[Courtesy Greater Kashmir]
The bunker is at the foot of the shrine, below the steps that lead up to the entrance of the shrine. Like so many other bunkers in the Kashmir Valley, it is enclosed by barbed wire, manned by a couple of soldiers, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. What distinguishes this bunker is a command, a credo, bold white letters on sky blue background: RESPECT ALL, SUSPECT ALL.
It is not coincidental that that oxymoron should appear on a bunker at the foot of the shrine of Baba Rishi, a Sufi mystic who devoted his entire life to preaching respect for all human beings and their environment. It attempts to subvert the teachings of Rishi Sahib. I drove with a friend to Baba Rishi for the first time last Saturday on the insistence of my 85 year-old mother who says her father, a wealthy merchant of his day, had married three times in the hope of producing an heir to his substantial wealth, but his wives sadly proved barren (or perhaps it was him). Hopeful, he trekked to the shrine where he tied a thread to a wooden rose and prayed for an heir. Upon returning home, he learnt that his fourth wife was pregnant, and in due course a baby girl arrived who was to become my mother.
Faith in Sufi mysticism has for centuries been the defining characteristic of Islam in Kashmir, commanding awe and respect, never shock and suspicion. Respect All. Suspect All. It is an eloquently fascist credo, packed with sad irony for it encapsulates the stated policy of the world’s most populous democracy to keep Kashmir its integral part at all costs.
Let me test to what extent this credo is being enforced, I thought as I walked around the barbed wire to the bunker, a bag slung over my shoulder. I smiled at the soldier, greeted him warmly in the lukewarm October sunshine.
“Where are you from? he asked
“Mumbai,” I lied.
“Where in Mumbai?”
Andheri. And you? I asked, jovially.
“Allahabad.”
“O, where the Ganga meets the Jumna.”
He nodded, waved me through without checking my bag, but asked where my friend was from.
“Kashmiri,” I said.
The soldier’s tone changed. He commanded my friend to open his bag, regarding him suspiciously, asking him the usual who, where, why, to which my friend responded truthfully, clearly, and the soldier let him through, reluctantly.
Respect a Mumbaiwallah, even if he lies. Suspect a Kashmiri, even if he speaks the truth.
Baba Rishi preached, as did all Sufi mystics, respect for the environment in which we live. We Kashmiris respect and revere our Sufi mystics to the horizon of love, mark their birth and death anniversaries religiously, solicit funds for the upkeep of shrines, even want to name the new airport after a great Sufi mystic
But judging from what I saw on the road to Baba Rishi and thence to Gulmarg, we do not respect the environment. We suspect it. We destroy it. Is it because we cannot bear too much beauty we have to either veil it (as many do their women) or cut it down to a stump (as we do our grand pines and poplars, and deodars and even chinars)? I saw grand trunks felled by the roadside, grieving stump after stump after stump on the hill side. No sign whatsoever of any re-forestration. Inevitably, there will be devastating mudslides downhill, all the way to Tangmarg and beyond, resulting in loss of life and property, surely. We are ill prepared to deal with any calamity in Kashmir, especially one we have ourselves created.
From Baba Rishi I drove three kilometers to Gulmarg on a treacherous old, potted road where, because it is a road rarely taken, the devastation is heart-rending. More trunks, a stream sobbing, choking on polythene bags, soda cans and the detritus, the deluge of neo-liberal global consumerism.
In Gulmarg, once a meadow of flowers, a green and white sign proclaimed, NO POLYTHENE ZONE. The NO should be painted over, for the state itself is using reams of polythene to protect the golf greens, but it serves no or little purpose to blame the current state administration, even if it came to power in a highly choreographed 2008 election. The state, which has little financial resources, is unable to meet even the payroll of state functionaries. Seemingly, the treasury is empty. If there is a vision, it is not visible on the street or in the meadows.
Meantime, people I talk to are slowly beginning to realize that they have no choice but to organize in every neighborhood and reclaim their environment, block by block, one meadow or bagh at a time: Goghji Bagh, Raj Bagh, Gulmarg, Yusmarg and so on. Without a mass popular movement, the environment is doomed.
When human endeavour fails, prayer begins. Let us tie a million threads to petrified roses at all the Sufi shrines in the Kashmir Valley and, then, let us raise our cupped hands to pray.
(Rafiq Kathwari, a poet and photojournalist, has translated Iqbal into English. He lives in Badami Bagh and can be reached at rafiqkathwari@gmail).
It is not coincidental that that oxymoron should appear on a bunker at the foot of the shrine of Baba Rishi, a Sufi mystic who devoted his entire life to preaching respect for all human beings and their environment. It attempts to subvert the teachings of Rishi Sahib. I drove with a friend to Baba Rishi for the first time last Saturday on the insistence of my 85 year-old mother who says her father, a wealthy merchant of his day, had married three times in the hope of producing an heir to his substantial wealth, but his wives sadly proved barren (or perhaps it was him). Hopeful, he trekked to the shrine where he tied a thread to a wooden rose and prayed for an heir. Upon returning home, he learnt that his fourth wife was pregnant, and in due course a baby girl arrived who was to become my mother.
Faith in Sufi mysticism has for centuries been the defining characteristic of Islam in Kashmir, commanding awe and respect, never shock and suspicion. Respect All. Suspect All. It is an eloquently fascist credo, packed with sad irony for it encapsulates the stated policy of the world’s most populous democracy to keep Kashmir its integral part at all costs.
Let me test to what extent this credo is being enforced, I thought as I walked around the barbed wire to the bunker, a bag slung over my shoulder. I smiled at the soldier, greeted him warmly in the lukewarm October sunshine.
“Where are you from? he asked
“Mumbai,” I lied.
“Where in Mumbai?”
Andheri. And you? I asked, jovially.
“Allahabad.”
“O, where the Ganga meets the Jumna.”
He nodded, waved me through without checking my bag, but asked where my friend was from.
“Kashmiri,” I said.
The soldier’s tone changed. He commanded my friend to open his bag, regarding him suspiciously, asking him the usual who, where, why, to which my friend responded truthfully, clearly, and the soldier let him through, reluctantly.
Respect a Mumbaiwallah, even if he lies. Suspect a Kashmiri, even if he speaks the truth.
Baba Rishi preached, as did all Sufi mystics, respect for the environment in which we live. We Kashmiris respect and revere our Sufi mystics to the horizon of love, mark their birth and death anniversaries religiously, solicit funds for the upkeep of shrines, even want to name the new airport after a great Sufi mystic
But judging from what I saw on the road to Baba Rishi and thence to Gulmarg, we do not respect the environment. We suspect it. We destroy it. Is it because we cannot bear too much beauty we have to either veil it (as many do their women) or cut it down to a stump (as we do our grand pines and poplars, and deodars and even chinars)? I saw grand trunks felled by the roadside, grieving stump after stump after stump on the hill side. No sign whatsoever of any re-forestration. Inevitably, there will be devastating mudslides downhill, all the way to Tangmarg and beyond, resulting in loss of life and property, surely. We are ill prepared to deal with any calamity in Kashmir, especially one we have ourselves created.
From Baba Rishi I drove three kilometers to Gulmarg on a treacherous old, potted road where, because it is a road rarely taken, the devastation is heart-rending. More trunks, a stream sobbing, choking on polythene bags, soda cans and the detritus, the deluge of neo-liberal global consumerism.
In Gulmarg, once a meadow of flowers, a green and white sign proclaimed, NO POLYTHENE ZONE. The NO should be painted over, for the state itself is using reams of polythene to protect the golf greens, but it serves no or little purpose to blame the current state administration, even if it came to power in a highly choreographed 2008 election. The state, which has little financial resources, is unable to meet even the payroll of state functionaries. Seemingly, the treasury is empty. If there is a vision, it is not visible on the street or in the meadows.
Meantime, people I talk to are slowly beginning to realize that they have no choice but to organize in every neighborhood and reclaim their environment, block by block, one meadow or bagh at a time: Goghji Bagh, Raj Bagh, Gulmarg, Yusmarg and so on. Without a mass popular movement, the environment is doomed.
When human endeavour fails, prayer begins. Let us tie a million threads to petrified roses at all the Sufi shrines in the Kashmir Valley and, then, let us raise our cupped hands to pray.
(Rafiq Kathwari, a poet and photojournalist, has translated Iqbal into English. He lives in Badami Bagh and can be reached at rafiqkathwari@gmail).
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