Kashmir woes — its culture, its genesis, its causes — a syncretic past

I walk a lonely road

The only one that I have ever known

Don’t know where it goes

But it’s home to me, and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I’m the only one, and I walk alone…..

Green Day

Walk alone, indeed! Perhaps this soulful song by Green Day sums up the plight of most Kashmiris for the last two centuries. They walk a lonely walk, lonelier than anyone elses’.

Formation of a unique religious identity in Jammu and Kashmir that set them apart from others

Religion and culture are intertwined, though they are independent of each other. These two different ingredients, when connected, make a unique blend. This unique blend has made me — a non-practicing Hindu and Bengali — different from, say, a Keralite Hindu or a Hindu from Gujarat. We might be Hindu in our religious beliefs, but our culture has made us different in practicing our religion.

This fact, though axiomatic true, we tend to forget readily. It is the same with most other religions that people spread across the world practice, be it Christianity, Islam, or any world’s religion.

This fact cannot be more accurate anywhere else in the world than in Jammu and Kashmir. Despite being predominantly Muslims, culturally, people in Kashmir valley practice a kind of Islam that is different from what we readily understand.

To demystify this phenomenon, we again have to knock on the door of history.

Conversion of a significant population of Kashmir valley into Islam happened during the fourteenth century when Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a Persian Sufi mystic from Hamedan in western Iran, visited Kashmir valley. Between 1370 and 1380, he visited Kashmir thrice. Hundreds of disciples, most of whom subsequently settled in the valley, accompanied him. He is known as Shah Hamden in Kashmir.

But the religious identity of the Kashmiri people was predominantly shaped by a Sufi saint, Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani. He was locally born and lived from 1377 to 1440. He was, and still is, highly revered by both Hindus and Muslims of Kashmir and is better known by his Sanskrit name Nund Rishi.

Lalleshwari was a woman mystic of Shaivite Hinduism. She lived from 1320 to 1392. She is better known as Lal Ded (Mother) in Kashmir. She also happened to be the founder of a unique Kashmiri literary tradition.

Sheikh Noorani was Lal Ded’s follower and was a ‘Muslim Shaivite.’ He translated “Islam into Kashmir’s pre-existing spiritual and cultural idiom.” His mausoleum was and still is the most sacred Kashmiri pilgrimage for Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims in Kashmir.

The unique version of Kashmiri Islam got support from Kashmir’s greatest indigenous ruler, Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin, in the fifteenth century. “Zain-ul-Adindin foreshadowed the syncretistic policies of India’s greatest Mughal monarch, Akbar.” He also sponsored the translation of the Kashmiri masterpiece Kalhana’s ‘Rajatarangani’ from Sanskrit to Persian.

This unique version of Islam endured and was resilient enough to define the daily practice of Islam even after six hundred years. There are innumerable shrines of Sufi saints dotted across the Kashmir valley. Quite a few of these Sufi shrines are of women saints. The relic worshiping in Kashmir is still practiced now and has its roots in the pre-Hindu-Buddhist past. The most famous example is the Hazrtbal shrine, situated on the outskirts of Srinagar. A hair is preserved there and believed to be Prophet Mohammad’s.

This unique blend of Islam and religious practice remained unchallenged till the second half of the twentieth century. During the 1970s and 1980s, a Sunni fundamentalist movement took shape through the local wing of Jama’at-i-Islami. During the 1990s, insurgency broke out in the valley, propagated by Sunni orthodox organizations and supported by the Pakistan state and its various agencies.

Yet orthodoxy remained a minority movement, supported by a small portion of the population. The syncretic Islamic practice is too ingrained in most people’s minds in the valley.

Coming back to the present

The history of Kashmir is the history of more than 100 years of the Princely State’s misrule and the State’s persecution of its subjects. Nothing much changed even after 1947.

Ordinary people in the Kashmir valley are primarily docile. Visitors to the valley during the last century documented this attribute in their numerous travel accounts published in various books and journals. People, predominantly Muslims, bore all the atrocities of the ruling class, all Hindus, with stoic composure.

The first sign of unrest started in the valley during the 1930s when a stray comment against the governance of the state in a mosque gathering led to the legal prosecution of the man. The protest against the trial led to unrest, and during subsequent police firing, two protesters died.

The spontaneous outrage worked as a seed that led to powerful feelings against the state and the desire for a change of regime. A few young men with higher education led the movement. The leader of this movement was a young schoolteacher from a village on the outskirts of Srinagar, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. He was one of the founders of the princely state’s first organized opposition. He was one of the founder members of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference.

Initially, the protests had typical Muslim rhetoric. It was only natural as the peasants, mostly Muslims and the landowners, and the influential state operatives were mostly from Hindu communities.

Later, however, Sheikh Abdullah toned down the Muslim rhetoric to start a national movement that included all faith and urged people from all religious beliefs to join the political activities in the cause of freedom of their country, Jammu and Kashmir. The All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference became the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, better known as NC, to accommodate people of all faiths as their members. “ Kashmir’s syncretic culture must have influenced this shift from communal to national. “

The 1930s were also an eventful decade for the Indian independence struggle. Gandhi’s Salt March, the attack on Writers’ Building in Calcutta by the trio revolutionaries Binoy, Badal, and Dinesh, Chittagong armory raid led by Master-da Surya Sen was just a few that readily come to mind.

In an atmosphere where the whole nation was involved in a freedom struggle, Sheikh Abdullah and his compatriot’s calls for freedom from the misrule of a tin-pot prince were not out of place. Only that tin-pot ruler happened to be a Hindu instead of the British, and the protesters were predominantly Muslims.

In the meantime, there was a clear divide in Muslim politics. The dominant faction led by Sheikh Abdullah was progressive and left-aligned. The other section, led by Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas, was religious and socially conservative.

The second group was from Jammu, while Sheikh Abdullah was from Kashmir valley. The growing difference between the two factions played out in 1947 when the princely state collapsed. There was a clear split between the political ideologies of Jammu and that of Kashmir, a gap that broadened as history unfolded.

The conservatives of Kashmir politics were wooed by the Muslim League leaders, while Sheikh Abdullah was more in sync with the Indian National Congress’s broad social and religious inclusiveness. Abdullah modeled the Quit Kashmir movement on Gandhi’s Quit India movement, but the conservative leaders of Jammu and Kashmir condoned it. They considered that the Hindu leaders of the Indian National Congress influenced the Quit Kashmir movement.

Sheikh Abdullah was immensely popular in the valley. He was a rousing orator, and his faith was rooted in Pius, God-fearing, Sufi Islam. He and his followers outsmarted and marginalized the orthodox clergy in the valley. The National Conference in 1944 drew a new manifesto called ‘Naya Kashmir.’ It was a revolutionary document then and even now. Even the Indian National Congress could not draw up that kind of manifesto.

With the manifesto, The National Conference promised to abolish ‘parasitic landlordism’ without compensating the landlords. The manifesto also pledged to transfer land to the landless tillers. This promise of land transfer to landless tillers, even the Indian National Congress leaders could not give due to their strong ties with the upper class and the privileged gentry. “The charter also visualized rapid social progress through education for the downtrodden groups and, remarkably for the time, included a separate section on the rights of women.’

Despite being popular with the mass, it is no wonder that the princely state government, as well as other powers to be, like the conservative leaders in Jammu and Kashmir, and the leaders of the Indian National Congress, viewed Sheikh Abdullah and his party suspiciously.

Who would trust a man who promises to take away all the wealth and privileges from the few ruling class and distribute the same to the peasants? Who would trust a man who promises to educate the poor and thus return power to them?

A new beginning

The Princely State’s government brutally suppressed the quit Kashmir movement in 1946.

But in the meantime, the epicenter of the trouble shifted out of the Kashmir valley to the Jammu region’s Poonch district. Poonch district is in the southwest of Jammu, bordering Pakistan. A predominantly Muslim population inhabits this district, yet, ethnolinguistically, they are distinct from the Kashmiri-speaking population of the valley.

Historically, Poonch was an autonomous principality until the Second World War. During the Second World War, the Dogra troops deposed the local Raja of the Poonch district and forced punitive taxes on the local people, who were mainly peasants. This action sparked a rebellion in the area, unlike the Kashmir valley. Jammu and Kashmir Princely States’ Dogra and Sikh troops reacted sharply with brutal reprisal.

It turned out to be a grave mistake on the part of the Princely State. The British government recruited the highest numbers of soldiers from this district in the entire Jammu and Kashmir area during the Second World War. Now, after the end of the war, the soldiers came back battle-hardened. They fought back fearlessly. And unlike in the Kashmir valley, the Princely State’s forces faced hard-armed resistance.

By the end of 1947, this rebellion took a pro-Pakistan character, and subsequently, the entire district came under the control of the rebels. Flush with this success, a substantial portion of the Poonch district and other surrounding districts was declared Azad Kashmir with the provincial government at Rawalpindi.

Meanwhile, on 15th August 1947, two new countries were born — India and Pakistan. The last Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir was inclined to join Pakistan. Because of that, the Maharaja signed a ‘standstill agreement’ with the Pakistan government. This agreement meant that they agreed to join the Pakistani Dominion formally.

There is a contradiction here. A despotic Princely State ruled by a Hindu King who mercilessly oppressed its Muslim subjects for centuries, and his troops brutally abused them recently wanted to join Pakistan. Though it might seem a dichotomy, it is not as counter-intuitive as it might seem.

Maharaja Hari Singh and his coterie of advisers acted purely for their self-interest. They knew that Indian National Congress leaders had a strong disdain towards the rulers of the princely states. They would lose their status, privilege, and wealth if they joined the Indian Dominion. Additionally, Congress had friendly relations with Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference leaders. They were not at fault for thinking their demands would be more acceptable to the Pakistanis than the Indians.

Now the stage is set for post-independence drama in Kashmir.

Conclusion

In this short historical sketch of Jammu & Kashmir, we can discern a few unique features. This uniqueness in Jammu & Kashmir history is not known to most. Hence, it becomes easy for people with vested interests to propagate false information.

• We have seen that geographically, Kashmir is more accessible towards the western side of our sub-continent through the Jhelum Road that runs from Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, up to Rawalpindi in Pakistan.
• Culturally as well, the population of Kashmir is more in sync with the people of western Punjab, a part that is now in Pakistan. A substantial population migrated from those parts and beyond to settle in Kashmir over a long period.
• Despite being overwhelmingly Muslim in religion, the population in the valley has a robust syncretic culture that is unmatched anywhere else in our nation and a far cry from the religious orthodoxy that we commonly equate with Islam. The Hindu Shivaite past is still remembered and deeply interwoven with Sufi Islam giving Kashmiri culture an unique blend. Even relic worshipping exists in the valley, as evident from Hazaratbal Shrine believed to have preserved the Prophet’s hair. This syncretic religious culture endured for more than six hundred years.
• The syncretic culture is one of the main reasons most Kashmiris did not want to be a part of Pakistan. They wanted an independent Kashmir.
• The history of Kashmir is the history of more than a hundred years of misrule, which the people bore with stoic calmness and composure. People of the valley are predominantly docile. Nothing much changed even after the independence in 1947 when Jammu and Kashmir became a part of India.
• The second world war also influenced the history of the Jammu & Kashmir area. Battled hardened soldiers, natives of Poonch district, bordering Pakistan, returned home after the war and took to arms against the brutal oppression of the princely state. An armed rebellion started from this district rather than from the valley. Pakistan state and its various agencies helped these rebel groups that later developed into the insurgency plaguing the area.
• Politics in the Jammu area is different from that of Kashmir valley. Leaders of the Jammu area followed social and religious conservative politics, while in the Kashmir valley, the politics is more inclusive. Religious orthodoxy influences the politics in the Jammu region.
• Sheikh Abdullah’s and NC’s Naya Kashmir manifesto was more revolutionary a document than most manifestos of the time, which was heavily left aligned. No wonder it was viewed with suspicion by the ruling class, be it in Kashmir, India, or Pakistan.

Kashmir remains an enigma. The mighty Himalayas, its snow-capped picks, and deep beautiful valleys could not overshadow the tragedy and the sorrow that unfolds daily in the lives of the people in the area. It is the story of ordinary people suffering. Whenever we think of Kashmir, we think of its natural beauty, ignoring the plight of the people and their suffering.

I think it is time for us to think about the people living in this beautiful corner of the earth. Also, it is time not to get swayed by any kinds of propaganda, overt or covert, through films, social media posts, or any other means.

If you have missed the first part of this article and want to read it, it is here — Kashmir woes — its culture, its genesis, its causes — a trial by ordeal

Originally published at https://barun.substack.com on July 16, 2022.