Kashmir owes it to its remote ancestor, Nila Naga, to bestow on her what she required io become a heaven on earth; a celestial beauty that surpasses the most spectacular scenic view imaginable in the world. He was the foremost Kashmiri to conceive of a society in the womb of Satisar which had become a den of devious and devilish Pissacas; a most difficult place inhospitable enough to welcome human settlements. His creative genius had no cotemporaneous parallel in history. His specific contributions and great daring adventures cast a shadow on the growing influence of the Pissaca chief and ejected his wicked tribe to lay foundations of the Kashmir kingdom; giving it its inner strength and all the ingredients necessary for the establishment of an independent State; for its various cultural formations; and for the growth of its indomitable historical personality.
The sole integrating principle of this personality was the homogeneity of the Nagas and their fierce determination to make Kashmir a safe abode for their progeny. They shaped the socio-economic institutions of the newly founded society and provided it religious and political organization which remained consistent with the aspects of historical culture that developed to accord legitimacy to Kashmir’s individuality.
Over a period of time the Kashmiris constantly endeavoured to sharpen their mental antecedents and skills to make possible their transformation from the household economy to the market economy and from die village to the sedentary life style. Vicissitudes Of history and hardships of geography least disturbed their momentum. Unfailingly, they continued showing their concern and remarkable endurance and firm resolve to make their personality an all-encompassing expression of the Kashmiri society.
The Harwan and the Hutmur cultural formations were the hallmarks of this expression; the peak periods of Kashmir’s social engineering, artistic refinement, ;matchless sedentarization, architectural triumph and local ingenuity, the imprints of which make an indelible impression on visitors even today.
The indigenous fertile mind became the vital component of the Koushur heritage which enjoyed a great reputation, for a long period of time, for the vision and genius of scholars, poets and writers whose quest for knowledge set the imagination of people aflame and intensified their yearning to traverse all the heights of everlasting glory; an aspiration that was fulfilled in a far greater measure than expected and found expression in the huge structures raised at Martand, Avantipora and Parihasapura with such an intricate artistic manoeuvring that puzzles the modem onlookers immensely.
But this prosperity began to melt-down amongst a crowed of petty imbecile kings who played havoc with the Kashmir’s economy by dissipating its resources on pleasure-seeking; and in the air of political wilderness and social anarchy perpetrated by a fickle multitude of power- seekers, pretenders and conspirators, and the Mongol intruders. The entire Kashmir got, thus, bogged down in a floundering morass of despair and confusion till the Crescent began to restore and rejuvenate the public confidence, and to rekindle the people’s interest in socioeconomic renovation and political reorganization.
Islam gave a fresh impetus and colour to the Kashmiri personality and enriched the contents of its individuality by embellishing it with the lace and ribbon of advanced technology, economy, agriculture and politics. An elaborate social engineering programme and intense rehabilitation and reorganization plan, based on Karkhana system, undertaken to help mitigate the effects of devastation caused by external forces, earned Islam a lot of public goodwill and adherents.
Islam transmitted the Sufi blood into the artery vein of the Kashmiri personality; making it a rich assortment of compatible opinions. It broadened the size and comprehension of its mind and greatly added to its importance in the formation of Kashmiri identity. The Islamic legacy became, thus, a pedestal basin of the indigenous thought and vision, and did not object to their relationship to past complexes and translated conceptual ambiguities into institutional patterns which inspired a de facto separation of politics and religion and persuaded the Sultanate to maintain a distance from the Khalafat; an institution that integrated the State and religion into an inseparable whole. It encouraged the venerable Kashmiris of the time to come to the fore to give an ideological quality and a unique character to the Kashmiri ethos; making it more rational and people friendly. It provided internal cohesion and stability which made Kashmir’s independence more firmly entrenched as the basis of its material prosperity and social and spiritual good.
But Kashmir could not always remain on the sunny side of the hedge. Smiles of fortune, peace, stability and prosperity began retiring from the sight when the Sultanate became virtually ineffective to fulfill its political role; when it lost its institutional luster under the lumpish Sultans who were completely insensitive to public suffering; and when small cracks started appearing in the whole social fabric of the Valley to polarize the public opinion on sectarian issues. The frequency of conflicts, conspiracies and usurpations, and overindulgence of rulers in debauchery stripped Kashmir of its vitality and cohesiveness and provided an opportunity to the alien Sayyids to emerge as a new politico-religious force; an abyss of despair that encircled the entire Valley and disintegrated the historical form of its collective personality to make it docile and submissive.
A host of these developments had devastating consequences which not only infringed the Sufi authority but also prompted the elite, the ulama and the religious intelligentsia to seek foreign help to promote their petty parochial interests. Kashmir, thus, lost its independence. This loss was mainly because of the naivety, short sightedness and polarization of the Kashmiri mind rather than the superiority of the Mughal forces. It exposed the Kashmiris to a total and perpetual subjugation and to its attendant constraints which slowly throttled their personality beyond human imagination.
The savageries of subjugation sucked Kashmir dry; leaving behind memories of shabby tyrannies ranging from absolutism to brazen savagery; from autocracy to new-style colonialism; different only in their apparatus of repression.
A too long and hot spell of four hundred and twenty years of Kashmir’s occupation tells the woeful tale of bitter centuries; each century presenting a gloomy picture of intimidation, oppression, persecution, exploitation and terrorism. Commencing with the onset of the Mughal Imperium, based on the use of flogging and lashing formula as a part payment of remuneration for the services rendered by the Kashmiri artisans, the story passes through an undifferentiated mass of eras of great culture shock, vandalism, bebuj-raj and brazen savagery when:
Mothers dared not outdoors and shaved the heads of their daughters for fear of molestation; when plucking of a head was much easier than plucking a flower; when the position of people was worst than chattels; when the butchers were publicly hanged for cow-slaughter; when the children were conscripted into be gar, when the Kashmiris were drowned in Wular during famines; when they were forced to pay nikah tax; when the azan was banned and mosques closed and converted into store houses; when the men were denied livelihood and the women coerced into the white slave- trade and prostitution; and when everything, including cow dung but excluding air and water, was taxed.
The story does not end here; it moves further to unfold the political scrounge and secret deals that accentuated the wedding of the Kashmir territories with an incompatible partner, and to reveal the scourge of the Indian terrorism fostered by its Hindutva consciousness which, despite the noise and chaos of freedom fighters, continues unabated to augment the number of martyrs, orphans, widows and disappeared persons.
The systematic constriction of life in Kashmir on b rough deal provoked angry reactions at various periods of history which, though suppressed at fell swoop, paved the way for organized protests that marked the beginning of political opposition to the alien rule.
This opposition grew up by stages in response to the socio-religious demands of the people and political 0nfiguration of the Valley. The Zaldagar Uprising, Prayers and Petitions, Labour Tensions and Massacre of 1931 marked the important phases in the evolution of organized opposition in Kashmir which remained modest in its political aspirations and never indulged in speculations about independence and freedom. Its main focus was on:
The improvement of the lot of the masses; the restoration of mosques and shrines; the protection of religious beliefs and communal practices; the abolition of begar; the employment of educated youth and the building of resistance to the minority perfidy.
This opposition helped the kashmiris to attain some relief in the circumstances to compensate for living in an environment of religious autonomy. But it did not arouse their natural and historical instinct for political freedom that was rather beyond the practicable realm of its activities. Its main political plank was to oppose the wrongdoings of the authorities and to impress on them that the life of depravity of their victims would incur public opprobrium and insubordination if allowed to grow in proportions. The concept of freedom in its political sense did not, therefore, attract the opposition and the political movement.
This concept came to gain admittance to Kashmir scenario (as we shall see in the 2nd Volume) in the seventh decade of the 20th century as a reaction to a host of variegated political opinions which had divided the Kashmiris into rather small and petty parochial camps. The principal contributory factor to this development was the betrayal of their “leaders” who pushed them into the quagmire of “plebiscite” and imprisoned their psyche in the bandwagon of izzat-o-abro and sold “self- determination” for their personal aggrandizement and ultimately accepted a humiliating climb down in exchange of Chief-Ministership through the medium of “Accord”. A conscientious and articulate group of young men found it extremely difficult to reconcile different political views and began seriously to think about their future. The concept of freedom attracted them deeply.
They interpreted this concept to mean independence and publicized it as the only solution to the centuries old problems of subservience and as a means to restore Kashmir’s lost national status and identity. They nurtured it as their belief that it was better to die gloriously for freedom than to live in perpetual slavery.
At the core of this new awareness is the lurking urge to revive the Kashmir’s historical individuality which was:
cultivated and articulated by Nila Naga; nurtured and developed by the Harwan and Hutmur cultural formations; broadened and strengthened by Zain-ul-Abidin; fostered and popularized by Nund Rishi and Lai Ded; and successively compromised by the Chaks, the Surfis, and the Dhars; and finally tailored to suit the needs of India’s political and military hegemony by its hench-men: the self-indulgent Sheikhs, the crafty Beighs, the merry-making Bakshis, the crazy Sadiqs, the spine-less Qasims, the flamboyant Abdullahs and the rip-roaring Muftis.
The projection of this individuality through “Kashmiriat” is nothing but a histrionic gesture; a sinister move to legitimize the position of the disputed Kashmir as India’s peripheral, subservient and sub-national constituency and equate it with Punjabiat, Bengaliat, Gujratiat, Maharshtriat etc; the undisputed sub-identities of all pervasive Indian National identity. By proclaiming Kashmir as its integral part and by relentlessly striving to validate the conditional “accession” through holding bogus elections, from time to time, to install local surrogate rulers and to operate through native institutions, India can neither supersede UN resolutions nor hoodwink the international opinion. These elections plus the Indian claims of legitimacy to its continued occupation of Kashmir by reference to the instrument of “accession” and to the State Constituent Assembly, together with the periodic celebration of ceremonies, especially 26th January and 15th August, have failed to create any tangible impact and win India requisite Kashmiri friends and collaborators to perpetuate its hegemony. Even the stationing of above seven lakh regular Indian troops in addition to paramilitary forces has not been able to produce tacit acquiescence to cow the Kashmiris into total submission. As a matter of fact, these tactics have proved counterproductive for India. They have impaired the capacity of an overwhelming occupation force to defeat the struggle by a systematic massacre and torture of the Kashmiris in concentration camps and interrogation centers and have, thus, acted as a tonic to energize the Kashmir’s struggle for freedom.
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. For feedback the author can be mailed at drahadhist@yahoo.co.in
