Kashmiriyat got currency during the 1970s. In 1971, Pakistan, a country formed on the basis of religion, broke apart on language, proving that only tolerance works
Kashmiriyat is a unique ethno-cultural and social consciousness which inspires and epitomises co-existence by amalgamating Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Sikhism; it embodies an ethos of harmony and a determination of survival of the people and their heritage by preaching religious-social harmony and brotherhood of all who belongs to Kashmir. A majority of Kashmiris, except a few, believed in it — in Srinagar, and in Delhi.
Kashmir, the land of Kashyap Rishi, has historically been a great centre for Hinduism and even Buddhism. According to Philip Mathew, Buddhist-Hindu encounter in the third century BC developed into a socio-cultural space called Kashmiriyat, where people of both religions lived harmoniously.
In medieval times, except for two failed attempts by Mahmud of Ghazni to conquer Kashmir, Islam entered the valley in a peaceful manner in the 11th century. Unlike many places where the followers of Islam came waving their swords soaked in the impure-blood of Kafirs (non-believers), in Kashmir, as Christopher Snedden tells us, Bulbul Shah and Shah Hamadan, who popularised Islam in the valley, possibly, and won converts from peasants to kings, came to Kashmir to avoid the devastation of their areas by Timur and other Central Asian Mongol or Turkic marauders. The locals, trained in a culture of syncretism, welcomed the Sufis.
From the 14th century, a doctrine of peace, harmony, and co-existence among Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam developed under Ghiyas-ud-Din Zain-ul-Abedin (1420-1470) and then later under Mughal emperor Akbar, who conquered Kashmir in 1586 and added to his Afghan province, Kabul Subah. These rulers gave equal protection, importance and patronage to Kashmir’s different religious communities. The solidarity which developed, continues till today and is so powerful that even during partition, when the entire Indian subcontinent was witnessing bloodshed, Kashmiris were living peacefully under their syncretic culture.
The believers of this version ignore the sporadic incidents of persecution of Hindus which happened during the rule of Sikandar Shah Mir, better known as Sikandar Butshikan or Aurangzeb. Sikandar Butshikan was the sixth sultan of the Shah Mir dynasty of Kashmir and ruled the kingdom from 1389 to 1413.
Baharistan-i-Shahi notes, “After the arrival of Sufi Mir Muhammad, Sultan submitted to his supremacy and eradicated aberrant practices and infidelity to the extent that he clamour of the drum and the trumpet, the shrill notes of the fife and the clarion no longer reached people’s ears, except in battles and assaults.”
Justine Hardy in his book, In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir’s long War: One Family’s Extraordinary Story, talks something different. Here, “Kashmiriyat is a word hung about with a history that it did not have. It had barely been in use before 1947.” Toru Tak, who wrote a paper titled, ‘The term Kashmiriyat Kashmiri nationalism of the 1970s’, tried finding the term in Srinagar’s local Urdu dailies. He found that it was used for the first time on September 23, 1975, in the editorial of Srinagar Times and that “the term was still in its embryonic phase and the nationalist/ethnic meaning of it, the implication for the identity of the Kashmiri people, is yet to be firmly fixed to the term”. TN Madan, a renowned anthropologist who was from Kashmir, pointing towards the foreignness of the word, Kashmiriyat, said it to be an artificially produced clone of Punjabiyat and a recent coinage of not earlier than the 1980s.
The use of Kashmiriyat got currency during the 1970s. In 1971, Pakistan, a country formed on the basis of religion, broke apart on the basis of language, proving that nothing works in South Asia except tolerance, acceptance and secularism. Indira Gandhi added ‘secular’ to the Preamble to the Constitution of India; for Sheikh Abdullah, who was trying to forge Kashmir as a ‘qaum’, ‘Kashmiriyat’ was to prove that Kashmir is secular, but in a manner different from the rest of India.
The cravings of secularism died with Sheikh Abdullah. Tak notes that in the early 1980s, when Farooq Abdullah used Kashmiriyat, it inevitably sounded like the slogan of Kashmir’s ‘Muslim’ identity as a counter to Delhi, which was essentially Hindu. He fought the 1983 election in an alliance with Mirwaiz Maulana Farooq, a Muslim religious leader with mild separatist leanings.
For Kashmir, the 1980s is the decade which saw the end of centuries-old culture of co-existence, mutual respect and brotherhood. Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the US strategy of countering it by the use of jihadis helped in the spread of the Salafism, the conservative, puritan form of Islam. Salafists had a presence in Kashmir right from the early 20th century, but they had always been at the margins, failing to replace the Sufi tradition.
But, when the hordes of Pakistan-trained jihadi groups, after their success against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, started entering Kashmir valley, they came with the idea of a ‘holy war’ for an Islamic caliphate, to cleanse the State of non-Muslim minorities. Politics intermixed with Islam infusing jihad, intolerance, radicalism, Dukhtaran-e-Millat were in hijab and Kashmiriyat of Sheikh Abdullah — a veil to hide Islamic revivalism — was an unnecessary burden. So, when the insurgency began from 1989, attacks were not only on the military units or security forces — alien to Kashmir and representing Delhi — but even on Kashmiri Hindus.
When it happened, Philip Mathew’s Kashmiriyat was too old and infirm, waiting for its death, and Toru Tak’s Kashmiriyat was a child. They trembled whenever they heard the sound of bullet, they cried whenever mosques started issuing warning to the Hindus. On September 14, 1989, horrified by the killing of Pandit Tika lal Taploo in full public view, they died in the fear and on January 20, 1990, the funeral procession came out when approximately 160,000-170,000 Pandits left their homeland.
Wahhabism, which calls for Islam to be returned to its purest form, is getting stronger in valley. Tariq Mir notes that in the last few years, Wahhabist preachers have spread across Kashmir, and now boast of 1.5 million followers out of a population of nearly eight million people.
It is not only that the Amarnath Yatra has been attacked; Kashmir had witnessed one of the worst ethnic cleansings. Here, a police officer got lynched because he carried an identity card with ‘Pandith’ written, and non-Muslim Government servants are being forced to flee from the valley. Delhi needs to understand that the reminding of ancient culture of syncretism — which doesn’t have many takers today — in the pursuit of political correctness will not make Amarnath Yatra any safer.
And, even while we inherit a heterodox culture based on acceptance — and there is absolutely no problem in regions having their own uniqueness and feeling proud in it — Kashmiriyat is a political construct which claims to be ethno-national consciousness. It may promote a type of sub-nationalism which goes against the idea of national integration and can easily be used against India by the separatists also. Syama Prasad Mookerjee had said, “Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Pradhan aur do Nishan nahi chalenge.” So, before evoking Kashmiriyat we need to think: ‘Should we have two distinct identitiesIJ’
(The writer is a post-graduate student, Centre for Informal Sector and labour studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University)