[Reader-list] Muslims help perform last rites of a Pandit in Kashmir

[Junaid]

Dear Rajendra and Kshmendra,

Which statement(s) of me can be seen as betraying/sowing any hatred
for Pandits, I would like to know. You cannot draw such conclusions
from what I have said. I don't hate, I have refused that option to
myself. As an important part of not only Kashmir's history and society
but also of the whole region Hindus are a part of me, the way since
the day I remember they have constituted my world. And so have
Muslims.

I don't think I have any "Muslimness". What is Muslimness? Is it some
extra limb attached to people who describe themselves as Muslims? Or
is it a gene that was formed exclusively among Muslims? If it is a
perspective what are its parameters. If I didn't have a Muslim name
and had said the same thing as I said in my last post, would you have
said I say such things because of some Muslimness?


If much has been said about conversions in Kashmir then I would like
to know which authoritative works on this issue are you banking on. I
would also like to know what numbers are you talking about. I would
also appreciate if you give me the sources for such "numbers".

On your two points Kshmendra.

1. I have never ever said that Pandits did not leave Kashmir--under
misinformation and disinformation in some places, under real threat by
some militants or shady groups and provocation by Indian agencies in
others, despite no societal approval of threats to Pandits, in a
situation where Indian government failed to reassure Pandits. I have
also said that the pain of leaving home is a great one. Kashmiri
Muslims share this pain with Pandits. This is the same pain which many
Kashmiri Muslims still carry from the time when they were forced out
of Kashmir by Dogra regime, or by the surviving descendants of those
tens of thousands Muslims of Poonch who were were massacred by Dogras.

I have also argued with Muslim friends in Kashmir that even if the
number of Pandits killed in early 90s was small compared with Muslims
in the same period, and miniscule seen retrospectively, it was enough
and realistic enough to trigger a panic among the Pandits. I, like
most Kashmiris, refuse to see Kashmir issue through the prism of
Pandit deaths compared to Muslim deaths, (or for that matter the lens
of India-Pakistan conflict); I see all these losses as an aggregated
loss for Kashmir.

However, I also maintain, that Pandits cannot make Kashmir continue to
stay under the Indian occupation just because Pandits share a religion
with India. That some Kashmiri Pandits became Indian nationalists
doesn't mean Kashmiri Muslims should follow suit, it would be akin to
saying that all Pandits should work for the independence of the entire
Kashmiri nation. A totally false expectation.

2. Yes I totally disagree with you that Kashmir's independence
struggle is an effect of some demonic forces of Islam. The Kashmiri
struggle is political, as it seeks political solutions to political
problems, which legitimates itself on a call for justice. Justice that
India cannot occupy or rule Kashmir against the wishes and approval of
its people. Kashmiris seek freedom from Indian rule, why should that
be "Islamic"? This bogey is an old one. Will not work anymore.

Junaid



On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Kshmendra Kaul<kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Junaid
>
> Your mail is both interesting and amusing.
>
> It is interesting that you reveal yourself as one bristling with hate for
> KPs. Which says much about your ideology when you talk about Kashmir and
> it's people elsewhere on this List.
>
> Kashmir has a history of repressions and opressions. That you choose to
> comment on that with a Muslimness is interesting. Convienient highlights;
> cursory dismissals.
>
> Much can be and has been noted about 'conversions' and who killed who in
> what numbers and when. I will not go down that path with you. But your
> comments on left-over percentages are interesting.
>
> It is amusing that my mail should have provoked such a diatribe from you. I
> wonder why. I made no comment on the Muslims of Kashmir or the History of
> Kashmir or that Muslims do not have an equal right to be in Kashmir.
>
> There were two points mentioned in my mail:
>
> 1. That there is "near erasure and extinction of a unique
>  socio-cultural-religious group that was indigenous to and rooted in
> Kashmir".
>
> Do you disagree with that? Certainly you are not suggesting that the KPs
> deserved that. Are you? Your academic comments on what is indigenous and
> what is not aside.
>
> 2. That there has been an "Islamisation of Kashmir under garb of "Aazadi"".
> You are at liberty to disagree with that and say that the "Aazadi" Movement
> has nothing to do with Islam, which would be a strange thing to say
> considering that only Muslims (some) in Kashmir subscribe to that.
>
> Kshmendra
>
>
>
> --- On Mon, 8/31/09, Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Muslims help perform last rites of a Pandit in
> Kashmir
> To: "Kshmendra Kaul" <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: reader-list at sarai.net
> Date: Monday, August 31, 2009, 7:30 PM
>
> Actually the "Islamisation" of Kashmir took place in the 14th century,
> when a majority of lower-castes of Kashmiri Hindus, with a
> choice/promise to escape the rigid caste structure of Hinduism,
> converted to Islam. Only the Brahmins/Pandits didn't convert--that is
> why the typical Brahmin proportion of population of 3 to 5 percent in
> the Hindu societies continued to remain the same, while others
> mass-converted, in the new Muslim society.
>
> It is a different matter that Pandits continued to enjoy their social
> position even after this Islamisation--probably apart from some little
> breaks--during Sikander's time and later under Afghans, which was
> miserable for Muslims as well.  During Zainul Abidin's rule or under
> Chaks, and Mughals, and of course under Sikhs and Dogras they enjoyed
> a high social position. Incidentally this constitutes the most of the
> history since "Islamisation" of Kashmir. The present-day Pandits,
> however, construct their history as exclusively having been marked by
> Islamic oppression. This kind of "history" writing among Pandits began
> around the time Muslims became politically conscious, and is therefore
> understandable.
>
> Many Pandits continued to treat Muslims as undercastes, largely seeing
> them as unclean, a practice that I have seen with my own eyes. Pandits
> wouldn't let Muslims enter their kitchens or eat with them. But
> somehow neither I nor anyone else seemed to be so bothered about it.
>
> This whole thing about Pandits being "indigenous" is theoretically and
> historically untenable. One cannot find clean lines of transmission
> from past to the present, where cultures have remained
> hermetically-sealed from the outside influences and that an active
> flow of people, ideas and material hasn't happened. Neither is
> Hinduism indigenous to Kashmir nor is Islam, in the sense that it grew
> up on its own and without any touch with the outside world.
> Historically there have been other religions practiced in Kashmir
> before the Hinduism that the present day Pandits now claim to follow;
> the later somehow includes Desh-bhakti which I am sure wasn't present
> among the repertoire of traditional Bhaktis in Kashmir at least not
> the Indian deshbhakti.
>
> And, really, is 700 years of Islam in Kashmir just an undesirable,
> forgettable, foreign footnote in the history of Kashmir, tomes and
> tomes of which Mr. Pawan Durrani and others have been dreaming up and
> dishing out here?
>
> Islam is a reality in Kashmir, you just cannot deny its existence. You
> may bury your head in the sand and try to cover up its existence by
> coming up with the "Shalla Daleelah" of good ol' Hindu times, but you
> will realise soon that Kashmiris no longer worry about the myths and
> stories that used to bind them into servitude. They think about the
> present and the future. They don't ignore the past, but they are
> sure-footed about their own social and political history as a society
> and a nation. They would not accept your present day mythology as a
> concrete historic reality, a mythology in which you and your facts
> have become inextricably wound up. A mythology which somehow resembles
> the tale of Ramayan--with Muslims as the evil Rakshas/Ravan, the
> Pandits as Ram in Banwas, with Kashmir as Sita abducted by Ravana, and
> Indian troops as Hanuman who justifiably sets the entire Muslim
> Kashmir on fire to make way for Ram.
>
> It is not going to happen.
>
> Junaid
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Kshmendra Kaul<kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> "There was nobody to perform the funeral."
>>
>> It is a commentary on the Islamisation of Kashmir under garb of "Aazadi"
>> that led to creating of a situation which forced almost all of the
>> Non-Muslims out of Kashmir.
>>
>> It is a commentary on the near erasure and extinction of a unique
>> socio-cultural-religious group that was indigenous to and rooted in
>> Kashmir.
>>
>> Kshmendra
>> --- On Sun, 8/30/09, Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> From: Junaid <justjunaid at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [Reader-list] Muslims help perform last rites of a Pandit in
>> Kashmir
>> To: reader-list at sarai.net
>> Date: Sunday, August 30, 2009, 12:48 AM
>>
>> Does this fit into any debate here?
>>
>>
>> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Kashmiri-Muslims-perform-funeral-of-Hindu-man-/articleshow/4948967.cms
>>
>> Kashmiri Muslims perform last rites of a Kashmiri Pandit
>>
>> SRINAGAR: In a unique display of communal harmony, Muslims neighbours
>> here performed the last rites of a Hindu man who stayed back when most
>> of the Pandit families fled during the early 1990s when Islamist
>> insurgency erupted in Jammu and Kashmir.
>>
>> Bhola Nath Kachroo of Srinagar, who was living with his wife and a
>> daughter here, died Friday after an illness and had nobody to perform
>> his funeral.
>>
>> The family was devastated when Kachroo, who his neighbour said was
>> "very old", passed away. There was no other Pandit family nearby to
>> help them.
>>
>> But, Muslims in the area helped the family in performing the last
>> rites of Kachroo. They made arrangements for the last rites and also
>> erected tents for Kachroo's friends and relatives who had gathered to
>> mourn the death.
>>
>> "There was nobody to perform the funeral. We were equally saddened to
>> lose an elderly person in our neighbourhood. We gathered and performed
>> the last rites without considering what faith we follow," said Ghulam
>> Mohammed Bhat, secretary of the Muslim Welfare Society.
>>
>> Most of the Hindu families migrated from the Kashmir Valley in the
>> wake of insurgency fuelled by Islamic fundamentalists, but Kachroo and
>> his family stayed back.
>>
>> "We came as humans to help our mourning neighbours. They didn't leave
>> when other Pandits fled and we owe responsibilities to this family,"
>> said Ali Mohammed, another neighbour.
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