Vanshika Sharma
With such a celebrated and glorious past the Dogras have not just conquered regions but have conquered hearts. But the question that we as a collective need to ask ourselves is, where do we stand now? The Dogras are being victims of an identity theft that needs to pop out with full enthusiasm into the public discourse before our coming generations get verily deprived of our vibrant Dogra culture.
Walter Roper Lawrence, who served in the Indian Civil Service under the British calls the Maharaja, Ranbir Singh, in his book, Valley of Kashmir, “a model Hindu Prince, devoted to his religion and to Sanskrit learning, but kind and tolerant to the Mussulmans, to whom he allowed free exercise of their religion”. This is the key takeaway that our ancestors have taken from the Maharajas and what has hitherto been the legacy of the Dogras, that is, “preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.” However, many Dogras have misunderstood this idea of preserving their own identity and therefore, have been merely left as ‘closet Dogras’ due to which we have been witnessing the growing density in cultural incompetence and decadence amongst the Dogras. The Dogras have been articulating their grievances on the issue of discrimination that they have been encountering because of the valley. But a major question that we need to put forth here is, is it justifiable to blame the valley for our cultural decay? Are the roots of our culture so weak that they could be jolted so easily? Is our culture vulnerable because of somebody’s robust cultural competence? Common! We can do better than this. But how? How do we carve our path towards the preservation of the glorious culture that our Maharajas have left for us? We need to pull our socks and set an expedition to preserve our culture.
In this expedition, the first and the foremost step is that of acceptance. We need to accept our identities and be proud of what we as a group of people have collectively to exhibit. We do not just have to accept our identities but respect the intersectionalities present in the regions of Jammu & Kashmir during our course of this expedition. Secondly, we need to unleash ourselves from the linguistic barriers.It’s due season that we cease getting conscience-stricken whilst conversing in our language. Let’s be the ‘Khand Mithe Dogre’ (Dogras are sweet as sugar) that we are. A lot of education is carried out either in English or in Hindi in the Union territory of
Jammu and Kashmir because of which the young educated population is unable to converse fluently in Dogri. In order to curb this problem, we need to promote pedagogy in Dogri language in schools and universities. Thirdly, we can’t jeopardise the importance of theatres in this journey which will help foster the culture if we use them wisely. George Santayana has very aptly said,
“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” In this case, we need to learn from England. In England, before the Restoration period, theatres played a major role in exhibiting English culture. But in 1642, the parliament decided on closing the gates of the theatre. As an aftermath of this, through the eighteenth century, there was a huge cultural decadence resulting in the seeping of French culture into England. A lot of poets rose in antagonism against the influence of the French as a soft power. Although the theatres reopened in 1660, but with a condition. The state imposed censorship on the theatres and press which curtailed the freedom of expression of the people of England, thus, resulting in further festering. In opposition to this, Pre Romantic poets like Samuel Johnson stood rock-ribbed, with saturated levels of chutzpah due to the growing consciousness of the decadence and claimed that this age of Licencing was an age of Silencing! (notice the wordplay). We do not have a facist licence age, then what is stopping us?The heads and shoulders of the Dogras will never bend in keeping the very idea of a single nation intact yet it will be very unfair if the Dogras keep submitting in order to preserve the idea of ‘oneness’ whilst putting their cultural identity at stake. It is high time we come out of our illusions. It will be wise to swim oceans for our nation, yet to sink in it and neglect our culture can turn out to be suicidal!
We dilligently need to visit all these spots during our expedition.After visiting all these spots we might have a cultural revival. And the sooner we revive, the better. Let’s have a Dogra Rennaissance soon.
(The author is a student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women University of Delhi)
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