[Reader-list] kashmiriyat by Meena Arora Nayak

[inder salim]

http://www.worldviewmagazine.com/issues/article.cfm?id=106&issue=25

KASHMIRIYAT

An embracing spirit languishes like the dying chinar tree

by Meena Arora Nayak

Lal Chowk surprised me. Instead of crumbling stores, I saw in them
merchandise piled high. Instead of the evidence of battles, I saw
vendors and vehicles competing for street space. Instead of
fear-stricken people, I saw a crowded marketplace, brimming with
activity. When I expressed my surprise to Arshad, my escort, he told
me that the state officials repaired all damages almost overnight-a
ruse to convince the people or, perhaps, themselves that the situation
was just as repairable. As for the people in the market, he said,
"Life goes on. In fact, within 20 minutes of an incident every thing
goes back to normal. We have become so used to it."

We bought the cheese and as we strolled through the crowds, we heard a
crash-thunderous-and the earth trembled under our feet. Within a
minute, everything changed. Bustling streets became fear-filled
confusion. Storekeepers pulled down shutters; vendors and vehicles
became entangled in flight; people ran in all directions, pushing
against each other, stumbling over wares laid out on sidewalks. As I
stood rooted to the ground, suspended in this surreal dimension, a
young woman ran past us, her bright yellow duppatta, which a minute
ago had probably covered her head in modesty, flying off her shoulder
in a trail of fire.

Arshad and I began walking towards the site, shouldering our way past
people fleeing in the opposite direction. "What do you think it was?"
I asked Arshad. "A police encounter? A terrorist's grenade?"

"Not an encounter," he said. "No shots." He paused. "No screams. There
were no screams."

As we turned the corner, a small crowd of men gathered around an
embankment. Leaving Arshad's side, I elbowed my way into the crowd,
determined to see the blatant tragedy of Kashmir. And there it was: a
chinar tree 20-some meters in height and 12-some meters in girth,
felled to the ground. Chinar is a Persian word meaning "what a fire."
In late autumn, the chinar bursts into flames, its palm-sized leaves
smoldering in colors from passionate purple to blazing red. In 1596,
the great Mughal Emperor of India, Akbar, planted the first grove of
chinars in a garden in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and
Kashmir. Since then, the chinar in Kashmir has become a dominant
feature of the landscape, and its connotations have become an idiom
both artistic and dialectic.

This is the story of Kashmir-the story of a dying civilization.
According to a Hindu legend, Kashmir was once a vast lake called
Satisar, inhabited by the Nagas, the snake people. Once upon a time, a
demon, Jaladeo, began terrorizing the Nagas, so they beseeched their
father, Sage Kashyap, to help. Kashyap, deciding to evoke the gods,
performed such severe penance that the heavens shook. Finally, Shiva
descended from Mount Kailash, his abode in the Himalayas, and rented
the mountainside with his mighty trident. All the water of Lake
Satisar drained out. Then Vishnu's consort, the goddess Laxmi (called
Sharda in Kashmir), took the shape of a hari or a mynah bird and
dropped on the demon's head a pebble, which penetrated his body and
grew to the size of a hill, encasing him in the rock. Thus, the hill
came to be known as Hari Parbat (Hari's Mount). In gratitude to
Kashyap, the site was called Kashyap Mir or Kashyap Mountain, which
has gradually corrupted to Kashmir. Over the years, the slopes of the
hill became enshrined with Hindu, Muslim and Sikh places of worship.
In the 16th century, Akbar constructed the Hari Parbat fort along the
top of the hill, enclosing the city of Srinagar in a citadel.

Even before Akbar built his fort, Srinagar and the whole Kashmir
valley was already a citadel. Nestled securely between the lofty
Himalayan range in the north and the Pir Panjal in the south, the
134-kilometer by 40-kilometer oval plane with its meandering rivers
and rippling lakes, rolling greens and flower-fragrant paths was a
citadel of Eden, a citadel for a way of life which the world would
never comprehend. Kashmiris call it Kashmiriyat.

Kashmiriyat, when experienced as a culture, is so syncretic that it
inspires an epitomizing co-existence: man's oneness with man; man's
oneness with nature. Kashmiriyat, when perceived as a faith, is an
amalgamation of four great traditions: the aborigines' Shaivism, a
Hindu Monistic philosophy, and the disseminated wisdoms of Quran's
Erfan, Buddhism's Nirvana and Sikhism's Ek Onkar.

Aside from being a fertile ground for missioners, Kashmir, being on
the Silk Route, was also an easy target for invaders who were
sometimes benevolent but often tyrannical. This constant shift in
allegiance taught Kashmiris the attitude of Kashmiriyat. No matter who
or what the monarch, the people of Kashmir knew survival could only be
through seamless co-existence. One of the reasons for such integration
was Kashmir's insular geography, which buffered most disruptive
influences. However, when the modern world's demarcation made Kashmir
a strategic vantage point, the permeation of outside antagonisms in
Kashmir's society was inevitable.

In 1947, the year of India's partition, Kashmir emerged from the
shifting tides of international politics as the invidious prize for
both India and Pakistan. At that time, Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu
king, but the majority of its population was Muslim. According to the
precepts of the British two-nation theory, Kashmir belonged to
Pakistan. However, Kashmir's Sufi Islam was hardly the Sunna- and
Sharia-based Islam of Pakistan, so the Raja entered a stand-still
agreement with both countries. Pakistan grew impatient and sent its
troops and warlords into Kashmir, forcing the hand of the Raja, who
appointed Sheikh Abdullah-a popular and trusted leader of the
Kashmiris-to negotiate the treaty of Kashmir's accession to India.
Thus it was that Kashmir became a part of India-but with reservation.
Article 370 of the Instrument of Accession gave Kashmir
semi-autonomous status within India's constitutional framework and
promised the people of Kashmir a plebiscite. The article guaranteed
the survival of Kashmiriyat in Kashmir, but it also became Kashmir's
albatross.

Imbued with this special status, Kashmir jealously protected its
autonomy. Consequently, the central government in Delhi pumped into
the region special food and resource subsidies but otherwise felt no
real need to be actively involved in the region's affairs. The
government of India did very little to monitor the state's
administrative and legislative machinery. With money pouring in
through the subsidies, the highly profitable tourism industry and the
farming of such cash crops as fruits, walnuts and saffron, corruption
was a natural result. Bribery took root early in Sheikh Abdullah's
20-year administration and burgeoned into a full-fledged orgy when the
regime of his son, Farukh Abdullah, began in the mid-1980s.

Civil lawlessness now reigns supreme in Kashmir. Investments,
development contracts, higher education and employment are all
privileges of the venal, while the ordinary Kashmiri is brick-walled.
Who is held responsible for the failed system? The situation.
Terrorism.

A disillusioned young rickshaw driver revealed the Sophoclean irony of
this inverted truth to me on my way to Chirar-I-Sharif, the shrine of
the Sufi saint Nur-ud-din Wali. He was a first-class graduate of
Srinagar's college of agriculture. "When I couldn't get a job,
militancy became the only option. Everyone knows how much they
(Pakistan's intelligence service) pay for young recruits. I tried
going to the other side, but my guide abandoned me in the mountains
and I returned home. I have a widowed mother and two sisters. Although
I can barely feed them with this job, I consider myself lucky. If I
had joined militancy…"

Kashmir's reversal of fate was sealed in 1987 when various Muslim
groups with an affinitive bias toward the Islamization of Pakistan's
military dictator Zia-ul-Haque formed a coalition called the Muslim
United Front. Haque's orthodoxy, drawing its inspiration from the
Ayatollah's experiments in Iran, promised a lawful land practicing
Quranic principles of governance and personal ethics. The frustrated
youth of Kashmir were ready and willing to surrender Kashmiriyat to
law and polity, even if it meant living in a polarized society. Muslim
United Front drew such unprecedented support from the people of
Kashmir that Farukh Abdullah feared defeat in that year's elections,
so he formed a coalition with India's ruling Congress party. Doubtful
of the coalition's victory, Farukh and Delhi orchestrated guarantees.
The election was blatantly rigged. Members of the Muslim United Front
watched as election booths were vandalized, votes were miscounted and
polling agents were beaten and jailed.

Kashmir erupted in riots and a wayward spirit entered the hearts of
people. It was the spirit of revolution. The former pleas for
plebiscite- Hum kya chahte hai? Rai shumari!-turned to chants for
azadi or freedom. Mothers urged their sons to beckon to the call;
schoolteachers stopped teaching math and history, and began talking to
their students about freedom and liberty. And Pakistan-with its
tantalizing promises of money and training camps-became the much
needed "helping hand" or, as India liked to call it, the "foreign
hand." Young Muslim men from all over the valley openly crossed the
Line of Control in throngs: Local bus drivers announcing two
towns-"Sopur, Kapur"-defiantly added "Upper" to indicate their
destination was on the other side of the mountains.

Of those 18 Muslim United Front polling agents, five joined the Jammu
and Kashmir Liberation Front, 12 joined the Hizb ul Mujahideen and one
enlisted with the Islamic Student's Federation. The gun had entered
the valley. Its first victim: Kashmiriyat.

Bashir Ahmad, a third generation weaver of pashmina shawls, is a
witness. Most of Bashir's business used to come directly from tourists
and merchants in Jammu. The tourists stopped visiting and the shawls
stopped selling. "Today, even if we can sell them in Jammu, it is at
the cost of our pride. They don't trust us any more." He told me how a
few years ago, he sent a shipment of pure pashmina shawls to a Jammu
dealer he knew well, but when he went to collect the payment, he only
received half of what was owed him. The dealer accused him of mixing
wool yarn with pashmina thread.

"Weaving is an ibadat," Bashir told me, "an act of worship. Weavers
have a patron Sufi saint who demands honesty in ibadat. Believe me, in
this business, if you are not honest, you will not be able to survive
for more than a few years. We have been weavers for over 100 years.
This situation has made my ancestors cheats."

This mistrust has soured not just business relationships, but also
relationships of the heart.

Shahid sahib, my host, shared his pain with me one afternoon. Before
the Kashmiri Hindus, or Pundits, as they are called, fled the valley,
fearing the fanatic implications of the Islamic insurgency, Shahid
sahib used to have a very close Hindu friend in his neighborhood.

"Kaul and I used to play chess in the evening. His board used to sit
in my living room. We would play in my house and, most evenings, go to
his house for dinner. His mother was an excellent cook. I loved her
like a mother. Then rumors of a Muslim militancy began to spread. But
there was no real incident. However, I was worried about my friend and
his family, so I told them that if anything happened, they could count
on me. A couple of days later, Kaul came to ask for his chessboard and
the following morning they were gone. The next thing we know, the
media is splashed with atrocities the Muslims had supposedly committed
against their Hindu neighbors-women raped, men tortured and killed,
children brutally murdered, houses looted. These were stories that
included my neighborhood. Right here where I live. How is it that I
didn't see anything?"

When I asked him if he still believed in Kashmiriyat, his eyes filled
with tears. "No one talks about Kashmiriyat any more. Maybe it was
always a myth, an illusion we had mistaken as truth."

"But do you believe in it?" I insisted.

"If anything had happened, I would have protected Kaul and his family
with my life."

Whether the grievances of the Muslims are real or imagined, whether
the Pundits fled due to a situation that was real or imagined, hardly
seems the point now. The fact is that the ordinary Kashmiri Muslim saw
the Pundits' leaving as a betrayal of Kashmiriyat.

While I talked to Shahid sahib, his seven-year-old grandson came into
the room. I dug out two candy bars from my bag to give to him. When
Burhan saw his grandfather's tears, he emphatically stated that
Kashmir should become a part of Pakistan.

"Why?" I asked him.

"Because we are Musalmaan."

"But do you know that India has many many Musalmaan?"

"Yes, but there are also Hindus. I don't like Hindus."

"Why?"

"They're not nice. They tell lies."

I asked him what he thought of me-whether I was nice or not.

"Very nice," he said, biting into his chocolate.

"So, do you think I am a Hindu or a Musalmaan?"

Without hesitation, he said, "Musalmaan."

I couldn't resist telling the little boy that I was a Hindu, but I
regretted the impulse almost immediately, because Burhan looked at his
grandfather with bewilderment and his own sense of betrayal.

In fact, betrayal is the theme song of Kashmir's tragedy. Ever since
1947, the Kashmiris have been suffering one betrayal after another.
The promise of the plebiscite was never fulfilled. Waiting for its
realization, the people of Kashmir never identified with India and,
thus, remained bereft of a national identity. Compounding this
estrangement was Delhi's repeated condoning of corruption in the guise
of secularism and democracy.

When embittered Kashmiris turned to Pakistan after the 1987 elections
fraud, Pakistan's intelligence service gathered the Kashmiris in an
embrace of pretended sympathy. For a while, Kashmiris saw the
Pakistani agents as fellow Muslims ready to fight for their brethren,
and freedom in the Kashmiri psyche became synonymous with the fanatic
elements of that agency.

However, within a few years the people of Kashmir realized that
Pakistan had invoked insurgency in Kashmir not for the Kashmiris'
right for self-determination but for the establishment of an Islamic
world-order. Their cause for freedom had been sabotaged and turned
murderously against their own people. What was worse was that
Kashmir's grassroots revolutionaries became indistinguishable from the
terrorists of foreign nations. This fight had become a
free-for-all-Afghanis, Pakistanis, Sudanese, jihadis, freedom
fighters, bounty hunters. However, by then it was too late. India had
already raised its flag of nationalism against Kashmir's separatist
movement. India began to send in its security forces who, under the
Armed Forces Special Power Act, started their own reign of terror,
interrogating civilians at gunpoint and torturing and killing others
on mere suspicion. The cause that had begun as a freedom movement
turned into a fractured war against military occupation.

Even if Kashmir is not fighting a conventional war, it is a war zone.
There are approximately 700,000 Indian military personnel from five
different brigades posted in Kashmir at all times. Not only is the
border lined thickly with Indian and Pakistani armies, but the towns
look like combat zones. Gun-toting soldiers are everywhere-patrolling
gardens, parks, lakesides, and even places of worship. Traffic in the
streets is often stalled to allow the lumbering, armored vehicles of
war to make their rounds. In Srinagar, there is a military bunker
every 200 meters, complete with sandbags, chains and soldiers flashing
AK-47s. Roadside checks have become routine. Anywhere, anytime, public
busses and private cars can be stopped and thoroughly inspected, and
the passengers rigorously questioned. There is no official curfew in
Srinagar, but after eight in the evening, the city becomes a shadowy
ghost town of stray dogs and security guards. Every corner is a
nucleus of suspicion and every military bunker an interrogation cell.
If you are not able to provide identification, or if you resist in any
manner, may God help you.

"What can they do to you?" I asked Arshad one evening when we were
caught in this nightmare.

"Young men disappear in Kashmir every day. Sometimes people find their
bodies-in lakes or on river banks; other times they just vanish."

I remembered a wailing mother in Hazrat Bal, the mosque where a strand
of Prophet Mohammed's hair is enshrined. She had been circumambulating
the sanctum sanctorum, kissing every latticed window, leaving a trail
of tears all along the marble walls. Upon my asking, she had told me
her son had disappeared.

Dr. G.Q. Allaquabad, a leading Kashmiri psychiatrist, says today
Kashmir's entire population suffers from depression. And it isn't just
the Kashmiris who are susceptible; the soldiers posted in Kashmir are
also weary and homesick. In Zaina Kadal, a riot-prone neighborhood, I
talked to a soldier standing beside a bunker with Mera Bharat Mahan
(My India is Great) written on its side in large red letters. The
soldier was a little wary but willing to talk. He told me he was from
a village near Bombay and that he had been stationed in Kashmir for
five years. "My son was born in my absence," he said with a sadness in
his eyes. "I see him when I go home on leave, but I miss him." I asked
him if he was afraid for his life, since military units were the
terrorists' main targets. "There's always a fear, but I'm a soldier. I
go wherever my country needs me." I asked him then if he was aware
that the people of Kashmir were sick of India and it military's
presence. His manner changed suddenly. "We are here for their
protection," he said in a tone of a programmed machine.

According to the people of Kashmir, they never needed military
protection against their own militants. No Kashmiri blamed them for
taking up the gun. Besides, they believe that all Kashmiris who were
alleged terrorists are either dead or reformed. There are certainly
foreign nationals still operating in the valley, and no amount of
security seems to prevent their infiltration across the border. The
Kashmiris say that is because the real terrorists have always been and
still are India and Pakistan, and they don't want the conflict to end.

When Kashmir's trouble began, the governments of both India and
Pakistan exploited communal sentiments by feeding the public rumors of
ethnic cleansing. Aside from engaging domestic public opinion, both
governments realized that they could use Kashmir to clean their image
in the world's view. Pakistan surmised it could ﾑcry wolf' and acquire
large amounts foreign aid to keep its military well-equipped against
its warring neighbor, India; and the Indian politicians discovered
they could absolve themselves of all sins, including going nuclear, by
citing victimization by Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. The Kashmir
conflict has become such a raison d'￪tre for their hostility that one
wonders what both countries will use as a stratagem if the Kashmir
question were diplomatically settled.

"It'll never be resolved as long as we are caught between their
quarrels. The only solution is for India to cut us loose and for
Pakistan to stop interfering in our bid for freedom," Shahid sahib
told me, echoing the sentiment of many Kashmiris.

A free Kashmir? The most poignant tragedy of this elusive desire is
that Kashmir is almost incapable of survival as an independent nation.
The people of Kashmir are aware of this, yet they crave it. For most
of its post-1947 life, Kashmir has lived on subsidies from India. Over
the years, the agriculture department replaced the farming of staple
crops like rice and wheat with revenue-generating cash crops like
saffron and fruits and walnuts. Consequently, Kashmir today imports
most of its rice, wheat and vegetables from other Indian states. It
would take Kashmir years to restructure its agriculture in order to
feed its people. The tourism industry, which used to be the backbone
of Kashmir's economy, is non-existent today. Freedom for Kashmir would
also mean a constant threat from its powerful neighbors, India,
Pakistan, China and Russia. For the simple Kashmiri, however, freedom
merely means the return of Kashmiriyat and a simple faith in God's
benevolence.
Sitting in the verdant green lawns of the Jama Masjid, enjoying the
afternoon sun, four young friends who make a living by spinning
pashmina thread, talked to me about azadi and what it meant to them.
Irshada, one of the women said, "It is the right to live our lives
like ordinary people."

When I asked her what her definition of an ordinary life was, she
blushed and looked at her friends. Her friend, Sumaira, who,
incidentally, is the sister of the man Irshada hopes to marry, said,
"she wants to marry the man of her choice."

"And have a family and enough money to live a comfortable life,"
Irshada shyly added.

"Azadi means no violence, no Indian presence, no Pakistani presence.
Just us. Kashmiris," Sumaira said.

"And no Pundits?" I asked.

"They will come back once we have azadi. This is their Kashmir, too.
We want them to come back."

"And there would be no trouble between the communities after all that
has happened?"

"Have you heard about Kashmir's Kashmiriyat?" Irfana, the unsmiling
one asked me.

I told her I had, but I wanted to hear her version of it.

"We used to have a Musalmaan ruler a long time ago-hundreds of years
ago-whose governor was so cruel he used to tie up Hindus in gunny
sacks and drown them in the Dal Lake. Most Hindus fled from Kashmir at
that time. Then another Musalmaan ruler came to rule Kashmir. His name
was Zain-al-Abdin. He invited the Hindus back and appointed them to
high positions in his kingdom. He helped them rebuild their temples
and celebrated their festivals with them. The Kashmiris learnt so much
from him, they called him Budshah (great king). He taught us all to
love our land-our Kashmir-and to live together as Kashmiris. That is
Kashmiriyat."

"It's still there," Irfana added. "Kashmiriyat is still there. "It's
hard to see it these days, because of the violence, but it's there-in
the hearts of all the Kashmiris."

Irshada smiled at me and said with a faith so firm I envied her,
"We'll be fine when we get azadi. Allah tallah will look after all of
us."

I came to Kashmir as a Hindu to reaffirm my faith before an image of
Shiva which is found in a cave near Srinagar. Instead, I tied threads
of hope on the lattice work of Makhdoom Sahib and Dastgir Sahib
mosques, rubbed my nose in the dirt of Chhati Padshahi Gurudwara and
rang bells of peace at the Chos Khor Buddhist monastery. I had become
a pilgrim who questioned the silence of these silent guardians of
Kashmiriyat. Irshada's simple faith restored my hope for Kashmiriyat's
survival, so I decided to spend my last day in Kashmir as I would have
back in the days when Kashmiriyat was not just in the hearts of the
people but roamed free in the streets. I rented a houseboat for the
evening to watch the sun rise on the Dal Lake.

Sitting on the deck that evening, watching the long twilight linger on
the Dal, I heard shots in the distance.

"An encounter?" I asked Aslam, the houseboat owner.

"No, no. Only some tourists playing with firecrackers. Don't let it
worry you. You enjoy your evening." But I knew he lied. I asked him
what he thought of the situation.

"Death," he said, lighting his 10th cigarette of the evening. "We will
die, either from a terrorist's gun or from being caught in the
crossfire. If not that, then from a heart attack brought on by the
tension of a failing business."

"Whom do you blame?' I asked.

He shook his head. "Kashmir has been touched by an evil eye."

I remembered the chinar I had seen on my first day in Srinagar. A tree
removal team from the garden and parks department had felled it. It
was dying. Nobody really knew the cause. "It was the heavy traffic.
The pollution," a bystander had told me. "Some bug was eating away at
its insides," another one said. "It's greed," a dapper young man
dressed impeccably in khaki trousers and a bright white shirt had
stated. "They need the space for more business construction." The
chinar was obviously dying. I remembered seeing the peeling scabs on
its once-smooth bark and fissures in the circular age lines in the
massive hollow trunk. Some of its branches, dry and brittle, had
snapped when it had crashed to the ground and were strewn around it
like hacked-off limbs. I had been told that only a week ago one of its
dead branches had broken loose in a storm and struck a little girl of
five, killing her. I remembered the old doll seller, who had stood
beside me, holding a pole against his shoulder on which hollow plastic
dolls with painted faces had hung from strings. His gray beard had
been filled with dirt; wrinkles reached into his eyes.

"It was touched by the evil eye," he told me in a hushed voice.

At dawn, the following morning, as I stood on the deck of the
houseboat, watching the sun rise, the Dal became ethereal, silver with
drops of golden sunlight twinkling along its still water. The first
rays of the sun streaked the sky behind Hari Parbat. Then the sound of
the first azan arose from a mosque on the hill. It was soon joined by
the sound of the first ardas from a Gurudwara also on the hill. Filled
with a sense of divine unity, I wondered if the prayer generated from
this elemental euphony would be powerful enough to one day negate the
touch of the evil eye.

Meena Nayak is writing a childrenﾒs book about Indian historical
legends which will be published by Penguin India. Steve McCurry's
photographs of have appeared in magazines and books including his own
South Southeast, published by Phaidon. StatCounter - Free Web Tracker
and Counter

--