Year: 2018

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A Brief history of Book Banning in Kashmir

Following is an extract from “Kashmir: The Untold story of Men and Matters” (1987) by B. L. Kak (1941-2007). The section “Fever and Fear” offers the readers a glimpse of the regressive tide that was building up in Kashmir at the end of 80s. How the violence of 1990 was just the natural outcome of the movement or tahreek that was underway in the crevices of Kashmiri society and how this society was inverted and conformed till regressive voices became mainstream voice of the populace. Like all violent right wing projects, the “revolution” starts as a cultural project in which books are the first targets and the last step in a call to arms. 

“Knowledge is a treasure; zeal without knowledge is like a fire without light .” A reality, as it is. And you cannot refute it. Ironically, however, most of the Kashmiri Muslims have proved themselves opponents of all books of knowledge. Instances, in this connection, are numerous. A thing of the past, though, became quite an event in Kashmir in April 1982. The police went against a local writer. The step against him was, curiously, ordered about four years after he printed his book in Urdu language in Srinagar and circulated in parts of the State in May 1980. And the unostentatious writer, Tej Bahadur Bhan, was baffled by the action against him. Indeed, immediately after his arrest, he pleaded for a quick answer from a police official to his question: “Have you gone through my book”? It was not for the police official to have an academic discussion with Bhan as the latter had been rounded up on the charge that his bool contained some objectionable material.

On the other hand, however, Bhan’s close associates were intrigued when police lifted him and kept him in detention, though for a brief period. It was not unknown that Bhan’s arrest had followed the protest demonstration by activists of the militant Jamait-i-Tulba in Baramulla, 32 miles from Srinagar, against the book – “Pehchaan”. Scores of Kashmiris, especially writers and intellectuals, found it difficult to appreciate the police action against Tej Bahadur Bhan. It was apparently in this context that 17 known writers and artists, including Ali Mohammad Lone, Autar Kishen Rahbar and Bansi Parimoo, demanded Bhan’s release as, according to them, his detention had violated the freedom of expression. Happily for Bhan, some opposition and Congress (I) members in the Indian Lok Sabha, in Delhi, also condemned the government, headed by Farooq Abdullah, for the writer’s arrest after he had supported Darwin’s theory of evolution in his book.

While most people began to think that this Darwin hatred had come rather late, Muslim fundamentalists in Jammu and Kashmir were dead earnest about keeping the “corrupting” influences away. These fundamentalists found Bhan’s book highly objectionable and demanded it be banned and the writer prosecuted. There was already a long list of banned books in Kashmir and most people outside the State might have been surprised to find Bhagwat Gita in the ban lost of Kashmir varsity. A case charging Bhan with attempt at hurting the sentiments of a particular community was registered. And Ali Mohammed Watali, then DIG of police, said that the police had launched a careful study of the issue. This was one positive fallout of the controversy since the study of the book could at least initiate policeman to literature and other intellectual pursuits.

That was the time when Kashmir’s education department found itself in a quandary. A serious problem had cropped up, making it difficult for the authorities to support the quoted saying: “Knowledge is a treasure; zeal without knowledge is like a fire without light.” In other words, valuable protestations by a section of the Muslim fundamentalists against the introduction of NCERT syllabus in educational institutions in the State created practical dilemma for the policy-making body in education department. Jamat-i-Islami and Tableegul Islam were credited with a success after the Farooq government did not hesitate to oblige them by proscribing a book on history meant for 6th standard in schools covered under the NCERT syllabus. The banning of the book, which allegedly contained derogatory reference to Islam, had further encouraged a section of the Muslim fundamentalists to demand withdrawal of NCERT syllabus itself.

During G.M. Sadiq’s tenure as Chief Minister the Muslim militants had whipped up popular sentiments against a famous printed document titled “Bool of Knowledge” which allegedly contained some anti-Islamic material. Demonstrations were organised against the existence in Kashmir of the book. Gripped by religious frenzy, demonstrators had attacked foreign tourists in skimpy clothes and a stinging treatment was given to a few European women – nettle was rubbed on their exposed legs. At the boulevard of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, a foreign tourist was compelled to shout “ban Book of Knowledge”. But the ingenious foreigner with unconcealed sarcasm [shouted] “ban all books of knowledge”. The Sadiq government soon proscribed the book and also unconditionally released those arrested for violence during the agitation.

After Shiekh Abdullah’s return to power in 1975, Muslim fundamentalists succeeded in removing several books from educational institutions and reference libraries. These books included studies on Darwin’s theory of evolution, A Short History of the World by H.G. Wells and Monuments of Civilisation. The last mentioned book contained a pencil sketch of the Prophet and this sparked off angry demonstrations, starting from the Kashmir University, and resulting in a series of violent incidents. Jamat-i-Islami was then accused of having incited the agitation, but the charge was stoutly denied by party president, Saduddin, who asserted that it was his party’s intervention that had saved the situation. However, a section of Kashmir University students complained to the then Governor, B.K. Nehru, that the party and its youth wing, Jamait-i-Tulba, were injection communalism into campus life. It was alleged that followers of these organisation had tried to build a mosque on the campus and also sought closure of the unique Central Asian Museum.

The campaign against the museum was started after the museum claimed to have identified a figure on the coloured tiles of the building to be that of said-philosopher, Syed Mohammed Madani Ali Kashmiri. Popularly known as Madin Sahen, the saint came to Kashmir in the 15th century from central Asia. he and his son were buried near a mosque at Zadibal on the outskirts of Srinagar. The museum survived the closure campaign thanks to stiff opposition from many influential Kashmiri Muslims, including Shiekh Abdullah. interestingly, in view of the attitude of the fundamentalists, booksellers in the State began to ensure that the books they put on sale were non-controversial. A leading bookseller in Srinagar had to engage an experienced Muslim teacher to go through several books on Islam before he put them on sale. Similarly, many librarians had voluntarily removed such books and periodicals that could provoke the irascibility of fundamentalists.

Even after the formation of the Congress (I) backed government headed by G.M. Shah a serious development had taken place with the high-pitched cry for Islamic order in the Muslim-majority Kashmir. The cry and unhindered actions by a section of the Muslims to communalise the situation perturbed most of the Hindus, particularly those residing in villages. And although the authorities in Srinagar and Delhi reaffirmed their resolves to stamp out the evil of communal politics, the growth in the activity of Islamic fundamentalists in towns and villages of Kashmir had become a reality with a phenomenal increase in the number of protagonists of Islamic order in a decade. The decade that was: June 1975 to June 1985. With the removal of Congressmen from power in February 1975, hundreds of Muslim fanatics got an opportunity to intensify behind-the-scene efforts on the need for the preservation of Muslim character of Kashmir.

Even Sheikh Abdullah, after his installation as the Chief Minister in 1975, was found encouraging actions designed, as they were, to unite Muslims and to increase the number of Islamic institutions, including mosques, not only in the two capital cities of Srinagar and Jammu but also elsewhere on the State. The Sheikh called himself a secularist. And yet he always advocated the need for the preservation of Muslim character of Kashmir. True, as the ruler of Kashmir for over seven years, he did not allow his opponents belonging to the Muslim-dominated groups to grow. But these opponents belonging to the right-wing Jamait-i-Islami, Jamait-i-Tulba, People’s League, Mahzi Azadi and People’s Conference were not prevented from open and secret attempts to strengthen and widen Islamic centres.

New Delhi had been apprised of the Shiekh’s unwillingness to know out those Muslims who had engaged themselves in activities seeking establishment of more and more Islamic institutions, particularly mosques, in Kashmir. But the ruling party at Delhi could not assert itself simply because of the Sheikh’s capacity to whip up passions of his con-religionists. Curious, indeed, was the oft-repeated statements by senior Congress (I) leaders describing the Shiekh, after his death in September 1982, as “a secularist” and “highly progressive in outlook”. Equally curious was the statement by the leader of the State Congress (I) Legislature party, Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, describing the Sheikh as “a communal politician sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism”. Less than a month before the Sheikh’s death, Sheikh Tazamul Islam, President of the Jamait-i-Tulba, said that his party was being reorganised to bring about an Islamic revolution in Kashmir. In an interview published in “Arabia,” a journal published from London, Tajamul mentioned that, as part of the programme, students and youths were being trained and drilled for achieving “our goal of establishing an Islamic government in Kashmir.”

About a year after the Sheikh’s death, Jamait-i-Tulba and People’s League voiced the demand for acquiring arms for their workers and supporters. What for? Just to prevent “Hindu chauvinists” from attempts at doing away with the distinct identity of the Kashmiri Muslims. Before its merger with the Mahzi Azadi, the Muslim League had asked the Muslim youth to join “jehad” against secularism and for Islamic fundamentalism in Kashmir. The message was contained in a booklet in Urdu language circulated in Srinagar and elsewhere in the State. The 32-page booklet urged the Kashmiri Muslims to “prevent daughters of nation (Kashmiri nation) from moving around half-naked in educational institutions, offices, shops and public parks, to force closure of cinema houses and liquor shops, to eliminate narcotics like hashish which have fouled atmosphere in cities and towns and to revive your Islamic identity.” The booklet blamed outsiders (apparently meaning Indians) for attempts to “annihilate” Muslim religion and called upon Kashmiris to initiate a “struggle” against them.

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Genesis of Utility of “last rites of KP” in mythical Kashmiriyat narrative


Claude Lévi-Strauss tells us that people think about the world in terms of binary opposites—such as high and low, inside and outside, person and animal, life and death—and that every culture can be understood in terms of these opposites. “From the very start,” he wrote, “the process of visual perception makes use of binary oppositions.

In the narrative of Kashmir, if Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims are the binary, under what conditions do these binaries interact with each other? Is there a pattern to the narrative used to define the relation between there binaries? Perhaps there is. Every year as violence rages in the valley, we find media latch on to the stories of Kashmiri Muslims performing last rite of some forlorn Kashmiri Pandit. In the grand narrative of Kashmiriyat, this is the part where reader is reassured of humanity. The part where the narrator of the myth reveals some kind of generic truth that makes the whole tale all too real and human. Even the reader who does not know the checkered history of Kashmir conflict, its many layers and complexities, gets the “truth” due to the way  this story is told. How? And Why?

 Strauss in seminal work “Structural Anthropology” (1973) tells us:

“Myth is the part of language where the formula tradutore, tradittore reaches its lowest truth value. From that point of view it should be placed in the gamut of linguistic expressions at the end opposite to that of poetry, in spite of all the claims which have been made to prove the contrary. Poetry is a kind of speech which cannot be translated except at the cost of serious distortions; whereas the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation. Whatever our ignorance of the language and the culture of the people where it originated, a myth is still felt as a myth by any reader anywhere in the world. Its substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells. Myth is language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at “taking off” from the linguistic ground on which it keeps on rolling. “

Strauss postulates: “Myth like rest of languages is made up of constituent units. These constituent units presuppose the constituent units present in language when analyzed on other levels – namely, phonemes, morphemes, and sememes – but they, nevertheless, differ from the same way as the latter differ among themselves; they belong to a higher and more complex order. For this reason, we shall call them gross constituent units.”  He calls these units – mythemes. According to him a structural analysis of sentence based on : economy of explanation; unity of solution; and ability to reconstruct the whole from a fragment, as well as later stages from previous ones, we will see patterns, patterns that can be read. He explain the concept, he gives an example. Imagine a future archaeologist from a time when humans have disappeared and so has all information about their culture. This archaeologist comes across of book on earth having orchestra score ? How will the archaeologist know that he is looking at orchestra score. The only way he intelligible can: he will see the patterns, notes and symbols repeating, he will eventually realize that the symbols in the book have a meaning and there is music in them. Similarly, if someone really smart goes to a fortune teller, the will know that the teller’s cards are limited and the “future” being read to him is having finite outcomes based on various combinations of those cards. 
Strauss in the beginning of his work quotes father of American Anthropology, Franz Boas: “It would seem that mythological worlds have been built up only to be shattered again, and that new worlds were built from the fragments.” 

We are now going to look at the mythical fragment using which this recent discourse about Kashmiri Muslims performing last rite of Kashmiri Pandits is built. The mytheme of the story which again appear during a violent era.

Margaret Bourke-White was the american photographer who famously chronicled 1947 partition violence, the horrors captured by her appearing in Time magazine. She travelled all over the sub-continent and met all the main actors of the narrative from Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru to Sheikh Abdullah. In 1949. she brought out a book “Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India” based on her experience in the field, all that she heard and all that she saw.  In the section “Democracy in Himalayas”, she discussed Kashmir and rise of Sheikh Abdullah.While writing about the subject, she does something that very few other western writers of the time had done, he gives us myths that surrounded the man known as Sheikh Abdullah. So, we are told how people believed that in 1931 when Sheikh Abdullah was imprisoned by Hari Singh in Hari Parbat fort, the king personally tried to have the man fried alive in a pan of hot oil. But the great pious Sheikh dipped his hand in hot oil like someone would in a pan of curd. He was unscorched. The king seeing the miracle grew afraid and let him go. Then we are told how people started noticing the name “Sher-i-Kashmir” mysteriosuly appear in autumnal Chinar leaves all over the valley. (Interesting that Aatish-e-Chinar should be the man’s biography). Among these tales we are told another tale of the great Sheikh, the tale of “last rites of KP” placed centrally in the narrative:

“The episode which has most deeply influenced them took place just after Sheikh Abdullah had come back from college [possibly 1930]. There was a religious clash in the streets of Srinagar; not a full-scale riot, but enough throwing of stones and threats of violence so that no Hindu dared cross a Muslim district. This placed the Hindus pitiably at a disadvantage, because Hindus are outnumbered nine to one by Muslims in Srinagar.
Srinagar, the “City of Seven Bridges”, is channelled with water-ways and busy with traffic of little pointed boats pushed with poles. Near the Second bridge [Habba Kadal] a Hindu girl was lying dead in her house. It is an injunction of Hinduism that the body must be offered up on the funeral pyre within twenty-four hours after death, but for two days she had been lying there and the family dared not carry her away for fear of Muslims. When Sheikh Abdullah learned of the girl’s death he went to the house and brought away the body in a boat.
‘Not even the police or government officials could have done it, ‘ a Home Guardsman who had been a policeman explained to me. ‘I was on duty on the Fourth Bridge. I saw the boat passing down the river. Shiekh Saheb was fresh from college then, and dressed in his black student’s jacket and red fez. On a wooden plank was the body of the Hindu girl, wrapped in white. Crowds were following the boat’s course along the riverbank, shouting that the Sheikh was a kavog‘ – the Kashmiri word for low-caste burner of corpses.
Sheikh Abdullah could hardly have chosen a more symbolic demonstration of his belief that human relations should transcend differences of creed. One of the sharpest contrasts between Hindu and Muslim ritual is in the treatment of the dead: Muslim bury, Hindus burn their dead.”

Thus we see that even back then a dead KP in the narrative served the same purpose that it does now. A prop to show the humanism in brute majoritarianism. Again we read of an act that (still) no government agency like police or any local administration can do. At least back then it was accepted and reported that the minority was in precarious situation. That the community was depended on goodwill of the majority and was subservient to their whims and fancies. In the language employed in current reports, in the present re-tellings of the “last-rite” story, the greatness of the majority is further amplified while the minority has been further obliterated. Back then the myth, built on binary of weak Kp and humanitarian KM, was used to build a personality cult, it was a single event in a narrative, now the event is held over and over again in news reported, narrative repeated over and over again to the point of propaganda, all to humanise tahreek that finds all kind of ways to use death, all just to convince the reader that the story is still the same.

Interestingly, in her book Margaret Bourke-White, we hear Sheikh say something that the later politics of Sheikh made impossible to concede, that KPs too victims of system, that they were not “the” system. We read:

Muslims had found it easy to blame all poverty on the “Hindu yoke”, the oppression of the Hindu Dogras, the class to which the Maharaja belonged. While still a youngster, Abdullah told me he had witnessed an incident that led him to learn that the mere fact of Hindus’ oppressing Muslims was insufficient to explain poverty. He was passing though an apple orchard which happened to be owned by a Muslim, and which employed some Hindu pickers. The owner had ordered one of the men to the top of a rather frail tree, and when a branch loaded with fruit came crashing down, bringing the apple picker with it and breaking his rib, the proprietor fell on the fellow with curses for his stupidity and heavy blows from his walking stick.

Abdullah accompanied the workman home and was stuck by the fact that, apart from the little cluster of plaster Hindu gods and sacred stones and flower petals in a clean corner of the hut, this Hindu family lived in the same wretched squalor as the Muslim needleworkers. Then he began visiting the shacks of quarry labourers – stone cutting is generally a low-caste Hindu occupation – and here too he found that when it came to living conditions the problems of Hindus and Muslims were identical. The fault lay in a system where a fortunate few could treat millions as chattel. As he grew older he became convinced that justice could come only with self-rule and that the people must forget religious differences and wage the fight together.”

What strikes in the passage is the need that is the need felt by Sheikh to make it clear that his fight is not against Hindus per se, that he stood for something greater. Today, Tahreekis make the same claim. That it is a “political issue”. In the older tale, an experience, a description of a lived experience is given. However in the current tale, good intentions are to be assumed from the act of “last rite of KP”.

In reality, reading into the cards, the way this story is told, repeatedly, a pattern, a symphony does appear, from the symbols it is clear that all such tales end badly for KPs. They end with a KP burning on a funeral pyre and a KM besides it singing song of self-praise. 

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Kashmir- As I Know It

Guest post by Pratush Koul on being a young Kashmiri Pandit and growing up outside Kashmir

We, teenagers of the 21 st century see life very differently from our parents. Our life generally revolves around competition, success, fashion, technology, studies etc. which leads to self confinement of oneself thus, the meaning of life has taken out from the picture. In our life generally the value of culture and heritage has diminished.

But, some people are raised in a different way, contrary to the habitable condition, these people, in their childhood suffer and face a lot and are forced to live a dreadful life. These incidents can cause a psychological trauma and can make that person mentally handicap.

Unfortunately, we can find context in various incident of the past and present where children, elders, women and men-folks suffered psychological trauma from an incident that devastated their lives.

Our story is no different.

Talking about me, I was born in Jammu in Gandhi Nagar. It was winter of 1999, nine years after our migration. As a toddler, my mother says, I used to cry a lot over absurd things such as cats, dogs, the moon, fireworks etc. and would always make their lives more miserable. I am told, at that time, there were not many cars and buses on the road. My father used to take me for a ride on his Chetak scooter until I stop crying. Around 2001-02, our house was completely built. A small, one story house in a rather quiet society. I had a small family; me, mom, dad, grandpa, grandma. When I was in my 6th standard, I was first told that you were a Kashmiri; This was taught to me when I asked my parents that, if people of Punjab are Punjabi, Bengal are Bengali, then what are we?

When I heard it, I took a sigh of relief, as I had thought I would never liked to be called a “Jammuee” (This was the word I thought I might hear.) As all my cousins were in Delhi and Chandigarh and I was a single child, its quiet obvious to deduce that I had a lot of lonely time. At that time, I used to sit with my grandparents and they would recite me stories from Gita, Ramayana, and Mahabharata which I enjoyed.

My grandfather used to read two newspapers daily (one English and one Urdu). I would some time ask them, pointing my tiny fingers to any random line on the Urdu newspaper, “What is this?” They would answer me with a smiling face. My grandfather often used to tell me about their childhood, how they used to study and also about their house. Once they told me about how, they were appointed for a job that was in Muzzafarabad and how their refusal saved them from the wrath of partition. It was 1947, they just had completed their matriculation exam and were asked by their father that there is a post of teacher in Muzzafarabad, which he should take, in order to earn for the family (he had a lot of siblings). Call it their ignorance or they forget, he couldn’t join the office which proved to be a blessing in disguise. They also showed me their matriculation certificate, after much requests.

In school, there was this one incident which happened to me in 8 th class. There was a boy, who used to annoy everyone; no one was spared from his mockery. One day he decided to annoy me. After much ignorance, I shouted, “Shut Up”. He had expression, totally opposite from what I was expecting, he was laughing with joy, and then he said, “Hath Me Kangri,Muh Me Choley, Kaha se Aaye Ye Kashmiri Loley”. I didn’t know how to respond to that. This was something I had never heard, and something I didn’t expected from one of my classmates. Other classmates interrupted and calmed the situation. I didn’t tell this to anyone at home, only kept it to myself at that day; I came across this question “DO I belong here?” it got me thinking for days until in school, I did a musical performance with my friend, it was a Dogri song, and after we sang, the sound of applause from the audience answered my question.

In my family, my father is a Kashmir lover, my mother on contrary, isn’t. no doubt, she has created an environment in the house by which one could easily identify her love for the culture and heritage of that land but when the statement “let’s go to Kashmir this summer” is said by dad, the expressions of my mother’s face changes. She always says that there are more places to go then just Kashmir, She avoids going there, main reasons being the recent turmoil caused by the miscreants and the previous experiences of migration.

Talking about my parents, my father lived in Habba Kadal, a locality having majority of KP families residing. He had his schooling from national high school Karan Nagar and then he went to Baraut for his B.sc in agriculture. He shared various incidents of his college life, how they, with a group of kashmiri boys used to live together in hostel, prepare Roganjosh and Haak using homemade Kashmiri spices and have a feast in their hostel rooms, with even giving a plateful of that to guard so that the feast goes on uninterrupted.

My mother is originally from Bandipore, but she too shifted to Habba Kadal after the demise of her parents. She had her schooling from Bandipore.

The best part of family gatherings is different for different people. For some, it is food, for some it is playing cards, for some it is singing, but for me, it was listning to discussion held by older people, discussion being about incidents from past, stories, jokes, family secrets etc. I was a member of that group, not a speaker but a listener. Some people would ask me whether I was able to grasp and connect with the kath-darbaar going on here, I would nod my head, not breaking the rhythm, not breaking the flow of their tales. By such stories, I learned a lot about things, places, people, historic events, funny incidents, all related to Kashmir. But apart from all that, after the fun and laughter of the past, came the sad ending; Migration, Exile, Exodus, Azaab, Pain, Homesickness, sometimes it would end with teary eyes and people would leave for their home, a home that is just a house now, not a Ghar. I sat there in the empty room, all this events revolving inside my brain, forming the story.

Such a story was their when my uncle told me that it was because of migration, you are in this world. I was totally awestruck and confused and even thought for a moment that he might be drunk! He told me that once he went to see my father in 1989, to check if he can be a suitable match for my mother, he went to his house, meet him and left. Before any further talks could proceed, the wrath of migration befallen on them and they were forced to leave their home my uncle lost hopes of finding him in the large commotion of people roaming across all over India in search of shelter. They too left Kashmir and came Jammu. One day, he had gone to Geeta bhawan to meet his friend who, like others, was waiting in line to get registered as a migrant and get a migrant ration card. And there, he saw my father, too waiting in line. They meet and hugged each other and two years later, my parents got married.

I was fortunate enough that my family didn’t had to suffer the wrath of migration camps and further atrocities caused by the gloom-ridden tent life, but that doesn’t imply we had a smooth life, the psychological trauma was with us too, in our minds.

In my childhood, I remember going to Mishriwala, Muthi camps with my mother. She, working in social welfare department, had been given duty to collect data of the migrant families for some government purposes. I don’t remember quite much of the details involved but I do remember the conditions and environment where the people were living, it was too pathetic to even describe that place in words. At present, I have a lot of friends and relatives living in Buta Nagar and Jagti camp and I often visit them. Apart from their present financial conditions, one can witness that none of them show a lack of discipline, values, hospitality and respect. Even in toughest time, they held their moral status perfectly.

Another quality, which I have recently encountered in my college life, is of the traditional attachment of Kashmiri Pandits which leads to the formation of small groups. Pune, Mumbai, Haryana or Florida, UK, Germany where ever KP’s are present, there exists a Community/Group. This helps, in my case in keeping the bond between the Kashmiri brethren and also helps one to quickly adjust to the new environment as you will have people from your community surrounding you.

In Conclusion

I think that the teenagers/millennial/youth of KP have inherited a void, a void of Kashmir, the real Kashmir, that Kashmir whose stories we used to listen from our parents, that Kashmir where Lal-ded fed Nund-reshi with her milk, that Kashmir where after a prayer to Shankaracharya Temple, one paid homage to Hazratbal Shrine and that Kashmir also who is still waiting with his blood soaked chest, waiting for his long lost children. I may have visited Kashmir five times, but only as a tourist. I wish that this generation pass down its legacy, a legacy more than thousand year old, praised by all from Nilamat Puran to Walter Lawrence; to its rightful descendants.

I may have not got the chance to be born or raised in Kashmir, but my wish would be that each part of my body would embrace and get absorbed into my motherland, just like a plant who grows from the land and is, at last, diffused back into it. Only then my soul would find solace and finally I will reach my home.

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Abhinavagupta on last word


Bollywood is a fantastic flytrap that captures all kind of wonderful cultural specimens. It does so intentionally or unintentionally.

In Masala Bollywood movies, there was a favorite formula involving a dying muslim. The rule was: if the film has a do-gooder muslim character, and if the character is dying, his last dying words are going to be “Laa ilaaha ill-Allaah”. In his last moments the guy has to remember God. The formula is repeated in countless movies, repeated often enough for us to know that if the character dies without completing the sentence, the hero will close the eye lids of the dead man and complete the line for him and then continue with decimation of the villain.

The dying words. It’s an interesting concept. The Muslim tradition comes from Hadiths. A good muslim is to die remembering God and be assured of a place in heaven. Even Kafirs may be given this option so that they may face less trouble in hell.

Meanwhile, we have the (fanciful) stories of Gandhi dying with “Hey Ram” on his lips. Where does the “holiness” of this idea come from? Why did it matter what his last words were? As a kid, I remember reading those booklets by “Hare-Rama-Hare-Krishna” people. There were chapters dedicated to the subject of death. A good Hindu is to remember God in his dying moments. And just like in case of Muslim, not just remember, but God’s name is supposed to be the last word uttered so that one may be assured of a place in Vaikuntha.

The idea comes from Gita which goes even further, the last thought, the last word, it lingers and has consequences. If your last words are of anger, you might get stuck in angry state. It is like dying last wish. According to Gita, in the last dying moments whatever the mind seeks, it gets. A teenage mind wanders, even back then the idea sounded frightful. What if someone dies in sleep, dreaming of dinosaurs? Or, worse still if one dies of diarrhea and shit is all one can think of? What if dying man dreams of Kashmir? Should everyone die dreaming of Kashmir? Is that what is happening?

Again in Bollywood, the concept is put to hilarious use in a little know film called “Bollywood Diaries” (2016) (by K.D. Satyam, writer of Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz). In the film a terminally ill guy who wanted all his life to be an actors comes up with the simplest plan to have his wish fulfilled. In his last days he surrounds himself with posters of films actors. In his last moment he remembers Amitabh Bachchan.

A religious text has propounded this theory. And the theory has obvious flaws which put a believer in awkward position, that too at the last defining moment of his believing life. If someone is dying, he should not be worried about these things. Even among Muslims, the flaw in the idea was obvious, so later commentators do say do remind the dying but don’t force the guy into saying “Laa ilaaha ill-Allaah” lest the poor guy gets irritated and ends up saying something worse like “Laa ilaaha Laa ilaaha”, and yet just make sure that his last words are “Laa ilaaha ill-Allaah” even if he previously said “Laa ilaaha Laa ilaaha”. The exact last words matter.

In most medieval commentaries on Gita, the importance of last word is emphasised. However, the flaw in this thinking was explored by Kashmiri Shaivite philosopher Abhinavagupta (c. 950 – 1016 AD). In his commentary on Gita, Abhinavagupta also asked the same questions: ” The moment of death can be devoid of happiness, sorrow or delusion/ What if the the man dies in sudden accident and has not time to think of anything? What if the man remembers cold sweet water of the village river? What if in dying moments the man thinks of his wife? Does the wife also die instantly and he gets to be with her forever? Or does his sole become one with his wife? “

These are doubts he had and these are questions he sought to answer.

Abhinavagupta’s answer: “At that very last moment (one who had been remembering God throughout his life) will remember God as a result of the impression created through continuous meditation and will be united with Parmaesvara. This is because he becomes free from the binding influence of time.”

Basically, Abhinavagupta believes that for a man who spent his life remembering God, the last critical moment is immaterial because time is a relative term. This answer to these queries may or may not matter sound rational. But, the fact that he sough to answer these questions means that people even back then could be rational about religious texts.It is amazing that people have spent so many centuries pondering over these issues borne of divine speech and texts.

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Reading the English translation of Abhinavagupta’s Gitartha Samgraha by Boris Marjanovic

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No, Didda did not kill her Grandchildren through black magic

Didda was saved from Sati by a man who she later forced into committing suicide. From the text it is clear that she guarded her position like a paranoid maniac. When she was giving she could be very giving (even got a matha dedicated to the potter lady who used to carry her on her back) and when she was in taking mode, Kalhana called her Durga. A lot is written about her character, some in glowing terms and some not so glowing. Particularly, it is always remembered that she killed her grandsons through use of “blackmagic”. But, did she?

That is what the translations tell us, that is what Stein wrote (“witchcraft”) and that is what everyone wrote and that is how we know.
[I do not know sanskrit]
Now, let us revisit the original sanskrit text. In the sanskrit text of Kalhana, the word in place of “witchcraft” is abhichar. And the word is used not in relation to death of her grandsons, but in describing the death of her old enemy Mahiman. Abhichar is often used in tantric context, Atharveda has sections on it. Abhichar however is not just some death inducing ritual, in language it can also be used to mean “ill means”. In fact, in some text “abhichar” is mentioned as second nature of some women. In Rajatarangini, if a King or if a person used the services of someone who knew actual abhichar kriya (rites), then the name of  the sorcerer is often specifically mentioned. Such a powerful man is always found worthy of a mention by name. However, in case of Didda, there is no mention who was performing the rites for her.

As for death of grandchildren, the text does not seem to have word abhichar anywhere. Stein seems to have made a mistake in reading or translating, a mistake that has been copied over and over again.

In the original text, just before giving the account of death of the three grandchildren, word vyabhichar, is used to describe Didda’s nature. Word vyabhichar is used for someone who indulges in illicit sexual activity, something that Kalhana repeatedly accuses Didda of. As for her grandchildren’s death, here is how the last death is described by Stein: “
Then the cruel [queen] put without hesitation her last grandson, Bhimagupta, on that path of death which bore the name ‘throne’.”

“Path”/course is the operation word here. The writer says that Didda caused the death just by putting her grandson on throne. Throne bore the name death. Later when the actual torturous death of Bhimagupta  at the orders of Didda is described, Kalhana reminds the reader that Bhimagupta infact was not the son of her son. Not her real grandson. He was a scion member of Abhimanyu’s wife’s family. Abhimanyu’s wife had secretly passed him off as her son. So, techincally Didda had no blood relation with him. It is here the reader is told that the people believed Didda had killed off the previous two young kings too.

For the death of first grandson, we read:

“On the twelfth day of the bright half of Margasira in the year [of the Laukika era four thousand] forty-nine (A.D. 973), he was destroyed by her persisting on her unholy course“. The second grandchild died of the same cause.

“Course”/path is the operational word here. The writer means to say that Didda caused the death of the child because she continued on her path of vyabhichar. Just after the death of his beloved son (a son she kept protecting from wars, she was a loving mother), in mourning although she did a lot of pious acts of building mathas (64 no less) and giving donations, just a year later she reverted back to her old “wicked” ways and thus in a (karmic) sense caused the death of her grandchildren. And it wasn’t like these men died overnight, they actually died on the throne, each ruling a few years. Her acts made the throne cursed. According to Kalhana they died due to the character follies of her grandmother. The world of morals that Kalhana lives in, all this makes perfect sense. The verses preceding the section about death of these kings, Kalhana mention timi-fish of sacred waters eating its own (which may have given the wrong idea to the translators, caused a bad auto-suggest or a bad inception), humble peacock eating snake while meditating,  heron eating unsuspecting fish. The reason Kalhana mentions this all is because he wants to illustrate that one never knows when good can turn to bad.

If one omits the word “witchcraft” from Stein’s translation, the true word-craft of Kalhana’s sanskrit becomes clear.

—

Vinayak Razdan

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Shonaleeka Kaul, the author of “The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini” (2018) did agree that my reading of the word is correct. The text mention vyabhichar.

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