Kr Swarn Kishore Singh
At the outset I will bluntly refute the words of Jahangir, the Mughal king who while exalting Kashmir had come up with a Persian couplet which meant, if there is a paradise on earth, it’s Kashmir. No doubt Kashmir is a treat for a poet, as it has it all; snow clad mountains, green plains, high plateaus, calm rivers, swift streams and what not. But it is very myopic of a person to claim such as absurd claim and that too when he has visited neither southern nor north-eastern parts of India. But one thing which everyone must agree is that there is something very magnetic with Kashmir that it attracts so much of international attention. There has to be some reason why Kashmir has taken more media space and government time than any other state in India and that too without any positive turnover.
Every time I try to write about Kashmir, there is one thing which I feel tempted to share; my experience on my maiden visit to valley. I visited Kashmir for the first time in the summers of 2011. I reached Srinagar at around 2 0’clock, de-boarded my cab at the tourist reception centre and then took a mild walk till I reached the famous Dal Gate. From Dal Gate I boarded a mini bus for Hazratbal, where my friend who was a professor in NIT Srinagar had promised me boarding till my stay in the valley. Living at fringes of valley i.e. on the lofty Pir Panjal region had weaved a sort of prejudice in my mind that after two decades of the ethnic cleansing and boasting of installation of Nizam-e-Mustafa in Kashmir, the societal set up in Kashmir would be primitive and very conservative. College boy and girls cannot be seen having a walk along the roads and the public display of love and affection, a far off thing for Kashmir. The moment I stepped into the mini bus; I found a couple enjoying the maximum intimacy one could afford publically and even more. This thing astonished me very pleasantly. And then when I reached the campus of Kashmir University I saw those Beckhamish spikes and French beards in same amount of abundance as I had noticed in Delhi University. The Bollywood tinge in the set up of the youth there was in no case less than any other university in India. Next day, while being on the way to Chashma Shahi, I entered the scenic Botanical Garden, the scenes I witnessed there, are something which should better left un-described for sake of sedateness and sobriety. Conservativeness; a big NO, as far as lifestyle is considered; Kashmir is anything but conservative, but like any other Indian city.
This experience of mine triggered my curiosity to learn more about Kashmir and the “Kashmiriyat”. Hence to learn about Kashmir I started scrolling through the pages of history of Kashmir, because I have always believed in Pearl Buck’s saying which says “if you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday”. Kashmir is not at all a normal place; its geographical location, landscapes and its coordinates all explain to us that there is something pretty special. Otherwise two nuclear forces would not have had been on logger heads for no reasons. Infact it is not only India and Pakistan but every big player on international arena is having a specific stance over the issue of Kashmir according to their interests. It is very much understandable that two estranged siblings i.e. India & Pakistan won’t fight three wars for the landscapes of Kashmir, so there is something bigger to it than a normal person can even think of. The control over this location further translates in control over south and south-east Asia. Infact Kashmir is the only point for India, which borders a ruthless Pakistan, disturbed Afghanistan and cunning China. Therefore to understand the importance and strategic significance of Kashmir come let’s peep through the window of history.
According to popular etymology the name Kashmir is a fusion of two Sanskrit words i.e. Ka & Shimeera; Ka means water & shimeera means to desiccate. Also it is known that Kashmir was settled by the son of Rishi Maraichi and grandson of Lord Brahma, Rishi Kashyap. According to Rajatarangini, a history of Kashmir written by Kalhana in 12th century, there was nothing but water in Kashmir valley. Rishi Kashyap drained the lake and then invited Brahmins to settle there. Even during Mahabharata, Kashmir was ruled by Kambojas who ruled it for very long time. Then the city of Srinagar is founded by famous warrior and Mauryan emperor Ashoka. Ashoka settled this city not because it was beautiful but he wanted it to be developed later considered as one of the highest seat of learning of Buddhism. Actually the strategic location of Kashmir was taken into consideration by Ashoka for propagation of Buddhism to central and East Asia, in which he succeeded very well. Infact, Taxila was the centre for learning which is positioned in the feet of Himalayan range and so he developed Srinagar which falls in the lower hills of Himalayas, as a transit for central Asia and East Asia. Infact a lot of historians even claim that classical Sanskrit was first developed in Kashmir. And after the third Buddhist council in Pataliputra (today’s Patna), a separate missionary was deputed to go to Kashmir & Kandhar. Hence a lot of Buddhists flocked to Kashmir for the purpose of study.
Then be it Gonanda dynasty, Karkota dynasty or Utpala dynasty, Kashmir had been ruled by either Hindu or Buddhists. They ruled the valley with a lot of grandeur and peace; it was they who set the standards of culture of Kashmir who in modern times is popularly and politically termed as Kashmiriyat. The first and only time some intruder has plundered Kashmir was Mahmud Ghazni was in 1014 AD which was followed by two more attempts by him which went in vain. And Muslims started ruling Kashmir only after 14th century. And the irony is that the first Kashmir muslim ruler was a bhudhhist who later converted to Islam. King Rinchan, a Ladkahi prince had a Hindu wife, converted to Islam and became Sadruddin Shah just to win the trust of the people he was ruling. The king was ruling a kingdom which was muslim majority, so he converted to Islam just to synchronise himself with the wishes of the people he ruled. Kashmir is such a place where Kashmiri culture i.e. Kashmiriyat takes precedence over religion. In 1339 AD, after the assassination of Udayanadeva and subsequent suicide of Queen Kota Rani Shah Mir, his minister took over in a coup and hence started first Muslim dynasty to rule Kashmir. Even during Mughal period in the rest of India, only Akbar who was known for his secular credentials was able to sneak into and rule Kashmir. And when Aurangzeb, the cruel king was ruling Delhi, Kashmir automatically slipped away due his religious atrocities. Even Sikhs were not able to rule Kashmir after they closed Jama Masjid, banned azaan and imposed heavy taxes. The Sikh rulers were forced to reduce the taxes and get their policies subdued. Infact Kashmir and Kashmiriyat are not something which has anything to do with the religious beliefs of its inhabitants.
Deep down inside Kashmiris are not fundamentalists and they are very much comfortable with multi-religious society. But the religious diversity of this region was exploited when General Zia-ul-Haq took over the reins of Pakistan. The time Gen Zia effectuated a coup in Pakistan; India was experiencing a renaissance in the shape of first non-congress government. Hence in Indian political set up the ruling parties were too inebriated in post-emergency hangover and too engrossed in managing the first ever coalition government of independent India to have given attention to paradigm shift in Kashmir was going through. New Delhi was busy in calculating permutation and combinations for distributing ministerial berths and hence General Zia exploited the political instability to its extreme. Infact the ruling parties in Delhi had every reason to worry as nobody wants to have a rival like iron lady Indira Gandhi. In the state also the Sheikh Abdullah too was elated after finally donning the power galleries after going through a very tough struggle, a betrayal from a dear friend Jawahar lal Nehru, hence an extended imprisonment. Hence the graveness of this issue went unnoticed even before a hawkish Shiekh Mohd. Abdullah. Kashmir was cruising well with Shiekh Abdullah as the captain, but his death in 1982 and then hanging of Maqbool Bhat in 1984 triggered things to worse. Then the famous and shameful rigging of elections by Congress in 1987 elections provided a vent for Kashmiris to rebel against India. And then the emergence and acceptance of a Syed Ali Shah Geelani as their hero led to radicalisation of valley which further translated into the famous ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits. Geelani started portraying Kashmir as a minuscule of Pakistan and then mishandling of the military uprisings in Kashmir further worsened the issue.
This orthodox and extreme societal set up is indeed a new thing for them; Kashmir has been known for being a secular territory since early times. The in-built software of Kashmiris is truly secular, which believes in harmonious co-existence without any violent expression of majoritarianism. Neither Kashmir nor Kashmiriyat belongs to any particular faith. Kashmir is a geographical entity and Kashmiriyat is a cultural entity, so we need not confuse it and hence connect it with a particular faith. Kashmiriyat means Kangdi not Klashankov, Kashmiryat means playing with snow balls not pelting of stones, Kashmiriyat mean unhurried and leisurely flow of Jehlum not gushing out of blood from Kashmiri youths. Kashmiriyat means the sweet voice of chirping birds but now it’s all about the painful noise of grenade blasts. Kashmiriyat meant poetry but now it’s all about propaganda. Kashmiryat meant business of handicrafts and fruits and now it is about the business of death. Kashmir meant love for beauty of nature not the lust of money and power. It is high time the youth of Kashmir to shun the business of death and start transactions of love and life. Kashmir had been known for this since long and now the onus is on us to take the legacy forward.
(The author is an advocate working in Supreme Court of India & a political and legal analyst)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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