Srinagar, Four Years Later

All the calendars in our home in Srinagar stood frozen at October 1999, which isthe last month my parents lived in their house there. We feared great damage in the intervening years, butwere relieved to find only enormous volumes of dust, and the detritus of pigeons nesting in the attic and thebalcony, encouraged by the easy access provided by broken window-panes. As we cleaned — the hard work beingdone by two neighbourhood caretakers called Abdul Gaffar and Raghunath — it was tempting to think of therestoration of this home as a metaphor for a restored Srinagar, and a Kashmir, and a return to amulti-religious, syncretic culture.

That restoration, however, is going to be much harder, and even perhapsimpossible, to achieve. The brutal history of the past fourteen years cannot be wished away, and a peopleground down under the military might of the state and the violence of well-armed militants, cannot but wonderat what might have been, or indeed what the future might hold. But there are other important reasons why thestate of siege in the valley will not be lifted soon: too many people have enriched themselves in the lastdecade, and they know exactly what they will lose if the conflict in Kashmir de-escalates.

Stories are rife of the wealth accrued by the leaders of each political faction(and there are many). Similar stories circulate about bureaucrats, officers of army units and of eachparamilitary force (these too are multiple, and their acronyms — BSF, CRPF, SSB, JKP, RR, STF — havebecome the new idiom of Kashmiri). People talk at length of the money that has circulated in the valley viaeach of these groups and their counterparts in Pakistan, and of how much the politico-military elite on bothsides of the border has benefited from the state of affairs in Kashmir.

Money to be made is arguably the most powerful local vested interest, but thereis also the heady power of this elite bull-dozing its way in elaborate convoys past locals who have learnt tostep aside or be assaulted. Recently, the local papers described a woman professor whose car failed to giveway quickly enough being dragged out by her hair and beaten. When officers or their families go shopping onResidency Road or Lambert Lane, trucks of soldiers deploy on either side, all in addition to the forcespermanently on patrol there. Local Kashmiris have learned to ignore such activities as the antics of apowerful elite, but for the likes of us visiting Kashmiris, every day offered ugly instances of the ways of asuperior occupying force.

The boulevard that fringes the Dal Lake is alive with people, but no one cantake free passage for granted, for at a moment’s notice the road is blocked and civilians must detour.Perhaps most egregious of all is the fact that local, non-upper class Kashmiris are turned away from thesprings at Chashmashahi, while outsiders are granted access.

Nowhere is the remaking of an older Kashmir into the soulless forms of a modernIndia more visible than in the paramilitary take-over (which can also of course be styled the"preservation") of the old Hindu shrines of Kashmir. Kheer Bhawani (Tulla Mulla) and the Shankaracharyatemple that overlook Srinagar have lost whatever ancient sanctity they once possessed. They are now armedcamps, festooned with the bright colours and signboards so beloved of military officers. Commanding officersof units stationed at these sites have turned them into advertisements for themselves — now you can only getto the Devi via CRPF yellow and red, and by walking past large tin placards that rewrite Kashmiri belief intothe vocabulary of a more "mainstream" Hinduism. When we visited, bhajans that blare from jagransin Delhi were playing loudly — only the wonderful old chinars suggested all that was once distinctivelyKashmiri about Tulla Mulla.

A Ram Mandir is being built at the site of the ancient sun temple at Martand (Mattan).This is not simply an addition to what is already there — it is a deliberate refashioning of Kashmiri Hinduworship to obey the dictates of Hindutva practice. But worst of all are the excessive displays put onostensibly for the benefit of the Amarnath yatris, but which actually function as a warning to localKashmiris: all along the route past Pahalgam, and to some extent on the Baltal route, banners and wall-sloganssponsored by the CRPF and the BSF (and occasionally, the Jammu and Kashmir police) welcome the yatris. Theseunits also make available tea and snacks, and announce them as prasad. There is no constitutionalseparation of temple and state to be found here — the yatris, and those who guard them, are equally, andaggressively, Hindu.

Most surprising for the visitor, however, is the great prosperity of Srinagar,where new homes are ever larger and the air impressively polluted by the thousands of cars and buses boughtrecently. Stores are stocked with the goods sold in the fancy shops of south Delhi. The handicrafts for whichKashmir has long been famous are plentiful, and the situation in the valley has meant that enterprisingdealers have developed outlets for them across the country. The electricity supply has improved considerably— there are power cuts, but they operate according to a schedule, and the voltage is no longer miserable.Outside Srinagar, however, it is a different story. Villagers talk of a time, twenty years ago, when they knewelectricity, and wish for doctors and teachers, who, like piped water, are a scarce resource.

But there is change in the air, and everywhere in the valley people arecelebrating their opportunity to travel to places that they have not dared to visit for years. An entiregeneration has been deprived of civic life and of the joys of Kashmir, and they are aware of this deprivation.Schoolchildren now flood Pahalgam and Gulmarg, and the Mughal Gardens are full of local visitors. No one knowshow long this lull will last, with the result that locals are moved by a near-hysterical urge to wander, topicnic, to talk of the future.

This is a moment of hope then, of young people wishing for a life different fromthat they have suffered so far, of conversations in which plans are made for a Kashmir in which ideas canflourish, the mind can be without fear, and the head can be held high. I invoke Tagore’s great nationalistpoem deliberately, for its aspirations — as true for Kashmiris as for Indians more generally — might wellbe those of a group of young college students and lecturers I met. They gather on Sundays to discuss a life ofideas outside of the machinations of international politics, paramilitary strategies, and theself-aggrandizement of those who rule Kashmir. Their hope, like Tagore’s, is to build a heaven of freedominto which Kashmir, and India, might one day awake.

Suvir Kaul is professor of English, University of Pennsylvania. This article firstappeared in The Telegraph, Kolkata.