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Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir by Chitralekha Zutshi. Permanent Black, Delhi. Pages 359. Rs 695
Zutshi's argument, based as much on wide-ranging archival research in personal and governmental records as on published material, cuts deep swathes into some time-honoured but never tested assumptions made to justify Kashmir's apartness. In the very first chapter she rejects the so-called syncretic, religion-transcending concept of Kashmiriyat sedulously cultivated by interested parties to suit their political agendas. She finds in the works of Lal Ded and Nund Rishi, respectively, a solid core of Hindu mysticism and Islamic Sufism, though these never conflicted with their fundamental humanistic values. In the changing socio-economic climate of their time, these values were readily accepted, but also appropriated by others-Lal Ded becoming Lala Arifa is a good example. The other myth questioned here is that of the fixed, static identity of religious groups in Kashmir. The Muslim identity, the core subject of this book, did not emerge fully formed, but developed in a process of differentiation brought on by the changing economic and social transformation of the state in the 19th and 20th centuries. In this process, Islam played a decisive role in channelling the anger caused by the economic policies of the successive Dogra rulers, particularly in the wake of the Land Settlement laws. That the ruling bureaucracy primarily consisted of Hindus from Punjab as well as Kashmiri Pandits added to the Muslim resentment, which in time included resentment against the discriminatory educational policies of the Dogra rulers. Zutshi is particularly convincing on the tactics adopted by the ruling elites to deprive the dominant Muslim peasantry of the benefits of secular education. As the resentments accumulated, they found ready outlets through the vocabulary of Islam. The Muslim identity also developed against the internecine quarrels between different factions of Islam represented by the Wahabis and the Hamadanis. These sectarian skirmishes later congealed into the Sher-Bakra conflict of the 1930s, culminating in the emergence of Sheikh Abdullah as the unquestioned Muslim leader. Zutshi views Abdullah's rise as the convergence of the religious and socio-economic positions of various Muslim organisations, and attributes his phenomenal popularity to his ambivalence towards both the religious and the much larger pan-Indian aspirations of his people. As leader of the Muslim Conference, he condemned the Hindu domination of the state administration, but later as the National Conference chief, he joined the nationalist discourse to retain his secular credentials. His Kashmiriyat encompassed both positions. Zutshi's narrative shows the fluidity of the Kashmiri Muslim identity as well as its periodic somersaults to gain political mileage. It is not that the Muslims continuously harped on their religious identity, but that the Muslim leaders grasped every opportunity to advance their identity politics through religious and regional articulations. Languages of Belonging is
a substantial book grounded in extensive research and deep thinking.
Apart from its other merits, it throws a suggestive though unintended
light on the present turmoil in the state and offers some thought to the
displaced Pandits. While not condoning their distress, the book
recaptures the historical events in which the Pundits were complicit
with the ruling Dogras in their repression of the Muslim majority. This
surely deepened the Hindu-Muslim divide that has endemically fractured
the seductive surface of "our paradise on Earth". |
THIS
book is a major intervention in the debate on Kashmir and that mercurial
entity Kashmiriyat. Its chief, though not exclusive, purchase on our
attention is in the interrogation of some of the myths attached to the
idea of a unique Kashmiri individuality (Mehbooba Mufti calls it 'Tashakhus')
that distinguishes the territory from the other states of India.
Throughout her discussion, Zutshi emphasises the point that what is
claimed to be specific to Kashmir can also, with minor variations, be
found in other religious and cultural formations in the country. This
should have a sobering effect on the fury of competing rhetoric of
identity in the state.