Date : 11/05/2024
The author, Dr. Kashinath Pandit, says he wrote the book, Kashmiri Pandits through Fire and Brimstone by way of a gesture of allegiance to his teacher and Guru, late Dr. Zabihullah Safa, Professor and Dean Faculty of Letters at the University of Teheran, Iran from whom he received training and “proficiency in literary pursuits.” He writes that Dr Safa had, ‘left Tehran and settled down in Germany’ after the Islamic revolution in 1979, and it is he who, “bequeathed”, to him, “the experience of expulsion from homeland.”
Author and Padma Shree Dr. Kashinath Pandit retired from the post of Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University. His publications Baharistan-i-Shahi: A Chronicle of Medieval Kashmir 1622 A.D (1990), and A Muslim Missionary in Mediaeval Kashmir (2009) (Being the translation of Tohfatu’l-Ahbab) published by Voice of India, deserve credit and our gratitude. Historiography, related to the issue of conversion, when seen in the light of these two key texts reveals the significant intervention Dr. Kashinath Pandit has made by translating Persian manuscripts into English.
His Book Ten Studies in Kashmir History and Politics (2019) is an Indian Council of Social Science Research publication, in association with Academic Foundation, New Delhi. The book is a collection of ten essays on politics and history of the valley of Kashmir. The book, Ten Studies in Kashmir is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand the politics of the Kashmir valley.
The two authors of the book, Kashmiri Pandits through Fire and Brimstone, Kashinath Pandit and Piaray Lal Koul Budgami have dedicated the book to the memory of the “soldiers of the Indian Defence forces, CRPF, BSF, J&K Police and other Paramilitary forces” and to “the hundreds of innocent, harmless and defenceless Kashmiri Pandits” who were brutally killed by the terrorists when externally sponsored armed insurgency erupted in Jammu and Kashmir State in 1989-90.
The book, Kashmiri Pandit through Fire and Brimstone is meticulously divided into five sections, with a Prologue, an Epilogue, an Appendix and an Index. The Epilogue states the basis for writing the book being the Urdu monograph titled Kashmiri Pandit : Dastan-i-Dar-o- Rasan, which had been authored by Piaray Lal Koul Budgami in 2016.
The first section of the book titled, The Saga of a Vanishing Community, has references to books which need to be read by anyone who is keen to know about the history of Kashmir and of the Kashmiri Pandit community.
There is the reference to Rajatarangini written by Kalhan Pandit, the intellectual of the mid-12th century who traces the origin of Kashmir Hindus to nearly six thousand years beginning with Gonanda ruling house in 3450 BCE, at the very beginning of the first section of the book. Kashmiri Pandits trace their origin to the legend of the creation of Kashmir as recorded in the Nilamat Purana of the 6th or 7th century A.D. Kashinath Pandit thanks “the celebrated Hungarian scholar of Indology, Aural Stein, who translated the chronicle from Sanskrit/Sharada into English with superbly researched footnotes and exegesis.”
It was around the beginning of the 14th century that Kashmir Hindu kingdom began to show cracks. Queen Kota Rani, the last ruler of Kashmir Hindu kingdom, was treacherously besieged and deposed by one of her commanders named Shah Mir in A.D. 1339. He founded the first Muslim ruling dynasty of Kashmir under the title Sultans Shamsu’d-Din Shahmir in A.D. 1339/42.
The authors draw material from authentic though hitherto less known works of history like Baharistan-i-Shahi: A Chronicle of Medieval Kashmir 1622 A.D (translated into English by Kashinath Pandit in 1990), Tarikh-i-Kashmir by Pir Ghulam Hasan (1891 A. D); and Tohfatu’l Ahbab : A Muslim Missionary in Medieval Kashmir being the biography of Mir Shamsu’d –Din Muhammad Araki, an Iranian Shi’a missionary of the Nurbakhshiyyeh order who visited Kashmir twice and wrought havoc on the Hindu Pandit minority community of Kashmir, destroying their temples, shrines and religious icons, and converting many of them forcibly to Shia faith.
Details of large-scale conversion of Hindus to the Islamic faith and their massacre in case they refused, is also vividly told by Ghulam Hasan in Tarikh-i-Kashmir (pp.178-80). One significant detail mentioned in this section is that, ‘three Kharwars— one Kharwar being approximately equal to 80 kilograms— of Hindu ceremonial thread (Yagnopvita/Zunnar/Janeu) were burnt under the orders of Sultan Sikandar.
There are references drawn from Jagmohan’s book My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir (2019) and the book, Kashmir Intifada- A Memoir (2016) written by A.M. Watali in the subsection Pandit Exodus.
A subsection tilted Panun Kashmir tells us that a resolution called Marg Darshan was unanimously passed by a large gathering of the exiled Pandit community at a general meeting of the Panun Kashmir held at Abhinava Theatre at Jammu on December 28-29, 1990.
Section II is on Kashmir Valley Politics: Alignments and Re-alignment. There are in this section, subsections titled the Delimitation of Constituencies, the Ground situation and Rehabilitation and other allied issues. In an overview of the section the authors have spelt out the names of Muslim missionaries like, Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, his son Sayyid Muhammad Hamadani and Mir Shams-u’din Araki, and the names of Mirza Haider Dughlat, the Chaks who sowed seeds of discord in the already vulnerable social structure of the Kashmir society after the Mongol incursions by the thirteenth century.
The issue of the exodus, and how administration collapsed on the night of 19th January 1990 has been mentioned by the authors. The authors say that Jagmohan has also lamented the tragic event in his book, My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir (1991) It seems the traumatized community had no option but to leave their ancestral homes en masse and go into exile to unknown places, people and environs. National media considered it a sin to trace and publicize their sordid saga. The Pandits have approached the state and central governments ‘supplicating for designating them as IDPs.’ (Internally Displaced Persons).
Section III is on the dilemma of Coalition Governments. Subsections titled Kashmir under Political Siege have a summation of about twenty points of the agenda of the PDP for the future of the state.
Section IV and Section V are titled J&K Reorganization Act 2019 and The End of the Night respectively. Article 370, now a defunct Article, had granted special status to the state and limited the Parliament’s powers to make laws concerning the state. It was embodied in the Constitution of India in Part XXI on ‘Temporary, Transitional and Special Provisions, with respect to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.’
Revocation of Article 370, the transformation of the state into two Union territories, and the initiation of the delimitation constituencies, and other reformative programmes, the authors write, have opened a new chapter in the modern history of Jammu and Kashmir. Industrialization of Jammu, connectivity between Jammu and Doda-Kishtwar districts and Jammu with Rajouri, Poonch and Mendhar, recognition and uplifting of the Gujjars and Bakarwals who live in the highlands of the districts of Rajouri and Poonch (pp.123-124), are mentioned in Section V. For the Kashmir valley rich in horticulture, the authors see scope for a tinned fruit industry, fisheries, and more technical training institutes, cultural centres, recreational facilities among other things.
Dr. Etee Bahadur is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
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An exhaustive review that makes the book itself a must-read priority. Thanknyou.