Kashmir by Humra Quraishi

Author:Humra Quraishi [Quraishi, Humra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184758894
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

The government didn’t seem concerned enough about the weavers’ problems, so in 1999 thirty of them got together and set up an association of weavers and embroiderers to manage their own needs, but it hasn’t got a registration yet. The file is probably lying forgotten on some babu’s desk.

Kashmir is a diminished society. Most of the Pandits have left, and that is an absence anyone who has seen Kashmir before 1990 will notice most easily. But there are other absences. Public space has shrunk; the ease of life is long gone, and the open, outgoing Kashmiri is nowhere to be seen. After the initial passionate defiance of 1989, after the men in uniform moved in, the battered populace began retreating—more every passing year. This was not a sign of submission, but of gloom, coupled with a bitterness of the worst kind.

In troubled times, people find solace in faith. I have seen women—‘half widows’ and mothers—wailing in the ziarats, the shrines of Sufi saints, praying for the safe return of their husbands or sons who disappeared without a trace, and old men sitting around with a vacant look in their eyes. More recently, I’ve seen women at the ziarats begging for money—something unheard of in the past. Cynics in the administrative system told me that like the ‘imported’ maulvis even these beggar women had come to the Valley from UP and Bihar! I spoke to six such women, and they were all Kashmiris, each with her own horror story—someone’s home had been burnt down, another’s sons had gone missing and she had no support system, and there was a half widow hoping to collect enough money to travel to Jodhpur. ‘The pir sahib at this ziarat has said that he’s in the Jodhpur jail … I’ve already spent what I had travelling to Delhi, Jammu and Agra, looking for him.’

But only the truly desperate seem to frequent the ziarats now. In a decade, the old faith, too, seems to have changed. A unique culture, born of Sufi Islam, is clearly on the decline. The violence in the Valley, the anger and despair of the Kashmiris, especially the younger generation, has affected even the traditional systems of belief. There is a hardening of attitudes, a preoccupation—perhaps inevitable—with the politics of the present and the immediate past; few have the time or mental space for other aspects of their history and culture. Which, of course, makes the job of jehadi outfits, based outside the Valley, that much easier.

The average Kashmiris, caught up as they are in the harsh realities of everyday life, don’t seem to know the relevance of their own patron saints. It is ‘outsiders’ who are making efforts to understand and promote the vision and the work of Kashmir’s saints and poets. Jalabala Vaidya and Gopal Sharma have made a film on Sheikh Nooruddin Wali (Nand Rishi), highlighting the relevance of his teachings in the present time of turmoil. Muzaffar Ali has devoted years of his life to an unfinished film on the life of the legendary Kashmiri poet Habba Khatun.

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