[Reader-list] Kashmiri May day zindabad , zindabad

[Inder Salim]

"Historians at times tend to universalize certain ideas and institutions
like modernity, morality, justice and democracy. In the case of Kashmir’s
history, these ideas have not been questioned either by the nationalist
historians or by the South Asian historians who work on Kashmir. Here I
would particularly like to specify the idea of ‘resistance’.

In day to day lives, as has been argued by James Scott, the mode of
resistance employed or used by the subordinate classes depends on the
amount of political freedom that they have. He says, ‘Subordinate classes
throughout most of history have rarely been afforded the luxury of open,
organized, political activity.’ In Kashmir during the Afghan, Sikh or Dogra
rule, Kashmiris were decidedly kept out of the army; they were even
prevented from having any game where physical activity was involved. Walter
Lawrence gives an example where he says,
"Before the time of Maharaja Gulab Singh the different wards of Srinagar
city used to turn out with slings and stones, and played a very earnest and
serious game. But Gulab Singh did not approve of this fighting spirit, and
put a stop to the mimic warfare."

A condition where even mimic warfare was not allowed and flogging in public
was a common routine, the only way left for the weaver was either flight or
to lie to the officials. During the Sikh and the Dogra rule, a Kashmiri
weaver avoided everything which included physical confrontation. He devised
ways and means by which he never went into direct confrontation; rather he
was choosing and creating new ways by which he approached the officials.
Thus, the acts of defiance which were seen by most British writers as an
example of Kashmiri cunning and coward behavior, when put in their context
were actually acts of resistance and implicit defiance, if not outright
revolt.

Again, it is not true that the Kashmiris never went into physical
confrontations against the ruling elite within Kashmir. Against the
oppressive taxation and poor wages the Kashmiri weavers had continuously
threatened the rulers (Dogras) of en-mass migration to Punjab which they
eventually did.

In 1865, the weavers had their artillery held towards the state
authorities. Unfortunately on this very important episode of ‘subaltern
assertion’ in Srinagar we do not have any written records. The archives, be
it the National Archives or the state archives of Jammu and Kashmir, have
nothing to say on this incident. The scholars and colonial writers are
silent on this incident too. In Kashmir historiography, it seems as if
nothing happened in Srinagar in 1865. Only Robert Thorp, who was present in
Kashmir around the same time (1870), has given us some details about this
shawl baf (shawl weaver) agitation. The agitation grew from the way the
shali (rice was/is called shali in Kashmir) was distributed in Kashmir
among the city dwellers. All the shawl bafs received a fixed amount of
shali from the department which was called Dag-i-shawl. The weavers had
been complaining against the irregular distribution of shali in Kashmir
from 1848 onwards and as stated before, they even migrated to Punjab
because of that reason. But despite repeated petitions, the Dogra state
continued with its policies and did nothing to improve the conditions of
the miserable weavers. Finally, in 1865 around 1,200-1,500 agitated shawl
weavers tried to meet Dewan Kirpa Ram, the new Governor of Kashmir.

Despite repeated assurances, the Governor kept delaying the meeting with
the weavers. When the weavers lost their patience, a large number of
weavers assembled at a maidan and in a desperate move they ‘made a wooden
bier, such as Mussulmen use to carry their dead to the place of interment,
and placing a cloth over it, carried it to and fro in procession,
exclaiming “Rajkark is dead, who will give him a grave?”’ The news reached
the Governor and he immediately deported some 300 to 500 sepoys. As soon as
the Dogra army marched towards the unarmed weavers, the weavers fled from
the spot and in that moment of rush some of the weavers (around five or
six) were drowned in the adjacent canal . Total dead is said to be between
20-25 weavers. Zaldagar in Srinagar, the place where this incident took
place, was the hot bed of weaver protests throughout the Dogra period. Even
now people (weavers) of Kashmir remember Zaldagar in the same way. In one
of the interviews a weaver said,
"Zaldagar is a place in Srinagar and I met an old man from that place. He
told me that some people had fled from there to Kanhihama during the
Maharaja’s rule. Like Moisima which is now known as a hotbed of resentment
against Indian state, Zaldagar was known for its anti-Maharaja sentiments.
Zaldagar is exactly near downtown. "

The revolt of 1865 can be seen as the growth of political awakening among
Kashmiris. This was probably the first time in the history of modern
Kashmir even modern South Asia where the inhabitants i.e. the weavers saw
themselves as a collective and the individual resistance was now also added
by collective resistance. This incident was a kind of precursor which later
saw the Kashmiris coming into open revolt against the Dogra state. One of
the important components among the protesting masses of the 1931 uprising
in Kashmir were the carpet and silk weavers. Many of these weavers were the
earlier shawl weavers who gave up shawl weaving and took to weaving carpets
and other things.
In many ways subtle and strong, overt and covert, individual and
collective, resistances by the weavers challenge conventional stereotypes
of Kashmiris and of weavers more specifically. The socio-economic
conditions of the weavers i.e. their coming from the lowest rung of the
society and their complete dependence on their physical labour, had an
important role to play in their modes of resistance. Their urban setting
i.e. same working conditions, dependence on the distribution of shali gave
them a sort of collective identity. Unlike Kashmiri peasantry which was
scattered across the valley with very less interaction with each other, the
weavers lived in ghettos and worked in same karkhanas which made them well
aware of each other’s conditions. These various facets of the weaver lives
made them the ‘class’ which went into open revolt against the ruling
classes, much earlier than various other classes (peasantry,
intelligentsia) of Kashmir or of South Asia."  by Amit Kmar  ( scholar at
JNU )