Strife-Torn Kishtwar: Dreams of Harmony Once Dreamt
Yoginder Sikand
'The situation in Kishtwar is now really desperate. Worse, in some ways, than in the 1990s, when the town had become a virtual army camp. Earlier, it was militants versus the armed forces. Now it is threatening to take the form of Hindus versus Muslims', said a distraught friend of mine in Kishtwar when I called him last night. Several people have been killed, scores more badly injured and dozens of shops set ablaze in continuing clashes between Hindu and Muslim mobs in the town. In the wake of the controversy over the Amarnath shrine and the BJP-imposed strike in Jammu, Kishtwar, like much of the rest of Jammu and Kashmir, is now being increasingly torn apart on communal lines.
Nestled high up in the Himalayas, sandwiched between Jammu and the Kashmir Valley beyond, Kishtwar is the headquarters of a district bearing the same name. I have been visiting the town regularly for the last two decades, haunted by the harsh beauty of its towering crags and the numerous Hindu and Muslim shrines scattered across narrow valleys cut into the mountains by the roaring Chenab. Hindus and Muslims, the latter in a majority, have lived here fairly peacefully for centuries. Even at the height of the communal frenzy that accompanied the Partition in 1947, when some two hundred thousand people were slaughtered elsewhere in the Jammu division, Kishtwar remained an island of calm, so its Hindu and Muslim denizens proudly relate. Joint patrols were conducted by Hindu and Muslim youth at night to defend the town from possible outside agent provocateurs.
I had first visited Kishtwar in the early 1990s, when the town, like much of the rest of the Doda district, of which it was then a part, was reeling under the spectre of unprecedented violence—perpetrated by Kashmiri militants and the Indian armed forces. Army check-points and bunkers lined the road winding up the mountains. Shops closed in the early afternoons, just before the night curfew began. From evening onwards the town wore a desolated, ghostly look. The streets were empty, save for patrolling soldiers and cows and dogs munching in garbage heaps.
Things had changed for the better from the late 1990s, however. The last time I was in Kishtwar—a little more than a year ago —it had been considerably transformed. The number of killings, by militants and the army, had sharply plummeted, new shopping arcades did brisk business, curfew was a thing of the distant past, and Hindus and Muslims both were jubilant about the prospects of peace at last. They chatted together in tea-shops, as they had before the advent of militancy in Kashmir, and played cricket in mixed teams in the massive grassy plain, the Chogan, that spreads from the edge of the town to the hems of the surrounding mountains. Support for militants had drastically declined, as Muslims grew increasingly disillusioned with Pakistan and as ideology-driven militancy deteriorated into brigandage and looting that targeted Muslims more than it did Hindus.
But now, things threaten to go back to the way they were in the early 1990s. Hindu and Muslim communal forces, in Kishtwar and beyond, finding their flocks rapidly deserting them, have quickly seized upon the Amarnath controversy to whip up sentiments and engineer communal clashes, with frightening long-term consequences for inter-communal relations and prospects of peace in Jammu and Kashmir. As the on-going agitations in Jammu and in the Kashmir Valley so tragically illustrate, Hindu and Muslim communalists desperately need, and feed on, each other, and this at the cost of the people in whose name they claim to speak.
As Kishtwar smoulders in flames, I think of the sprawling Astan-e Bala, the graceful pagoda-like shrine of the patron Sufi saint of the town, the seventeenth century Shah Fariduddin Baghdadi, that is perched on a promontory in the heart of the town, facing erect peaks permanently buried in snow that lead on to the bleak cold desert of Ladakh and beyond. I can hear the plaintive wail, uplifting and enrapturing, although I cannot understand a word, of Sufi hymns in Kashmiri emanating from a shop outside the shrine where I have spent many hours over many days. The shrine is deeply revered by many Kishtwaris, transcending religious boundaries, and even several local Hindu supporters of the BJP regularly visit it to seek the blessings of the saint buried therein. Shah Fariduddin had travelled all the way from Baghdad to the mountain fastnesses of Kishtwar, and his teachings of love and devotion had so influenced the then Hindu ruler of the town, Raja Kirat
Singh, that he became a Muslim. He adopted the uniquely syncretic name of Tegh Muhammad Singh, and gave his daughter in marriage to one of the chief disciples of Shah Fariduddin, Syed Bahauddin Simnani. Several of his subjects followed suit, yet many of those who remained Hindu held Shah Fariduddin in high respect. He married a local Rajput woman, and the descendants of her natal family continue to have a special role in the rituals associated with the shrine although they are still Hindus.
I think, too, of the Darbar-e Asraria, the shrine of Shah Fariduddin's son, Shah Asraruddin, also located in the town. Legend has it that this saintly figure miraculously brought back to life a Hindu friend of his so that they could finish a game of polo that they were playing when he had suddenly died. I seriously doubt the veracity of the legend, of course, but fully appreciate its spirit.
I see now in my mind's eye the amiable Riaz Ahmad, custodian of the shrine of Shah Asraruddin, who had graciously given me several hours of his precious time to tell me the story of the Sufis of Kishtwar and their living legacy. 'Islam means peace, and Muslims should relate to others through love. God is the Cherisher of all the worlds, and not just of Muslims alone. Likewise, the Prophet Muhammad was a source of comfort for all', he explained, lamenting how certain radical Islamist groups had completely subverted these truths, just as their Hindu counterparts had in the case of Hinduism. 'Mazhab nahin sikhata apas mai bayr rakhna' ('Religion does not teach hatred for others'), he quoted a stanza from an ode by Muhammad Iqbal, roundly condemning the killing of innocents in Kishtwar and elsewhere by Hindu and Muslim militants and the armed forces.
Besides Muslims, many local Hindus and even army personnel, Riaz Ahmad said, visited the shrine that he looked after, for, as he put it, 'The doors of the shrines of the Sufis are open to everyone.' Many Hindu farmers around Kishtwar unfailingly left a part of their first harvest every year at the door-steps of the shrine as an offering, and some of them came to him for settling their disputes.
I reminiscence about the many other remarkable people I know who live in Kishtwar, who, in their own ways, have been struggling to maintain the increasingly fragile communal harmony that the town was once known for. Faruq Hussain Kitchloo, for instance, the middle-aged Imam of the town's central mosque or Jamia Masjid. Legend has it that land for the mosque was donated by a Hindu—perhaps a devotee of Shah Fariduddin—centuries ago. The Imam invited me to his house, and I found him a gracious host. We talked mainly about inter-communal relations. He told me about the regular meetings organised in the town by the local authorities to maintain communal harmony. About how he and a group of Hindus and Muslims from Kishtwar had been to Bhaderwah to mediate between clashing Hindus and Muslims there. About how he, along with leading Hindus and Muslims of Kishtwar, had jointly demonstrated in the wake of killings of innocent people in and around the town and
had pooled resources to assist victims of road mishaps, a common occurrence in the treacherous mountains. About a recent convention that he had helped organise in commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad, to address which he had invited a prominent Hindu, who spoke about the need for communal harmony. About a debate held in a local school on promoting communal harmony, in which Hindus and Muslims both had participated. About the Islamia Faridia School where he taught Arabic and Islamic Studies, which had more than a hundred Hindu students on its rolls and several Hindu teachers as well. About how he stressed in his Friday sermons that 'Muslims must respect the rights of their neighbours, including people of other faiths, because Islam says so' and that, 'The Quran says that to kill a single innocent human being—and this is irrespective of his or her religion—is tantamount to slaying the whole of humankind.'
I think about Imran Kitchloo, a handsome lad, who, when I met him five years ago, was a 15 year-old twelfth standard student in the school where the Imam Kitchloo taught. Bursting with energy and enthusiasm, he told me about the group that he had formed, which he had christened 'Message for Peace', through which he had brought together school students to discuss burning social issues, including, and especially, communalism and communal conflict. The group issued a regular magazine—photocopied sheets of paper stapled together—every issue of which had something or the other to say about the need for communal harmony.
As Kishtwar reels under curfew, I wonder how and what the men involved in the Faridia Charitable Trust (named after Shah Fariduddin) are doing —Abdur Rahman Kondoo, an activist of the Tablighi Jamaat who worked in the Tourism Department, an Islamic missionary group, Mohinder Kumar, an engineer, and Javed Iqbal, a shopkeeper. This group of Samaritans had got together to raise resources to help out desperately poor patients at the Government hospital in Kishtwar, the only such facility in the entire district, and to conduct free medical camps. Hindus and Muslims were roughly in the same number among the four hundred-odd people associated with the Trust. I distinctly remember, as if it had happened just the other day, that dark, wintry evening when I had accompanied Kondoo Saheb to the depressing, dimly-lit wards of the hospital, where he sat with patients, Hindus and Muslims, on their beds, placing his arms around them and whispering words of comfort.
Thereafter, we had met up with the rest of the team behind the Trust at a roadside dhaba, discussing religion and politics over steaming rajma-chawal, and the suave Ghulam Rasul Shaikh, Chariman of the Trust, had had the last word on the subject. 'Religion should inspire believers to recognise the common humanness of everyone, irrespective of community, and, motivated thus, to work for the benefit of all' he said, Buddha-like, as the shopkeeper began pulling down his shutters minutes before the night curfew was to start.
Where, now, I wonder, is the flamboyant and exceedingly handsome Asghar Ali Shaikh, more popularly known as Bitta, a surrendered militant, the Robin Hood of Kishtwar. He was held in awe by the denizens of the town, who would liberally provide money to him to spend on the medical treatment of road mishap victims, irrespective of community. I had met him in a cafe, where he was surrounded by a circle of awe-struck followers. He had just returned from an accident site up in the treacherous mountains of Padder. The victims were all Hindus from Jammu, and he had made arrangements for medical supplies for the injured and for the bodies of the deceased to be sent back to their homes. This work was his life's mission, he said. He had started it after his own sister and brother died in a road accident some years ago.
And then there was Muhammad Aslam Agoo, Chairman of the Green Model School, brother of a senior leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Freedom Movement, a party allied with the Gilani faction of the Hurriyat Conference. He had taken me around his school and gifted me a set of CDs of a mushaira that the school had organised to promote Hindu-Muslim unity and friendship between India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Joginder Bhandari, the Hindu principal of the school, had proudly told me of how Hindu and Muslim and even a few Buddhist and Sikh children studied together in the school, and about the public rallies taken out by the children to promote communal harmony. His cousin and senior local BJP leader, Satish Bhandari, had been slain by militants some years before. This had led to communal clashes in the town, but this did not stop him from managing a Muslim-run school. 'There have been sporadic incidents like this', he said, but, he insisted, 'they have not been
able to destroy Kishtwar's centuries' old tradition of communal harmony. Most Hindus and Muslims here are completely against communal forces.'
And where, in the midst of all this turmoil and frenzy, is the blind Ramanandi sadhu who claimed to be more than a century old? He was in charge of an ancient Shiva temple located in an entirely Muslim locality on the slope above Kishtwar's bus stand. He was from eastern Uttar Pradesh and had settled in Kishtwar in 1961, never going back home after that. We chatted about many things, but mostly about Hindu-Muslim relations and what he felt were the changes that these had undergone over the decades. 'When I came here', he said, 'there was no communal problem, and I was taken aback by the very close relations between the communities.' 'But now', he grimaced, 'things have changed.' Yet, he went on, on the rare occasions that he stepped outside the temple, his Muslim neighbours greeted him politely. 'They treat me very kindly', he said. 'God is one and his light resides in every heart', he quoted the Sufi-Bhakti Kabir Sahib.
And what about Iqbal, he with the most endearing smile I have ever seen, a lad from Gandoh, one of the poorest parts of Doda district, whose parents had sent him off to Kishtwar to work as a waiter in a dhaba after a relative of his was killed—by the army or by militants, no one knew. He and the elderly Nathu, a Dalit from Udhampur, inseparable friends, were a constant source of amusement and a mine of information. At the dhaba they worked in, where I normally had my dinner every night, I met numerous interesting people: Ravi Kumar and his friend Firdaus, son of a surrendered militant, who were in business together; Khem Singh, a Hindu Rajput, who had written a dozen or more poems in praise of the Prophet Muhammad and Shah Fariduddin; and Raju, a Muslim tailor, and Madan Lal Rana, his Hindu friend who owned a telephone booth and was my guide to the local madrasa.
'I support only God' Madan shot back at once, when I had asked him which political party he supported. Raja had nodded vigorously in agreement, enveloping him in a tight embrace. That, I remember, was the last conversation I had in Kishtwar—a little more than a year ago. And now, as news pours in of agitation and conflict in Kishtwar and elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir, I wonder how Madan and Raju are faring. And the rest of my Kishtwari friends as well, and the dreams of harmony that they had once dreamt.
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