[Reader-list] Muslims help perform last rites of a Pandit in Kashmir

Mon Aug 31 20:29:52 IST 2009

Dear Junaid

Your mail is both interesting and amusing.

It is interesting that you reveal yourself as one bristling with hate for KPs. Which says much about your ideology when you talk about Kashmir and it's people elsewhere on this List.

Kashmir has a history of repressions and opressions. That you choose to comment on that with a Muslimness is interesting. Convienient highlights; cursory dismissals.

Much can be and has been noted about 'conversions' and who killed who in what numbers and when. I will not go down that path with you. But your comments on left-over percentages are interesting.

It is amusing that my mail should have provoked such a diatribe from you. I wonder why. I made no comment on the Muslims of Kashmir or the History of Kashmir or that Muslims do not have an equal right to be in Kashmir.

There were two points mentioned in my mail:

1. That there is "near erasure and extinction of a unique  socio-cultural-religious group that was indigenous to and rooted in Kashmir". 

Do you disagree with that? Certainly you are not suggesting that the KPs deserved that. Are you? Your academic comments on what is indigenous and what is not aside.

2. That there has been an "Islamisation of Kashmir under garb of "Aazadi"". You are at liberty to disagree with that and say that the "Aazadi" Movement has nothing to do with Islam, which would be a strange thing to say considering that only Muslims (some) in Kashmir subscribe to that.

Kshmendra

--- On Mon, 8/31/09, Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Muslims help perform last rites of a Pandit in Kashmir
To: "Kshmendra Kaul" <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
Cc: reader-list at sarai.net
Date: Monday, August 31, 2009, 7:30 PM

Actually the "Islamisation" of Kashmir took place in the 14th century,
when a majority of lower-castes of Kashmiri Hindus, with a
choice/promise to escape the rigid caste structure of Hinduism,
converted to Islam. Only the Brahmins/Pandits didn't convert--that is
why the typical Brahmin proportion of population of 3 to 5 percent in
the Hindu societies continued to remain the same, while others
mass-converted, in the new Muslim society.

It is a different matter that Pandits continued to enjoy their social
position even after this Islamisation--probably apart from some little
breaks--during Sikander's time and later under Afghans, which was
miserable for Muslims as well.  During Zainul Abidin's rule or under
Chaks, and Mughals, and of course under Sikhs and Dogras they enjoyed
a high social position. Incidentally this constitutes the most of the
history since "Islamisation" of Kashmir. The present-day Pandits,
however, construct their history as exclusively having been marked by
Islamic oppression. This kind of "history" writing among Pandits began
around the time Muslims became politically conscious, and is therefore
understandable.

Many Pandits continued to treat Muslims as undercastes, largely seeing
them as unclean, a practice that I have seen with my own eyes. Pandits
wouldn't let Muslims enter their kitchens or eat with them. But
somehow neither I nor anyone else seemed to be so bothered about it.

This whole thing about Pandits being "indigenous" is theoretically and
historically untenable. One cannot find clean lines of transmission
from past to the present, where cultures have remained
hermetically-sealed from the outside influences and that an active
flow of people, ideas and material hasn't happened. Neither is
Hinduism indigenous to Kashmir nor is Islam, in the sense that it grew
up on its own and without any touch with the outside world.
Historically there have been other religions practiced in Kashmir
before the Hinduism that the present day Pandits now claim to follow;
the later somehow includes Desh-bhakti which I am sure wasn't present
among the repertoire of traditional Bhaktis in Kashmir at least not
the Indian deshbhakti.

And, really, is 700 years of Islam in Kashmir just an undesirable,
forgettable, foreign footnote in the history of Kashmir, tomes and
tomes of which Mr. Pawan Durrani and others have been dreaming up and
dishing out here?

Islam is a reality in Kashmir, you just cannot deny its existence. You
may bury your head in the sand and try to cover up its existence by
coming up with the "Shalla Daleelah" of good ol' Hindu times, but you
will realise soon that Kashmiris no longer worry about the myths and
stories that used to bind them into servitude. They think about the
present and the future. They don't ignore the past, but they are
sure-footed about their own social and political history as a society
and a nation. They would not accept your present day mythology as a
concrete historic reality, a mythology in which you and your facts
have become inextricably wound up. A mythology which somehow resembles
the tale of Ramayan--with Muslims as the evil Rakshas/Ravan, the
Pandits as Ram in Banwas, with Kashmir as Sita abducted by Ravana, and
Indian troops as Hanuman who justifiably sets the entire Muslim
Kashmir on fire to make way for Ram.

It is not going to happen.

Junaid

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Kshmendra Kaul<kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> "There was nobody to perform the funeral."
>
> It is a commentary on the Islamisation of Kashmir under garb of "Aazadi"
> that led to creating of a situation which forced almost all of the
> Non-Muslims out of Kashmir.
>
> It is a commentary on the near erasure and extinction of a unique
> socio-cultural-religious group that was indigenous to and rooted in Kashmir.
>
> Kshmendra
> --- On Sun, 8/30/09, Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Muslims help perform last rites of a Pandit in
> Kashmir
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> Date: Sunday, August 30, 2009, 12:48 AM
>
> Does this fit into any debate here?
>
> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Kashmiri-Muslims-perform-funeral-of-Hindu-man-/articleshow/4948967.cms
>
> Kashmiri Muslims perform last rites of a Kashmiri Pandit
>
> SRINAGAR: In a unique display of communal harmony, Muslims neighbours
> here performed the last rites of a Hindu man who stayed back when most
> of the Pandit families fled during the early 1990s when Islamist
> insurgency erupted in Jammu and Kashmir.
>
> Bhola Nath Kachroo of Srinagar, who was living with his wife and a
> daughter here, died Friday after an illness and had nobody to perform
> his funeral.
>
> The family was devastated when Kachroo, who his neighbour said was
> "very old", passed away. There was no other Pandit family nearby to
> help them.
>
> But, Muslims in the area helped the family in performing the last
> rites of Kachroo. They made arrangements for the last rites and also
> erected tents for Kachroo's friends and relatives who had gathered to
> mourn the death.
>
> "There was nobody to perform the funeral. We were equally saddened to
> lose an elderly person in our neighbourhood. We gathered and performed
> the last rites without considering what faith we follow," said Ghulam
> Mohammed Bhat, secretary of the Muslim Welfare Society.
>
> Most of the Hindu families migrated from the Kashmir Valley in the
> wake of insurgency fuelled by Islamic fundamentalists, but Kachroo and
> his family stayed back.
>
> "We came as humans to help our mourning neighbours. They didn't leave
> when other Pandits fled and we owe responsibilities to this family,"
> said Ali Mohammed, another neighbour.
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