B L Razdan
An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to
speak, and impossible to be silent." Said Edmund Burke
in the British Parliament when Bastille was stormed in Paris ushering in the French Revolution. The predicament of Kashmiri Pandits today is somewhat the same. They can neither remain silent nor speak over the tragedy occasioned by the fury of nature that has caused unprecedented loss and agony to the people presently inhabiting the valley of Kashmir
Kashmiri Pandits (KPs for short), by their very nature don't celebrate tragedies even of their enemies, unlike those who conspired to hound them out of the valley and then celebrated and rejoiced over their successful ethnic cleansing. Nature's wrath has been too furious in Kashmir this time. It is indeed sad and tragic. But Nature has its own ways of getting even, which are beyond human comprehension. The KPs, none-the-less, feel sorry for all those who are suffering in a smuch as they can easily understand what it means to lose one's home and hearth. . But KPs may not like to indulge in false and fake breast beating either. The wounds that were inflicted on them are still too fresh in their hearts and minds to permit them to relate, regret or even mourn, as they would normally do.
Not that they feel happy which they really can't over such a calamity of such huge proportions; but probably because they are too human to weep for those who celebrated their tragedy; who danced over the killings and the death of their kith and kin by damning them as traitors and informers; who did not let them even mourn their dead; they told them rather unabashedly that their dead deserved to die as they were informers and traitors to the holy cause of establishing Nizam-e-Mustafa, not to speak of denying even the decent last rites of their dead; instead warning and threatening them that they would meet the same fate too, if they did that and not even now letting them to freely visit their holy places like Amarnath and Kaunsar Nag.
KPs would be amply justified in being indifferent or at best feeling as much concerned about it as they should be about any such tragedy happening anywhere else say, in Syria or Somalia; for it is natural for them to recall when their so-called dear neighbour, their dear 'brother', their dear 'friend' for a long time, who no longer remained a neighbour, a brother or a friend; who, on the other hand, stuck stickers at their gates: Raliv, Tsaliv nata galiv (Convert or run away or be annihilated), and "Indian dogs go back" and such like stuff.
The KPs have been watching with amazement their legacy being methodically appropriated - or misappropriated to be more correct - by Islamising their religious places, cultural and religious icons; like Shankaracharya Hill being renamed as Kohi- Sulaiman, Kounsar Naag being renamed as Hauz-e-Kausar, Lala Ded being referred to as Lala Arifa, Arnimaal's name being removed from the list of famous Kashmiri poets just because some fundamentalist could not read the history of Kashmiri literature properly, to recall a few instances. What is worse for the KPs is that all this has a tacit approval of the State Government, which turns a blind eye to the literary works of KP litterateurs not being re-published even after the old stocks have been long sold out. But every Muslim poet's maqbara or grave is being converted into a memorial.
The KPs have forgiven their tormenters, who deprived them of their houses, lands, orchards, businesses, jobs and above all, their homeland and everything that they had accumulated over several generations.
That's why they don't celebrate the tragedy that has befallen their Muslim brethren. That's why KPs still welcome their Muslim brethren with open arms as if they were still the same neighbour, the same brother and the same friend which indeed they no longer are, because they have embraced Wahabhism imported Directly from Saudi Arabia via Deoband.
But forgiving is one thing and forgetting quite another. KPs are as much human as to forgive but not forget. Forget they never will, but forgiven they already have. May God help them and alleviate their suffering.
KPs still believe in and invoke the following universal prayer that they used to recite every morning before their gods, but were cruelly and forcibly prevented from offering in their centuries old shrines and temples they had been adoring all their lives generations after generations for the past five thousand years, much before even the advent of "Islam":
Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinaha
Sarve Santu Niramaya
Sarve Badrani Pashyantu
Maha Kaschid Dukha Bhag Baved
(Translation: Om. May all beings be happy; May existence provide for all of their needs; May everyone become realized in God)
The KPs know for sure that when the calamity shall be over and when flood waters would recede, their Muslim brethren will return to their homes, some of which were theirs not long ago and were either forcibly occupied or bought for peanuts; but the calamity that befell them over two and a half decades ago, which continues till now, will continue to haunt them; because they can never think of going back to their homes again. That's why they genuinely believe that their own calamity was more disastrous and devastating than that of their Muslim brethren.
The KPs are not surprised at the time-honoured attitude of the local government towards them, which has all along been hostile to say the least.
Tomorrow when they take over again, KPs experience says that their focus will be, as has always been the case, on KMs and KMs alone. In keeping with their past practice, the KPs will be ignored completely.
This is in spite of the fact that KMs there are flooded with funds and they do not need these at all. Still they will be fed with more. Notwithstanding that, several KP organisations are busy collecting funds in aid of their Muslim brethren knowing fully well that it would never be acknowledged.
Nature, unlike men, may be furious at times but certainly it is not ruthless, dubious devious or depraved. Nature may at best believe in the maxim: "As you sow, so shall you reap" or "If you sow wind, you shall reap whirl wind".
That's why the man-made calamities, which KPs suffered, are far worse and everlasting than those of nature, which their Muslim brethren are suffering now.
Still, in keeping with their noble ethos, the KPs still wish, may their calamity end very soon and may they soon be able to return to their homes. The KPs invoke another Vedic prayer that they have been singing every morning and every evening, for centuries for the well being of all:
Raja swaste praja swastedesha swaste tathaiva ca yajamana grihey swaste, swasti go brahmane shuca
(Translation: May the king be safe, May the people be safe, May the host's house be safe, And likewise, may the priest also be safe)
And finally the KPs are ever reminded of the celebrated British Artist Author, Educator and Journalist, Evelyn Waugh's feelings in saying, "To have been born in a world of beauty, to die amid ugliness is the common fate of all us exiles."
And lastly, this prayer, "May that Dharma which KPs have been practicing so assiduously and steadfastly and the Kashmiri Muslims mocking at so callously, and to protect which the KPs staked everything, protect them in turn during their exile."
The KPs Dharma enjoins upon them to believe in the theory propounded in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that associates karma to causality and is not at all at variance with the tenets of true Islam, in the name of which, Muslims, not only in Kashmir but the whole world over, commit all sorts of atrocities and crimes against humanity and God both.
The KPs wonder what fate their Muslim brethren will meet on the day of resurrection (Qayamat).
The karmic law is the idea that the beneficial or harmful effects one's actions, words and even thoghts occasion on the world will return to oneself. Colloquially this may be summed up as "what goes around comes around." May we all learn from these lines from the said Upanishad:
Now as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be;
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;
he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.
|
