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Mani Kaul’s Before my Eyes (1989). The film was produced by J&K tourism department but the end product by the legendary filmmaker left them so confused that the film was never properly showcased by them. It was supposed to be a tourism film but Mani Kaul made it without showcasing the usual sights of Kashmir. Most people would miss the genius of this film, but those who understand cinema would know what Kaul managed to achieve with the film.
With minimalistic human presence and a deliberate brooding consciousness of the geography of the place, the film like some dream of a child, traces the flight of a soul in paradise, there are sights and some sounds, it rises till the beauty materializes before your eyes and you realize it is not a dream, or is it.
The Hot air balloon works like a metaphor for dream in the film. Director hints at it when you see some people asleep in a Hotel room while a balloon rises from the window. You know you are dreaming because the western music mixes up with the local sights from a houseboat.There are vast mountains, greens, whites, wild brooks and broad rivers. You see a child running free. A man galloping on a horse while the moon rises. There is a garden, the (only) famous garden. You are alone in all this space.
The Spy Tales from 70s
In June 1977, Jammu and Kashmir had some interesting visitors from across the border. Five Pakistani men and a woman from Lahore illegally crossed border from Sialkot and walked into Jammu. The woman was a performing artist named Haseena and she was traveling with a purpose. From Jammu, the woman and the troupe travelled to Shopian in Kashmir where she assumed the name – Gul Afroze. She stayed in town for about ten days and then made her way to Srinagar. In Srinagar she rented out two houseboats and kept rotating her residence between the two boats. A few days later she tried to get herself enrolled as a casual artiste in a Central Government department. During a routine “character verification” check with Intelligence Bureau the plot went bust. Haseena was quietly flown out to an undisclosed location. It was revealed that Pakistan’s Military Intelligence had enrolled talented girls for spying in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The ring had been active in Jammu & Kashmir since 1973, supplying inflowing of military movement to Pakistan by co opting Indian military and Army officers.
Pakistan came up with the plan under Z.A. Bhutto at the end of Indo-Pak war of 1971. Bhutto re-organized the counter Intelligence wing of Pakistan’s intelligence Bureau and Military Intelligence. The objective was to carry out subversive activity in Kashmir and collect vital military information.
In March 1979, 60 men and officers of Indian Army posted in Samba sector were investigated for passing information to Pakistan. Many of these men, including 2 Army officers were found guilty and handed over long prison sentences. About 50 to 60 per cent of arrested Army officers, including senior and junior officers, were alleged to be directly involved while a major-general, two brigadiers and one colonel acted as accomplices.
B. L. Kak writes in his “Kashmir: The Untold story of Men and Matters” (1987):
“Towards the end of April 1979 it was stated that 25 to 30 members of the gang had visited Pakistan individually and collectively from time to time under the veil of secrecy. This disclosure was followed by the circulation of a report that two officers of the Indian Army, stationed in Kashmir, would be punished on charges of “objectionable” activity and misuse of the official position. The two officers, a brigadier and a major, had been accused of spying for Pakistan with the help of two women. These two women – mother and daughter – were identified as residents of a border town in the west of Srinagar. The middle-aged woman (mother) was given the title of “captain” by a Pakistani Intelligence agency, while the daughter, educated and charming with a husky voice, was trained and encouraged until she gained experience to infiltrate into some Army circles in Kashmir.
The middle-aged woman managed to keep her adversaries at a distance in spite of the fact that she had been described as a “Pakistani Agent” in the official records of Intelligence Bureau and the State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in the past. A local contractor of the area had wanted to enter into matrimonial alliance with her daughter. But he had to withdraw from the field in the wake of the reported advice from the Pakistani Intelligence agency that it wold be useful to rope in the Indian Army major, who was then posted to that area, as the husband of the charming girl. And as the mother of the girl had a reason to oblige the Pak agency, the Army major was lured to roll down to become her son-in-law, although the marriage between the two was arranged in secrecy. Some time after his marriage the Army major received orders of his transfer to a place outside Kashmir. Happily for him, the major managed to get himself posted to Kashmir again with the help of his wife. The lady wooed a former minister in Delhi and subsequently tricked a senior brigadier of the indian army in Srinagar before the latter became a friend of her family.”
In August 1979, a lieutenant colonel of Military Intelligence wing in Kashmir, was accused of having prepared a secret 20 page document for Pakistan.
The document was earlier seized in third week of July near Laghama in Uri Sector by men of Intelligence wing of Border Security Force. The matter was dropped after much controversy between Army and BSF. K.M Singh of the intelligence Bureau as well as Mahesh Shanker, Ghulam Jeelani Pandit, A.M. Lone and Rathinder Kaul from CID refused that the document was prepared for Pakistan.
In November 1980, some captured smugglers revealed that BSF Dakota planes were getting used to fly hashish balls from Srinagar to Amritsar and Delhi.
Kashmir was big money, and men were small fish in mouth of invisible big fish. The real fishing season arrived in 1990.
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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.
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
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.
A Jataka tale from Kashmir, 1839
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| Latukika Jataka Bharhut now supposed to be in Allahabad museum |
In around 1874, Alexander Cunningham started excavating the Buddhist site at village Bharhut in Madhaya Pradesh. Among the many discoveries he made were wall sculptures depicting the Jataka tales, or the tales of Buddha’s previous births. Among these sculptures he found a tale that he had heard from a Kashmiri Muslim in 1839 when he was first visiting Kashmir as the ADC to Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India.
We can’t say if the story survived because Jataka tales travelled to Persia and Persian language or if it was a remnants of Buddhist culture of Kashmir, what we can do is marvel at the fact that a Kashmiri recalled this story, albeit in a different form which shows the impact Buddhism had on the people far and away.
In the notes to the sculpture, he narrates the Latukika/Quail Tale from Cylon and the Thrush tale from Kashmir.
[The Stûpa of Bharhut, Cunningham, 1879]
Love, what is your own address?
Feb, 2016.
Kalaam: “Chan” Rasul Mir
Singer: Rashid Hafiz
Recorded in Srinagar. At place named after a Pakistani Commando who crossed over for Jihad in 1965.
Khaane Kam Kam tchai karith vaeranai
Paane ashqo chui katyo dhikaano
Kalaam: “Chan” Rasul Mir
Singer: Rashid Hafiz
Recorded in Srinagar. At place named after a Pakistani Commando who crossed over for Jihad in 1965.
Khaane Kam Kam tchai karith vaeranai
Paane ashqo chui katyo dhikaano
Houses many have you destroyed
Love, what is your own address?
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Review: “Kashmir: Exposing the Myth behind the narrative”
The book “Kashmir: Exposing the Myth behind the narrative” (2017) is written by Khalid Bashir Ahmad, a former Kashmir Administrative Services person who served the State Administration in powerful positions as Director Information and Public Relations and Secretary, J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, besides heading the departments of Libraries and Research, and Archives, Archaeology and Museums. The book, the latest fat brick targeted at Pandits, aims to prove that the whole Kashmiri Pandit narrative, ever since the beginning of history, is a bunch of lies, a “myth” and it goes about the task by masking anti-pandit propaganda as scholarship. In his zeal to write an all encompassing exposé, the author has unintentionally produced the finest document on what drives the anti-pandit sentiment in Kashmir valley and which class produces it for the gullible masses.
The book tries to settle the 1990 debate by trying to prove that Kashmiri Pandits have been a lying race since 6th century A.D., around the time Nilmata was written that too after annihilation of the Buddhist religion by “militant” Hindus. It’s does not try to debunk parts, it tries to do so the whole.
Khist-i-awwal chu nehad memaar kaj, Taa surayya mee rawad dewar kay
If mason puts the first brick at an angle, the wall, even if raised upto the Pleiad, is bound to come up oblique
Pandits claim to be “aborigines”. So, the first chapter is titled “Aborigines” dedicated to basically proving that Nagas did not exist. According to the writer if “Nagas” are disapproved, it can be proven the Pandits are lying. In trying to do so, it claims the no evidence of “Nagas” is found in neolithic sites like Burzahom. The thought that the snake worship cult evolved much later just does not occur to the writer. It claims that besides Nilmata and Rajatarangini, there is no mention of Nagas in context of Kashmir. The author ignores the fact that origin of Buddhism in Kashmir also is based on the story of Nagas getting converted at the hands of buddhist monks. All buddhist sources on Kashmir mention the Nagas. The writer claims there is no archeological evidence of Naga worship when the fact is Pandits still worship the fresh water springs of Kashmir as Nagas and remember their deities. Ain-i-Akbari testifies to the fact that in Mughal times the snake cult was strong. The author does not mention the fact the snake deities are still worshiped a few miles away from Srinagar in Kishtwar valley. Instead it is hinted that the snake tales might have come from central India. The author doesn’t mention that Lalitaditya claimed descent from Naga dynasty of Karkota Naga. Even Chaks are said to have come from snake dynasty. Instead the reader is reminded that Buddhists were finished off by Brahmins. Here Kalhana’s account of Buddhist viharas is considered useful but in later chapter Kalhana is denounced as an unreliable source. The conflict between Hindu rulers and Buddhist rulers and subsequent destruction of viharas is read as a religious confrontation while the conflict between Muslim rulers and Hindu subjects and subsequent destruction of temples is never read a conflict between religions. The fact the in Nilmata, Buddha is celebrated is denounced by author as a sign of cultural aggression by Brahmins and not as a sign of cultural assimilation. That this assimilation meant that Buddhism survived in Kashmir valley even till 12th century is ignored. The valley based readers of the book at are no point reminded at a lot of Masjids and Ziyarats in Srinagar as built upon Buddhist sites. No cursory mention of the fact that Jama Masjid of Srinagar used to be holy to Buddhist pilgrims even till 1950s. None of this is mentioned. Instead, the author writes:
“It is interesting to note that while many later Puranas and works such as those of Ksemendra, Jayaratha and Kalhana identify Buddha with Vishnu, all of them denounce Buddhism indirectly by assigning Buddha the task of deluding the people. The departure by the Nilmata in mentioning Buddha in a spirit of catholicity looks calculated. “
Here the author exposes his lack of knowledge of history he has embarked upon exploring. He forgets that Ksemendra himself was a Buddhist. In his works he presents most religious men as charlatans, even Buddhists but particularly the Brahmins. In Kashmir back them, men were still free to speak their mind against hypocrisy and dogma of religious men. Instead, the author is too focused on proving that writers of Nilmata were “calculating” brahmins. This “Eternal Pandit”, mean, calculating, power hungry, back stabbing, money grabbing is the running theme of the book.
In the next chapter titled “Mind’s eye” the author tries to prove that Kalhana was again a lying brahmin. According to the author, Kalhana in his own words used “Mind’s eye” to write the history of Kashmir, the author writes the entire chapter under the impression that “Mind’s eye” means some sort of divine intuition to write about past that Kalahan had no access to.
The author’s understanding of theory of history is so rudimentary, his approach so flavoured with politics of present times that he does not even realize the utter nonsense he has presented through partial quotes cooked in furnace of deliberate malice . No, Kalhana did not use “Mind’s eye” to write about prehistoric Kashmir. Kalhana mentions “mind’s eye” in context of definition of purpose of a poet. The “mind’s eye” is the plane of the brain that gets triggered when one reads something that stimulates one’s imagination.
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| Kalhana describing the purpose of a poet writing about histroy |
Kalhana mentions that it is the job of a poet writing history to bring alive history. That it should be written in such a way that the the story plays in the mind of the reader and this is not possible unless it runs alive in the “mind’s eye” of the poet first. He mentions that a poet of history should not just state facts but tell a story, an unbiased story. Rajataragnini is deliberately written by him in “Santa Rasa”. Of course, the author had no clue or no inclination to inform his readers all this. Rajatarangini is written based on theory of Sanskrit literature. “Santa Rasa” or the Rasa of peace is used to offer solace to the world weary mind of the powerful people who read it. The whole Rajatarangini is written with a sense of resignation, that all good things as well as bad things pass. It was for this reason that the leaders like Budshah, Akbar and even Nehru studied and found solace his work. It presents to “mind’s eye” the story in which the power is shown to be ever transitory. But some people have their “mind’s eye” so blind shut, they can’t see all this. The fact that he have an entire chapter on Kalhana titled “Mind’s eye” makes the author’s ignorance about the meaning of the term all the more hilarious. The reader is not told the Kalhana told the story based on still older texts, even a text of history written by Kshmendra. The reader is not told that history of Kashmir was already known to Mughal world based on Persian translations of Rajatarangini and various other works. The discovery of Rajatarangini manuscript in Kashmir was celebrated because now people had direct access to the source. If there was no Rajatarangini, if the Pandits had not kept it safe, how else would we have known how about the past of Kashmir?
Instead, in this book Kalhana’s mind is targeted as if it it was mind of a delusional brahmin who knew in future Muslims of Kashmir would be bothered by his writings.
“Kalhan was not a man with a closed mind, and this after all, is an essential qualification for a good historian.” …and that’s a quote on Kalhana’s mind from Romila Thapar.
In the next chapter titled “Malice”, the reader is basically told that Jonaraja was again a malicious Brahmin. According to the author, Jonaraja was a man who hated Musalmaans, why else would he not use the word “musalmaan” even though the word existed as proven by famous Lal Ded saying “na booz Hyund ti Musalmaan”. Genius! The thought that the saying is of obvious later origin just doesn’t occur to the director sahib of historics even though he does quote Chitralekha Zutsi. The reader is not told that the word “mausala” does infact figure in Rajatarangini post Kalhana, instead the reader is confused with words like “Yavanna” and “Mleecha”, not told that even word “Yavanna” is used with beauty by Jonaraja when he describes Muslim/Yavana worshipers as “…crowds of worshippers used to fall down and rise at prayers, imitating the high waves…”
Walter Slaje, the Austrian expert on medieval history of Kashmir and Rajatarangi explains the usage of these terms like this:
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| Slaje, Medieval Kashmir and the Science of History (2004) |
So, the reader thinks Jonaraja, he too was a lying Brahman who told lies about Sikandar just because Jonaraja couldn’t reconcile to the fact that the Hindu era of Kashmir was over. Some one teach director sahib about how not to read the past through the lens of present, lest someone claim that director Sahib is making the claim cause he can’t reconcile to the fact that Kashmir is right now partly ruled by Hindu BJP. It’s like saying that historians-artists of Kashmir will start to invent myths at the first sign of majority religion losing hold of business of running State. Err…isn’t that happening in Kashmir. [the usual reply from Kashmir: a muslim would never do that, only pandits can]. It would also mean that any Pandit rejecting the claims of the book about Jonaraja or Kalhana is obviously doing so because of what happened to him in 1990, and hence is lying. What buffoonery passes for history in case of Kashmir!
The author claims Kalhana was a essentially a poet and a believer of fairytales and hence can’t be trusted, Jonaraja hated Muslims, hence can’t be trusted. But, in this chapter while mentioning the faults of Jonaraja, author asks why Jonaraja didn’t mention Hallaj’s visit to Kashmir. There is a widely and newly found belief in Kashmir that Mansur al-Hallaj (857-922) visited Kashmir in 896 AD. The source of the claim comes from “The Passion of Al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam by Louis Massignon” translated and edited by Herbert Mason (1982/94). Massignon’s work was translation of 13th century manuscripts of “Tadhkirat-ul-Awliyā” (Biographies of Saints) by Attar of Nishapur (1145). Attar was essentially a poet, here the Kashmiri author would like to trust the words of a poet who wrote about miracles performed by Sufis. Interestingly, in the same work of Attar, we read about Kashmiri slaves serving missionaries in Persia. Author ignores all this. [Read: Hallaj in Kashmir]
The next chapter is titled “Power” and the reader is reminded that Pandits were part of the Power circle during Afghan rule. That Pandits invented the stories of persecution.
This chapter on Afghan period in Kashmir ends with reader being told that a pandit was responsible for Shia-Sunni riots and probably was the cause of debauchery of the ruler. Then the reader is told that pandit masses suffered no brutality under Afghans….after all pandit were working for Afghans on high posts. The pandit were again lying. It was pandits who convinced Walter Lawrence to write those horrible things about Afghans. Hence proved: Pandits the perpetual liars and power hungry fiends . He then goes on to quote a pandit…Birbal Kachru’s work to prove that only Muslims (Bombas…readers are not told that Bombas were Shia) suffered under Afghans. Rest is all figment of imagination – “mind’s eye” – of later Kashmiri pandit writers.
In all this the facts reader in Kashmir is not told:
Lawrence based his writing on Peer Hassan (1832-1898) and not some pandit. It is not as if Pandits poisoned Lawrence’s ears against Muslims. Hassan has written at length about it in his “Tarikhi-Kashmir”. Interestingly, the “historian” makes no reference to Hassan in this section.
Reader is not told that GMD Sufi, again a Muslim, in 1949 in his “Kashir A History Of Kashmir” wrote at length about the tyrannical Afghan period and mentions persecution of Hindus as well as Shias. Sufi does not use Kachru as source for Afghan period but uses him for Sikh period during which he lived. For Afghan period he uses Muslim sources, works of afghan era, all of which mention persecution.
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| Sources used by GMD Sufi. |
And finally if someone working for Afghans at high post means it was all peaceful back then for the rest of the community, surely the author of this tome himself working as a government employee for Government of India in 1990s should be read as benevolent nature of the government and a general sign of how peaceful the 90s were.
In between, innumerable inanities, the book also reminds the reader of valley that Kashmiri Pandits are different than rest of Hindus. Proof: Krishna cult had no presence in Kashmir. There are no Krishna statues or temples in Kashmir. The reader is here not told that Kalhana starts his Rajatarangini with mention of Krishna in relation with King Gonanada. The reader is not told that exclusive elaborate Krishna sculptures across India are a recent phenomena. Before that there was more elaborate Vaishnav cult theories centered on various avatars of which many are now considered minor. The reader is not told of the “flute player” on the walls of Martand.*
Why does author bring it up? Because in 1980s, Kashmiri Pandits publicly started celebrating Krishna Janamashtami and the Kashmiri fundamentalists cum conspiracy theorists saw in it the attempt of Kashmiri Pandits aligning with alien “Indian culture”. In such attempts these fraud “intellectuals” try to dictate who is a good native Kashmiri Pandits true to Kashmir and who is bringing in Indian Culture. Back in 80s, all such Indian Kashmiri Pandits were branded Sanghi Pandits.
In the beginning of the same chapter, we are gratuitously told of poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s thoughts on pandits of valley:
A’an Brahman zaadgana-e-zindah dil
Laleh-e-ahmar zi rooye sha’n khajil
Tez been-o pukhta kaar-o-sakhy kosh
Az nigah-e-sha’n farang andar kharosh
Asl-e-sha’n az khaake-e-daamangeer ma’st
Matla-e-ein akhtara’n Kashmir mas’t
These scions of Brahmins with vibrant hearts,
their glowing cheeks out the red tulip to shame.
Keen of eye, mature and strenuous in action,
their very glance puts Europe into commotion.
Their origin is from this protesting soil of ours,
the rising place of these stars is our Kashmir.
It appears that Iqbal loved Pandits and his took pride in his pandit origins. Later as the author unleashes his propaganda against Pandits, the reader has no option but to think of Pandits as ungrateful people.
What the reader is not told is the following lines of Iqbal:
Hai jo peshani pe Islam ka teeka Iqbal /
Koi Pandit mujhey kaihta hai to sharm aati hai.
The mark of Islam is on my forehead
I am ashamed if someone calls me a Pandit
The reader is not told that Iqbal of later age, lauded a murderer like Ilam Din and laid the ideological foundation of religious state called Pakistan. If poet Kalhana’s poetic genius should not cloud our opinion about his ability to be neutral, or just his politics, why should any other parameter be set for Iqbal? Why expect pandits to celebrate Iqbal? (another pet peeve of the author of this book)
In the next chapter titled “Blood”, we move to Dogra times. Somewhere, the story of Pandits refusing Muslim “gharwapsi”, a initiative of Dayanand Saraswat is repeated by the author. The author repeats the claim just as it is made by Hindutva people, particularly Balraj Madhok.
Using such spins, the pandit are mocked by Sanghis as well as Islamists for being too “proud”. The eternal “proud” pandit.
In this chapter, the reader is reminded that Pandits have muslim blood on their hands and they no Pandit was harmed in 1931. That there were no riots against Hindus. That muslims hands were always clean of any blood.
To that I can offer some personal history:
I called my grandmother this morning to ask her again the story.
I call to ask her the name of the man who died in 1931. Morning of July 13th in Kashmir.
She asks me not to waste my time.
I insist.
He was a brother of her mother.
She doesn’t remember the name. She doesn’t remember the year. What did he do for a living? She doesn’t know.
All she knows:
‘It was the year of first “gadbad“.’
I remember hearing bits: He had gone out to get bread from the local bakery. Someone put an axe to his head.
She doesn’t remember all this.
She asks me not to waste my time with this nonsense.
She asks if I had my breakfast.
I call to ask her the name of the man who died in 1931. Morning of July 13th in Kashmir.
She asks me not to waste my time.
I insist.
He was a brother of her mother.
She doesn’t remember the name. She doesn’t remember the year. What did he do for a living? She doesn’t know.
All she knows:
‘It was the year of first “gadbad“.’
I remember hearing bits: He had gone out to get bread from the local bakery. Someone put an axe to his head.
She doesn’t remember all this.
She asks me not to waste my time with this nonsense.
She asks if I had my breakfast.
The next chapter “Agitation” deals with Parmeshwari Handoo case and is interesting as it quotes old local newspaper reports and rightly links the case to rise of Jan Sangh in Kashmir. In this chapter too you will read a Pandit saying some nice things about Jamaat-i-Islami and bad things about Jan Sangh. The book practically is based on the now established textual norm of quoting Pandits to prove Pandit are lying hence tahreekis are telling the only truth. One truth. Readers are reminded by author that inter-religion marriages had previously taken place in Kashmir but there were no communal disturbances. In horde to provide examples of communal harmony, we are told artist Ghulam Rasool married a Pandit girl Santosh Mehra. Fact: Santosh was not a Kashmiri Pandit and Ghulam Rasool was hardly the “ideal” muslim. Why only in Parmeshwaru Handoo case did Pandits came down on streets? Long quotes are provided linking Pandit community en-mass to Jan Sangh. Pandits planning acid attacks, arson attacks and desecrating muslim mosques. Authors uses official police records here.
The reader has no option now but to see Pandit as the perfect enemy.
Fact: Such communal polarizations and crimes are more often than not two sided affairs. How is this act of compilation different from a Hindu organization compiling a list of FIRs naming just Muslims during a riot? To what purpose are such listings used. But, people in Kashmir as so used to their majority status, such questions just do not bother the author.
The real tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits is that this is probably the first book that actually has the exact FIRs of their dead and their raped, and some new names . It is another matter that that are used to forward the usual: 1. Not enough died. 2. Pandits [like their ancestor Kalhana] exaggerated the description of scene [no, no, not like people that did it in case of Asiya-Neelofar in 2009, ignoring the FIRs when needed. Is the official police report of Kunan Poshpora acceptable to the author?
Guess being Director of something in government has its perks. The modern brahmins…those that control the texts…control history. But, I guess most Pandits would thank this book for giving out those FIR details.
In case of Bhan family, using an RTI, the writer finds that the killing did happen and then claims the gruesome details of the killing, flinging from the top floor, were figment of KP minds as the police report don’t offer any detail. Earlier he has already tried hard to prove that either KP killings were carried out by State or for being “informers”. Why now he feels the need to prove that killings were not “gruesome”? Guilt. All proof need to be erased. All blood stains wiped clean.
He then proceeds to expose “Pandit” propaganda using a quote from a Hindutva site to prove that KPs have never ever, never ever, never ever since 14th century, fed the cows.
Most of the killings of minorities in Jammu and Kashmir have been “adopted” online by Hindutva sites. No, you won’t find any neutral site easily with clear data and facts. On hindutva sites written by non-Kashmiris, regurgitation of data has high amount of mutation. Which leads us to this comedy of fools: The professional KM “historian” reads a “fact” and then in his expert 14th opinion decides to cook pandits in a medieval oven of fresh “facts”.
He writes that the hindu propaganda site claims:
“15 [Kashmiri] Pandits who had gone to graze their livestock were murdered ”
He then informs the readers that the elite Kashmiri Pandits never have taken cattle for grazing, ever! That’s all he could come up with to cast the spell of doubt on the killing! So Kashmiri Pandits didn’t die because Pandit wouldn’t touch the job. The discussion ends up about “status” of pandits in ancient Kashmir.
The fact:
The hindutva site mentions: “15 Pandits who had gone to graze their livestock were murdered ”
The “historian” added the word “Kashmiri” to it and started discussing cattle grazing habits of Kashmiri pandits.
The fact: The killing did happen. It was not Kashmiri Pandits. But 15 Hindus of Chirjee near Kishtawar in Doda who were killed by terrorist. The entry for it in not found on any Indian government site online but in US congress report on Human rights.
It didn’t occur to the “historian” (and wouldn’t probably to his readers in Kashmir) that in villages, Pandits used to have cows at home, and like any other villager, this pandit too used to take his cows from grazing. See…now we are talking cow. Isn’t that how most discussions end up these days? Utter ludicrous diversions that don’t allow you to get to the facts.
In dealing with exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990, reader is told using account of Muslims that Pandits left Kashmir in aeroplanes. The usual Jagmohan Conspiracy is forwarded as the culmination of centuries old cruel games that pandits like to play.
Why was this book written the way it was: rejecting Nilmata, Rajatarangini, Afghans brutalities, 1947, 1967, 1986, 1990?
It was done so because Kashmiri Pandit tell their story in that sequence. Pandits claim to be “aborigines”, claim Rajatarangini as “their” history, claim they suffered under Muslim rule, suffered losses in 1947 partitions, were beaten to ground politically in 1967 agitation over “Parmeshwari Handoo case”, suffered rioting in 1986 in Anantnag and were finally forced to flee in 1990.
It’s an infantile game the two sides are playing. Pandit brains wanting to explain 1990 by explaining Sikander. Muslim brains wanting to negate 1990 by negating Sikander. In between always quoting Lal Ded as some symbol of peace. One side claims C is true, then B is true so A is also true. Other side counter claims as A is a lie, so B is a lie and then C obviously is a lie too. No side ready to accept that lies are being peddled left, right and center. And yes, don’t forget pandits are greater liars because in Muslim books you will always find pandit forwarding the “Jagmohan theory”. This book even quotes actor Rahul Bhat saying something like “I accept KMs suffered more than KPs.” Basically, the fact that a KP would empathize with KM is also used as a handy tool when needed. Don’t be surprised if you see less KPs making such claims in future. Don’t be surprised if the chasm between the two communities increases. And don’t be surprised to see which class politically befits from it in India and in Kashmir valley.
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*The Flute players. It is wrong to thing of this image as Krishna. If you are Hindu, if you accept rest of my arguments, if you don’t understand the or know the subject enough, there is a good chance you will accept this as evidence. This is confirmation bias. The bias with which this whole book is written. A muslim reader of the book would have tough time acknowledging it.
The image of Krishna dated 1/2 nd century A.D is infact found on a boulder in Chilas (POK) along with that of Baldev and even Buddha. A Pakistani expert of Kashmiri origin, A. H. Dani mentions it in his “Chilas: the city of Nanga Parbat” (1983).
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Some more lies from the author:
According to Bashir, cunning Brahmins modified (disfigured) Buddhist statues to give them Hindu look. He calls it Buddhist statue…not Gandhara statues. Bashir calls it “5th century Buddhist statue.”If one reads what he has written…there is only one conclusion that a lay reader in Kashmir with no real access to Hindu culture or original sources would assume: Brahmins mutilated Buddhist statues to make them Hindu. He bases his claim based on writing of Aijaz Bandey about an Ekamukha Shivling in a temple in Baramulla. Something he reveals (rather hides) in bibliography. And if one actually reads Bandey about that Shiv ling…we read something else completely. We read about how Gandhara art influenced Hindu art in Kashmir. Bandey does not make it sound like Hindus disfigured Buddhist statues to make Hindu gods out of them. Bandey writes about art assimilation. He even accepts there were already such Hindu images in Gandhara. Khalid Bashir Ahmad’s skewed logic if one extends to Muslim art in Kashmir, all Kashmiri traditional Muslim Ziyarats are Buddhist and not just influenced by Buddhist art.
Also, if one knows the basic history of Kashmir…one would know that Mihirkula brought in priests from Gandhara in Kashmir…something that local priests resented. How are these foreign priests supposed to have created a highly localized document like Nilamata?
Example of how the text from Bashir’s book is getting used for propaganda online. The section on left occurs in Bashir’s book.
Propaganda: Stein thought Kalhana’s text was corrupted.
Fact: On page 377 of “Rajatarangini: a chronicle of the kings of Kasmir, Volume 2” Stein is infact talking about the condition of a manuscript of Nilmatapurana found by Georg Bühler. More particularly, Vitastamahatmya. Not Rajatarangini.
Fact: Stein spent his life proving the merit of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini in historical sense by mapping its text to real places, real people as mentioned on coins and inscriptions on sculptures/temples.
Fact: Had manuscripts of Rajatarangini and Nilmatapurana perished like rest of ancient manuscripts of Kashmir, had some families not preserved, our knowledge of old Kashmir would have been next to nothing. Your ultra-nationalistic pride of having thousands of year old history would have been just hot air.
Another use of the quotes from Bashir’s book used for online propaganda. Here again, Bashir’s ability to lie would amaze anyone who has actually read the sources.
Anand Kaul wrote ‘The Kashmiri Pandit’ in 1924. Lawrence used the term “death, conversion or exile” already in 1895. But, of course, the propagandists know most people in Kashmir would easily accept that a Pandit lied being “Brahman Qaum”.
Fact: “Butshikan” term for King Sikandar was used by Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah for his Tarikh-i Firishta (1612). And he mentions the persecution of Hindus. It was not Kashmiri Pandits who invented the term. It was British to first latched on to the term. Anand Kaul only followed their lead. Unlike Bashir he had no access to Google, to know better. Postcolonialism hadn’t yet arrived.
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| “History Of The Rise Of The Mahomedan Power In India Volume 4. Enlish translation by John Briggs 1831. |
Fact: Jonaraja does mention that Sikandar did towards the end of his life change his ways. Jaziya was stopped.
Fact: Toward the end of Sikandar era we do find an old sculpture of Brahma that in Sharda has an inscription with name of King Sikandar on it, having being commissioned by a Hindu/Buddhist officer of the king.
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Another example of these half-educated charlatans befool the people. Clearly, the author has no actually understanding of the history of Shaivism in Kashmir. He is out of depth here, and yet he does not shy away from making a fool of himself. Here again, the reader is reminded that even Shaivism was a relatively recent import from mainland India by clever, deceitful, exploitative Brahmins. In his frenzy, the author ignores the actual facts and instead invents another lie: Tryambakaditya settled in Kashmir in 800 A.D.
Fact: Sangamaditya, the 16th descendant in the line of Tryambaka settled in Kashmir in 8th century. His father Tryambaka XV married a brahmin woman in Kashmir. In that he broke the the celibacy tradition of the “Siddhas” all of whom were given the title “Tryambaka”. The matrilineal society of Kashmir demanded that Tryambaka XV’s son settle in Kashmir. So, Sangamaditya the 16th descendant in the line of the mythical original Tryambaka settled in Kashmir.
Somananda, 4th descendant of Sangamaditya produced Shaiva literature (Sivadrsti) in 9th century.
[ref: Śaivāgamas: A Study in the Socio-economic Ideas and Institutions of Kashmir by V. N. Drabu]
Fact: This is how most famous Kashmiri Shaivite Abhinavagupta (c. 950 – 1016 AD) in his Gītārthasaṅgraha was re-interpreting “divine word of god” Gita to make the text more inclusive. This is how the ideas of Shaivite in Kashmir, were setting ideological base for coming of Lal Ded and Nund Rishi who would see all humanity as one. It was in a way Shaivite and their monotheism that made Islam not a completely alien thought for the masses in Kashmir.
Anyone who has actually read Trika system would know that Saiva system looked down upon temple worship, daily rituals of brahmins and even the Vedas were treated as inferior knowledge.
Yes, Kalhana and Kshemendra mock the priests and pretenders. That tells us even back then, just like now, there were charlatans. Even, Noor ud-Din Noorani in his time mocks the Mullas and their exploitative ways. This also tells us that back then Kashmiris had a culture of criticism. A culture that is missing in missionaries that arrived in Kashmir later.
The Mullas flourish on money
fests
These Sheikhs like honey
stick to wealth
The sufis half-naked
do no work
yet, enjoy
unrepentant
many scrumptious meals
These Sheikhs like honey
stick to wealth
The sufis half-naked
do no work
yet, enjoy
unrepentant
many scrumptious meals
None pursue knowledge,
It’s all just another game
these selves
unrestrained
Seen them lately?
Catch them live
Try this old trick:
Announce a grand feast,
from pulpit
now watch
This Mulla run to the Masjid
“Run sick Mulla! Run!
Run to your Masjid.”
Run to your Masjid.”
These are the words of the saint of Kashmir, after whom the Srinagar airport is named ( built on a Karewa named after a Naga, Damodara).
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