Tag: hindustaantiPaekistaan

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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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Suchetgarh Border


February, 2016

Suchetgarh Border in RS Pura sector, Jammu.

A Thirsty Special Train.
First Train to Jammu from Sailkot. 19th Cent. A.D.

Prior to 1947, Suchetgarh used to be an important railway station connecting to Sailkot. The railway line is now defunct and the place is now being promoted like “Wagha”, a place from where you can see Pakistan.

This is the season of mustard. All the border villages burn beautiful yellow.

Border fences cut through the agricultural fields
Sailkot is only 11 kilometers from here. This is the shortest road from Jammu to Pakistan.

 The other side

Here, at the border date, an old banyan tree is the function border pillar. Half of it is Indian and half is Pakistani.

On the Pakistani side, under the shade of the same tree, a worker.

A Pakistani tower

On the Indian side, the BSF office is where stood the old railway station. The wall facing the border has bullet marks, tagged as “Bullet Marks fired by Enemy”. The firing occurs only when tensions between the two countries run very high. When the body burns in fever, bullets arrive like sweat. The last recent bullet marks were from time Kargil war of 1999.

Tourists from Kargil region

Just next to the border post is an old Hindu temple. This is said to be original Ragunath Temple that was later shifted to Jammu.

Across the temple is shrine of Muslim peer “Baba Neeli Tali Walla” that was recently renovated.

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I wonder if there’s any old temple being renovated across the border fence at Post Inayat.

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For new “Radical Humanists with expertise in Kashmir affairs”

For new “Radical Humanists with expertise in Kashmir affairs” and for people selling the news about Geelani “talking” to Burhan Wani before his “sahadat” and Hafiz Saeed organizing the mass mourning.
Khudiram Bose carried out violent acts between the age of 14 to 16 in which innocent people died. Before his 19th birthday, he was hanged, people say, with a smile on his face. The legend of Khudiram Bose was born.
In 1949, Nehru refused to inaugurate Khudiram Bose Memorial in Muzaffarpur in 1949. In response, Nehru’s ideological opponent, M.N. Roy, the grand-daddy of new “Radical Humanists with expertise in Kashmir affairs” was to write:

“I had the privilege of knowing Khudiram. I met him and Prafulla [Chaki] on the eve of their pilgrimage…with pioneers like Khudiram, nationalism was a religion…For them, patriotism was not the path to power. It was tapasya, a mystic experience of self abnegation. Khudiram himself was the gentlest of souls…In a trance a psychological state of the mystic karamyogi, he stated on his fatal pilgrimage; the bomb on his box and the pistol in his pocket were not the means to destroy human life; they were as flowers with which the devotee goes to the temple to please and propitiate the god.” (Independent India April 16, 1949)
Nehru, in fervor of new found Aazadi, could have appropriated Khudiram Bose and cheered him as the youngest hero of Indian Freedom Struggle. It would have made good headlines and a lot of happy people. But, he didn’t. It was against his principle of non-violence and he probably better understood the perils it would bring for India. He would have been leading Indian Aazadi Tahreek in which Godse and Bose sleep in the same grave with Gandhi. One big graveyard. He wasn’t going to encourage the cult in which violence would be celebrated like a religion. Nehru was thinking about future while M.N. Roy fell back to populist iconography of his Hindu origins. The purpose of a revolution for M.N. Roy was always simple: if in the end the majority of the people are happy, the revolution is worth it. However, he didn’t have to deal with morality of Islamist revolutions and the questions of minorities.
It is not surprising that today the “Kashmiri” followers of M.N. Roy still sell revolutions by using iconography of religion. And that’s why Kashmir is not anytime soon going to see a leader who can say Abdul Sattar Ranjoor and Burhan Wani cannot lie in the common grave of Kashmiri religio-nationalism.

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Kashmira Tilotamma

Based on the 11th and 12th sarga of Kāśmīrakamahākaviśrījayānakaviracitaṃ Pr̥thvīrājavijayamahākāvyam.

Prithviraja Vijaya Mahakavya was written by Kashmiri poet Jayanaka between 1193-1200 A.D in Ajmer at the royal court of Prithviraj Chauhan III. It was an epic eulogy to the Chauhan, and along with Rajput history, it gives the description of early battles between forces of Prithviraj and Muhammad Ghori.

The only known manuscript  of the poem (missing some sections) was found in around 1875 in Kashmir in Sarda script by Georg Bühler. It was a commentary on the work by Jonaraja, who is famous for having written Dvitiya Rajatarangini (second Rajatarangini), covering  the period from 1150 A.D. to 1459 A.D.

In 11th sarga, Prithviraj is told the story of destruction of asuras Sunda and Upasunda. He hears about defeat of Ghori’s forces in Gujarat. He retires to his picture gallery, browses through his illustrated books and is aroused by image of apsara Tilotamma, the one made from the ‘finest bits’, the cause of destruction of Sunda and Upasunda. He over hears someone recite a verse, ‘…everything comes to him who strives to get it.’

In 12 sarga, the reciter is introduced:  Jayanaka, from the fine land of Sharda – Kashmira Mandala. A man knowing six languages, great-grandson of a brother of Sivaratha, a minister of King Uchchala of Kashmir (1101-1111 A.D.).

Then the epic abruptly ends.

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Lull in midst of a Storm, 1947

An extract from ‘The leaf and the flame’ (1959) by Margaret Parton (1915-1981), staff correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune. Paints a vivid picture of Kashmir just before the invasion in 1947 as the flames of partition finally starting reaching Srinagar.
June 17

The first time I came to the Vale of Kashmir I was disappointed. Perhaps I had subconsciously confused the words “Vale” and “Veil”. I had expected a lush ravine with great ferns, towering pines, and soft veils of rainbow-glowing mists from the sprays of waterfalls.
Kashmir is nothing like that, at least in the valley. It is a wide, gently-rolling plateau- five thousand feet high – set about with bare and craggy peaks. Back in the mountains there are indeed the kind of ravines and vegetation I had pictured, but unless one goes trekking one does not see them. One sees instead the bare mountains all about, the great stretches of artificial lakes near Srinagar, and the tumbling wooden town itself.
Gradually, running many visits since then, the quiet beauty became powerful in my eyes; the enchantment of Kashmir penetrated my heart. Now, sitting on the flat roof of our houseboat and staring across Dal Lake at a sunset-reddened range of noble peaks, I wonder how I could ever have thought them ugly that first visit, that time which now became almost legendary in my mind. And now, peacefully, I wish to re-live that fevered time.
It was October, 1947. The brat partition riots, which took perhaps a million lives and made twelve million people into homeless refugees, were barely over. We had seen too much murder and bloodshed in both India and Pakistan to be able to take sides any longer; we were weary of refugee problems and talk of revenge. Perhaps when you have spent many months looking at the mutilated corpses of murdered babies you reach a point beyond an understanding of revenge, when only an emotion of universal grief seems appropriate. We needed a little time for peace and restoration, and so, because we were in Rawalpindi, we went to Kashmir. There had been no riots in Kashmir. Kashmir, everyone said, was quiet and beautiful. the Hindu Maharajah had not yet decided whether to join India or Pakistan, but no one seemed to be hurrying him.
At that time the only road into Kashmir from the Indian sub-continent led from Rawalpindi in Pakistan up past Murree, through the mountains of Western Kashmir up onto the plateau, and past Baramula along the Jhelum River to Srinagar.
Still on the Pakistan side, we drove along beside a river which formed the border of Kashmir and saw hundreds of people crossing the river towards us, riding on logs or crude rafts. One young man lay on an inflated goatskin and paddled across with his hands and feet to the bank where we had stopped the car. Dripping, he climbed up the rocks and spoke to us.
“We have been driven from our homes by the Maharajah’s troops,” he announced.”We have brought our women and our children to safety in Pakistan, but we are going back to fight. I myself have only come over here to get a gun and ammunition.”
It seems strange to me now to think that this little rebellion in the western district of Poonch has been so completely forgotten in the surge and confusion of later events. It was certainly a small wave of history swallowed almost immediately by a larger one.
On the Kashmir side of the bridge from Pakistan we had to stop the taxi and go though customs. Although the population of Kashmir was largely Moslem, the Maharajah and the ruling class were Hindus and, therefore, worshippers of the cow. Our baggage was carefully searched for forbidden beef as well as for firearms. The officers finished with us quickly and then turned to two large wooden boxes which an old Moslem in the front seat was taking to a doctor in Srinagar; the young clerk pried open the lids and recoiled when he discovered both boxes contained live leeches.
“Search them. They might be hiding guns,” ordered the customs officer. The clerk picked up a stick and began poking unhappily among the leeches. The custom officer, a thin Hindu pundit, leaned against a railing above the river and, in the way of all educated Indians, talked politics.
“We Kashmiri pundits are the third most intelligent people in India.” he said. “Only the Bengalis and the Madrasi Brahmins are smarter than we are. That is well known.
“If Kashmir joined India there would be two other peoples ahead of us. But if we joined Pakistan, we would be able to dominate them, because we would be more intelligent than anybody else.”
Wondering how democracy is ever to succeed in Asia, we drove on another hundred miles, through the Jehlum gorge and up into the Vale. Once, we stopped beside a field of early winter wheat and spoke to a peasant boy. He was wide-eyed and shy, and he spoke softly.
“No, there is no trouble here, Sahib,” he said.”All is peaceful. I do hear in our village gossip that the government is fighting itself, but what is that to do with me?”
On the outskirts of Baramulla, a pleasant little town at the edge of the Vale, a crowd was massed near a stone bridge. A haggard young man was auctioning off clothes one by one. While we watched he sold a pair of pink-satin Punjabi trousers for three rupees.
“Those belonged to his wife who was murdered,” explained an old man standing nearby.”He, like so many others, us a refugee from the West Punjab, without money and forced to sell everything. Hindu refugees have come here to Kashmir because they know it is peaceful and they will not be persecuted, although most of us are Moslems.”
Within a week, the custom officer, the peasant boy, and the young refugee were probably all dead.

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Lakhon Mein Ek, 1967, Pakistan


It is 1948 and Kashmir is already divided between two newly created nations. But a war still wages on and boundaries are being drawn and re-drawn. There is news of communal violence in Poonch. Prem Nagar (Love Town) is in sphere of violence. Caught in this violence are two patriarchs in town Khairabad, one Hindu and one Muslim, one Hardayal and one Ahmad. Both are looking for their missing family and young child. Hindus are killing Muslims. Muslims are leaving Poonch and heading for the land now rechristened ‘Azad Kashmir’. Emotions are running high. Ahmad begs his friend Hardayal to leave for Hindustan. Hardayal does not want to leave his birth place and head for an unknown land but takes the advise. Ahmad promises to continue looking for Hardayal’s daughter Shakuntala. Hardayal promises to look for Ahmad’s wife and son Mehmood on the other side. On reaching the other side Hardayal finds the whole village of Prem Nagar burning with no sign of Ahmad’s wife and son Mehmood. The shock of violence proves a bit too much for  Hardayal, he protests the violence and like Manto’s Toba Tek Singh, ends up in an asylum. Ahmad manages to find little Shakuntala safe in a police station. He takes her in. When the news of violence in Prem Nagar reaches Ahmad, he takes his wife and son for dead. Little Shakuntala is afraid that in retaliation her Ahmad uncle will kill her. Ahmad tells her his Allah don’t believe in such mindless violence. When a Muslim mob turns up at his house to get the girl, he tells them the same thing – ‘not the way of true religion.’ As often happens in movies (and in Bible), an instantly repentant mob drops weapons and goes away enlightened. We know Ahmad is going to raise Shakuntala as his own daughter. Meanwhile, little Mehmood evading a Hindu mob crosses over to Azad side and is rescued. But the violence does an erase job on his memories. He is taken in by a Pathan Dilbar Khan, a lorry driver who will raise him as his own son renaming him Dildar Khan.

Years later, lorry driver Dildar Khan meets Shakuntala and both fall in love with each other. Ahmad reminds Shakuntala not to do anything that would embarrass him in front of the society. He indirectly asks her if she has consummated her love with the Muslim boy. Shakuntala promises she did no such thing. Ahmad meets Pathan Dilbar Khan and politely asks him to stop Dildar Khan from wooing the Hindu girl. An angry Pathan confronts his son Dildar Khan and asks him what has he been doing with the innocent Hindu girl. ‘Nothing, father, we just hugged once.’ Pat comes a slap. ‘Would you like it if someone hugs your mother or sister?’ Love is forbidden. Caught in a dilemma, Dildar Khan promises to forget Shakuntala. Driving his lorry in a distraught state, he has an accident that again erases his memories and brings back old memories.

He wakes up from accident remembering his real name and the name of his father. He refuses to recognise Pathan as his father. Mehmood is reunited with his real father Ahmad and moves into his house. Here, he again meets Shakuntala but doesn’t remember her as the woman he once loved but remembers her as the little Hindu girl he used to play with. A crestfallen Shakuntala sings her sad songs to the lovely valleys. Mehmood does not remember her. She cries. Mehmood does not remember her. Angry Pathan arrives at Ahmad’s door to reclaim back his son. Pathan claims his son Dildar Khan became Mehmood so that he could live with Hindu girl Shakuntala. Shocked at hearing this accusation, Mehmood finally remembers everything. Love again blossoms. Everything is fine but then Shakuntala’s real father Hardayal return from India to take back his long lost daughter.

It is obvious Shakuntala loves Mehmood. He is her god, yet, Shakuntala and Mehmood part ways for if they stay together it shall bring dishonour to everyone, every religion.

In Hindustan things don’t get any better for Shakuntala. Hindustan isn’t kind to woman who falls in love with a man prone to amnesia. It has been so since the birth of Bharat. The tyranny that amnesia inflicts on women gives birth to nations.

Shakuntala
Amar Chitra Katha

In Hindustan, Shakuntala is looked down upon because she slept in Pakistan, Land of Pure. In India, she is treated as impure and not even allowed to enter the temple. Shakuntala wants to return to the real land of pure. Father is helpless.

Shakuntala’s problems only compound. A rich Hindu sets his lecherous eyes on Shakuntala and using the help of a local conniving pandit manages to marry her. But on their first night together, Shakuntala tells him that her heart belongs to someone else. Scene cuts to the temple of her heart and we see her singing bhajan the her love god.

God of love from Pakistan.
No weapons here.
[video]

Sung by Noorjahan and written by Fayyaz Hashmi of ‘Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo’ fame, ‘Man Mandir ke Devta‘ is a curious specimen from old world Pakistan where even propaganda had to be rooted in a certain unavoidable intimacy with the enemy. Pakistan has come a long way since then and Pakistani cinema is of course as good as dead.

The conniving Pandit and the profane rich landlord.
The regular Hindu punching bag blokes in Pakistani cinema.

Scorned, Shakuntala’s husband decides to put an end to this unholy love. He shoots off a secret message to Mehmood pretending to be Shakuntala and asks him to meet up at the border. He plans to kill Mehmood. Shakuntala overhears the evil plan and rushes to save Mehmood. In the finale at the line of control, Shakuntala takes a bullet for Mehmood and dies. Mehmood takes back Shakuntala’s body to Pakistan, the land of pure.
Funny thing, the subcontinental popular cinema. In 1962, the story of Shakuntala was retold in Indian film ‘Ek Musafir Ek Hasina’ (1962). Again a girl in love with an amnesic boy and again a drama set in Kashmir. However, while the Indian film towards the end disintegrates into a regular Bollywood affair so that in sum Kashmir just looks like an exotic prop, it is surprisingly the Pakistani propaganda film which at least is a bit more focused in its depiction of complex geographical and ethnic setup of Kashmir. Indian films were and remain very vague about these things. Who in Bomaby would have made a film about a place called ‘Poonch’? 
If you invert ‘Lakhon Mein Ek’, if it was made in India, if the girl was muslim and the amnesic boy was Hindu, if the rhetoric was kept the same, if the story is again told over the dead body of a woman, if the religious overtones are a bit diluted and a nationalistic flavour is a bit amplified, if a dying Shakuntala was to again plead the case of a nation, you get the story of Raj Kapoor’s Henna (1991).  

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Watch the entire film here

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This is Part 1 of two part series on ‘Kashmiri women in Pakistani cinema’. In part 2, we are going to look at the curious case of a Kashmiri pandit girl pleading the case for Pakistan.

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Previously: Bollywood and their Kashmir nonsesne

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Kashmir Map, 1851

A puzzling image for most of post-1947 generations. Interesting, how unfamiliar a place can get just by changing the way its map is laid out.  

Cabool, The Punjab & the Beloochistan
Issued 1851, London & New York by John Tallis & Company
Drawn & Engraved by J. Rapkin
via: davidrumsey.com

And in this mind wrapping map: This is Kashmir….

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A rug factory that was in Amritsar


William Sloane arrived in America as an emigrant from a Scottish town famous for weaving carpets and rugs. In 1843, William Sloane along with his younger brother John W. Sloane went on to form a company called W.& J. Sloane, importing rugs and carpets into America and changing the way the rich and famous decorated their homes in that country.
In 1876 at Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, William Sloane noticed that the most popular attractions was the Oriental rugs. He bought the entire collection for a millions dollars and then displayed them at his New York store where it is said they sold ‘like lollipop’. The average price was $10,000 with one Persian masterpiece even selling for $75,000. This was the first time in America that a retail house was selling Oriental Rugs. Looking at this success, soon others jumped into the market but Sloane was still at the top of the game.
In 1882, to maintain his lead, Sloane’s got in touch with a rug manufacturer in Amritsar offering to buy their entire output. The deal was done and Sloane’s was the  become only American retail store with its own Oriental rug manufacturer. 
The manufacturer was Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s Great-grandfather was a Kashmiri migrant shawl weaver, who probably arrived in Punjab at a time when Shawls were in much demand in Europe. But that business died with the end of Franco-Prussian war. Now, the American’s it seemed had arrived just in time. Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company had left the shawl business and moved to carpets in around 1880. While weaving was done in Amritsar, they got material from Kashmir where they maintained another workshop.
It was a mutually beneficial agreement for both the parties. Sloane’s could now give their designs and requirements for rugs tailored for American taste and yet retain Oriental touch as was manufactured in India.
But this design and requirement transferring was easier said than done. The method employed was ingenious but laborious. A design once approved was traced on a huge sheet of graph paper, each square representing a knot in wool. The minute specifications and texture design were appended to the sheet and sent off to Amritsar. In Amritsar, the master weaver, the only one who could read the instructions duly translated in Urdu and intone them to the other workers. It was a painful process, considering that an average rug was 12 x 15 foot and had 3,500,000 hand tied knots, a process that took three to four years. 
This business partnership lasted right until 1948. Then India became Independent, Pakistan arrived and like many other threads, this thread too got severed. Violence engulfed the areas around the newly created borders. Shaikh Gulam Hussun found himself in middle of it all.
On April 8, 1947, Shaikh cabled Sloane’s:
“Thank god we and Swadeshi (a subsidiary wool spinning plant) escaped damage. If no further trouble hope dispatching from Amritsar fifty per cent more yardage than last year.”
The people caught in conflict were yet to grasp the scope of this violence. They were yet to understand how deep the cuts are going to be and how long will the bleeding go on.
Violence soon caught up with Shaikh’s optimism. 
In October Shaikh reported pillaging of Amritsar, the burning and looting of his home and factory. The machinery that survived was requisitioned by the East Punjab Government.
Then in 1948, India and Pakistan had their first war over Kashmir. Shaikh’s luck was finally out, but still he clung to a hope. 
“Owning to various difficulties,” wrote Shaikh with amazing stolidity in January, 1948, “we do not think we will be able to resume out business as quickly as anticipated for now we are cut off from Kashmere. The rumour was that our factory has been confiscated over there.”
That was the end of the story for Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Sloane, on the other hand now started sourcing their material directly from Kashmir.
In ‘The story of Sloane’s’ published by W.& J. Sloane Firm in 1950, we read:
“Thus was this friendly personal and commercial tie finally broken. Some day, it is hoped, Shaikh may re-establish his enterprises in Amritsar; but this is doubtful as all the Mohammedans, who were the weavers, have fled. the remaining Hindus do not weave. Sloane’s is now receiving its hand-woven rugs from Syrinagar, in Kashmere.”
Young hands at Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s factory, Amritsar. 1915.
Photograph: ‘The Bombay Presidency, the United Provinces, the Punabb, Kashmir, Sind, Rajputana and Central India: Their History, People, Commerce and Natural Resources’ (1920) by Somerset Playne
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Disjoint Images and Text

While we are still on subject of how images impact us. A related post of another impact of images, previously posted to my other blog. 

Stages in Life of a Gandhi Photograph

Photograph by great Brian Brake published in ‘India, by Joe David Brown and the editors of Life’, 1961 [complete book available at Hathi] as a visual aid to the text that deals with relevance of Gandhi in India, The Nation’s Unsilenced Conscience. It would have you believe Gandhi was alive, in heart and spirit of Indians.

As I looked at this beautiful picture, something about it made me realize that this can be a case study about  disjointedness of images, context and text. About giant sweeps of history. Of loss of footnotes. Of lost in footnotes. Of seduction by images. About loss.

One may ask why. After all it does look like a perfect picture for an article on Gandhi. Children = innocence = unsilenced Conscience. Children in love with Gandhi = The Nations’s un-silenced conscience. Simple and brilliant.

The problem is with the details. The book only tells you that it is by Brian Brake and appears courtesy of Magnum. Place where is was taken in not mentioned. No year is given. Online, the only other place where you will find this image (besides the online version of the book) is an Arabic page dedicated with love to Gandhi, his life and work. This, as often happens, after I post stuff at this blog, will not be the case for long. It will probably end up on Gandhi Love or Gandhi Hate pages on Facebook, adding a new cycle to the life of this image. And will probably be again lost in indifference of text and context.

So what is it that I know about this photograph that makes this entire setup ironic. What is it about this setup that makes me often doubt everything I read and see. Why do I want to try and rescue it from the narrative in which it is wrapped?

The little girl in green at the back is attired as an elderly traditional Kashmiri Pandit woman.

The photograph was shot in 1957 during a ‘national’ day, an Indian one, with cultural parade and all, organised under Prime Minsiter of Kashmir, Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammed in Srinagar. He was the man who replaced imprisoned Sheikh Abdullah.

Another photograph from the event shot by Brian brake.
Via: Museum of New Zealand
Although I couldn’t find the Gandhi photograph there, but the conclusion
that both very shot as the same event is quite easy to make based on the dress that children are wearing in the background.

“The close alignment of the Conference with the politics of the Congress was particularly distasteful to Bazaz. Bazaz had been moving away from Gandhian and eventually Congress politics throughout the 1930s. He had been taken aback by Gandhi’s dismissive reply to his letter asking for advice on the path Kashmiri Pandits should follow in the political movement in Kashmir: “Seeing that Kashmir is predominantly Mussalman it is bound one day to become a Mussalman State. A Hindu prince can therefore only rule by non ruling i.e., by allowing the Mussalmans to do as they like and by abdicating when they are manifestly going wrong.””

Lines about strange case of Prem Nath Bazaz From ‘Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir’ by Chitralekha Zutshi. Prem Nath Bazaz was later exiled from Kashmir (after differences with Sheikh Abdullah) to Delhi and spent his later life advocating Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, returning only in 1970s after Shiekh-Indira accord to help Janta Party and attempting to create a democratic opposition to Shiekh.

Looking now at the grand narratives of the national myths of India, Pakistan and Kashmir, and looking at the realities as they often dwell on hard ground. where these myths crumble into incoherent bits and pieces, one does tend to agree, history is a nightmare. And that there is no waking up from it. For it is a nightmare within a nightmare. It is narratives ingesting narratives, facts ingesting fiction, fiction vomiting facts. An on top of it, it is always a book with a beautiful cover.

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A panel from an old Indian comic based on story of Rupinika, from Somadeva’s Katha Sarit Sagara (The Ocean of Streams of Story)

 
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