War has been a cardinal theme since time immemorial ,that has been explored and questioned from different aspects and in different eras from Heraclitus to Karl von Clausewitz or Jean-Paul Sartre, being simultaneously a field of study and a pertinent issue addressed in historic and contemporary intellectual debates. Human rights violations, arms trade, loss of life and property, peri and post war psychological conditions in war zones, turmoil hit regions like Kashmir, are the most seminal issues that often rake such forums and conventions. But there is always a very indelible issue that is overlooked most of the times, the issue of Identity. Identity is often misunderstood as being only intrinsic to one’s intimate realm, but the idea of Identity is multidimensional encompassing ones past, present and future, with collection of the ideas being necessarily temporal to the society, at multiple levels, like the sense of security, freedom of ideas and often a premise to its existence. Individual identity is structured and evolves from a complex psychological and personal interactions from the stark experiences of the past, which influence the current events and are later exuded as retrospections in the future, providing an individual and the state, a hierarchy of narratives to their existence. Hence, the idea of identity is also very basic to the idea of amour propre, which form the cornerstone to struggles and movements.
The discussion makes it clear that the idea of identity is supreme and paramount to every nation and its people, and hence, can be very vulnerable to suppression, sa-botage and confusion, in the conflict of states and sovereignties. The same has been very conspicuous in our own struggle for Free Kashmir. The freedom struggle incepted as a violent armed endeavour, later metamorphosed into a sheen political effort and now is moving its way as a rough rocky excursion, has always had a con-fusion of identity in its background. Intact, this confusion is way too old, finding its origins in the Sheare vs Bakre era, only that the identity crises that we suffer right now is more diverse, severe and confusing, and it is divided into multifarious rhetor-ics.The freedom struggle inchoated with the idea of an independent Kashmir, the early armed and political groups proudly claimed to be fighting for the Nation of Kashmir, that was inclusive of all its diverse cultural elements. The idea of an inde-pendent Kashmir had started!!
But only since a last few years this flame seems to be dying out. The youth seem more or less indifferent towards the validity and sanctity of the movement. The cause for this nonchalance is the fact that the people aren’t completely clear about the objectives of the our struggle. . The main reason for this indifference has been the sabotaging of the Kashmir history and attempts since very early times to put an impasse on the learning and teaching of Kashmir history and Kashmir language.
It is disheartening, telling a common Kashmiri that Kashmir had always been a free land comes as a surprise or a shock. Like every other country Kashmir had been ruled by a number of kings. Before Muslims took over the throne of Kashmir in 1332 C.E, it had been ruled by 21 dynasties of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians, 18 of whom were native. During the Muslim rule which was for about 450 years there were around 300 years of complete independence. It was during the reign of the native kings Kalita Ditya and Zain-ul-Abideen Kashmir reached the peaks of glory. However one of the major blows to the independence of Kashmir when Gulab Singh came into power after the British had conquered it from the Sikhs in 1846 and sold it to Gulab Singh like a commercial commodity for 7.5 million with a right given to the purchaser to treat the residents as the cattle. There were great uprisings through out the valley against the atrocities of Gulab Singh and hence manifesting into the very first freedom struggle of Kashmir. Numerous Kashmiris were killed all around the valley as on July 13, 1931 when police opened indiscriminate fire on the peaceful protestors. Finally a legislative assembly was established within 3 years of the incident, when Kashmiris were knocking at the doors of freedom from despotic Dogra rule after British quit subcontinent, they felt like the proverbial fish that had struggled its way out of the frying pan but had fallen into the fire, they were pounced upon by a bigger monster in form of free India. In 19 century when there were unending dawns of freedom for many countries, the independence of India led Kashmir to slavery. The whole history is too long to be narrated over here; the point is that Kashmir like any other country has its own past, its own culture, its own freedom struggle and a full fledged history.
But the present generation has been rendered oblivious to all of these facts. A Kashmiri student is deprived of knowing about the past of his land. Instead of teaching Kashmir history, the history of the subcontinent is taught in the schools and colleges. The Kashmiri students are taught about the movements, massacres and leaders of British and Independent India while they are completely ignorant about our struggle against the Dogras and other foreign interests during early 18 and 19 centuries.
A history student would, with all vindication, speak volumes on the Jallian walabagh massacre but hardly a few know why 13 July is marked as the martyr’s day of Kashmir. Having traveled a few places, all the people feel proud in narrating the past events of their land, however small they be, but instead of having such a glorious history we always hesitate to speak about it because we are never sure about it, rather we speak about the history which plunged us into darkness.
The other most important aspect of ‘sameness and identity’ that has been very easily sabotaged is the language. While the influence of Indian and western literature and ideas is rising exponentially on our academic spheres, the Kashmiri literature and language are in a progressive decadence. Children are not exposed to their mother tongue, there is an intangible taboo associated with it. As a kid, I remember, we were fined for speaking in Kashmiri language, in one of the leading schools of valley, same is true with most of the institutions, where the spoken Kashmiri is demonised. The Kashmiri literature is in dungeons. There are hardly any organisations working for its upheaval and propagation. When the written Kashmiri should be an essential part of curriculum, it is hardly taught. Its a matter of shame that most of us can’t read our mother tongue. Our history and language are dying just like our nationalist sentiments.
We have already lost hundreds of thousands of lives over past two and a half dec-ades. Our economy is dead, education is marred, we live a hundred years into the past, but it wont be sacrilegious to call all these sacrifices a mere waste until we don’t relate to each of them at very individual levels and as long as we don’t remain within the circle of sameness-identity.
The reforms should be made at all the levels of our society. Our leaders should slowly form their own intellectual space within a complex system of institutions and processes, designed to protect the integrity of people, so that they could exercise positive leadership at will, and not merely serve as passive agents sanctioning poli-cies presented to them by the off screen actors.
This is high time when we should profess the teaching of our history in schools and colleges. Kashmiri language should be an essential part of the academics.
We need to take adequate steps to make the young ones of our society aware about the rich past. The literature and histories that have no bearing on us, should be eliminated from curriculum of students and it should be replaced by the recorded past events of Kashmir. Kashmir history should be taught as essential part of academics as well as through TV media for the people who already lost the chance to know about it. Documentaries on Kashmir’s past should be made on large scale.
Our intellectuals should own the responsibility of knitting each of us into a common past, a common art, a common language and a common struggle, these articulate a background for representing the quest for identity.It should be noted that our past marks our identity.
And importantly each one of us will have to be the change we want to be..
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