[Reader-list] Kashmir, Cashmir...

[inder salim]

Everything that irritates us about other can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung.

I will try to be as simple as possible. I am trying again to write
something on Kashmir. Aga Shahid Ali has aptly composed many Cashmeers
in one of his poems, because there indeed are many Kashmirs for each
one of us.  More Kashmirs than we can write with given English
alphabets even. But it is not necessary that each two Kashmirs ( say
Kashmir and Cashmir) can be in a fighting mood every time. They can
exist simultaneously and even offer a space for another Kashmir to sit
and contribute to the net-working of This Kashmirs. But since, we know
that any number of conflicting Kashmirs, too, are immensely
contributing to the understanding of other, so every Kashmir stands
not-excluded.  I have to remind myself, time and again, that there are
millions of Kashmirs. Each material individual: a Kashmir, as a given
subject, that significantly causes an understanding of ourselves.

This can happen only in mind, because I am trying to push this word
beyond the range of alphabets. This can be a part of some radical
thought, because the on going success graph  of a typical urbanized
standard life form is uni-dimensional, hence boring in many senses.
It does not take a philosopher to tell us that how an Individual
living in a Metro-city feels over-taxed and often emotionally
frustrated by the speed of life. Rural India is in imitating mode, so
everything looks messy at the moment. In the Himalayan Regions, like
Kumaon, Gharwal, they say, Chaptta KarDo ( Flatten it ). People want
to connect themselves with  fast Metros and all that which constitutes
a Metro city.  They have a right to think so. Here, people have the
right to disagree with that also, that is normal.

What interests me most is the idea that engages 'the other', be it
within the city or out there. The other, as we know is a flexible
term. Every other person is other for the other, and one can play this
instrument OTHER by simply touching its cords efficiently or casually.
Since no body can claim to be a master of this instrument, because
every time is first time. The other, I believe is the word that
problematizes everything, everything.

At the moment I want to enter' this other' through a vivid phrase by
Loius Althusser  " labour of the tailor that disappears in the coat."
 I guess, we rarely see the faces of those labourers who toiled hard
to mix concrete or lifted marble blocks on their shoulders for the
making of Taj Mahal. All we see is the final form, which hypnotizes us
visually. We even forget the amputation of the hands of all the craft-
person who created The Taj. In short, the discourse 'On Love', I
believe, can change even, and take a better form than we know.

I am slightly trying to club, environmental issues and Kashmir so that
the  Kashmir word becomes truly universal, or that way, Environmental
issue becomes truly universal.  Any criticism to this is that there
are Kashmiris themselves who are trampling with the echo system of
Kashmir and hence the word 'Kashmir' can not become universal in that
sense.  I don't dispute that. Here, I remember,   Prof. Ghulam Mohd.
Shaad, ( Govt. Degree college Anantnag ) recited a poem in Sahitya
Academy few years back titled ' Thar Nanuk '( heads and tails)  in
which he explicitly talked about the  excesses  both committed by
security forces and Militans in Kashmir. As a metaphor he created
tension between the two opposing forces with a singular focus on
Woman. The woman as nature, harassed, tortured raped and killed by
both. No wonder that where ever we look into our history, we see
'woman' as victim. And it seems that no amount of writing on that can
reflect the pain SHE has endured since thousands of years.

I come back to Kashmir. When  Kashmir was sold by British to a King
for Rs.75 lacs only, it really transformed into a woman on sale. No
wonder why the book by Shabnam Qyoom ' yeh kis ka lahoo, yeh kon mara'
  was widely read by masses in Kashmir. I guess, it the time when
Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah had an accord ( 1975 ) with Indira Gandhi, or
may be a little earlier.  The victim in book is  Reshma who loved
Mahmood, but because of some uneasy dramatic twists Ashok was the only
trusted person who was asked to take care of  Reshma. But to the
shocking disbelief of Reshma, Ashok never restored her back to
Mahmood. He simply kept her.

Now, the situation is, I believe, during all these 60 years of
conflict between Ashok and Mahmood, Reshma simply wants to be free.
Indeed, once Mahmood Bhai seduced her with his  1947 looks, but now he
is old, and more so, reports are that he is a quarrelsome husband, and
his numerous children from different wives are either settled in
London or are simply poor; as poor as Ashok's.  The trouble is that
like a true Wahabi Muslim he simply refuses to give her Khula Nama.
Politically, Mahmood is right, he says, that how he can utter Talak
Talak Talak, when she continues to be locked in the perverted arms of
Ashok. He should free her first, and then we can settle it, albeit as
per Islamic Laws. Now that is again a disaster for battered Reshma.
She simply wants to be free,  and a friend of both. But you know, how
we treat a woman in our culture. A woman can not be a friend in the
first place, let alone if she has shared bed with the man who has a
potential to become her friend.  We need to understand what is
Territory of Desire (( coming book by Annaya Kabir on Kashmir )).  We
perhaps need some real emancipation, before we even begin to think of
debating the claims and counter claims.  Yesterday, I happened to be
at Indo-Pak Mushaira at Jamia Millia Islamia, and from Kishwar Naheed
, the noted feminist Pakistani Poetess, it was not the usual Indo-Pak
hug poem, but  the core of the conflict: the Woman. She concluded her
poem in the auditorium with this note that "He can be a Dost (Friend)
".

Yes, there is a J&K Act that disables a woman from inheriting property
in J&K in case she marries a Non-J&K Male. This too can be clubbed
with the Free Kashmir Movement. There should be choice for each one of
us, and that is the Azadi we want in actuality. The word Azadi, which
is written with simple grass of the earth and not the usual ink on
paper.  Please see the image in my blog
http://indersalim.livejournal.com from my performance/installation at
ISF 2006 event. ' Say No to Death Sentence'. We need to lift the level
of ethics, and that can not happen in absence of environmental, social
 and psychological understanding of the other and self. Here, Felix
Guattari's new aesthetic paradigm comes to my mind. So, this
'environmental' which is synonym of 'woman', needs to be incorporated
simultaneously in any form of struggle,  and that is political.


Right now, I am a little interested in some deconstruction of the
mundane about Kashmir. We have talked enough through some well known
facts about Kashmir. I am pushing it like a mother who has baby inside
womb that wants to come out. So, I push:

Quite playfully, during our school days we knew how a mere shifting of
'nukta' the black dot on the urdu word ' khuda' turns it into a word '
Judha ' which means the opposite, the conflict, the disintegrated, the
death.  Those days it was difficult to visualize the rapid fluxes of
this nukta but now  I feel that ' the nkuta' ( bindi/dot ) functions
like a free electron revolving around the nucleus which behaves
Khuda/Judha at the same time. Here, this Khuda/Judha thing is quite
different from the two words khuda and Judha as we know
conventionally.

It is almost a common sense, that because of our instinct for life- no
one wants to be a Judha. All of us want to be Khuda in a sense that
the very sound in essence gives us the understanding of some
stability. Some form of visibility that enables us to suppress the
negative, death like face of Judha.   But one day, we die.  Therefore,
the word Judha works in tandem with  word Khuda for a real
understanding of Khuda. Sufi thought is full of such a understanding
of life. That is another debate, so for a while let us keep that out.

With Kashmir, India is playing that arrogant Khuda, because it does
not want to experience Judha and loose the sense of stability, since a
Nation Sate easily becomes narcissistic at the very time it gives
birth to a Map. So any change that aims to disfigure that particular
form of visibility is resisted by those who identify with it. But for
those who identify their lucid Khuda with something other than that-it
is not a big deal. For some people the whole earth is Khuda and can
not be Judha,  who is like a bride, unless she is *Striped bare by the
very bachelors who claim the title of being of a true lover.   So a
true lover of earth can not identify with the Khuda as manifest in the
Map of a nation state.

Enough of this Khuda/Judha thing. There is a law in Science that a
balance can be either stable or sensitive. A sensitive balance can not
give us a measure of heavy things, and a stable balance can not give
us the weight of  'a tinka' ( a straw ).   Myself, being one amongst
the masses, a tinka, I feel quite insignificant once 'I ' am measured
by the balance that is meant to weigh heavy things.  We need millions
of sensitive balances to tell us how each straw looks like. ( God of
Small Things by Arundhati Roy ). And once we are able to do that we
can simplify the notion of controlled territories. They don't serve us
because they Judha us, and pitch us against the things that are
measured by balances meant for heavy things of history. Perhaps, we
need a shift.

Now, imagine, Shaheed Bhagat Singh comes to life and talks to a
Freedom  Fighter like Yasin Malik. Here, some Gandhians believe that
his throwing of bomb was not mere symbolic, but I guess it was
symbolic and he was a  real hero by all means. But still Bhagat Singh
will not criticize  Yasin Malik  for his militant activism, though he
will give him a tip of so like a good coach.  Now, again if Mahatma
Gandhi comes back to life how he will talk to Yasin Malik who has
shunned violence. He will be glad and pat him on the back. He will try
to convince him to stay with the Indian Union, but if he will be shown
the grave yards of Kashmir he will suggest  Govt. of India to
carefully negotiate the terms of Free Kashmir. This is indeed complex
for all us, and that is why suggests that we have Kashmir for each one
of us. I know many friends in Europe who support the free Kashmir
idea, without disbanding their deep love for India. Here, I think that
Militants in Kashmir too need to change their strategies for better
results and common support.

Enough for today.

There is couple by Ghalib, my all time favourite.

Aasan kahnay ki kartay hai farmaish, Goyam Muskil , vagar-n-goyam Mushkil
( I am expected to be simple, but if I am simple, it becomes difficult
for me to breath even.)

With love and regards
indersalim









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