The jobbing ‘historians’ of Little League notoriety , familiarly known as loyalists and lumpish status-quoits, are relentlessly engaged in hoodwinking people into buying whatever they write. They are tricky enough to exploit their gullibility by tickling their vanities, naiveties and religious susceptibilities to the hilt. Even the highly educated among them, with adequate knowledge and comprehension of subtle interplay of historical forces and their role in the formation and gradual expansion of cultures, very frequently fall for their sentimental twaddle’s which are doggedly involved in cultivating communal dichotomy by guarding and sharpening the Hindu’, Muslim’ borders of history ; a deeply thwarting and logically flawed approach that vitiates the very essence and continuity of historical processes and considerably constricts the smooth flow of civilizational refinements into the artery vein of Kashmiri personality and casts a shadow on its national perspective; its individuality; its moral fibre, and shrinks the perspicacity of its elegant legacy and historical collectivity to a considerable extant.
Interestingly enough, no evidence is forthcoming to suggest that the terms: Hindu” and Muslim” were ever in common usage in ancient and medieval times. The contemporary sources are conspicuously silent about them. They use caste names such as Damaras, Lavanyas, Ekengas” , and Tantarayans” etc. to refer to the people of various socio-religious backgrounds. Likewise the medieval chronicles use surnames such as Maliks, Buts, Tantrays, Dars, Rainas, Kauls”, etc., to describe people of various communities.
Of course we come across the term “Hindu” in medieval times, but it is used in political rather than religious sense to signify only that section of population which showed exemplary courage to challenge the authority of the Sultans and the Umaras by categorically refusing to augment their rip roaring and money grabbing programmes through ugly and immoral means. However, Jonaraja, a medieval official chronicler, is reasonably discreet and honest enough to use the term Rakhshas “ to discredit the dissenting voices among the Kashmiri subjects, no matter which religion they belonged to.
Equally pertinent to understand is the term Mleech which is naively misconstrued, by all and sundry, as an offensive weapon of Muslim bashing; a Conjectural inveigh against all the practices and rituals connected with the mores of the community. But contrary to this popular belief, it is contextually used in the primary source material with a cultural rather than religious connotation not to despise and denigrate the Muslims but to refer to all groups of people (both friends and foes) having foreign connections, including the Arabs, the Turks, the Sufis, the Missionaries etc.
It is a widely accepted fact that most of the historical terms and expressions are hardly grasped and conceptualized in their original perspectives especially by those commissioned to write propaganda histories. After flushing out the requisite material from the deep but calm waters of history, to weave their assigned stories, these propagandists generally lend their own meaning to various terms of antiquity and, thus, try to obscure and obliterate the shard differences that exist between the original and the distorted ones; making these not only compatible with the usual stereotype but also subservient to their own prejudices and perfidies.
Likewise, it is extremely outrageous to place languages within the obscurantist constraints of religious and racial bounds and fence these as private properties of the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians etc. Such an unfair and unscientific treatment serves no useful purpose and instead intensifies and complicates the rigidity of competitors engaged in dividing the people for political considerations. Beside, this unendurable classification betrays the very significance and purpose these classical languages stand for and belittles their role in the dissemination of knowledge and information and impedes the smooth propelling of these vehicles of expression of human ideas, feelings and talents to encourage social bitterness with a lot of hatred involved. Only a flippant attitude can discard the obvious universal truth that the classical languages neither owe their origin and growth to religion, or caste, or creed, or colour, nor do they need any patronage of a church, a temple, or a mosque.
What are the surrogate historians’ and ‘academics’ scrounging for? They are seemingly endeavouring to build a strong edifice of jingoism by heaping mountains of praise on what is not at all sacrosanct and worthy of attention and dealing nonchalantly and finding fault with what is of great consequence and merits serious treatment. In this process they not only tamper with the evidence and blend together the fact and the fiction but also twist and oversimplify the events of immense import with plentiful bearing on our ethos and institutions. A set of elaborately and deliberately contemplated strategies and techniques, which they employ in their interpretations to postulate and visualize the life lived by our distant ancestors, are not well grounded in, or proven by scientific history. Though intellectually shallow, these strategies are too engaging to plague the young-minds Jingoistically and lure them into climbing on the bandwagon ot “Kashmryat” a borrowed conceptual model now used as a conciliatory device to push the youth into the quagmire of illusion and deviate their youthful attention from the real burning issue of the Kashmir dispute. Originally devised by the present author, in the contextual background of a fluid political situation obtaining in 1984, to lend an intellectual content and meaning to the much publicized but vaguely worded idea/slogan: “izzat-oo-abroo-ka-muqqam” and make it, thus, an effective and viable alternative and alimony for the Kashmiri aspirations, the phrase/expression was to our dismay hijacked and, eventually, used as a tonic for both the lords and their loyal subjects to make them feel much comfortable and stronger in their behaviour and attitude towards Kashmir and the Kashmiris.
Concluded
Dr. Abdul Ahad is a well-known historian of Kashmir. He presents a perspective on the Kashmir issue and talks about Kashmir’s history and individuality and personality.
