[Reader-list] Suvir Kaul: Srinagar, Four Years Later

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Telegraph [India]
September 01, 2003

SRINAGAR, FOUR YEARS LATER

Suvir Kaul returns to his homeland and finds that Kashmir's 
multi-religious, syncretic culture might be impossible to restore

The author is professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

All the calendars in our home in Srinagar stood frozen at October 
1999, which is the last month my parents lived in their house there. 
We feared great damage in the intervening years, but were relieved to 
find only enormous volumes of dust, and the detritus of pigeons 
nesting in the attic and the balcony, encouraged by the easy access 
provided by broken window-panes. As we cleaned - the hard work being 
done by two neighbourhood caretakers called Abdul Gaffar and 
Raghunath - it was tempting to think of the restoration of this home 
as a metaphor for a restored Srinagar, and a Kashmir, and a return to 
a multi-religious, syncretic culture.

That restoration, however, is going to be much harder, and even 
perhaps impossible, to achieve. The brutal history of the past 
fourteen years cannot be wished away, and a people ground down under 
the military might of the state and the violence of well-armed 
militants, cannot but wonder at what might have been, or indeed what 
the future might hold. But there are other important reasons why the 
state of siege in the valley will not be lifted soon: too many people 
have enriched themselves in the last decade, and they know exactly 
what they will lose if the conflict in Kashmir de- escalates.

Stories are rife of the wealth accrued by the leaders of each 
political faction (and there are many). Similar stories circulate 
about bureaucrats, officers of army units and of each paramilitary 
force (these too are multiple, and their acronyms - BSF, CRPF, SSB, 
JKP, RR, STF - have become the new idiom of Kashmiri). People talk at 
length of the money that has circulated in the valley via each of 
these groups and their counterparts in Pakistan, and of how much the 
politico-military elite on both sides of the border has benefited 
from the state of affairs in Kashmir.

Money to be made is arguably the most powerful local vested interest, 
but there is also the heady power of this elite bull-dozing its way 
in elaborate convoys past locals who have learnt to step aside or be 
assaulted. Recently, the local papers described a woman professor 
whose car failed to give way quickly enough being dragged out by her 
hair and beaten. When officers or their families go shopping on 
Residency Road or Lambert Lane, trucks of soldiers deploy on either 
side, all in addition to the forces permanently on patrol there. 
Local Kashmiris have learned to ignore such activities as the antics 
of a powerful elite, but for the likes of us visiting Kashmiris, 
every day offered ugly instances of the ways of a superior occupying 
force.

The boulevard that fringes the Dal Lake is alive with people, but no 
one can take free passage for granted, for at a moment's notice the 
road is blocked and civilians must detour. Perhaps most egregious of 
all is the fact that local, non-upper class Kashmiris are turned away 
from the springs at Chashmashahi, while outsiders are granted access.

Nowhere is the remaking of an older Kashmir into the soulless forms 
of a modern India more visible than in the paramilitary take-over 
(which can also of course be styled the "preservation") of the old 
Hindu shrines of Kashmir. Kheer Bhawani (Tulla Mulla) and the 
Shankaracharya temple that overlook Srinagar have lost whatever 
ancient sanctity they once possessed. They are now armed camps, 
festooned with the bright colours and signboards so beloved of 
military officers. Commanding officers of units stationed at these 
sites have turned them into advertisements for themselves - now you 
can only get to the Devi via CRPF yellow and red, and by walking past 
large tin placards that rewrite Kashmiri belief into the vocabulary 
of a more "mainstream" Hinduism. When we visited, bhajans that blare 
from jagrans in Delhi were playing loudly - only the wonderful old 
chinars suggested all that was once distinctively Kashmiri about 
Tulla Mulla.

A Ram Mandir is being built at the site of the ancient sun temple at 
Martand (Mattan). This is not simply an addition to what is already 
there - it is a deliberate refashioning of Kashmiri Hindu worship to 
obey the dictates of Hindutva practice. But worst of all are the 
excessive displays put on ostensibly for the benefit of the Amarnath 
yatris, but which actually function as a warning to local Kashmiris: 
all along the route past Pahalgam, and to some extent on the Baltal 
route, banners and wall-slogans sponsored by the CRPF and the BSF 
(and occasionally, the Jammu and Kashmir police) welcome the yatris. 
These units also make available tea and snacks, and announce them as 
prasad. There is no constitutional separation of temple and state to 
be found here - the yatris, and those who guard them, are equally, 
and aggressively, Hindu.

Most surprising for the visitor, however, is the great prosperity of 
Srinagar, where new homes are ever larger and the air impressively 
polluted by the thousands of cars and buses bought recently. Stores 
are stocked with the goods sold in the fancy shops of south Delhi. 
The handicrafts for which Kashmir has long been famous are plentiful, 
and the situation in the valley has meant that enterprising dealers 
have developed outlets for them across the country. The electricity 
supply has improved considerably - there are power cuts, but they 
operate according to a schedule, and the voltage is no longer 
miserable. Outside Srinagar, however, it is a different story. 
Villagers talk of a time, twenty years ago, when they knew 
electricity, and wish for doctors and teachers, who, like piped 
water, are a scarce resource.

But there is change in the air, and everywhere in the valley people 
are celebrating their opportunity to travel to places that they have 
not dared to visit for years. An entire generation has been deprived 
of civic life and of the joys of Kashmir, and they are aware of this 
deprivation. Schoolchildren now flood Pahalgam and Gulmarg, and the 
Mughal Gardens are full of local visitors. No one knows how long this 
lull will last, with the result that locals are moved by a 
near-hysterical urge to wander, to picnic, to talk of the future.

This is a moment of hope then, of young people wishing for a life 
different from that they have suffered so far, of conversations in 
which plans are made for a Kashmir in which ideas can flourish, the 
mind can be without fear, and the head can be held high. I invoke 
Tagore's great nationalist poem deliberately, for its aspirations - 
as true for Kashmiris as for Indians more generally - might well be 
those of a group of young college students and lecturers I met. They 
gather on Sundays to discuss a life of ideas outside of the 
machinations of international politics, paramilitary strategies, and 
the self-aggrandizement of those who rule Kashmir. Their hope, like 
Tagore's, is to build a heaven of freedom into which Kashmir, and 
India, might one day awake.

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