A Return to Kashmiriat
What is Kashmiriat (Kashmirness)? Kashmiriat is, in fact, another name for Sufism. Kashmiri culture means Sufi culture. Kashmir is perhaps the only place in the world where Islam was spread only through the Sufis. As such, a revival of Kashmiriat in Kashmir would in fact mean revival of Sufism. Sufism and spirituality are synonymous. Sufism is based wholly on peace and love. Indeed, Sufism is only another name for a culture of peace and love.
What is Sufi culture? In the words of the Sufis, it is peace with all. This Sufi culture is desirable as creating a bond not only between Muslims, but also between Muslims and Hindus.
The people of Kashmir have followed this Sufi culture for several centuries, thus ensuring that the whole environment of the state is based on the principle of peace, love and social harmony.
The people of Kashmir were totally innocent of hatred and violence. But some external elements misled them into deviating from this Kashmiri culture. This breeding of hatred and violence, far from giving them anything positive, took away their most precious asset, and that was the Sufi culture which had always been a symbol of Kashmir — that is, the culture of peace and love.
It was the good fortune of the people of Kashmir that the Muslim Sufis who came from outside in the last few hundred years, and those Sufis who were born in Kashmir, all communicated the message of peace and love. This brought about a tremendous revolution in Kashmir, where Islam spread far and wide.
For instance, Shayhkh Nooruddin Noorani (d. 1439) one of the great Sufis of Kashmir, symbolized the true Kashmiriat. He was known as Alamdar-e-Kashmir, and was greatly respected also by the Hindus, who called him Nand Rishi. He was equally popular among Hindus and Muslims.
Shaykh Nooruddin Noorani once observed: “If you are wise, do not differentiate between Hindus and Muslims. This is the way to find God.” He was also a poet. His poems, titled Rishi Nama and his writings show that, to him, there was only one sure way of acknowledging man, and that was for man to love man. To him loving man was the way to realize God.
One of the precious sayings of Shaykh Nooruddin Noorani is as follows: “I broke the sword and made a sickle from it.” This saying expresses the essence of his thoughts. This means that though God created iron with exceptional strength, iron is not meant to be used for violence. It should rather be used for constructive ends in the service of humanity. If instead of a sword, you make sickle from the iron, it will be of use in agriculture. But since October 1989 such people in Kashmir have emerged who believe in converting their sickles into swords. In the name of jihad, they have been spreading the culture of hatred and violence throughout the whole of the State.
From day one, I have regarded this so-called Kashmiri movement as being without foundation. I have to say that any progressive happenings emerge in the process of a long history rather than through the present kind of movement. I believe that the fate of Kashmir was already decided upon with the end of British rule in 1947. Now neither an all-out war nor a guerilla war can change the fate of Kashmir. All such efforts to do so have totally failed. Repeating such initiatives again and again only worsens an already bad situation.
Experience shows that India’s progress is far greater than that of Pakistan in every respect. In such a situation the best choice for the Kashmiris is India, not Pakistan. The truth is that remaining part of India is to be a part of a developed country, whereas associating with Pakistan is throwing in one’s lot with a country which has yet to start its journey towards progress.
Before the start of militancy in 1989, Kashmir was called ‘Pirwar’, meaning in Kashmiri language, the land of Sufis. A Kashmiri Muslim once told me with great pain that, prior to this, Kashmiris had not even known how to kill chickens, but after 1989, they began to slaughter human beings. The Sufi culture that prevailed in Kashmir owing to the untiring efforts of Sufis like Bulbul Shah and Shah Hamadan, etc., was totally a culture of peace. The Kashmiris by temperament were totally non-violent.
This Sufi couplet speaks of the peaceful temperament of the Kashmiris:
Ma qissae sikandar o dara na khwanda eim
Az ma bajuz hikayat e mehro wafa mapurs
(I have not read the stories of Sikandar and Dara, ask me only about stories of love and compassion)
But human beings are fallible and prone to human weaknesses, so that when certain people, serving their own personal interests, wanted to mislead the Kashmiris, they were able to provoke them into aggression. But this was a temporary phase. Events tell us that now people are returning to their true nature.
Now the final hour has come for the Kashmiris to return to their past, to revise their forgotten lesson, to reshape their lives again in line with Sufi traditions, to make Kashmir once again a region of peace and love as it had always been in the past. This is Kashmirness. A return to this Kashmiriat holds the key to progress in Kashmir.
Refusal to Accept the Reality
I have been writing about Kashmir since 1968. My first article was published in the Urdu Weekly, Al-Jamiat, in its issue of June 8, 1968, (p. 4). One part of this article about the politics of Kashmir is quoted here: “The time for receiving one’s rights is when the decision is in one’s own hands. But our leaders come to the realization of this fact only when their case becomes a moral one. I have this feeling when I read the speeches of Shaykh Abdullah, the leader of Kashmir. His present political campaign is nothing but the refusal to accept the reality of having lost the war.
In 1947 he was in such a position that, had he opted for a realistic policy, he could have succeeded in deciding the matter according to his choice. But he missed the bus by indulging in unrealistic dreams. In national matters, when the time for decision has slipped from one’s hands, the problem becomes much more complicated and difficult to resolve. National leadership is a task which can be performed only by those who can envision the future in the present. Those who can see only the present and the past cannot lead a nation. Indeed, by their unwise steps, they can certainly complicate matters.”
These words were penned forty-five years ago. The reality of these words has now become a proven fact. The Kashmiris must learn a lesson from this experience. They should never repeat the mistake of continuing the failed politics of the past under new names. Now the final hour has come for the people of Kashmir to take a fresh look at the whole matter of the construction of their future, and, taking realities into consideration, reconstruct their national policy. A viable policy is only that which is sustainable. An unsustainable policy is no policy at all. Implementing a policy which is not result-oriented is just a waste of time and energy.
Anachronism
The goal of the movement launched after 1947 in Kashmir was to make Kashmir into a separate pocket. This was plainly an anachronism. The present age is one of international relations. In such a situation, the making of separate pockets is an irrelevance.
In this connection, one lesson-giving example is that of Pakistan. The formation of Pakistan was based on this same concept of a separate pocket. Prior to 1947 the theory advanced by the Muslim leaders who advocated the creation of Pakistan was that creating a separate pocket was a must for the survival of their national identity. Yet, once Pakistan had been brought into existence, the majority of the educated people of Pakistan opted to go to Europe and America and abandoned Pakistan, the God-given country, as they called it – ‘Mamlekat-e-Khuda dad’. Earlier these leaders had insisted on Muslims being a separate nation, but then they adopted the nationality of other countries — America, France, Britain, Germany, etc. They preferred to live in these countries rather than in Pakistan.
Now the Kashmiris, who are trying to form a separate political pocket, should learn a lesson from this sorry state of affairs in Pakistan. They should refrain from basing their movement on unrealistic objectives and then later going against their own stand under the pressure of circumstances.
