Daily Times

The Kashmiri society that I was raised in was compassionate, kind, tolerant, and close-knit. Political rifts, animosities, and communal fault-lines existed even then, but without the vitriol, venom, and sheer viciousness that we see today. Marriages and funerals were occasions on which people put their enmities on the backburner and participated in with geniality and cordiality.

I recall that despite the age-old ‘Sher’ (followers of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah) and ‘Bakra’ (followers of the Mirwaiz) political fissure, one of the first people to show up at my maternal grandfather Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s house the day he died on September 8, 1982 was Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq.

At the time, the news of my grandfather’s death hadn’t been made public. Senior politicians of different ideological orientations and senior administrators feared that taking his body to the Polo Ground in full view of the already overwrought and emotionally agitated people thronging the gate of his house would make it difficult to rein in sentiments and could exacerbate the already fragile situation.

I, not being able to navigate my way through the agitated crowd that had gathered outside my grandfather’s bedroom, made my way to my grandmother’s younger brother, Benji’s house, which was a stone’s throw away. I pushed, shoved, and elbowed to make my way through the main gate, which was thronged by a multitude of people. The evening air was laden with the stifling heaviness of slogans; the piercing weeping of women; and the swishing sounds of young boys flagellating themselves, marking their bodies with visible signs of bereavement. The frightening roar of vehicles, chaotic screams, unbearably loud sounds of mourning, and the frantic patter of running feet around my grandmother’s brother’s house shook me into a startled wakefulness at first light. I learned that grandfather had breathed his last on the evening of September 8. His corpse, subsequent to the ritual cleansing, had surreptitiously been taken to Polo Ground in the wee hours of the morning, where it would lie in repose for the next two days.

Pak-trained militants also inflicted atrocities on their co-religionists during their Kashmir ‘struggle’

And that’s when I saw Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq walk briskly through the door to condole my grandmother. The next day, he was also part of the hours-long funeral cortege to Naseem Bagh.

The flags that flew at half-mast that day were symbolic of the diminution of the ideological underpinnings of a mass movement for Kashmiri nationalism, and of the mourning for an abraded Kashmiri identity. In that distressing, heart-breaking, and passionate atmosphere, Grandmother stood with her shoulders squared and employed religious rhetoric to remind the mourners in the front lawn of her house that even the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) could not escape the clutches of death, let alone an ordinary mortal. In a strong voice, she implored them to be patient and told them that the greatest tribute they could pay to Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was to show the world that they were an evolving nation, capable of maintaining an enviable calm even in difficult times. I sat behind her on bended knees while she importuned the crowd of mourners to remain stoic, wondering, with the befuddlement of a ten year old child, how a sense of orientation, order, and clarity would ever follow the fluster and tumult of those days!

The day the Mirwaiz was assassinated in May 1990, all we could think of was a man being killed in the prime of his youth, leaving behind a destitute widow and young children, who needed him more than ever. Regardless of political differences and ideological divides, the grief caused by his assassination was shared by all and sundry. That’s the Kashmir where I was raised!

As the 1990s dawned, the political, cultural and socioeconomic fabric of Kashmir was severely impaired by the free rein given to Indian military and paramilitary forces to quell dissidence, and also by Pakistan-trained militants who, in a no-holds barred conflict, inflicted atrocities on their co-religionists as well. New Delhi hadn’t succeeded in consolidating democratic institutions in the state, which could have enabled effective participation. India’s political and democratic practices, as Robert A Dahl observes, “have displayed some egregious shortcomings from a democratic point of view. It has suffered from recurring violations of basic rights.” The disillusionment created by New Delhi’s ploys, and the warped motive of the Pakistani military in spurring the growth of a jihadist element in Kashmir and facilitating the infiltration of armed combatants across the Line of Control (border separating Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan administered ‘Azad’ Kashmir) generated a militant movement in the state. What began as a skirmish over the quashing of democratic institutions in Jammu and Kashmir had erupted into a conflagration that swept the Kashmir Valley and some parts of the Jammu province of the state.

At this stage, everyone needs to be open to diplomacy and peaceful negotiations to further the India-Pakistan peace process. The aims of that process should be the gradual withdrawal of forces from both sides of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir as well as the decommissioning of militants, the rehabilitation of detained prisoners, and repair of the frayed ethnic fabric in all parts of civil society. We have the resilience and the wherewithal to move forward.

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 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 nylakhan@aol.com

Published in Daily Times, May 25^th 2018.