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Bhagwan Das Garga's 'Storm over Kashmir' by Andrew Whitehead

8/15/2017

B.D. Garga during the filming of 'Storm over Kashmir', 1948 - photo courtesy of Donnabelle Garga

B. D. Garga (1924-2011) was one of India's most renowned documentary makers - and 'Storm over Kashmir' made in the late 1940s was his first film. As such, it's an important piece of cinema for what it reveals of such a key figure in Indian film as well as for what it says about Kashmir. I'd love to be able to post the video of 'Storm over Kashmir' here, or at least include a link. But I can't. There's a copy at Pune and another at the Indian government's Film Division, but I haven't yet managed to see it or obtain a copy (and I've been trying for a long, long time).

With the help and permission of Garga's widow, Donnabelle Garga, I am able to post some wonderful images both from the film and taken at the time it was being made and to share a little more about this historic documentary. Garga was a leftist and his take on Kashmir reflected a progressive mindset, which in the late 1940s was sympathetic to Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of the main Kashmiri political party, the radical and nationalist National Conference.

Garga with Shiekh Abdullah (with glasses) during the filming of 'Storm over Kashmir' - photo, Donnabelle Garga

In an article entitled Fragments of a Life, Garga wrote about how 'Storm over Kashmir' came to be made:

'Soon after the traumatic experience of partition, I found myself in Kashmir exploring the possibility of making a documentary film (eventually titled Storm over Kashmir) on the political situation there. K.A. Abbas, who was already in Srinagar at the invitation of Sheikh Abdullah, invited me to stay with him in his large, lovely houseboat. This was the beginning of a long friendship and collaboration on ‘various adventures and misadventures’ as he put it. Kashmir in 1948 was a most exciting place to be in. Raiders from across the border had overrun the valley, pillaging and killing innocent people. They did not even spare the nuns and burnt a chapel. There was widespread anger and revulsion against the marauders and their atrocities. Journalists and photographers from all over the world had converged on Srinagar. Our houseboat was a sort of ‘Press Club’ where everybody met and discussed the day’s happenings. Among the other visitors, I particularly remember the late D.P.Dhar, a firebrand, who would arrive with a rifle slung across his shoulder.

It was here I met the legendary French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Many a time he would invite me to join his photographic expeditions. He created all those incredible masterpieces with a battered old Leica, without filters or any artificial light. He told me that he had started his career with Jean Renoir and then switched over to Photography. Cartier-Bresson introduced me to a man to whom I owe much: Georges Sadoul'

The late Dileep Padgaonkar also wrote about the film in his foreword to Garga's 2005 book, The Art of Cinema: an insider's journey through 50 years of film history:

Around this time, Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi and Garga had to hasten to the capital to ensure the safety of his parents who lived there after partition. He had no project in hand. One day, BalwantGargi, the Lahore friend who had prodded him to take up cinema as a career informed him that Sheikh Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir had invited writers and artists to visit the state which had been invaded by raiders from Pakistan. The two decided to approach Abdullah for help to make a documentary.

The Kashmiri leader told them bluntly that he had no funds for the project. All he could do was to place a houseboat at their disposal and look after the transportation. With great difficulty they managed to get a camera and raw stock which was still in short supply. The writer Rajinder Singh Bedi suggested the plot.

Te main character was a woman who had been raped. Her husband had been killed and her house destroyed. A young girl from Delhi, AchalaSachdev, was given the role. This was the first time she faced the camera. The unit began work in Baramullah where atrocities had taken place. Nuns had been molested in a church and the chapel had been ransacked.

Garga felt at home in Kashmir for in his childhood and early youth he camped there every summer. He would take the ‘Nanda Bus Service’ which ferried passengers between Lahore and Srinagar. (Today, the Nandas rank among the leading industrialists of India.) The familiarity with Kashmir proved useful during the making of the documentary and so did the company of several people Garga met including the French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, the American journalist, John Gunther, and budding Kashmiri politicians like Shamlal Watt and D.P.Dhar. The latter always went around armed with a rifle. Also present was K.A.Abbas whose houseboat served as a veritable Press Club.

The film was called Storm over Kashmir. Abbas had suggested the title after watching the rushes. RomeshThapar, a down-and-out editor of a communist publication, wrote the commentary and narrated it. Sardar Malik, who had been active in the pro-communist Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and had done musical scores for Uday Shankar’s academy composed the music.

Though the Congress President, PattabhiSitaramayya, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and several foreign correspondents had seen and appreciated the documentary, the censors would not pass it on the grounds that it did not show the Indian army defending Kashmir and that it depicted Sheikh Abdullah in a flattering light. Garga travelled to the front, befriended General Thimayya, then in charge of the Kashmir operations, shot images of soldiers as well as of a procession of children shouting” ‘Beware, you raiders. We Kashmiris are ready to face you.’ Four decades later a man came to meet Garga and told him that he was one of those children marching past his camera.

The censors finally cleared the film and it went on to win critical acclaim in prestigious publications like Indian Documentary which featured it on its cover page. But it was never released in India. Until 1988 the Famous Cine Laboratory in Tardeo, Bombay, reportedly had a print in its possession. Garga reckons that it may have found its way to the National Film Archive in Pune.

The most authoritative account of 'Storm over Kashmir is in Meenu Gaur's SOAS doctoral thesis entitled 'Kashmir on Screen: region religion and secularism in Hindi cinema'.

The Progressive legacy in Kashmir is brought out well by the film Kashmir Toofan Mei, or Storm Over Kashmir, made in 1949 by a group of theatre actors and filmmakers closely allied with PWA and IPT A. Storm Over Kashmir is produced by
India Art Theatres Ltd and directed by BD Garga, well-known film academic and
author of several books on Indian cinema. Keeping with Progressive traditions, the film introduces 'the people of Kashmir' in the star cast along with IPTA artists. The IPTA actress, Achla Sachdev plays the main protagonist of the film, and the commentary for the film is credited to the Progressive writer, Rajinder Singh Bedi.

The title of the film is reminiscent of Pudovkin's 'Storm over Asia' (1928), considered one of Soviet cinema's silent film classics. While Storm Over Kashmir is described as a documentary, most parts of the film are fictionalized, meant to function as a generic and not specific narrative of what ordinary Kashmiris endured during the tribal raid.

The film reveals to us the horrors of the tribal raid through the character of a
Kashmiri woman, Shabbo. The film opens with Shabbo mourning the death of her
infant, sitting amidst ruins and the destruction wrought at the hands of the tribesmen.

The commentary informs the audience, 'Death and destruction, hate and fear, these
were the gifts of raiders from Pakistan brought to the people of Kashmir'. The film then goes into flashback painting a portrait of an idyllic village life in Kashmir. The
commentary in the film highlights the struggles of the Kashmiri workers and peasantry, and eulogizes Sheikh Abdullah as a revolutionary leader:

Sheikh saheb's arrival sent a thrill through the village ... there was an air of
expectancy. A movement was being launched demanding a popular government
and economic reforms for the peasants .... Sitting in the cool shade of the
Cyprus trees, she had heard her revered leader tell them that they must win the
power with which to build a new life, that they must never despair, that victory
would ultimately be theirs. The peasants of the Kashmir valley had suffered
much and at times it looked as if their fate would never change. With Sher-i-
Kashmir amongst them their determination grew to end the rotten state of affairs
in their land ... .

This idyllic village life is disrupted with the attack of the tribesmen. Scenes of plunder follow, and the entire village is razed to the ground. This is followed by documentary National Conference voluntary militia, portraying the resistance offered
to the tribesmen by the people of Kashmir. Images of workers, the children's army ('Bal Sena') and the women's militia, marching and carrying banners, 'Shahidani Kashmir Zindabad ['Long Live the martyrs of Kashmir'] - Silk Weaving Factory Workers Union, Raj Bagh', and 'We will defend our motherland with our young blood- Bal Sena', are inter-cut with images of Sheikh Abdullah paying his respects to the 'martyrs'. The commentary speaks of hope and freedom in the framework of socialism as images of Abdullah and Nehru roll on the screen:

The Kashmir of tomorrow is taking shape today. Men, women and children all
of them have a part to play. The masses of Kashmir have found their soul. Bent
backs are no longer bent, eyes doused by poverty are aglow. The old hates have
dissolved. A new comradeship had evolved between worker, peasant, and
intellectual. Freedom has begun to find its roots. Yes, a new Kashmir is rising
from the rubble heaps. It is the Kashmir ofShabbo's dreams. Her son is dead but
there are millions of other sons of Kashmir who will defend their new won
freedom, till their fertile field, and finally reap the rich harvest. An ugly chapter
has ended. A new age has begun.

The question of the conditional and contested accession of Kashmir to India is not
represented in this film, and instead, Kashmir's past and present are intrinsically woven with the future of a socialist India.

Donnabelle Garga has also sent some wonderful photos of Achala Sachdev (1920-2012) in 'Storm over Kashmir'. Her film career continued until 1995, when she played Kajol's grandmother in 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge'.

Donnabelle has also sent me a photo of her and B.D. taken in Goa in 1998. Many thanks to Donnabelle for making this article possible.

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Sheikh Abdullah: in his own words - by Andrew Whitehead

7/7/2017

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A news photograph of Sheikh Abdullah arriving at Heathrow airport, London, 7 March 1965 - full details below

I have, by chance, come across two brief interviews with Sheikh Abdullah recorded in the 1960s. Both appear to have been BBC interviews - probably for BBC radio. They both offer real insight into his character and political outlook - and are as revealing of the man as of the movement he led.

Sheikh Abdullah: March 1965

This interview with Sheikh Abdullah, conducted by William Clark, took place in London, three days after his arrival in the UK.

What asked what Kashmiris are seeking he replies: 'They feel that the future of the Kashmir state must rest in their hands'. He insists that Kashmiris view the accession to India as provisional. He is asked whether he would like to see a plebiscite to decide whether Kashmir should be part of India or Pakistan and responds: 'Or take another course' - a clear indication of his preference for independence.

Sheikh Abdullah: January 1968

An interview with Sheikh Abdullah recorded on 3 January 1968. He had just been released from detention and had not yet returned to Srinagar. The interviewer was Donald Milner.

As you might expect for someone just released from jail, Sheikh Abdullah is circumspect about politics and his personal plans - but at one point he remarks of the chief Minister, G.M. Sadiq, and his government: 'I consider them quislings'.

Sheikh Abdullah on Sunil Khilnani's 'Incarnations' series

And as a bonus, here's Sunil Khilnani's short (14 minutes) programme on Sheikh Abdullah broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016. It includes archive clips of Sheikh Abdullah, a burst of MC Kash (rapping to the riff from Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir') and the voice of the historian Chitralekha Zutshi - and the 'anonymous' BBC correspondent you hear 3'20 in and again at 13'00 is me (and David Loyn at 11'55, followed very briefly by the voice of Elizabeth Blunt).

... and the photo

The image of the top of the page is a news syndication photo. On the back it bears the headline: 'GREAT AIRPORT SUPPORT FOR THE "LION OF KASHMIR": March 7th 1965'. And the text reads: 'Overwhelming support and affection is shown SHEIKH MOHAMMED ABDULLAH, the Kashmiri leader, as he finds himself in the centre of the crowd on arrival at London Airport (Heathrow) to-day (Sunday) for a visit. Known as the "Lion of Kashmir", during his stay in Britain he is expected to address meetings in London, Bradford, and Birmingham'

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How an Irish poet's epic poem on Kashmir captivated the West - by Nirupama Rao

9/11/2016

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Thomas Moore never visited India. But 'Lalla Rookh', his story about a fictional Mughal princess introduced the Kashmir valley to artists in Europe.

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,
Before you agonise them in farewell?
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Where are you now?

— Kashmiri Song (1902) by Lawrence Hope and Amy Woodforde-Finden

In 1817, Irish poet Thomas Moore, who had never set foot in India, wrote the story of a fictional Mughal princess, she of the tulip cheeks or Lalla Rookh as he called her. Moore’s poem captured the popular imagination with its rendering of exotic scenes and colourful images from the distant Orient. More importantly, it introduced the valley of Kashmir (“Cashmere”) to the Western mind, providing the “canvas upon which future European travelers to Kashmir painted much of their story”. In popularity, Lalla Rookh became a Sound of Music for the early and mid-nineteenth century. Its association with the beautiful valley of Kashmir accentuated the story’s veneer of mystery and romance.

For instance, in the early 1900s, a spirited Englishwoman, Florence Parbury, wrote An Emerald Set With Pearls, extolling the beauties of Kashmir and the poetry of Lalla Rookh. Parbury travelled to Kashmir, sketching and painting its natural beauty and devoting extensive space in her book to the story by Moore. She added musical scores for some of the poems in the book, particularly those with references to the Vale of Kashmir.

Taking her cue from Moore, Parbury drew reference to “a wondrous land tucked away in the Himalayan Range”, describing its charms by such names as “Kachemire-be-Nazeer” or the Unequalled, the “Garden of Paradise” and the “Emerald set with Pearls”. Mentioning the early European traveller, Francois Bernier who visited the Vale of Kashmir in 1664 with the royal suite of the Mogul Emperor, she says:

Those only who have seen Kashmir in the beauty of its seasons can appreciate the truth of these old-time poets, none of whom however, of any nationality, have ever done justice to this delightful country and immortalised its lakes, flower, valleys, streams and fountains as perfectly as Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, did in his famous Lalla Rookh...

Parbury bemoaned the fact that few had heard of Moore’s work at the time of her writing her book. In fact, by the turn of the twentieth century, in late Victorian England, the poem had lost much of the tremendous popularity it had enjoyed in the decades after its publication in 1817. Her effort, therefore, was to “rouse a fresh interest in the poet’s beautiful work, in the form of a souvenir of Kashmir”.

To corroborate Parbury’s lament, the story of Lalla Rookh was lost to most modern audiences until the Opera Lafayette, a Washington-based performing company, revived its operatic version by the French composer Felicien David in 2013. The music from David’s opera was also recorded by the company on the Naxos label and released in 2014. Costumes for the performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and at the Lincoln Center in New York were designed by Poonam Bhagat of New Delhi, and the element of Indian classical dancing was also introduced with the dancers of Kalanidhi Dance of Washington.

Moore never went to India and yet ventured to write a work that interwove courtly Indian customs and manners, history and landscape, with Persian lore and legend. Writing his book over a period of six years between 1811 and 1817, he had extensively researched available scholarly material on India as the detailed footnotes and bibliography inLalla Rookh indicate. Access to the research material was provided by the Anglo-Irish peer Francis Rawdon, the Earl of Moira, at his mansion, Donington Hall in Derbyshire. Francis Rawdon subsequently went on to become Governor General of India as the Marquess of Hastings from 1813 to 1823.

In writing his book, Moore received encouragement from a number of friends, including his more famous contemporary, Lord Byron, whose ease and eloquence of poetic expression and bold and revolutionary choice of themes for his writing were renowned, and even evoked a sense of considerable insecurity in Moore. Yet, unprecedented for his time, Moore received an advance of 3000 guineas for the book – a sound business decision by his publisher, since the book went into at least five editions in the first year of publication (1817) becoming the toast of England and the Continent.

The book also won great popularity in the United States. The storyline ofLalla Rookh – that of a privileged Mughal princess departing Delhi in a magnificent cavalcade crossing from the heat and dust of the plains to the majestic Himalayan mountains and then into Kashmir, lent itself well to showcasing in pageants and theatrical spectacle. An illustration of this is provided by a contest held in the 1880s by American showman Adam Forepaugh to choose the “handsomest woman in America” who could play the role of Lalla Rookh, the winner being awarded $ 10,000.

Twenty-five-year-old Louise Montague from New York won the title. Nature it was said, had “not dealt to Miss Montague a sparing hand” ; she could boast of an “excellent type of beauty” and a “face so strikingly beautiful that one wonders how so much loveliness can be concentrated in one human being”. The attraction personified in the image of a young and lovely Lalla Rookh can be seen in the photograph below of the English stage actress Kate Vaughn from the 1870s.

It is not clear whether she was playing a singing role as would normally have been assumed from the various musical renditions of the story, since she is dressed in fashionable Victorian clothes, complete with a corset to emphasise her waist, which would have made singing impossible! This would suggest that the character of Lalla Rookh was much sought after essentially for her show-stopping regalia, recalling a princess of the Orient. Vaughn wears a plume on her head-dress which is intricately decorated, and a veil to suggest her Eastern character, and distinctly pronounced jewellery.

What was the world that Moore sought to create? Perhaps it is best summed up by this passage:

A gleam of Bokhara’s vaunted gold, of all the gems of Samarkand...where is the Orient? Where does it begin and end? Hunt in vain for a map; at one moment it might be mysterious Cathay, at another enchanted Persia, or a Persia which extends beyond Araby, beyond Abyssinia, even to India...Its frontiers are the veil of the harem, the walls of sunlit and jasmine-scented gardens where the nightingale eternally warbles to the rose. The Beloved guards its boundaries, she of ruby lips, of teeth like pearls, and ringlets like hyacinths. Her brows are an archer’s bow, her arrows the glances that speed from it. She watches over hooris, who weave their dancing way through innumerable courtyards, adorned with diamonds, nourished by the dew of heaven. And always the pomegranates are melting with sweetness.

— Excerpted from the jacket of “Poems of the Orient”, CD, Naxos, 1999

This is the vision of the Orient that captured the imagination of writers and lay people alike in the Western world of the nineteenth century. It is the world illustrated in the poster of Lalla Rookh’s departure from Delhi as shown in the great show of Adam Forepaugh.

The picture is “one unbroken line of splendour”: dancing girls and elephants, mahouts and lancers, an adoring populace, the bejeweled and beautiful princess on a caparisoned elephant, Mughal India meeting Barnum and Bailey.

Moore’s work cannot however, be dismissed as the scattered musings of a dilettante. First, it was the product of research from material available to a European audience in that era. Beginning his arduous endeavour, Moore wrote to a friend: “I shall now take to my poem and do something, I hope, that will place me above the vulgar herd both of wordlings and critics; but you shall hear from me again, when I get among the maids of Cashmere, the sparkling springs of Rochabad, and the fragrant banquets of the Peris.” Even the name of the work, Lalla Rookh was unusual, and Moore’s friend, Byron lauded him for choosing a “tough title”.

Second, the themes addressed in Lalla Rookh are not trivial or merely romantic. While the connecting narrative of the poem basically concerns the marriage of Lalla Rookh, the princess of Delhi, to Aliris, the Prince of Bucharia or Bokhara, and the story of her journey from Delhi to the Vale of Cashmere where she is to be married to the Prince, this narrative is interspersed with four long poems: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, The Fire Worshippers, Paradise and the Peri, and The Light of the Haram. All these are recited to her, accompanied on a stringed instrument called the kitar, by Feramorz, who presents himself as a Kashmiri troubadour, and steals her heart along the journey to Kashmir. Happily, on the very day of the marriage ceremony he turns out to be the prince to whom she is to be married.

The four long poems in the story are where the themes of religious fanaticism and despotism, the violence and injustice of conquest and imperial domination, the tragedy of star-crossed love, and romanticism cast in the Persian mode are all intertwined. Mokanna, the veiled, lustful, degenerate religious prophet of the Khorassan poem is oddly reminiscent of an evil leader of the ISIS. Presenting himself as a savior, he claims he has to hide his “beauty” beneath a veil because it is so blinding, but he is actually camouflaging a horribly disfigured body and an equally malformed soul that perpetrate great cruelty on all who fall under his spell.

In the post-Civil War, still-segregated United States, cities like St Louis witnessed the formation of the Veiled Prophet Society, recalling in many ways the Ku Klux Klan, meant to protect the status quo of the rich and wealthy white population against any inter-racial solidarity, especially among the working classes. Another of the poems, The Fire Worshippers, recounts the struggles of the Zorastrian people against the Arab conquest of Iran.

Returning to the story of Lalla Rookh and her minstrel beloved, one is struck by many humorous references in the narrative to courtly Indian life and manners, often recalling popular entertainment in Hindi film. A few examples will illustrate this. The delineation of the character of Fadladeen (Fazluddin), “Great Nazir or Chamberlain of the Haram”, who accompanies the Princess Lalla Rookh to Kashmir is one of them. This is how Moore describes him:

Fadladeen was the judge of every thing, – from the penciling of a Circassian’s eyelids to the deepest questions of science and literature; from the mixture of a conserve of rose-leaves to the composition of an epic poem..His political conduct and opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi, – “Should the Prince at noon-day say, it is night, declare that you behold the moon and stars.

The last few lines recall what in the Persian and Urdu tradition is called khushamdi, or “hukum ka ghulam” or the essence of obsequiousness when it comes to flattering, or agreeing with your masters. Elswhere, the minstrel Feramorz is described as “graceful as that idol of women, Crishna – such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic, beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes, and exalting the religion of his worshippers into love”.

There are strokes of humour too, which are not bereft of the Indian touch: it is said that a series of disappointments and accidents had befallen Fadladeen during the journey. For one thing, couriers stationed between Delhi and the Western coast of India had “failed in their duty” to “secure a constant supply of mangoes for the Royal Table” and “to eat any mangoes but those of Mazagong was, of course, impossible”.

In another example, the chamberlain’s personal copy of the Koran has been mislaid by his Koran-bearer for three whole days, and the last straw is when, owing to the “obstinacy of the cooks, the pepper of Canara is put in his dishes instead of the cinnamon of Serendib.” Beyond Lahore at the end of the Grand Trunk Road, the “loss of the good road they had hitherto travelled” leads to Fadladeen’s being “very near cursing Jehan-guire (of blessed memory!) for not having continued his delectable alley of trees, at least as far as the mountains of Cashmere”.

And the classic touch of the burlesque is provided when Fadladeen at one point of the story, goes…

...into a panegyric upon all Mussulman sovereigns, more particularly his august and Imperial master, Aurangzebe, – the wisest and best of the descendants of Timur, -who, among other great things he had done for mankind, had given to him, Fadladeen, the very profitable posts of Betel-carrier and Taster of Sherbets to the Emperor, Chief Holder of the Girdle of beautiful Forms’ (his business being at stated periods, to measure the ladies of the Haram by a sort of regulation-girdle, whose limits it was not thought graceful to exceed. If any of them outgrew this standard of shape, they were reduced by abstinence till they came within its bounds).

Soon after its publication, readers of Lalla Rookh were obviously star-struck by its many descriptions of the beauty of the Indies, and particularly of Kashmir with all its allusions of an earthly paradise. The scene of lighted lamps floating on the river, which Lalla Rookh encounters on her journey, inspired a number of European artists during the nineteenth century. So too did the theme of Kashmir, or Cashmere as it was widely called, become the popular fixation.

The subject of Indian bayaderes or dancers was sure to draw crowds. The ballerina Marie Taglioni in Le Dieu et La Bayadere, sometimes called the Maid of Cashmere, mesmerised audiences with a cashmere shawl draped around her shoulders, jewellery on her forehead and on her arms in the Indian style, and her ballerina dress ornamented with distinctly zardozi-like embroidery.

Indeed, the whole subject of Indian dance and dancers was one hotly debated and scrutinised, as a study of press coverage and critical commentary on the first ever tour of Indian dancers and musicians to continental Europe and England in 1838 will testify. The statue of the eighteen year-old dancer, the beautiful Amany, sculpted by Jean- Auguste Barre in 1838, illustrates the impact made by devadasis from near Pondicherry on often-mesmerised western audiences eager to see the real form of Indian dance.

Music and Orientalist spectacle is never far from the story of Lalla Rookh, considering that many composers created their own musical interpretations of its narrative, choosing different parts of the story. They included Felicien David (Lalla-Roukh, 1862), Robert Schumann (Das Paradis und die Peri, 1843), Henry Clay (composer of the cantata, Lalla Rookh, 1877), and Anton Rubinstein (Feramors, 1863). The earliest known musical presentation of Lalla Rookh, however, predates all these composers.

At the Chateau Royal in Berlin, in January 1821, a grand “festspiel” was staged in the apartments of Frederick I, overlooking the royal palace garden, in which members of the Royal House of Prussia and their guests, the future Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Grand Duke Nicholas and his bride, Grand Duchess Alexandra, participated. In fact, the Grand Duchess, who was also the daughter of King Frederick of Prussia, played the role of Lalla Rookh.

In this “festspiel”, the different stories in Lalla Rookh were enacted through tableaux vivants, songs and dances, altogether presenting a grand and memorable spectacle causing the future Empress of Russia (who was often referred to as Lalla Rookh on many occasions in the future, including by the poet Pushkin) to exclaim (with a sigh), “Is it then all over? Are we at the close of all that has given so much delight?”

This was obviously an unparalleled spectacle of oriental costume and adornment stretching till four in the morning, with 186 characters and the tableaux vivants of sixteen figures “in which every costume and detail was apparently so realistic that the audience felt itself completely carried away to the gorgeous East... and there was but one opinion upon the taste, elegance and beauty of the entertainment, for it surpassed by far all that had ever been seen of this kind.”

And true to the spirit of Lalla Rookh, there was also a “Fete des Roses”. A souvenir was subsequently printed in Berlin on the orders of the King, to commemorate this grand event, and copies of it reveal the munificence of the enactment: 23 hand-coloured plates show the splendid costumes and the chief characters, including Lalla Rookh and her bridegroom Aliris.

The wealth of detail in the costumes of the various actors in the pageant indicates a careful study of Indian paintings and representations, together with the use of genuine Indian textiles, silk and wool, and embroideries to create the attire worn. Lamentably, the music composed for the occasion by Gaspare Spontini lacked any Oriental flourish, or melodic adornments and is largely forgotten today.

The grand spectacle at the Prussian court led to the translation of Lalla Rookh into German, and also provided for its introduction into the Russian imagination. The national poet of Germany, Goethe, was also immensely taken with the news from Berlin of the “festspiel” involving members of the royal court and the exotic allure of the story of the Eastern princess. The “romance, intrigue and mystery” of Lalla Rookh thus exerted a strong attraction on European audiences thirsty for a glimpse of the unknown East.

Extending however, beyond the mysteries and exoticism depicted by Moore, work was underway to promote a serious study of the Orient, and India, beyond orientalist stereotypes. The first Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford was established in 1832 and a number of travel narratives and letters were published with considerable depth of cultural detail and seeking to present a more realistic portrait of India that transcended western fantasising. The import of Indian textiles, chintzes and Kashmiri shawls also provided the texture and feel of distant climes and were considered hallmarks of taste and distinction.

The music of the East was also being introduced to western audiences. The East India Company’s various settlements and “factories” in western and northern India became venues for musical interaction with the locals and exposure to Indian, particularly Hindustani, musical and dance traditions. The Company, it is said, did not quibble over the cost of elephants in those early days, and on “public occasions, such as the annual parade to mark the birthday of the sovereign, it was the practice (of the Company ‘nabobs’) to hire a full ‘naubat’.”

A number of what came to be known as “Hindostannie” airs were produced involving cooperation between Indian linguists and musicians and Europeans particularly in the kingdom of Oudh. A woman singer from Kashmir, named Khanum, achieved much celebrity as a nautch dancer to army officers, and as a source of Indian tunes to women collectors. European performers dressed in Indian costumes while performing these Indian songs, and received even the commendation of Warren Hastings.

In his rendition of scenes from Kashmir, Moore conjures the image of roses, of the Sultana Nourmahal (the Empress Noor Jehan, wife of the Emperor Jehangir) wandering among flowers, feeding small singing fishes in marble basins. Feramorz the minstrel, singing his song, tells the story of The Light of the Haram (Noormahal herself), beginning thus:

Who has not heard of the Vale of CASHMERE,
With its roses the brightest that earth every gave,
Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?
…to see it by moonlight, - when mellowly shines
The light o’er its palaces, gardens and shrines;
When the water-falls gleam like a quick fall of stars,
And the nightingale’s hymn from the Isle of Chenars
Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet..
..And what a wilderness of flowers!
It seem’d as though from all the bowers
And fairest fields of all the year,
The mingled spoil were scatter’d here.
The lake too like a garden breathes
With the richbuds that o’er it lie, –
As if a shower of fairy wreaths
Had fall’n upon it from the sky!
..Who in the moonlight and music thus sweetly may glide
O’er the Lake of CASHMERE, with that One by his side!
If Woman can make the worst wilderness dear,
Think, think what a Heav’n she must make of CASHMERE!

Moore calls “Cashmere” a heaven on earth, the unequalled, every spot “holy ground” – suffused by the smell of roses from which “Attar Gul” or attar of roses is distilled, the Happy Valley, made even more beautiful by the “splendid domes and saloons of the Shalimar”.

These descriptions of “fair Cashmere” provided the “canvas upon which future European travellers to Kashmir painted much of their story”. The identification of Kashmir as the Paradise of the Indies and the Happy Valley however also persisted with tendencies to describe its populace in an Orientalist manner.

These then, were images enshrined in the Western imagination throughout the period of the Raj. Travellers to Kashmir throughout the nineteenth century – writers like Vigne – said, referring to Lalla Rookh, that “there is great justice in the ideas of scenery to be collected from the poem”.

Explorers like Moorcroft and Trebeck, Hugel and Jacquemont sought to provide further intellectual ballast to the interest and curiosity about this part of the subcontinent abutting and indeed merging into High Asia. Artists like William Carpenter had also read Moore’s story before visiting Kashmir as would be indicated from the title of one of his paintings entitled: The Shalimar garden; scene of the festivities at the marriage of Lalla Rookh, daughter of Aurunzebe.

Years later, Jawaharlal Nehru in his autobiography would describe how Kashmir haunted him, quoting Walter de la Mare whose words, in turn, seem to draw inspiration from Moore:

Yea, in my mind these mountains rise,
Their perils dyed with evening’s rose:
And still my ghost sits at my eyes,
And Thirsts for their untroubled snows.

Nehru wrote that “(the) loveliness of the land enthralled me and cast an enchantment all about me. I wandered about like one possessed and drunk with beauty, and the intoxication of it filled my mind.” To him, Kashmir embodied feminine beauty, a supremely lovely woman with “a hundred faces and innumerable aspects, ever-changing”. Moore would not have disapproved.

Nehru’s description of the view of the Vale of Kashmir from the Pir Panjal range on the road from Srinagar to Jammu is expressed in a similar vein:

The next morning we left Srinagar and sped towards Jammu. The road left the valley and mounted up the Pir Panjal. As we went higher, the panorama spread before us, and broader vistas came to view. We stood near the mouth of the tunnel and had a last look at the valley below. There lay the Vale of Kashmir, so famous in song and history, in its incomparable loveliness. A thin mist covered part of it, and a soft light toned down the hard edges of the picture. Above the clouds rose snow-capped peaks, and down the valley below came the faint and distant sound of running water. We bade a silent farewell…

This passage recalls one from Lalla Rookh where Moore speaks of “the fresh airs and enchanting scenery of that Valley, which the Persians justly called the Unequalled.…the grottos, hermitages and miraculous mountains,…make every spot of that region holy ground” and where he goes on to describe “the countless waterfalls, that rush in to the Valley from all those high and romantic mountains that encircle it…” and “the wonders and glories of the most lovely country under the sun..”

While Nehru, a Kashmiri, could lay claim to a sensibility which drew its inspiration from identification with the land and landscape of Kashmir, his writer’s imagination was also influenced no doubt by the Kashmir visualised in Western, particularly English, popular literature.

During the nineteenth century, Kashmir – being "discovered" with increasing frequency – also became a natural stepping-stone to Central Asia. Moore had, perhaps unconsciously, heralded this in his treatment of the theme central to Lalla Rookh – that of the alliance of marriage between a Mughal princess and a Prince of Bokhara or Samarkand. Beyond the happy valley lay the high mountain fastness of the Karakoram with its passes functioning as gateways to Turkestan.

This became the arena then for staging of the imperial Great Game and players like Curzon and Younghusband exemplified the transcendence of power and geopolitics over the romance and poesy of Nurmahal and Jehangir and Lalla Rookh and Aliris. India’s ongoing differences with Pakistan over Kashmir, have of course, distanced the Kashmir Valley from its time-tested links with Central Asia. The present is very different from the past and the mountain caravans of yesteryear are mirages that elude our grasp.

There is certainly nostalgia for the charm and innocence of the Kashmiri climes elaborated by Moore and interpreted in the various operatic and musical versions of his work. Simply put, Kashmir is not Cashmere, it is a very different place.

Even the images of the state in the Indian popular imagination have changed. The depiction of the Valley as a place of sylvan retreat, of eternal sunshine over snow-capped mountains, glimmering lakes and heroes and heroines in shikharas, a romanticised Indian frontier region, has faded, its place taken by darker, sombre narratives of love and longing in a time of violence and alienation. Thus, the “Cashmere” of Noormahal and Jehangir, of Lalla Rookh and Feramorz is a Paradise Lost. Bollywood meets Kashmir today in a spirit very different from Hindi cinema’s dealings with the state in films like Junglee and Kashmir ki Kali, hits from the 1960s.

But humans will dream and dream we will of that enchanted Kashmir. While capturing screen shots of Lalla Rookh and her sojourn to the Vale of Cashmere, and reading Thomas Moore, I am reminded of these lines from Led Zeppelin:

Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin' through Kashmir.

— From "Kashmir", Led Zeppelin

Orientalism, it is true, does not do real justice to the East and its fascinating complexities, and Moore’s work is no exception, but who would not yearn for a “Feast of Roses” on Dal Lake or in the Shalimar and dream about caravans crossing the high passes of the Karakoram, destined for Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand and steeped in the lore of the Silk Road?

Nirupama Rao

This article first appeared on scroll.in http://scroll.in/article/728492/how-an-irish-poets-epic-poem-on-kashmir-captivated-the-west-spawning-operas-musicals-and-grandeur and is reposted here with the kind permission of both Nirupama Rao and of scroll.in

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The Sheikh versus the Pandit: the roots of the Kashmir dispute - by A.G. Noorani

5/30/2016

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Nahi kuch subha-o-zunnar ke phande mein girai/wafadari mein sheikh-o-brahaman ki aazmaish hai (The loop of the rosary and be sacred thread cannot hold any one / The real test of the Sheikh and the Brahmin is in their faithfulness).

Ghalib’s couplet accurately sums up the roots of the Kashmir dispute. It also provides a clue to the ever deteriorating situation there. Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah’s Kashmiri nationalism clashed with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s Indian nationalism. The clash was inherent in their relationship even at the best of times. Nehru arrogantly spurned conciliation and resorted to brute force, with the aid of the army, by ousting Abdullah from the office of Prime Minister of Jammu & Kashmir on 9 August 1953 and imprisoning him for eleven years. What is little known is that he submitted his prisoner and erstwhile friend to hardships; denying visitors access to him and foisting a conspiracy case which he knew to be false – plotting for accession to Pakistan.

The Sheikh and the Pandit together

To all outward appearances, India has rivetted its control over the State after the Sheikh’s ouster. But today, more than even before, grim realities have surfaced to the shock of many to demonstrate that Kashmiri nationalism is very much alive and kicking despite New Delhi’s repressive policies and the army’s sustained record of outrages. India – its government, most in its media especially TV, and academia and its stooges in Kashmir who have feasted themselves on the crumbs New Delhi throws at them from the high table, prefer to envelop themselves cosily in a state of denial. The reality is unbearable to witness – India governs Kashmir against the wishes of its people. They reject the very legitimacy of its rule. As Mir Qasim, installed as Chief Minister by elections which he admitted were rigged and who had supported Abdullah’s ouster in 1953 wrote: “They clearly say that they would not like to remain in India. They would like to go out of India. They ask for a plebiscite so that they will be allowed to answer whether they want to remain in India or go out of India”. (Mir Qasim, My Life and Times, 298).

It was left to one of India’s foremost public intellectuals, Ashok Mitra, former Finance Minister of West Bengal, to rip apart the veil of falsehood and expose the havoc India’s policies have wreaked. “Behind the façade of the constitutional apparatus rests the nitty-gritty of rude fact: the Valley is an occupied territory; remove for a day India’s Army and security forces and it is impossible to gauge what might transpire at the next instant. Some of the stone-pelters may nurse illusions about Pakistan, some may think in terms of a sovereign, self-governing Kashmir, but they certainly do not want to be any part of India … the great Indian nation, with its load of civilization stretching 5000 years, is extraordinarily mum.

“The debauching of civilization in Kashmir, no matter what its underlying reason, creates no ripples. One is suddenly hit by a fearsome realisation Indians by and large do not perhaps feel at all, this way or that, about the Valley’s people. In other words, the Indian nation is alienated from Kashmir.” (The Telegraph, 27 August 2010).

Mehbooba Mufti, head of the PDP-BJP coalition in the State, loftily declared, on 19 April, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that “there is a pain in the hear of Kashmiris and we all have to heal it together”. What she added indicates all too well that the causes of the pain elude her. She cited “several tragic incidents in the past … and more recently in Handwara where innocent people were fatally caught in the vortex of violence” (Yusuf Jameel, Asian Age, 20 April 2016; italics mine, throughout). – “Caught”; not shot at. Earlier on 26 March, she spoke of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s “mission of development and peace” (Peerzada Ashiq, The Hindu, 27 March). She refuses to know why her people are in pain.

Contrast this with Nirupama Subramanian and Bhasaarat Masood’s four reports in Indian Express, 20-23 April 2016), one of the most honest reports we have had in recent years. “When the Army does an encounter they come in hundreds for one militant hiding in a house. Then they destroy the house. They use heavy shells and mortars”, a girl student in Anantnag told them. Destruction of a whole house to get catch a solitary militant is an established practice in Kashmir alone, never attempted in Punjab.

A teacher in Tral warned “don’t blur the lines between our grievances and our aspirations. Aspiration is azadi. Grievances are like Centre does not hand over power projects in Kashmir to the State Government. Our development needs and separation are two different things. We vote for development but azadi will not come without talking with Pakistan.”

A 29-year old teacher said that the bridges between India and Kashmir “have been burnt forever”. For, the bottom line is “India does not trust Kashmiris and Kashmiris don’t trust India”. The situation deteriorated steeply since the outbreak of militancy in 1989. But its roots lay in the clash of Kashmir and Indian nationalism in 1947. In a real sense, there is no alienation of people from the Union; alienation implies previous affection that the people of Kashmir never had for India not even at the time of the accession as both Abdullah and Nehru knew very well. Reflecting popular opinion, the Sheikh was against Kashmir’s accession to India, though he preferred its ideology of secularism to Pakistan’s two-nation theory. Reflecting Indian opinion and his own strong preferences, Nehru would have nothing but its accession to India. Both knew what the Kashmiris thought and felt, hence India’s initial hesitation in forging the accession. The record on views of all three Abdullah, Kashmiris and Nehru speaks for itself.

Sheikh Abdullah’s views:

On 19 April 1946 the Sheikh demanded in a telegram to the British Cabinet Mission “a right to independence” because “the Kashmiri nation” resided in “a unique region in India”. This was asserted when the talk was of a federal union, not partition.

After the partition, he was released from prison on 29 September 1947. On 3 October he said “we will chose the path which will lead to the independence of … the Kashmiris” (Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah: The Blazing Chinar, Gulshan Books, Srinagar, pp. 256 and 275).

On his release from prison Abdullah said “If the 40 lakhs of people living in Jammu & Kashmir are by-passed and the State declares accession to India or Pakistan, I shall raise the banner of revolt and we face a struggle”. Since Maharaja Hari Singh was not going to accede to Pakistan, this was clearly a warning against accession to India. As late as on 22 October 1947, Abdullah’s line was “Freedom before Accession”. It was reflected in his party the National Conference’s organ Khidmat which said on the same day “What the present moment demands and demands urgently is not accession to Pakistan or India but power to the people. Are we going to sell ourselves to the Indian capitalists or the Pakistan Nawabs?” (Quoted in Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging, Permanent Black, p. 307 - a most insightful work).

Abdullah confided to Phillips Talbot, later U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, who was in India from 1939-1948. “He told me that Kashmir would be ‘finished’ if it had to join one Dominion and thereby incur the enmity of the other. What he sought, he said, was an arrangement by which Kashmir could have normal relations with both countries”.(An American Witness to India’s Partition, Sage, p. 378). As we shall see this was the lime he pursued right till 1964.

Prior to accession to India Abdullah sent one emissary to Pakistan after another, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed and G. M. Sadiq. Neither was allowed to meet Mohammed Ali Jinnah or Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Only the CM of West Punjab, the Nawab of Mamdot, met them. Strangely, neither admirers nor detractors of Abdullah care to probe into their brief. What was it? It was obviously to fulfil his plans for independence. He had accepted an invitation by emissaries from Pakistan to meet Jinnah after his visit to New Delhi. The tribal raid from Pakistan was launched while Sadiq was in Lahore.

Even after the accession the Abdullah pursued his plans, to the knowledge of Nehru, in a talk with Patrick Gordon Walker, Britain’s Commonwealth Secretary, in Nehru’s home on 21 February 1948 – four months after the accession. He reported to London: “7. At this point Nehru fetched in Sheikh Abdullah and said he would leave us to talk together. Just before Nehru left Sheikh Abdullah said he thought the solution was that Kashmir should accede to both Dominions. I had not time to get him to develop this idea before Nehru left the room but questioned him afterwards. He said Kashmir’s trade was with India, that India was progressive and that Nehru was an Indian. On the other, Kashmir’s trade passed through Pakistan and a hostile Pakistan would be a constant danger. The solution therefore was that Kashmir should have its autonomy jointly guaranteed by India and Pakistan and it would delegate its foreign policy and defence to them both jointly but would look after its own affairs. The two Dominions share a common interest in Kashmir and it would serve to unite and link them. I asked whether Nehru would agree to this solution and he said he thought so. He had discussed it with him. … Since drafting the above I have seen Nehru again with reference to paragraph 7 above. He sways that he would be prepared to accept a solution broadly on the lines of that proposed by Sheikh Abdullah.”

In New York as a member of the Indian delegation to the security Council, Abdullah approached the U.S.’ Permanent Rep-representative to the U.N., Warren Austin, on 28 January 1948, who recorded: “It is possible that principal purpose of Abdullah’s visit was to make clear to US that there is a third alternative, namely, independence. He seemed overly anxious to get this point across, and made quite a long and impassioned statement on the subject. He said in effect that whether Kashmir went to Pakistan or India the other dominion would always be against solution. Kashmir would thus be a bone of contention. It is a rich country. He did not want his people torn by dissension between Pakistan and India. It would be much better if Kashmir were independent and could seek American and British aid for development of country.” (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948 South Asia, p. 292).

Abdullah even sought out the Pakistan’s delegates. He complained to President Ayub Khan, when they met in Rawalpindi on 26 May 1964, that they “would not even talk to him. … When he went to the Security Council the second time, he did meet Choudhry Muhammad Ali and told him that the only way to get the Indians out of Kashmir was to agree to independence of the State”. (Altaf Gauhar, Ayub Khan, p. 264).

The Sheikh spoke to the U.S. Ambassador to India, Loy Henderson, in Srinagar. He reported to the State Department on 29 September 1950: “In discussing future Kashmir, Abdullah was vigorous in restating that in his opinion it should be independent; that overwhelming majority population desired this independence; and that he had reason to believe that some Azad Kashmir leaders desired independence and would be willing cooperate with leaders National Confederation if there was reasonable chance such cooperation would result in independence. Kashmir people could not understand why UN consistently ignored independence as one of possible solutions for Kashmir. It had held special Assembly to deal with independence for Palestine which was smaller in area and population and less economically viable than Kashmir. Kashmir people had language and cultural background their own. Their Hindus by custom and tradition widely differed from Hindus India, and outlook and background their Moslems also quite different from Moslems Pakistan. Fact was that population Kashmir homogeneous in despite of presence of Hindu minority.

“When I asked Abdullah if he thought Kashmir could remain stable independent country without friendly support India and Pakistan, he replied negative. In his opinion independent Kashmir could exist only in case it had friendship both of India and Pakistan; in case both these countries had friendly relations with each other; and in case US through UN or direct would enable it, by investments or other economic assistance, to develop its magnificent resources. Adherence Kashmir to India would not lead in foreseeable future to improving miserable economic lot of population. There were so many areas of India in urgent need of economic development he was convinced Kashmir would get relatively little attention.” (FRUS, 1950, Vol. 5; p. 1434).

Abdullah was quite open about his aims as Nehru well knew. He went public in an interview to Michael Davidson of The Scotsman published on 14 April 1949. He said: “ ‘Accession to either side cannot being peace’. He declared, ‘We want to live in friendship with both Dominions. Perhaps a middle path between them, with economic co-operation with each, will be the only way of doing it. But an independent Kashmir must be guaranteed not only by India and Pakistan but also by Britain, the United States and other members of the United Nations. Would an independent Kashmir, I asked him, a kind of Himalayan Switzerland, be feasible and constructive? Those areas of the present State which bordered India and Pakistan and which had no affinity lies with the people of the Vale could fall naturally to the Dominion with which they were related by race or religion – the Poonchis, who are Moslem Punjabis, belong obviously to Pakistan, and the Hindus of Jammu, Rajput-Dogras are surely Indians.

“Abdullah replied: ‘Yes, independence-guaranteed by the United Nations – may be the only solution. But why do you talk of partition? Now you are introducing communalism and applying the two-nation theory to Kashmir – that communalism which we are fighting here. I believe the Poonchis would welcome inclusion in an independent Kashmir; if, however, after its establishment, they chose to secede and join Pakistan. I would raise no objection.

“I want a solution that is fair to all three parties – Pakistan, India, and the people of Kashmir. But we won’t submit to a communal solution. There has never been a religious problem in the Vale of Kashmir. Hindus and Muslems, we are of the same racial origin, we have the same customs, wear the same clothes, speak the same language. In the street, you cannot distinguish between Moslems and Brahman Pandits. Why, we even have a Mosque in the wall of which a Hindu temple has been built. In Kashmir we have Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab and Moslem refugees from East Punjab. …

“When the Kashmir Moslem Conference also turned communally-minded, most of us Kashmiris left to form a National Conference, a non-sectarian movement conforming with the secular principles of the Indian Congress. Naturally we sympathise rather with India than with Pakistan. …

“Religions have never been a cementing force, the Sheikh declared. Christians fight Christians in Europe; Japanese fight Chinese; Turkey wants to be Europeanised; Moslems have warred against Moslems. Socially and nationally there are more compelling interests, economic and ideological. The first task for the Kashmiris, Hindus, and Moslems is to win internal liberation from exploitation.” (The writer is indebted to Andrew Whitehead for the text of the interview). The interview had Vallabhbhai Patel foaming at the mouth. (Durga Das, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Navjivan Publishing House, vol.1, pp. 266-271).

Nehru’s Views:

It is important to note that Nehru tried to secure Kashmir’s accession to India while Sheikh Abdullah was still in prison, regardless of his wishes or those of the people of the State. His stand was revealingly summed up in the blunt pithy assertion to Liaquat Ali Khan “I want Kashmir” (Lionel Carter (Ed.), Weakened States Seeking Renewal: British Official Reports from South Asia, 1 January – 30 April 1948, Manohar, part I, pp. 176 and 416. An invaluable collection of two volumes). Even before the Partition Plan was announced on 3 June, 1947, he began his campaign with a mention of Kashmir as “a difficult problem” at a formal meeting with Mountbatten and advisers on 22 April 1947. He followed it by a long note to Mountbatten on Kashmir dated 17 June 1947 in which he concluded: “If any attempt is made to push Kashmir into the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, there is likely to be much trouble because the National Conference is not in favour of it and the Maharaja’s position would also become very difficult. The normal and obvious course appears to be for Kashmir to join the constituent Assembly of India. This will satisfy both the popular demand and the Maharaja’s wishes. It is absurd to think that Pakistan would create trouble if this happens.” (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, p. 229). Pakistan did not count. He lavishly praised the Sheikh. On 4 July he wrote to the Maharaja, whom he detested, requesting a meeting and suggesting accession “I appreciate your difficulties” (ibid., p.253). No talk here of releasing Abdullah.

The sinister aspect of the plan became apparent when he Maharaja asked for a standstill agreement on 12 August 1947. Pakistan agreed India declined and asked for negotiations. Nehru had himself revised the draft standstill agreement with all the States to include “foreign affairs” (item 7); a virtual Instrument of Accession. Had the Maharaja agreed, Abdullah would have been confronted on his release from prison, the very next month, with Kashmir’s accession to India – behind his back. So much for respect for the popular will.

Nor were Nehru’s later references to the Sheikh justified. His following was confined to the Valley. In Jammu and the present Pak administered Kashmir Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas’ Muslim Conference held sway. Even in the Valley Abdullah’s voice was not decisive on the crucial issue of accession (Vide Ian Copland’s essay “The Abdullah Factor: Kashmir Muslims and the Crisis of 1947”. The people followed him up to Kohala (i.e. locally) and Jinnah beyond it.

Chitralekha Zutshi holds that the Muslim Conference “reigned supreme in Poonch and Jammu in 1946” while the Valley was split. Shops displayed photographs of Jinnah, Iqbal and Abdullah side by side (pp. 298 and 303). What is clear is that on the issue of accession the overwhelming view was for Pakistan. India’s leaders knew that very well. The deliberations of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, Nehru, in particular, knew that, hence, his advice to Kashmir’s PM Meher Chand Mahajan “I feel it will probably be undesirable to make any declaration of adhesion (to India) at this stage” (SWJN, vol. 4; p. 274). Kashmir’s PM Janak Singh opined on 13 August 1947 that “the bulk of Muslims will not accept (a) decision to accede to India.” Nehru told the Committee on 25 October 1947 “The question was whether temporary accession would help the people in general to side with India or whether it would only act as an irritant. There was bound to be propaganda to the effect that the accession was not temporary and tempers might be inflamed”; i.e. the people would resent Kashmir’s accession to India. The next day N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar said that “immediate accession might create further opposition”. Nehru opined that he would “not mind Kashmir remaining an independent country (sic.) under India’s sphere of influence”. It was then decided to accept the accession “subject to the proviso that a plebiscite would be held in Kashmir”. The Ministry of States was directed to prepare a letter to the Maharaja on “the temporary acceptance of the Instrument” of accession (Prem Shankar Jha, Kashmir 1947, Oxford University Press; appendices IV and V).

This explains why Mountbatten told the visiting UK Minister Arthur Henderson, on 9 January 1948, that Kashmir’s accession was “on a temporary basis and subject to a plebiscite” (Carter, part I, p. 154).

The Maharaja’s panic can be guaged from a quaint, forgotten episode which his PM Mahajan mentioned in 1963 “On 24 October the Deputy Prime Minister left Srinagar for Delhi carrying a letter of accession to India from the Maharaja” (Looking Back, p. 150). In 1997 Alastair Lamb remarked that India has “generally been careful to avoid specific reference to this document” (Incomplete Partition, p. 143). It was published for the first time by the relentless researcher Andrew Whitehead in his book A Mission in Kashmir (Viking, p. 122). I am grateful to him for providing me with a copy of the letter dated 23 October. It reads: “I hereby authorise my Deputy Prime Minister, R.B. Ram Lal Batra to sign the document of accession of the State with the Indian Union on my behalf, subject to the condition that the terms of accession will be the same as would be settled with H.E.H. The Nizam of Hyderabad.”

Patel added his bit to get the ruler to accede to India; significantly even before the Radcliffe Report, which awarded to India the connecting link through Pathankot, was out. “You are aware that om 15 August, India, though divided, will be completely free, and you also know that by this time a vast majority of the States have joined the Constituent Assembly of India. I realise the peculiar difficulties of Kashmir, but looking to its History and its tradition, it has, in my opinion, no other choice.” (SPC; p. 32).

He played the communal card on 18 June. “The Kashmiri Pandits and the Hindus form a very small proportion of the population, and as they are comparatively better off, the poorer majority which is getting conscious, is trying to assert itself and the conflict of interest is creating a situation in which the minority finds itself in an unenviable position and lives in a state of perpetual insecurity and fear, resulting in demoralisation. The State being a Hindu State, situated in Muslim surroundings, finds itself in a very delicate and difficult position …” In a letter of 16 June he wrote of Nehru “After all, he is also a Hindu and that a Kashmiri Hindu” (ibid. p. 3). One wonders whether he would have called Hyderabad a Muslim State. Nehru would have been offended by Patel’s remark.

One man, the brilliant Secretary in Patel’s Ministry of States, V.P. Menon, kept his head. At a meeting on 11 May 1947 Mountbatten noted that there were some States “which were geographically and ethnically almost bound to throw in their lot with Pakistan”. Nehru said that “the people of almost every State had openly declared in favour of joining the Union of India.” He asked “what would happen if Hyderabad wanted to joint Pakistan”. That is when V.P. Menon fired this deadly salvo. “It would produce a very similar situation to Kashmir joining the present Constituent Assembly” (i.e. of India) (Transfer of Power, HMSO, vol. X, p. 764).

During talks with the Secretary-General of Pakistan’s cabinet Mohammad Ali in November 1947, the latter asked whether a plebiscite was really called for as Kashmir had a Muslim majority. Menon replied that “he entirely agreed that Kashmir would go to Pakistan”, but emphasised in view of what has passed, a formal (sic.) plebiscite was essential. On 3 November 1947, Menon met a delegation from Hyderabad. The minutes read: “MR. MENON opened the discussions by making reference to the Kashmir problem … the States falling within the Dominion of India should join the Indian Union and those adjoining Pakistan should go with that dominion … he believed that Kashmir should have joined the Pakistan Union and the Government of India never desired the accession of Kashmir to the Union of India. But it was impossible for the Government of India to sit silently when Kashmir and Jammu were being raided and ruined by marauders and freebooters. (Constitutional Discussions, Government of Hyderabad, vol. 2, 193).

Nehru had other ideas. Less than a month after Kashmir’s accession and its accompanying pledge to its people of reference to them and of plebiscite, he had decided to back out. He wrote to Abdullah on 21 November 1947: “You will appreciate that it is not easy for us to back out of the stand we have taken before the world. That would create a very bad impression abroad and more specially in U.N. circles. … If we said to the U.N.O. that we no longer stand by a referendum in Kashmir, Pakistan would score a strong point and that would be harmful to our cause. On the other hand, if circumstances continue as they are and the referendum is out of the question during these next few months, then why worry about it now. … There is no difference between you and us on this issue. It is all a question of the best tactical approach. I would personally suggest to you not to say anything rejecting the idea of a referendum….” (SWJN, vol.4, pp.336-7). This makes one doubt whether he ever intended to hold plebiscite.

The interests of all coincided. Nehru the Indian nationalist, and Patel the Hindu nationalist decided to renege on the nation’s solemn pledges on plebiscite to the people of Kashmir, to Pakistan, and as Nehru himself said, to the world. Sheikh Abdullah the Kashmiri nationalist fervently went along because a plebiscite, as all three knew, would have gone in favour of Pakistan. The Sheikh therefore, sought desperately a settlement with Pakistan other than by a plebiscite and retention of Kashmiris autonomy, meanwhile. The record shows that he was snubbed in both ventures.

On 25 August 1952 Nehru sent him a Note which he had written in Sonamarg – finalise the accession through Kashmir’s Constituent Assembly. Both the UN and Pakistan were impotent. Kashmiris will submit. “It must be remembered that the people of the Kashmir Valley and round about, though highly gifted in many ways – in intelligence, in artisanship, etc. – are not what are called a virile people. They are soft and addicted easy living. … The common people are primarily interested in a few things – an honest administration and cheap and honest food.” (SWJN, vol. 19, 328-29). No Kashmiri would utter those words for his own people. Nehru’s outlook was moulded in the political climate of Uttar Pradesh to which he really belonged. It was exposed also to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Bogra, when they met in new Delhi on 17 August 1953: “Most people, of course, were hardly political and only cared for their economic betterment” (SWJN, vol. 23, 332).

This is the Development Thesis of today: Kashmiris have no soul. Feed them; they will submit. Abdullah derived his power from the people. If their views on accession to India continued to diverge, without any hope of reconciliation, he refused to act as India’s stooge and lose everything. Nehru, in contrast, was happy with the façade of a popular regime headed by the Sheikh, regardless of the depth or quality of its popular support – a policy being pursued to this day.

Abdullah set up an 8-member Committee of his party in May 1953 to evolve a solution which Pakistan could accept. Unbeknown to him, a couple of them had secretly gone over to Nehru. He had the Sheikh arrested on 9 August 1953 to replace the Kashmiri nationalist by a succession of stooges bar an interval (1977-84).

Nehru’s record is seriously blemished by two facts; he knew that the people rejected India’s rule but, nonetheless, kept on promising to abide by their wishes from 1947-1954. Indira Gandhi had informed her father in a letter from Srinagar on 14 May 1948 “They say that only Sheikh Saheb is confident of winning the people…” (Sonia Gandhi (Ed.) Two Alone Two Together; Penguin, 2005. The suspension marks, which suppress the rest, are made by the distinguished editor herself for reasons not hard to guess).

A host of impartial observers agreed. Two days before independence the British Resident at Kashmir reported to the Viceroy’s Principal Secretary, Sir George Abell. “I saw new Prime minister (General Janak Singh) yesterday, and he is aware of the situation and although inclining towards India as a Hindu, realises bulk of Muslims will not accept decision. He therefore wishes for agreement for both.” (Transfer of Power, vol. XII; p. 696).

Major W.P. Cranston, of the British High Commission, stayed in Srinagar from 10 to 14 October 1947 and wrote a report on ‘The political situation in Kashmir’ on 18 October, giving his assessment. He wrote: “The future, however, is very uncertain and depends entirely on when the Maharaja makes his announcement as to whether Kashmir should remain independent or accede to either of the two Dominions … it was thought probable that he would then declare the accession of Kashmir State to the Dominion of India. This would cause an immediate reaction throughout the State by the Muslim population which numbers about 80 to 90 per cent and which is strongly opposed to any union with the Indian Government. (Lionel Carter (Ed), Manohar, 2011,; p. 523).

Carter has also edited Completing the First Year of Independence: British Official Reports from South Asia; 1 May – 17 September 1948, Manohar, 2016). The documents he reproduces tell the same tale.

An official of the UK High Commission reported from Srinagar on 30 April 1948: “While everyone considered that a plebiscite would lead to an overwhelming vote in favour of Pakistan, they could not believe that India would voluntarily quit Kashmir. … There was no doubt in the minds of any of the Indians I spoke to that the plebiscite would go in favour of Pakistan. .. I conclude, therefore, that the Indian Army, like most armies of occupation, is strongly resented by the great majority of Kashmiris.” (Part 1, p. 178).

Sir Terence Shone, the High Commissioner, reported to London on 24 May 1948: “Two members of this High Commission, who recently paid separate visits to Srinagar, came away with the impression that if a fair plebiscite were held in the Vale of Kashmir it would go in favour of Pakistan. Impartial sources also say that the recent Independence Celebrations aroused far less popular enthusiasm than the Indian press suggested.”

John Shattock, ICS, who had served in Kashmir reported to London on 4 June: “British missionaries who live in outlying areas in the Vale of Kashmir all think that a fair plebiscite would go in favour of Pakistan. As these missionaries are very close to the ground and have no axe to grind one way or the other, they must be considered as pretty reliable exponents of public opinion.”

A High Commission official who visited Kashmir (14-19 May 1948) reported in detail. “It seems that Sheikh Abdullah’s position has been somewhat weakened as a result of: (a) The presence of the army of occupation; the people are said to be terrified of the Sikhs. On the other hand Major General Thimmaya said that relations between the troops and the civil population were excellent and that people were coming in from the surrounding districts giving intelligence of the approaching raiders. Their cooperation with the Army was good. (b) The lack of food supplies during the last severe winter owing to the closing of the road to Rawalpindi. (c) Stories of atrocities by the Indian Army brought up by refugees from Jammu. (d) Dislocation of trade by reason of the closing of the road to Rawalpindi. (e) High Government officials are going about in cars and generally living at a high standard, whereas the common people are suffering from shortages. The fact that the Indian Army saved Srinagar seemed to be forgotten in view of the winter and present discomforts. …

Kashmir’s trade outlet is to Pakistan rather than to India and by the road to Rawalpindi. Its export(s) of timber are by river and Arts and Crafts by road. Imports were also via this road. The road over the Banihal Pass cannot take this traffic and as a result trade is at a standstill.”

Alexander Symon, the Deputy H. C. in New Delhi had easy access to all. He reported on 12 September 1948 on what the UN Commission had learnt. “Almost all the members of the (Kashmir) Government both individually and in groups had told the members of the U.N. party that they were in favour of an independent Kashmir. They were very apprehensive, however, lest their views might become known to the Indian Government. On their return from Karachi the main Commission had been considering this possible solution, but almost all of them were very scared about it. The members of the Kashmir Government had also told U.N. party that Sheikh Abdullah on behalf of the National Conference would be prepared to meet and talk with Ghulam Abbas on behalf of the Muslim Conference. Sheikh Abdullah himself and Afzal Beg (the Revenue Minister and a comparative moderate) were the prime movers in favour of this.” A report by Symon directly to PM Attlee mentioned Sardar Ibrahim, in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir’s disclosure that “Abdullah had in fact been making advances to him.”

We have an impeccable source in Jayaprakash Narayan’s letter to Nehru on 1 May 1956. He warned: “From all the information I have, 95 per cent of Kashmir Muslims do not wish to be or remain Indian citizens. I doubt therefore the wisdom of trying to keep people by force where they do not wish to stay. This cannot but have serious long-term political consequences, though immediately it may suit policy and please public opinion. From the point of view of the desirability of establishing a peaceful social order, it cannot but prove disastrous. I do earnestly wish that this question be considered more from a human; rather than a nationalist point of view. (Bimal Prasad, ed. 1964, Vol. 7, 115).

We learn every day from reports from Kashmir that its people’s opinions have remained the same even fifty years later in 2016. They have not acquiesced in, still less submitted to, India’s rule. They still fling in its face the pledges made by Jawaharlal Nehru form 1947 to 1954 when he publicly reneged. On a rough tabulation there are nearly 30 of them. Here are a few.

+ To Liaquat Ali Khan, on 26 October 1947: I should like to make it clear that the question of aiding Kashmir in this emergency is not designed in any way to influence the State to accede to India. Our views which we have repeatedly made public is that the question of accession in any disputed territory or State must be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people and we adhere to this view. (White Paper on Jammu and Kashmir 1948, p 46). It was also sent to Attlee.

+ Further “our assurance that we will shall withdraw our troops from Kashmir as soon as peace and order are restored and leave the decision about the future of then State to the people of the State is not merely a pledge to your Government but also to the people of Kashmir and to the world. (ibid, 51, paragraphs 5 and 7).

+ Vallabhai Patel’s speech at a public meeting in Bombay on 30 October 1948: “Some people consider that Muslim majority area must necessarily belong to Pakistan. They wonder why we are in Kashmir. The answer is plain and simple. We are in Kashmir because the people of Kashmir want us to be there. The moment we realise that the people of Kashmir do not want us to be here, we shall not be there even for a minute.” (Hindustan Times, 31 October, 1948).

+ Nehru’s speech at Calcutta on 1 January 1952: “If then, the people of Kashmir tell us to get out, we will do so. We will not stay there by force. We did not conquer the territory. There is no doubt about it that he is the leader of the people of Kashmir, a very great leader. If tomorrow Sheikh Abdullah wanted Kashmir to join Pakistan, neither I nor all the forces of India would be able to stop it because if the leader decides, it will happen. … Since the matter has been referred to the UN, we have given our word of honour that we shall abide by their decision. India’s pledge is no small matter and we shall stick by it in the eyes of the world.” (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 17, 76-78).

+ In Parliament on 26 June 1952: “And I say with all respect to our Constitution that it just does not matter what your Constitution says, if the people of Kashmir do not want it, it will not go there. … It might pain us but we would not send an Army against them, we might accept that, however much hurt we might feel … and we would change our Constitution about it.” (ibid., vol. 18, 418).

+ In Parliament on 7 August 1952: “So while the accession was complete in law and in fact, the other fact, which has nothing to do with law, also remains, namely our pledge to the people of Kashmir. If you like, to the people of the world, that this matter can be reaffirmed or cancelled or cut out by the people of Kashmir, if they so wish.

“We do not want to win people against their will and with the help of armed forces, and if the people of Jammu and Kashmir state so wish it, to part company from us, they can go their way and we shall go our way. We want no forced marriages, no forced unions like this. I hope this great Republic of India is a free, voluntary, friendly and affectionate union of the States of India. … ultimately – I say with all deference to this Parliament – the decision will be made in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir, neither in this Parliament, nor in the United Nations, nor by anybody else.” (ibid., vol. 18, 293-96). This puts paid to the resolutions by Parliament.

Abdul Gafoor Noorani is a lawyer, historian and author who has had a long association with Kashmir and has written extensively about the Kashmir issue. His titles includes The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012, a collection of his articles in two volumes. He has been an advocate in the Supreme Court and he lives in Mumbai.

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Mehbooba's Difficult Challenges - by Reeta C. Tremblay

4/7/2016

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Ms. Mehbooba Mufti, president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and daughter of its founder and former chief minister, the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, was herself sworn in as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir on April 4 with a commitment to take forward the ‘Agenda of Alliance’ (AoA) between her party and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). In her address to a huge gathering of invited guests at her swearing in ceremony, referring to it as the “people’s agenda”, she reiterated its goals of creating peace, reconciliation and development in the State, which would be possible only if there no longer existed the present “scenario of despair and trust deficit” among its population.

More significantly,she reminded the Modi BJP government and other Indian guests that peace, stability and development require that “the whole country join this new enterprise of hope to pull the State out of the morass and resolutely address the challenges confronting it”. This hopeful tone reflects Mehbooba’s discomfort with the PDP-BJP alliance and her astute understanding of the ground realities in the State, particularly in the Kashmir Valley.

It would certainly be a mistake to see her three-month-long hesitation to lead the PDP-BJP alliance government as the result of her grief over the sudden death of her father or little more than the staging a political drama. As an astute politician, Mehbooba is certainly cognisant of the fact that the AoA, her father’s legacy to align the PDP with the BJP, remains an unpopular initiative in the Valley. It continues to be viewed by the Kashmiri population as an unholy alliance between, on the one hand, the soft-nationalist PDP (whose agenda continues to be self-rule, engagement with the separatists, open borders and a continuing dialogue with Pakistan) and, on the other hand, the hyper-nationalist BJP (who have consistently pursued full integration of the State with India through the abrogation of Article 370). Without any doubt, the PDP-BJP government under Mufti Sayeed’s leadership failed to live up to its promise of “smart government” providing “smart governance”. Even the Hindu-dominated Jammu region, the BJP’s major constituency, remains dissatisfied for the lack of fulfilment of the BJP’s promise of an equal development of Jammu. The contradictory ideologies of the two parties have further accentuated the already existing inter-regional and inter-communal polarization, giving once again public space to the separatist/nationalist groups in the Valley as well as to the Hindu fundamentalists in Jammu.

When, ultimately,Mehbooba broke her silence after the death of her father, it was to accuse the BJP of the “overt and covert” sabotage of her father’s leadership and to insist that as a necessary condition for the PDP to continue in the alliance, she needed the BJP’s assurance of tangible outcomes from the items negotiated in the AoA to create an enabling environment in the State. But despite the fact that those preconditions were never met and probably never given serious consideration by the BJP government, after a single one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Modi, Mehbooba agreed to form a government. Mehbooba had no choice. Her party had come to be divided between those who favoured a partnership government with the BJP and those wanted to abandon the unnatural alliance. Neither going for an election nor forming a coalition government with the National Conference (which still remains unpopular in the Valley for mishandling the 2010 protests and Afzal Guru hanging) were viable options.

Mehbooba’s main challenge remains how to protect her political constituency in the Valley while delivering on the governance front per the AoA. A quick reminder of the context of the PDP-BJP alliance of March 1, 2015 is essential here. The 2014 winter assembly election results produced a hung assembly, with a divided mandate along party lines and regional divisions—the BJP winning 25 out of 37 Jammu seats and the PDP winning 25 out of 46 seats in the Valley and 3 in the Jammu region. For the first time in the electoral history of the state, the BJP emerged as the dominant party in Jammu region but with no presence in the Valley. Indeed, it lost all contests in the Valley and lost deposits on all except one. On the other hand,the PDP, which won most of the seats in the Valley, did not actually receive a strong mandate and could not be perceived as the dominant party in the Valley. It faced competition from the other Valley-based mainstream party, the National Conference, which was successful in winning 12 seats and coming in a close second in a number of contests between the two Valley-based parties.

In order to form a coalition Government, Mufti Sayeed’s PDP and the BJP entered into a governance partnership, the so-called “Agenda of Alliance”. The Agenda, an effort towards seeking a national reconciliation on J&K, was predicated on the assumption that the successful performance of the coalition government in the area of good governance and inclusive economic development would, to some extent, mitigate the salience of identity-based politics in the region. In this agreement, the BJP shelved its position on the abrogation of Article 370 and the PDP equally stepped back from self-rule and related demands for autonomy. But Mufti ensured that the agenda would accommodate the PDP demands for soft borders (travel and trade between Indian-administered Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir) and opening up dialogue with all internal stakeholders (separatists) to build a broad-based consensus on the resolution of all outstanding issues of J&K. The State government was to be transformed into proactive, transparent and accountable government which would create an enabling environment for the all-around economic development of the state.

Mufti Sayeed had voiced the hope that this Agenda of Alliance, as a partnership with the BJP, could represent a paradigm shift in Kashmir’s political history and start a new era of peace and development in all three regions of the state. In the event, however, the BJP’s insistence upon placing its own hyper-nationalistic agenda above considerations of good governance effectively prevented the Mufti government from achieving anything of significance in that direction. Neither did the BJP deliver on vital governance issues, for example failing to provide timely aid for flood victims or revoking the dreaded Armed Forces Special Powers Act, nor did they relent in the pursuit of their hyper-nationalist and Hindutva agenda. The hard-core nationalist rhetoric of national BJP leaders, like Amit Shah (threatening to pull out of coalition if national security were compromised), Home Minister Rajnath’s ultimatum on the release of Masrat Ali, leader of the 2010 Valley protests, and the raising of Pakistani flags (the government will not tolerate anti-national activity), and Defense Minister Parrikar’s statements (neutralise terrorists through terrorists only) have alienated Muslims in the Valley.

Jammu’s BJP and the RSS are encouraged by this type of pronouncement and have begun vigorously to pursue their Hindu agenda in the State. The Deputy Chief Minister, Nirmal Singh, refused to fly the State Flag on his official car, suggesting that he does not recognize the State constitution (both these are part of the special status guaranteed to the State under the Indian constitution). The state wing of the RSS launched “Mission Kashmir”, a new campaign whereby it created a core unit in the Valley.It was Jammu’s Hindu fundamentalists who were to put the beef ban on the legislative and judicial docket which heightened the tension even further. Indeed, ‘beef politics’ engulfed the state’s two regions, deepening communal and regional polarisation and solidifying vertical divisions. After two contradictory court decisions, protests and counter protests followed in the two regions, including a physical attack in the legislative assembly on an independent MLA, Rashid Engineer. More ominously, this was followed by a petrol bomb attack on trucks on the J &K highway, resulting in the death of a young Muslim man. The Kashmiri Valley’s secessionist/nationalists who had largely remained an insignificant force during the past few years have effectively been given a new life by both Jammu’s Hindu fundamentalists and the BJP’s hard-core challenges to the ‘soft nationalist agenda’ of the PDP. As a result, instead of reducing regional tensions and moving forward on the governance agenda, there is an increasing communal and regional polarisation,a re-emergence of assertive separatist politics in the Valley and assertion of a hard core Hinduvtva agenda in Jammu.

That, in a nutshell, is what Mehbooba has inherited. Will she be able to deliver on the promise of effective governance as underlined in the AoA while mitigating Valley’s collective identity demand for azadi and reining in the State BJP members responsible for communal disharmony in the State? The responsibility for Mehbooba’s success or failure lies largely with the BJP. During Mufti’s Sayeed’s regime, the BJP had remained short-sighted in failing to understand that Kashmiri ethno-nationalist aspirations remain alive and deeply entrenched among the Valley’s Muslim population and that the Valley’s population can be easily mobilised when the public perceive that the state is no longer acting in their economic interests or sufficiently protecting their distinct religious and political identity.

This lack of understanding has been accompanied by the BJP’s lack of experience in governing the State. It has failed to act as a partner in the governing alliance, pursuing instead a politics of opposition which has emboldened the Hindu fundamentalist in Jammu. Hindu mobilisation in the state can have serious consequences – not only threatening the breakdown of the government but also increasing the intractability of the Kashmir issue. On Mehbooba’s part, she needs to figure out how to put the separatist/nationalist genie back into the bottle and how to break the vicious reinforcing cycle of Hindu-nationalist and pro-integrationist demands in Jammu exacerbating Muslim alienation and encouraging separatist politics in the Valley which only seems to encourage the Hindu fundamentalist response.

Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay is Professor of Comparative Politics in the department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada, where she also held the position of Provost and the Vice-President Academic till June 2014. Her research includes projects on comparative federalism in the South Asian region where she explores the relationship between territorial and cultural identities and examines the tensions and contradictions between formal and informal nationalisms.

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Kashmir Revisited, 1943 and 2015 - by Deborah Williams

3/10/2016

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Intrigued by her father's wartime diary entries and photographs of Kashmir, Deborah Williams came out from Australia to follow in his footsteps across Srinagar: 

Roy Williams - photo taken at Mahatta's, Srinagar, in 1943

Long ago intrigued by the mystery of Kashmir when my father entertained us with memories of his war years in India – tales of high snowy mountains, a close escape from a sinking houseboat, a tablecloth embroidered with delicate figures – I have visited Srinagar several times. In the spring when almond blossoms fill the air; in summer when houseboats huddle in the shade of green willows; and now in December, at the beginning of chillaikalan – the coldest, most severe 40 days of winter.

My father, Roy D. Williams, serving as a pilot with the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force), was based in India from 1942-45. In 2007 the discovery of his wartime diaries inspired me to trace his Indian footsteps, so a year ago, when a BBC article about Mahatta's Photo Studio in Srinagar caught my eye, it was with astonishment that I realised I have a portrait photo of Roy taken while on leave in Kashmir in August 1943. And quite clearly, at the bottom of the photo, is the Mahatta’s signature. I read that Mahatta’s, founded in 1915, continues as a glorious bubble from the past, run by Jagdish Mehta, a silver-haired gentleman clad elegantly in white. The shop still exists, but for how much longer? I had to go there. As soon as possible. Which meant winter.

Roy visited Kashmir twice. In the summer of 1943 and the spring of 1944. He travelled there by car from Murree (now in Pakistan), an eight hour trip over the mountains, before descending through a gorge for 100 miles, alongside rapids, fir, pine and poplar trees, arriving in Srinagar at 4.00 p.m. on 1st June 1943. On 2nd June, he wrote: glorious views of mountain range. Most lovely scenery ever seen on travels. Seduced by the beauty of Kashmir, he was a happy man.

Seventy-two years later, in December 2015, too terrified to face the mountain road from Jammu in winter, I arrived on a morning flight from Delhi, seated next to a rugged Kashmiri, brown and white beanie atop his suntanned head, a brown shawl edged with pink embroidery draped over his shoulders.

The plane descended over misty fields and red roofed houses, the mountains invisible behind a wall of cloud, leafless poplar trees standing tall like frozen soldiers. Outside the airport a frosty chill cut the air as my taxi drove past men in traditional brown phirans, and the intriguingly named Orbit Girls School in shades of hot pink, while gun toting soldiers lined the road all the way from the airport to Dal Lak ... this was not the summer time paradise my father had enjoyed.

Mahatta's had inspired this visit, but was not my only mission – I also wanted to see Nedou's hotel where Roy went to dances, Nishat Gardens where he picnicked by moonlight, The Club, Gagribal Point where he went swimming, Dal Gate, and Third Bridge where he visited a mysterious Subhana mentioned several times in his diaries. In five freezing days I immersed myself in a Srinagar parallel to the usual tourist trail, stumbling into a world of extraordinary warmth and hospitality along the way.

When I first set forth for Mahatta’s, morning frost lay white on stone walls and blanketed the lake's wooden landing platforms. The lake was an icy, silvery sheen, boatmen in voluminous phirans huddled on richly coloured cushions in shikaras, kangri pots perched by their sides, while phiran clad men glided by on bicycles sagging under piles of coats, furry hats, and gloves. The world was cold, still, and surreal in its beauty.

On the way to Mahatta's I passed the once gracious old Nedou's Hotel, where Roy went to dances in June 1943. Its two storey, mouldering white gabled buildings stand forlornly around a water-logged “lawn” graced with rubble. It was a mess.

Impossible to enter through barred gates and barbed wire, I took “creative” photos through holes in the old red wall, and was left wondering at the twists of fate which could leave such a fine old building, once witness to grand and happy times, in such a sad, uninhabitable state. Host to dignitaries including Lord Mountbatten and assorted maharajahs until its closure around 1988-89 when it became a military billet, alas much of its written records and history were lost in the floods of 2014 when the hotel was up to its neck in metres of water. The waterlogged gardens are perhaps a remnant of the Jhelum's waters, but if there are plans afoot to revive the hotel to its past elegance, there is certainly no sign of it.

Nedou's Hotel, December 2015

Mahatta’s was easy to find, still standing proudly in a long black and white building overlooking the Jhelum River. Roy had his portrait taken there on 9 June 1943, and picked up the prints, which he found excellent, two days later.

Entering its calm, dim interior of elegant wooden counters, glass-fronted wooden cabinets, old cameras, photos and photographic equipment is to enter another era. Alas, the owner Jagdish Mehta was not there, but his assistant, the tall and gracious Gul Mohammad rose from a chair by the door where he had been absorbed in a newspaper, and greeted me with quiet, smiling warmth.
He told me that they no longer do portrait photos as the studio had closed, converted into a café, but he graciously took my photo with my own camera, and I took his, before descending to the downstairs café, once the studio, where huge black and white photos of old Srinagar street life cover the walls. I settled at a table, and like superimposed images, saw myself sipping tea in 2015, while the handsome 24 year-old Roy, cravat smartly tied, posed against the wall for his portrait in 1943. Oblivious to the future, and the fact that his daughter would one day be here too, hot on his trail.

Deborah Williams at Mahatta's

Gul Mohammad

In search of the Club which Roy had joined on arrival, I followed directions given by Gul Mohammed, and between Mahatta's and Zero Bridge, came across a low slung building partly submerged in muddy earth. It seemed to be sinking, lost in time, fading into the past. The windows and doors were shuttered, sealed with years of accumulated dust and dirt, and the facade unimposing. I suspected that the other side, now inaccessible behind military barbed wire, had been grander, but there was no way of knowing, so I contented myself with a walk along the Bund as far as Zero Bridge, built after the war, in the late 1950s, and now under a frenzy of reconstruction.

The wooden bridge is supported on pillars of interlaced wooden beams, works of art in their own right, and Moghul style kiosks provide shelter at intervals across the length of its elegant span. Two years ago I recall seeing the bridge in a shocking state of near collapse, so this renovation is a bright light indeed.

The Club, 2015

Zero Bridge, 2015

On my first day of meanderings I was enticed into the Salama Bespoke Tailor shop, founded in 1842, on Polo View Road. The owner, Mr Gulzar, was keen to show me his impressive collection of letters dating back to the 1940s, from dignitaries, officials, UN personnel, diplomats, trekkers, travellers and military officers including a captain in the 6th Queen Elizabeth Own Ghurka Rifles regiment - all glowing reports about the quality of his tailoring and his honesty, and using a vocabulary rarely heard now. When did I last hear someone talk about going on furlough?

After seating me in front of the gas heater, and serving me warming cups of saffron tinted Kashmiri tea, Mr Gulzar proceeded to flourish the softest of Kashmiri scarves, a kashmir-mohair vest lined in silken pinks and blues, hunting jackets with leather elbow patches, plus-fours, knickerbockers, skirts, trousers and other extraordinary outfits from a time now past. He was a seductive salesman, (though I resisted his offer to make me a pair of plus-fours), and also a great source of information, telling me that as a child he accompanied his tailor grandfather to Nedou's, when cows were kept behind the hotel to ensure a supply of fresh milk.

Subhana the Worst, 1957

When I tell him that Roy made advance payment for embroidered work to a man called Subhana who then disappeared with the money, Gulzar's eyes lit up. Subhana “was a villain!”, he declared, known to have a bad reputation, so bad that one night somebody added the words “the Worst” to Subhana's shop sign. Speaking as though the villainish Subhana of 70 years ago was still there, he said that “the father was good, but the son went bad”. Indeed, but Roy, not to be outdone, returned the following year, contacted the Visitor's Bureau, tracked Subhana down at Third Bridge, and got his 50 Rupees back. During this story-telling, in a thoroughly modern moment, Gulzar's son Amjed went online and found a 1957 photo of Subhana seated on carpets and finery at Third bridge, a sign behind him announcing Subhana the Worst.

Then in a wonderful twist where past blended into the present, on my way home along the Boulevard that evening, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw nestled at the back of a small shopping complex, a sign which had me laughing out loud – Subhana the TRUST!

Subhana "The Trust", 2015

The old, narrow Third Bridge where Subhana set up shop has been replaced by a nondescript yellow metal bridge, Subhana is no longer there, the river banks are littered with rubbish, the old houses slowly crumbling, and there is little evidence of the once buzzing commercial district where “visitors” used to shop. Gulzar took me there, showing me where they arrived by shikara, disembarking at a narrow laneway running between red brick walls up to what had been a main thoroughfare.

On arriving in Srinagar Roy joined the Club where he socialised, drank the occasional beer, and danced. His month long visits were active and idyllic - long horse rides before breakfast, walking and shopping on the Bund, buying film on the black market at 1st Bridge, and dancing at the Club, Nedou's and Nagin Lake. Returning from a late night dance one night he helped to open the lock gates at Dal Gate at 1.00 a.m. He went swimming at Gagribal Point, spending hours in the cool summer waters of Dal Lake. A “bathing boat” is still moored calmly off Gagribal Point near Nehru Park, proof that despite the now polluted waters, people still swim here.

He ate strawberries and cream in the dark on his houseboat, and picnicked by moonlight in the Nishat Gardens where in summer the chinar shaded water terraces flow down to the lake. It must have been magical, but in December the near empty gardens were swathed in mist, sheets of crackled ice coated the fountains and empty water channels, the great chinar trees stood stripped of leaves, and stray dogs slept curled together at their feet. I talked to a gardener who told me the chinar trees here are 400 years old. Sparkling with energy, spittle flying, he shouted questions at me. Country? Job? Ahhh!!! Teacher! He babbled about different jobs, selling cows, building a three storey house, then thanked god three times. When I told him my father came here for a moonlight picnic, he was delighted, pointed to a nearby magnolia tree, saying it flowers by moonlight. So very romantic, he said, grinning. It must have been, but now, too cold to linger, I left - behind me a bevy of gardeners planting flowers in sculpted beds, and two young men photographing tourists draped in richly glittering Moghul clothes.

Roy didn't confine himself to Srinagar. In May 1944 he travelled by mail bus to Pahalgam and set out on a three day trek to the Kolohai glacier, accompanied by Kashmiri guides, and enthralled by the magnificence of the mountains. But not all was idyllic – back in Srinagar, rain set in, and on Wednesday 17 May he wrote: Still raining steadily in morning. Continued throughout day till late afternoon. Took walk up to Bund. Spent evening on boat. Awakened at 2.30 A.M. by Alec. Annex capsized. Lucky to escape. All clothes and bedding saturated. River rose 3 feet due to heavy rains in mountains. I remember clearly his story of how the houseboat had broken its moorings, and trapped beneath a bridge, was flooding in the rapidly rising river.

More recently, in September 2014, Srinagar was metres under water when heavy rains swelled the Jhelum, burst open the lock gates, and flooded surrounding areas. Houses and hotels were submerged, people evacuated, hundreds died, and the damage can still be seen in collapsed buildings and a boardwalk by Dal Gate which rolls and sags as though in an earthquake.
And far from idyllic now is the bubbling undercurrent of discontent with the political situation. Young men talked of their desire for an independent Kashmir, of their frustration at the corruption and repression of free speech. Older men spoke with anger and tears in their eyes at the irresponsible destruction of lakes and waterways now turned to dry reed beds filled with rubbish.

Dal Lake, December 2015

Much has changed, but traces of the past live on and the Kashmir which charmed my father so many years ago is still a place of ethereal beauty despite years of fighting and political woes, and a tourist industry which has seen the number of houseboats explode and the waters increasingly polluted.

When Roy left Kashmir, he made the return trip to Murree by bus, a tiring 12-hour journey over a road no longer accessible from Srinagar. Now travellers have the choice between a spectacular, hair-raising road to Jammu, or a short flight over snowy peaks. I chose to leave on a SpiceJet flight to Amritsar, sad to leave but relieved to escape the worst of chillaikallan when I feared a Kashmir sealed in ice and snow. Only five days there but an experience rich in the past and present intertwined, and the knowledge that the essence of Kashmir has not changed.

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Balraj Puri: an appreciation, by Chitralekha Zutshi

1/5/2015

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One of Jammu and Kashmir's commanding intellectuals, Balraj Puri (1928-2014), died in the year just ended. The distinguished historian Chitralekha Zutshi offers her personal reflections on his life and achievements:

Balraj Puri

When I heard that Balraj Sahab had passed away this past August, I was overtaken by sadness, and also a pang of regret. I had plans to visit Jammu in November with the intention of spending some time with him, learning more about the entangled politics of the state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1947. In my experience, his was the most clear-headed and refreshingly honest voice on the subject. I had met him only once, in 2010, and although in frail health, he was lucid about the state of politics in Jammu and Kashmir. He told me that Kashmir’s politics was a prisoner of its past; it could not move forward until the intertwined interpretations about its history—both distant and recent—that define its political discourse in the present, could be disentangled. Truth was an incessant casualty in the process. With his death, I had lost my chance to learn more, but more importantly, we had lost someone who always told the truth regardless of how bitter it was, or how negative the consequences for himself.

"we had lost someone who always told the truth regardless of how bitter it was, or how negative the consequences for himself"

Fortunately, Balraj Sahab was a prodigious writer and has left behind a plethora of writings. He wrote on everything from Indian federalism to Communism in Kashmir to Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, and much, much more. When I read his writings, I am struck by the simple yet potent logic he brought to bear on all his analyses. And these analyses were not merely academic for him; indeed he sought to put them into practice to solve the problems he saw plaguing the state. Two issues underlined Balraj Sahab’s politics over the years: re-centering the position of Jammu within the state of Jammu and Kashmir by allowing for regional autonomy, and the development of a healthy opposition within the state, which he saw as the basis of a democratic politics.

In pursuit of both causes, Balraj Sahab often clashed with the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. An early member of the political party from Jammu, drawn to its progressive politics of land reform and economic equality, Balraj Sahab recognized that the party was overwhelmingly centered in the Kashmir Valley. If the party was to become truly representative, then Jammu and its people had to be given due representation within it, and by extension, a say and stake within the politics of the state. This could be achieved, in part, through a platform of regional autonomy, which allowed for all the constituent units of Jammu and Kashmir to function and develop equally well without encroaching on each other.

The second, related issue on which he spent his lifetime crusading was that, for democratic institutions to become functional and entrenched, the National Conference/Congress combine could not be the sole political voice within the state. J&K needed an opposition party or parties to challenge the dominant political players and to allow democracy to take root in the state. This was why he was a dedicated member of the Praja Socialist Party and refused to allow the party to be merged with the Congress.

Although he ran foul of the National Conference as a result of his politics (he was expelled from the party), Balraj Sahab spoke out vehemently against the Indian state for imprisoning its leader, Sheikh Abdullah, in 1953 and then intermittently until 1975. He incessantly mediated between Nehru and Abdullah and later between Abdullah and Indira Gandhi to bring about a rapprochement between the Kashmiri leader and the Indian center. He recognized that J&K was the true test of Indian democracy and secularism against which India’s democratic systems, its human rights record, and its record at preserving communal harmony would be measured. I daresay that he died a disappointed man in this respect, although not a pessimistic one, campaigning and writing for the truth until the very end.

I felt the huge void left by Balraj Sahab’s passing when I made my way to Srinagar and then Jammu in October and November. What was striking about him, I realized, was that he was universally respected. Political ideologues from across the political system admitted, rather wistfully, that he had always been right, that the political aspirations of the people of all the constituent parts of Jammu and Kashmir needed to be represented for the Kashmir tangle to be untangled. I wish he was still around, to help us make dispassionate sense of the recent election results in the state and what they foretell about its future.

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Artists and Scholars Commemorate the Life and Work of Agha Shahid Ali - by Patricia O'Neill

10/25/2014

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'The Beloved Witness Symposium: Agha Shahid Ali and Kashmir' was organized at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York state, on 19th and 20th September 2014 to celebrate the acquisition of the poet’s manuscripts and personal papers as well as the launching of The Beloved Witness Project, a digital archive that features video clips of Shahid reading his poems. The digital archive is now available to anyone who has an internet connection (http://asa.dhinitiative.org/listen).

Shahid taught at Hamilton College from 1987-1993. During that time he published his second American volume A Nostalgist’s Map of America and wrote many of the poems that resulted in his most important volume The Country without a Post Office. The Country without a Post Office was written as a response to the crackdown by the Indian army on the people of Kashmir in retaliation for their support for independence from the state of India. The crackdown was very severe, including the arrest, torture and disappearance of Kashmiri men and women and the suppression of civil rights of the people generally. Curfews that brought the economy to a halt, the evacuation of Hindu Kashmiris, the destruction of mosques and temples, and the banning of assembly were employed in the name of suppressing militants whom the authorities believed were receiving support and training from Pakistan. The details of the people’s suffering during this period are represented in Basharat Peer’s memoir Curfewed Nights and in Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator.

One of the items on display - a rug commissioned by Shahid during one of his visits to Srinagar

Living in America, with only summer visits to his home in Srinagar, Shahid felt the exile’s dread and anxious waiting to hear from his family and friends. One day he heard from his father that someone had been to the local post office and there on the floor was a letter for Shahid’s father. The man brought it to him because ordinary postal service was not working. Thinking about the breakdown of something as ordinary as postal service led Shahid to think about his homeland and the loss of the rich cultural and community life he had known as a child. The Country without a Post Office expresses that longing for a return via memory, and, at the same time, it reaches out in solidarity to other places where war and political conflicts require a poet’s response, however inadequate. Since its publication in 1997, Shahid’s book of poems has provided hope where there had been none, inspiration to write and speak about Kashmir, and an historically significant intervention in Anglophone literary history. Shahid’s ghazals have introduced the Urdu-Persian form and cultural context to readers of English.

The Beloved Witness Symposium brought artists and scholars together to present and discuss Kashmir. Musa Syeed, an American of Kashmiri descent, showed his first feature film, The Valley of Saints. The film is not yet in general release but it has been making the film festival rounds and garnering prizes, including a Sundance Audience Award and an Independent Film Spirit award for cinematography. Students of film at Hamilton were riveted by Mr. Syeed’s account of living with the boatman who is the focus of the film and of the problems of shooting on location during the military enforced curfews in Srinagar. Professor Hena Ahmad, Shahid’s sister, the novelist Kamila Shamsie, Shahid’s student, and the poet Peter Balakian, Shahid’s colleague at Colgate University, told stories about Shahid, his love of cooking, his open-hearted and confident approach to life and work, and the demands he placed on himself and his students to pay attention to every word they wrote. Professor Haley Duschinski, an anthropologist who has done field work in Kashmir for many years showed slides of the people she has interviewed and talked about their efforts to create archives of the lives of loved ones killed during the military crackdown.

Although we were remembering Shahid, many of the participants were also worried about the fate of friends and family in Srinagar today. A week before the symposium, a flood broke through the levees in Srinagar putting 80% of the city under water in a matter of hours. Shahid’s family home was completely destroyed and Shahid’s brother Agha Iqbal Ali, who was supposed to attend the symposium, was in Delhi arranging for the safety of his 90-year-old father. Although all of the guests at the symposium live in the United States or England, there was still a palpable sense of loss in their discussions of Srinagar, which is now in ruins, and much uncertainty about its reconstruction.

It was fitting, then, that the day ended by recognizing that Shahid’s importance is best understood through his impact on artists who continue the work of showing us the world we live in, a world of deeper knowledge and more compassion than the news media can address. Mirza Waheed read from his new novel The Book of Gold Leaves. Kamila Shamsie read from her latest work A God in Every Stone. Peter Balakian read his elegy for Shahid and many of the members of the audience who had been students or colleagues of Shahid contributed their reminiscences of what Shamsie called “the Shahid that we have internalized.”

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The title of the symposium comes from two lines from Shahid's ghazal "In Arabic":

They ask me to tell them what Shahid means: Listen, listen:
It means "The Beloved" in Persian, "witness" in Arabic.

Agha Shahid Ali, Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals, W.W. Norton, 2004

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The Beloved Witness Project at Hamilton College is ongoing. The library exhibit of Shahid materials will be on display until December. Then all of the items will be digitized and displayed in the Beloved Witness Project’s digital archive. This summer Burke Library’s Special Collections will support a visiting scholar to study Shahid’s manuscripts. Next year we hope to welcome a Fulbright Scholar from India. Already several undergraduates at Hamilton and other colleges have studied the materials to write their own scholarly and creative work, including a couple of digital projects on Shahid’s poetry. Scholars interested in access to the special collections of Shahid’s papers should contact Christian Goodwille (cgoodwil@hamilton.edu) at Hamilton College.

Patricia O'Neill is a professor of English at Hamilton College. She was Shahid's friend and colleague, dedicatee of Shahid's poems "Farewell" and "The Veiled Suite", and co-director with Hena Ahmad of The Beloved Witness Project: Agha Shahid Ali.

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Artists and Scholars Commemorate the Life and Work of Agha Shahid Ali - by Patricia O'Neill

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Sheikh Abdullah: March 1965

Sheikh Abdullah: January 1968​

Sheikh Abdullah on Sunil Khilnani's 'Incarnations' series​

... and the photo

KashmirConnected

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Sheikh Abdullah: January 1968

Sheikh Abdullah on Sunil Khilnani's 'Incarnations' series