The various communities of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — Muslims, Pandits, Dogras and Ladakhis — have time and again tried to forge a national consciousness. The notion of ‘Kashmiriyat’, with its syncretic cultural ethos, put forth by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his comrades had similarly involved culling selected cultural fragments from an imagined past that could enfold both Pandit and Muslim communities. But due to regional sentiments so well entrenched in the psyche of the people; this attempt is still in a volatile stage.
These Indian and Pakistani institutions have couched the debased discourse of exploitation in the language of culture and religion — a strategy that has led to the relegation of Kashmiris’ political subjectivity, history and traditions
Far from being an unachievable and abstract construct — to me, Kashmiriyat crystallises concrete political measures like eradication of the feudal structure as well as its insidious social ramifications; the right of tillers to the land they work on; the unacceptability of any political solution that does not take Kashmiris aspirations into consideration; the right of Kashmiris to high offices in government bureaucracy; the availability of medical and educational facilities in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh; the preservation of literatures, shrines and historical artefacts that define Kashmiriyat; formation of the Constituent Assembly of J&K to institutionalise the constitution of the state in 1951; the fundamental right of all Kashmiri men and women to free education up to the university level; equal opportunities for both sexes in the workplace; the nurturing of a contact zone in social, political and intellectual ideologies and institutions; and pride in a cultural identity generated in the space created by recognition of multiple perspectives.
Kashmiriyat — the secular credo of Sheikh Abdullah’s All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference — was popularised in the 1940s and 50s to defeat centralising strategies of successive regimes of independent India. This concept is an attempt neither to simplify the ambiguity and complexity of religious, social and cultural identities nor to assert a fixed identity or reinforce the idea of purity of culture. I would veer away from adopting an image of this secular credo that is created by unitary discourses it deplores. Quite the contrary, ‘Kashmiriyat’ brings about a metamorphosis in the determinate concept of the Indian state, and creates a situation in which the nation-states of India and Pakistan are forced to confront an alternative epistemology for Kashmir. At a time of political and social upheaval in the state, this notion engendered a consciousness of place that offered a critical perspective from which to formulate alternatives. Without negating the historicity of the notion, this theoretical fiction was deployed by Sheikh Abdullah and his colleagues to forge a strategic essentialism enabling the creation of a sovereign Kashmiri identity. It certainly was not a flawless notion.
Uncertainty about the status of J&K has loomed large since 1947. In frightening darkness of political intrigue and paranoia of political deception, the fungi of undemocratic policies and methods continue to grow unabated. The unresolved Kashmir dispute poses a danger of monstrous proportions to the stability of the Indian subcontinent.
Does the former princely state present an instance of a post-colonial state? Post-colonialism refers to a phase undergone after decline and dismantling of European empires by the mid-20th century, when the people of many Asian, African and Caribbean countries were left to create new governments and forge national identities. In the case of J&K, the ideologies propounded by governments of India and Pakistan reflect and produce interests of agencies and institutions of these states on both sides of the Line of Control (LOC). These Indian and Pakistani institutions have couched the debased discourse of exploitation in the language of culture and religion — a strategy that has led to the relegation of Kashmiris’ political subjectivity, history and traditions.
Eminent Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said has noted in one of his works, “All human activity depends on controlling a radically unstable reality to which words approximate only by will or convention.” Representatives of the privileged centres of power silence voices that are on the margins of mainstream society and politics. These privileged centres have always distorted reality by imposing on it their ideological schema. Their ability to conjure images and re-stretch boundaries that serve their set of beliefs has rendered them a force to reckon with. In the case of J&K, ideas expounded by the powers-that-be portray Kashmiris as a stereotypical and predictable entity.
Such a delineation of the Kashmiri subjectivity was fore grounded by an imperial agent of the British Raj — Sir Walter Lawrence, Settlement Commissioner of J&K — in his The Vale of Kashmir. This politically and culturally misleading portrayal of the Kashmiri subjectivity has been further underscored by Indian and Pakistani government policies, and is a reason why the authority of democratically-elected representatives in the region has always been curbed. The policies of the Indian and Pakistani governments follow the much-trodden path of totalitarianism and spell a pattern of doom for Kashmir. The unnecessary and unjustified postponement of the resolution of the Kashmir conflict has insidiously gnawed at the tenuous relations between India and Pakistan. The issue has also, for better or worse, been thrust on to the stage of global politics, and its volatility has contributed to the destabilisation of the Indian subcontinent. Political Scientist Josef Korbel had noted this with foresight when he wrote: “whatever the future may have in store, the free world shares with India and Pakistan common responsibility for the fate of democracy and it awaits with trepidation the solution of the Kashmir problem. Its own security may depend on such a settlement.”
The writer is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir, The Life of a Kashmiri Woman, and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir. Nyla Ali Khan has also served as an guest editor working on articles from the Jammu and Kashmir region for Oxford University Press (New York), helping to identify, commission, and review articles. She can be reached at [email protected]