| May 29, 2008 | Thursday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 23, 1429 |
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Snapshots from Kashmir
ALLOW me to offer a few snapshots of Kashmir as seen from Srinagar during last week’s brief visit there. Unesco’s goodwill ambassador Madanjeet Singh sponsored the trip, involving representatives from other South Asian countries as well.
He was a keen photographer who caught Nehru’s eye and both became each other’s admirers. A collection of some of the old photographs with a handwritten preface by Nehru is a volume to treasure. This My People shows “a different aspect of India” as Nehru observed.
The common folk, the masses, the people who inspired Madanjeet Singh straddled the entire stretch of undivided India. The smiling image of the naked, rain-drenched Kashmiri boys might represent the gay abandon that Madanjeet had set out last week to restore to their homeland.Now old with a mild swagger, the genial Sikh is better known as a philanthropist who throws money at any cause that touches his heart, one such being Sufism. So he donated a tidy amount to the Kashmir University in Srinagar where he invited Indian President Pratibha Patil to inaugurate the Institute for Kashmir Studies.
An idyllic reverie is, of course, not easy to translate into reality. Nor, on the other hand, is it always possible to wish away an unpalatable truth — such as Kashmir’s bitter reality — with Madanjeet’s dream of peace and brotherhood. But who can deny that dreams do permeate the wider dialectics that pave the way forward, often by slowly chipping away at granite-like adversities?
The dream of peace and brotherhood has many strange facets though. No one disowns the idea per se. On the contrary, they often fight bloody wars to seek its elusive fruition. So many Indian and Pakistani soldiers have died trying to do precisely that, bringing their versions of peace to Kashmir. Countless innocent civilians have been killed; thousands have ‘disappeared’, which is poker-faced euphemism for cold-blooded murder, quite possibly in a torture chamber. And many more are set to die or simply ‘disappear’ in the time to come, all in the cause of Kashmir’s peace and brotherhood.
One representation of this contrariness came as a photograph distributed by the Indian army last week. It showed President Patil aiming an AK47 rifle into the camera, and wearing a broad smile. The gun had been captured from militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, the caption said.
Therefore, when Mrs Patil was delivering her address on peace and brotherhood at Srinagar’s Kashmir University my mind strayed to her picture. It had inevitably become the subject of editorial comment in local papers. Even Omar Abdullah, India’s most presentable poster boy for Kashmir, confessed it reminded him of the Sylvester Stallone film ‘Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot’.
As the supreme commander of the Indian armed forces, President Patil would want to forget the insensitive imagery. It reveals pettiness — not hers, but of those who flaunted it. The picture hasn’t gone down well with a single Kashmiri and in any case does little to promote the ideals of Kashmiriyat she spoke about at the university.
This leads to another contradiction about Kashmir that I gleaned during the three-day visit. In an informal meeting with leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, you could get the distinct impression that Pakistan’s present self-absorption with democracy does not enthuse its friends in Srinagar. Hurriyat leaders are planning to visit Pakistan next month, quite possibly to ascertain where they stand in the scheme of things of the new government.
The mismatch between democracy and the Kashmiri cause is reflected in other ways in the Valley. The extension of Wahabi Islam in what was essentially a region of Sufi syncretism is a serious challenge, not the least because it impacts adversely on Kashmiri women’s rights.
Habba Khatun, the 16th century iconic woman poet, is Kashmir’s best-known cultural symbol. Religious zealots, including women vigilantes, regard her legacy with fear and suspicion. This stifling version of the faith was promoted in the Valley by Pakistan under Gen Zia’s watch. That patronage has shifted somewhat though not completely to more moderate representatives within the Hurriyat and outside.
JKLF’s Yasin Malik, possibly the most secular of the pro-freedom group, is currently visiting Pakistan with his road show called ‘The Freedom Journey’. It’s basically about his widely ignored but deeply authentic support from the Kashmiri masses, with hundreds of thousands of signatories demanding their role in the peace talks mentioned above.
Malik’s isolation from Kashmir’s mainstream will not be good for its future. Kashmir’s syncretic faith, which he represents, and Wahabi Islam were at loggerheads over the performance by Junoon at Srinagar’s scenic Dal Lake. The show was organised by Madanjeet Singh’s South Asia Foundation and opposed by religious extremists such as Syed Ali Shah Geelani. The Hurriyat kept quiet, reflecting a tacit Pakistani endorsement. The arguments on both sides of the landmark event were interesting though not unique.Junoon is a Pakistani music group and its leader Salman Ahmed swears by the Sufi ideals of cosmic peace and fellowship. The show was proof of his popularity among Kashmir’s youth. Thousands came but many more were deterred by the intimidating security. They sang with Salman and swayed to his music even though I have reservations about its range and quality to deserve the epithet of Sufi music. And so, while on the one hand the Junoon message was one of bonding, it was being played out by the other side as a case of Nero playing the fiddle at an inopportune time.
Moreover, Kashmir’s tryst with musicians, as we know from history, has not always been a happy one. A famous Kashmiri bard called Kuka Paray headed the vigilante militia set up by India to thwart Pakistani-backed militants. Those were Kashmir’s really dark days.
That the show had the participation of Sri Lanka’s Chandrika Kumaratunga and Farooq Sobhan of Bangladesh was a tribute to its wider appeal beyond the India-Pakistan tangle. But Kashmir is not just about wars and religious frictions or its musical panacea. It embodies memories too that reflect the way we were.
For Pakistan’s art historian Salima Hashmi, a leading member of the Madanjeet group, the visit became a tryst with her core reality. Srinagar is where her parents Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Alys were married. Naturally, Salima took off on her great personal journey that has a significant public importance too. Locating the room in a girls’ school where Sheikh Abdullah performed the nikah was a moving experience for Salima.
Moreover, the fact that the place where her parents were married is still preserved by Kashmir’s largest girls’ school as Faiz Room offers the hope that the spirits from the past may yet be blessing Kashmir and shepherd it to a great future. That’s what Madanjeet Singh too would want to believe.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
