The last Queen of Kashmir will help Kashmiris realise what they were and help them regain self-recognition and self-understanding, believes author Rakesh K Kaul. A symbol of self-pride and to-do spirit, she ruled the land in the face of adversity. By Saritha Saraswathy Balan
The tale of Kota Rani struck a chord with author Rakesh Kaul while he was pondering over his wife’s family name of Dhar and its origins. Pandit Birbal Dhar, an influential tax collector of the 19th century, belonged to the Dhar luminaries. His wife was abducted by the then Afghan Governor Azim Khan as part of a political vendetta. She later committed suicide fearing that Khan would dishonour her and her last words were, “Know that Kashmir has yet a Kota Rani. Remember me to my lord.”
That’s when he chanced upon the fiery persona of Kota Rani, the Hindu ruler of medieval Kashmir, and the daughter of Ramchandra, the administrator and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of King Sachdeva. She rose to power after her father was assassinated and became the military chief of the last Hindu ruler of Kashmir, Udayanadeva. Sound on strategy and practical wisdom, she practically ruled the state and eventually married Udayanadeva. When the Kashmir valley was invaded by a Mongol-Turk invader called Achalla, Udayanadeva fled to Tibet. But Kota Rani stayed put, defeated Achalla and drove away all the foreign troops.
When Udayanadeva died in 1338, the queen kept the death of the king a secret for four days to gain time to entrench herself. She then shifted her headquarters from Srinagar to the strong fort of Indra Kot (now Sumbal), where she proclaimed herself as the ruler and assumed sovereign authority.
She had to face deceit and intrigue most of the time during her rule. There had been, reportedly, a consistent effort by her opponents to capture and seize the state but she and her ministers prevented the invaders’ attempt to a large extent. The queen succeeded, partially, in her mission of not allowing the kingdom to slip away.
later one of her ministers, Shah Mir, started conspiring against her. Kota Rani, even after knowing that she would be trapped by Shah Mir’s troops inside the fort and that her end was near, did not give up and drew up battle strategies to thwart the conspiracy. In a diplomatic move she even offered to marry Mir. But at the crucial moment, she committed suicide to prevent Mir from imprisoning her alive and offered her intestines to him as a wedding gift. After her death in 1339, the Sha Mir dynasty established its rule in India.
Kaul, whose family migrated to the US in 1972, took 12 years to research on Kota Rani before finishing his book The last Queen of Kashmir. “It was a very sad story and I had never heard about Kota Rani before. I wondered who is this inspiring symbol of feminine resistance, who had been central to the social history that Kashmiri Pandit women carried with them over the intervening centuries,” Kaul remarks.
The book examines Kota’s life story and what drove the principles around her. “Kota reflects a deep understanding of Kashmiri culture. She is an icon of resistance against invaders and a symbol of the universal values that Kashmir’s civilisation stands for,” the author says. According to him the brave Kota Rani played a critical role at a historic inflection point in Kashmir’s turbulent history. “The story of the Kashmiri queen bears many parallels to the situation in the Valley today as she was ruling the land in the face of adversity,” says Kaul. “I also realised that the highest truth of Kashmir was held and transmitted by women, from mothers to the girls, not by the patriarchs. I can go on telling you why women were supreme in the culture. Kashmir was the land of Shakti after all,” he adds.
“What sobered me was that Kota was surrounded by literary geniuses. Ninety per cent of Indic poetry of the period is in Sanskrit and virtually all of Indic literature in Kota’s time were in the form of poetry and written by Kashmiris. The works of these poets were invaluable as I began the sometimes painful task of reconstructing what had been sundered apart,” Kaul says. The research was a creative journey that took him to Persia and Germany as well.
“I started collecting materials from all over the world. The researchers were kind and shared facts with me. I went to known people like Theresa Wilke of University of Halle Wittenberg, who had studied about Kota Rani,” he says. “It is then that I realised that there is an independent view of Kashmir from the world. From Buddha to the Chinese scholars, Kashmir enjoyed a great recognition as a land of reality. People outside the country, who are doing research on Kashmir, have an incredible sense of excitement and amazement in unearthing what the scholars of the time had written, which is unfortunately not the case in India,” he tells us.
He continued, “The gap between how people within and outside India view Kashmir is quite surprising. In India, there is very little understanding and appreciation about the history of Kashmir. We have a bigger written history on Kashmir. It is not just the history of a land , but one that provides a better understanding of the history of India.”
Kaul chose a partially poetic and romantic style in writing the story of the last queen of his homeland. “The book needed to be one that educates and entertains. It had to be for all ages and an indestructible one. I adopted a literary style that would be authentic to the story. I had to approach the subject with love similar to that of a mother waiting to hear the cry of her new-born baby,” he says.
After theMahabharata and Rajatarangini, “the last Queen of Kashmir is the third and the only novel written till now in the Virasa rasa style, which is considered a style impossible to capture in words,” he avers. Kaul believes that for anybody connected with Kashmir, the book is a mandatory read that will lead them to the path of light from darkness. “It will enable them to know about their lost self-recognition and self-understanding,” he claims. “A book can offer a lot and make people think,” concludes Kaul.