part of it.
Kashmir’s public sphere has rarely included rural women as active participants. Political rallies, protest marches, even awareness campaigns — these have largely remained male spaces. The women of Budgam, by stepping to the roadside with their plates, did something quietly radical.
They did not seek permission. They did not wait for an invitation. They positioned themselves in the path of power and offered sweetness.
LG Sinha’s administration will continue its enforcement drive. The “narco palaces” will be attached. The passports will be cancelled. The law will do what the law does.
But the law alone has never cured addiction. Communities do. And when women in rural Kashmir decide that a drug march is worth stepping out for, with toffees on steel plates that is not a footnote to the campaign. It is the campaign.
