Every time tragedy strikes Kashmir, one thing is almost guaranteed: before the facts settle, before institutions respond, before society pauses to reflect, women are placed in the dock.
The recent floods that ravaged parts of the Valley should have sparked serious conversations about climate resilience, urban planning, environmental degradation, illegal construction, shrinking wetlands, and administrative preparedness. Instead, social media found a far easier explanation. Women were blamed.
According to countless self-appointed guardians of morality, the floods were not the consequence of changing weather patterns or decades of environmental neglect. They were supposedly God’s punishment for girls wearing jeans, pursuing higher education, speaking freely, using social media, or refusing to conform to someone’s narrow imagination of “tradition.”
Then came the reported rape case in Baramulla.
Instead of outrage directed solely at those accused of committing the crime, social media once again performed its favourite ritual: putting the woman on trial. Questions immediately shifted from the conduct of the accused to the character of the survivor. Where was she? Why was she there? Why did she trust them? Why didn’t she leave? Why this? Why that?
Notice the pattern.
When roads collapse, women are blamed.
When floods arrive, women are blamed.
When sexual violence occurs, women are blamed.
Apparently, in the imagination of many online commentators, women are responsible for everything except the actions of men.
This is nothing but cowardice.
Victim-blaming is perhaps the most convenient form of moral laziness. It demands no evidence, no reflection, and no accountability. It merely requires pointing a finger at the person who has already suffered. It transforms empathy into suspicion and justice into public humiliation.
What makes this culture especially dangerous is that it disguises itself as concern for morality. Those who spend hours policing women’s clothing, friendships, education, and mobility often remain remarkably silent when confronting male violence. Their outrage is selective. Their morality is conditional. Their courage extends only as far as criticising women.
If preserving morality means endlessly monitoring girls while excusing boys, then what is being preserved is not morality but patriarchy.
The recent floods exposed another uncomfortable truth. Instead of demanding answers about disappearing wetlands, blocked drainage channels, reckless urbanisation, and poor disaster preparedness, many people preferred theological shortcuts. Blaming women is easier than questioning governments. It is easier than challenging environmental destruction. It is easier than admitting that natural disasters have scientific causes.
Science does not recognise misogyny as a meteorological explanation.
Rivers do not overflow because women pursue careers.
Cloudbursts do not occur because girls attend universities.
Climate change does not pause to inspect anyone’s clothing.
Yet absurd explanations continue circulating because they comfort those who fear social change more than environmental collapse.
The same intellectual bankruptcy appears whenever a woman reports sexual violence.
Instead of asking why men commit rape, society asks why women trusted them.
Instead of asking why perpetrators feel entitled to violate consent, society asks why the survivor travelled somewhere.
Instead of examining violence, society examines femininity.
This inversion of responsibility is not accidental. It is deeply political. It protects male privilege by making women permanently responsible for preventing men’s crimes.
Imagine applying the same logic elsewhere.
If someone’s house is robbed, do we ask whether they deserved it because they owned valuable possessions?
If someone is assaulted on the street, do we conclude that walking outside invited violence? Of course not.
Yet sexual violence remains one category of crime where many people instinctively investigate the victim before considering the accused.
Nothing reveals society’s prejudice more clearly.
Social media has become the loudspeaker of this prejudice. Hidden behind anonymous profiles, countless users issue moral verdicts without evidence, circulate rumours without verification, and destroy reputations without consequence. Every comment demanding that women “behave properly” contributes to a culture where survivors hesitate before reporting crimes.
And then society wonders why so many cases remain unreported.
Perhaps because women know that reporting rape often means surviving two assaults: one committed by the perpetrator and another committed by public opinion.
Equally disturbing is the circulation of alleged videos or photographs relating to sexual violence. Every share, every download, every forward transforms spectators into participants in the violation of another human being’s dignity. Those who consume such material while claiming moral superiority should examine their own conscience before lecturing anyone else.
There is another hypocrisy that deserves attention.
Many of the same individuals who lecture women about modesty remain silent about pornography, domestic violence, child abuse, harassment, and everyday misogyny. Their activism begins and ends with controlling women.
This selective outrage exposes their priorities.
Their concern is not virtue.
Their concern is control.
Kashmir deserves far better than this endless cycle of misogyny disguised as tradition.
Our history is rich with scholarship, poetry, compassion, and resilience. Yet some voices continue dragging public discourse backwards by treating women as permanent scapegoats for every social anxiety.
No society has ever progressed by silencing half its population.
No civilisation has ever achieved justice by humiliating victims.
If morality is invoked only to discipline women but never to challenge violent men, then it has ceased to be morality altogether.
The Baramulla case must proceed through the legal process, where evidence; not Facebook comments or WhatsApp rumours, determines responsibility. Courts exist precisely because mob opinion is neither reliable nor just.
The recent floods should likewise compel serious discussion about climate adaptation, environmental planning, and public infrastructure, not baseless attempts to transform natural disasters into weapons against women.
Kashmir stands at a crossroads. One path leads towards science, justice, empathy, and constitutional values. The other leads towards superstition, misogyny, conspiracy theories, and endless cycles of victim-blaming. We cannot walk both roads simultaneously.
The real flood threatening Kashmir is not merely the water that enters homes. It is the flood of ignorance that enters public discourse. It is the flood of misogyny that drowns compassion. It is the flood of prejudice that washes away reason.
Until that flood recedes, every woman who survives violence will continue fighting two battles; one against her attacker and another against a society that refuses to stop asking the wrong questions.
The measure of a civilisation is not how loudly it preaches morality. It is how courageously it stands beside the vulnerable.
Kashmir must decide whether it wishes to be remembered as a society that protected women—or as one that blamed them for everything.
The writer is M.A. in History from University of Kashmir, Srinagar. munshiyamin5@gmail.com
