IS KASHMIR STILL A PARADISE ON EARTH?

My world is not yet completely dead as I don’t know whether I should write an obituary or not.

Kashmir is cradled in the mountains of the Himalayas and considered as the Switzerland of South Asia. It has once been so beautiful that the Emperor Jehangir once exclaimed; “If there is paradise anywhere on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.”   But then, is it sagacious to call our valley a heaven now? It’s turned into a virtual hell.
My father repeatedly talks a lot to me about his childhood. He talks about a foot long icicle, about snowfall that ended for days together, about spring that would bloom into the buds of badam vaer, about long winters and hot summers. And then, I wonder what will we tell our children tomorrow?? About the choked up streams, about snowfall that never came on time, about lakes that are dead, about trees that were cut just because they blocked the view. Not only that we can surely tell them about the bloodshed, about how bombs were exploded, about how children were orphaned, women made widows and how starving people died…then ultimately I come to a conclusion  we the children of this age have nothing good to share with our future generations. We don’t have those nostalgic memories which our fathers and forefathers relish by sharing with us. Unfortunately we have nothing good to share with our posterity. And the fault is not ours. We were brought in the world of guns and bombs. We were brought in a world where a man peeped at us 24*7 from behind a sandbag bunker but I think I am too worried about the future because the rate  of destruction at which we are going there will be no tomorrow.
Kashmir was a paradise not only for the dwellers but also for the saints, Rishis and tourists. If you still go and ask a Bedouin in the deserts of Arabia what paradise looks like… his answer will most probably be the images of crystal clear sparkling waters, huge snow capped mountains, lush green fields…then think about it and you will realize that this image has a striking resemblance with the picture postcard image of pristine Kashmir. But we do not live in a post card. The Kashmir that’s on the post card is very different from the Kashmir we live in.
How is it that the land that was once the favorite retreat of tourists has suddenly become inhabitable for its own residents?  Let’s not think how Kashmir was or how is it now let’s think how Kashmir is now and how it can be and what it should be. Let us make Kashmir more beautiful than it ever was to the extent that the post card image of Kashmir looks inferior to real Kashmir. In spite of amassing the problems we need to come up with solutions. Friends, our fathers received a picture perfect heaven,  gave us an altered heaven and we are preparing hell for the future generation…  we have only one Kashmir and I don’t think it is worth a risk. Kashmir is on the edge today; tomorrow it will be off it if we do not discharge duty in an appropriate way. We cannot get back what we have lost but we can at least save what is left off.
Arundati Rai once wrote,” my world is dead; I write to mourn its passing”. But my world; my Kashmir is not dead yet but I wonder if I should start writing its obituary.

HOW AN AFGHAN MUSLIM CONQUERED AMERICA

The best-selling poet in America today could never have known that someday there would be such a thing as America. Born over eight centuries ago in what is now Afghanistan, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Sufi mystic, has traversed some rather astonishing cultural and temporal boundaries to become one of the most improbable leaders in American letters. A study of Rumi’s success, however, would not be complete without exploring the relationship between the poet and his most popular translator, Coleman Barks. On the spiritual and textual plane in which Rumi and Barks encounter one another, we find not a clash, but a fusion of civilizations, out of which has emerged a 13th-century Sufi devotee who is devastatingly fluent in postmodern American English.

 As throngs of Americans now worship Rumi for the way he worshipped Allah-at a time in which “Allah” has become a scary word in the “Western world”-the political significance of Barks’ accomplishment cannot be overstated. Barks, a white man from Tennessee, doesn’t speak or read a lick of Persian, and this fact both complicates and facilitates his ability to make a historically accurate Rumi accessible to mainstream America. A poet himself, Barks “re-Englishes” existing translations, releasing, in his own words, “the fire and ecstasy of Rumi’s ghazals” from the stale confines of their scholarly translations. But because Barks himself has become a palpable presence in these ghazals, some critics have lambasted him for the liberal manner in which he has popularized Rumi. In the eyes of his detractors, Barks has taken offensive liberties with his quote-unquote translations, disrobing Rumi from some of his more doctrinal attire, and transforming him into such an abstract sprite that any Western reader can easily exploit his icon to sanctify whatever carnal impulse they happen to be experiencing at the moment.

 Barks opens the door, critics object, to a la la land of no-rules Islam, a playground of exotic wisdom that conflates Sufism with Buddhism, with Taoism, with organic broccoli, with LSD. In Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, Franklin D. Lewis writes that Barks tends to “present Rumi as a guru rather calmly dispensing words of wisdom, capable of resolving, panacea-like, all our ontological ailments.” Other scholars note that ambiguous traces of sectarian intolerance and even misogyny can be unearthed by studying Rumi in a historical context, and, in their estimation, Barks glosses over historical context, preferring instead to engage Rumi in the less problematic realm of eternity. This is, in my opinion, quite harsh treatment of Mr. Barks, who has made tremendous progress in highlighting the shared values of cultures that have forgotten their shared history and humanity. In his defense, Barks has amassed a dedicated following in the Middle East, and despite accusations of cultural insensitivity, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Tehran for his success in making Rumi a hit in places across the United States where many feared that Barack Obama might be a secret Arab-Muslim. What strikes me most about the criticisms against Barks is that they generally accuse him of giving Rumi too friendly of a face-making him too universal, too endearing, too accessible to Americans. It is here that my praise for Barks flows in exactly the opposite direction of the criticism he has attracted. Although Barks may have had to escort Rumi through Ellis Island to import him to the United States, he has shown that one can Americanize an “other” without bastardizing him.

 The task of a translator working across vast expanses of time and space is not easy, and what Barks has done is beautifully-indeed, wondrously-rendered Rumi into an English that pierces through the souls of millions of Westerners, yet still remains reverently (if only relatively) faithful to the original Persian.Poetically, this is significant. But politically, it is momentous. Although something may have been lost in his “translations,” something more priceless has been found: in this American Rumi we have acquired a dazzlingly cogent ambassador of a slandered religion, and a most unlikely cultural bridge that could not have come at a better time. Step outside the library for a moment, and consider the circumstances on the ground.

 The United States is fighting a war in Afghanistan, the birthplace of Rumi. We’re fighting a war, of sorts, in Iraq, the birthplace of Sufism. We have been for some time now teetering on the brink of disaster with Iran, formerly known as Persia, and amid all of this, who rises to become America’s most beloved poet? Walt Whitman? Robert Frost? No, a Persian Sufi whirling dervish from Afghanistan who preached of unconditional compassion and sang of the glories of abandoning oneself entirely in the annihilating light of Allah. There is powerful communal capital packed inside this peculiar factoid that could reverberate well beyond the poetry of Rumi. We should not let the organic cultural matter responsible for this transcontinental connection go to waste.Muslims are mistranslated everywhere To further dramatize the political import of an accessible Rumi, I’d like to juxtapose Barks’ vaguely positive misrepresentation alongside another Persian-to-English translation controversy. In 2005, President Ahmadinejad made the following remark: “بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود” Whatever this truly “means” in English, the phrase was translated into “Israel must be wiped off the map,” and the threat was swiftly relayed across frenzied media wires around the world. Because “wiped off the map” is tough-guy Hollywood slang without even a distant relative in Persian, other translators tried to intervene, offering up some variation of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole’s interpretation, “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must (vanish from) the page of time.”

 This alternate version reveals that Ahmadinejad, who has no authority whatsoever over Iran’s military forces, may not have been directly threatening the people of Israel, but alluding to a passive wish for the collapse of the Israeli government. This distinction is critical. “Wiped off the map,” however, has a deliciously genocidal ring to it, and it was quickly seized upon by warmongers in order to bolster their case for dropping B61 nuclear bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

 Islamophobia has now become a socially acceptable subcategory of anti-Semitism. This is what we’re up against. This is the climate of propaganda and militarism to which responsible cultural and literary criticism must be sensitive. In light of the relentless media assault designed to utterly disfigure the image of Islam in the eyes of the entire Western world, Barks’ ostensible efforts to put a brighter smile on Rumi’s face is one transgression I can learn to live with. Scholars may bicker-syllable by syllable-over the precise ownership of Rumi’s odes, but this battle is bigger than stanzas. Muslims are mistranslated everywhere, egregiously so-not just their poetry, but their faces, their character, their humanity. Before deconstructing Barks to bits, consider the political ramifications of the poetic license assumed in the “wiped off the map” scandal: an entire country was reduced to a second-class leader who was reduced to a caricature who became a manifest casus belli. This is the same process of mistranslating a Middle Eastern country, recall, that led us into Iraq, and this reductive demonology is both representative and routine.

 Islamophobia has now become a socially acceptable subcategory of anti-Semitism. Fundamentalist and terrorist have become not fringe, but mainstream definitions of what “Muslim” “means” in a frightened Western consciousness. Every day in the “news,” the 1.8 billion varieties of Islamic experience across the world are compressed into quick images of sinister creatures toting weapons, silhouetted by smoke and flame, ululating in alien tongues. Oh, Rumi, if you have indeed inspired an irrational love of Allah through the “translations” of Coleman Barks, is this not better than an irrational hatred of Islam inspired by the “translations” of a hallucinating media machine?let’s focus on joining Rumi in his realm of peace and unity I do wonder what Rumi would say about all this fuss over what his words meant so many years after his death. Perhaps he would find it ironic, given that he was concerned almost exclusively with the ineffable. It’s hard to say what Rumi would say, not only because he’s dead, but also because Rumi lost himself in translation a long time ago as he tried and, by his own ecstatic admission, failed to find words to convey the depth of his passion for God. In that sense, even he is an inadequate translator of himself, so perhaps he might cut Coleman Barks some slack. It is, after all, finding union in the silence between words that matters most to the mystic poet, finding connection and completion beyond the divisions of symbols. Rumi points us to this wordless world, where we stand, if only fleetingly, on common ground with one another, where we are not separate, and no word exists-in any language-to say that you are different from me.

 In 2009, in this new year, as America struggles to find its heart and once again extend it to others, as we tear ourselves apart with metal and language, let’s focus on joining Rumi in his realm of peace and unity, and not worry so much over what letters ultimately lead us there.

MUSLIM WORLD NEEDS AN EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION,A RENAISSANCE OF IT’S OWN!!

The greater world around. Muslims had become a closed book. What is more they had no wish to open the book and read. They had long ceased to follow the Prophet’s injunctions to “seek knowledge even as far as China”. Islam was afflicted with intellectual rigor mortis.
(Walker Benjamin. Foundations of Islam. The making of a world)

Indeed the above quoted lines reflect the reasons for the miserable plight ever since Muslims have sucked themselves in the intellectual stagnation and spiritual degeneration. Barren minds are never productive. They are breeding grounds of ignorance and backwardness. Creative thinking (Ijtiha’ad) is a continuous process. Not confined to a particular era and space. Once you block its doors, you plunge in scholasticism which D’ Alembert called the so–called science of the centuries of ignorance.
          It is ironic – painful too – that the West asks us to follow the Prophet’s (SAW) injunctions to seek knowledge.  For the last three hundred years Muslim world (not Islam) have, yes, got afflicted with intellectual rigor morits. That speaks why have we been so deficient in producing scientists and philosophers. Even now when we have emerged as ‘free nations’ on the globe and command immense resources. We lag far behind the West in science and technology.
          Open the Holy Quran. You will be fascinated to see that all most one–ninth of the verses of the divine book stress upon “tafakur”, “tadabur” and “taakul”. That is Quran provokes a Muslim to study universe and find answers to why, how and what, he is baffled with. Islam rejects the static view of the universe and regards it as always changing and revolving. By saying Kula Yavmin huva fee Shaan (every day has its own glory). Quran encourages a Muslim to understand the change that is recurring and perpetual. This change is one of the greatest signs of God.
          Maurice Buccaie, the author of Quran Bible and Science admits that where there is a contradiction between Science and Bible, there is no contradiction between science and Quran. Quran and science are compatible. Here exploring domain is not barred with any dogmatic barrier. Nor propounding that ‘earth is round’ will make any Newton or Copernicus guilty of committing ‘heresy’. Islam does not know Inquisition Courts for unfolding mysteries of nature.
          But that was when Muslim world was at the zenith of its history and held the reins of leadership. The moment we lulled in lap of ignorance and got obsessed with sectarianism and factionalism and dissipated our energy on trivial matters and closed the doors of Ijtihad, we pushed ourselves on the precipice of decline. We lost everything – land, honor, sovereignty and leadership. Knowledge is the key to success, empowerment and dominance. That is why we were asked to make an odyssey even to a far off place like China in pursuit of knowledge. What knowledge? The knowledge the China at that time was the seat of and famous for. Attached to religious Islamic moorings the followers were directed to do forays in the world of matter too. Islam emphasizes a Muslim not to feel shy of picking up jewels of wisdom from any where he lays his hands on, as science (wisdom) is the ‘last treasure of a Muslim’.
 Renaissance paved way for modern science to rid West out of Dark Age. Muslim world, in this context, needs Renaissance of its own to enable it compete with the fast changing world. And first step for this is to usher in scientific technological revolution. Spending more funds on Science – oriented education and stressing on the intelligent grasp of the contents rather than believing in age old practice of mugging of theories and formulas.
          We have to remember that science needs an intellectual environment, free of obscurantism, dogmatism and intolerance. It demands nothing but complete isolation. Its own world. An institution that spins on creative thinking, with no fetters, no edicts. That makes not any Abdus Salam alien in his own country, or any Qadeer Khan imprisoned or humiliated before a military ruler. Science flourishes in a place where being genius is not a ‘sin’ but an honor.
          But how poorly impoverished we are in this field that plays a dominant role in shaping the future of the world and which is the cornerstone of success and progress.
          As Islam exhorted Muslims to seek knowledge, the early generations from Islamic world produced knowledge and wealth, that enabled the Muslim empires to hold their writ on larger part of the world. But now what we are left with is the dismal situation. ‘Almost half the world’s Muslim population is illiterate and the combined GDP of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) hovers near the GDP of the France alone. More books are translated every year from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the past century. Fifteen million Greeks buy more books every year than almost 300 million Arabs. In the year 2000, according to World Bank, the average income in the advanced countries (at purchasing price parity) was $ 27,450 with the US income averaging $ 34,260. Israel’s income per head stood at $ 19, 320 in 2000. The average income of the Muslim World, however, stood at $ 3, 700. The per capita income on PPP basis in 2003 of the only nuclear-armed Muslim majority country, Pakistan, was a meager $ 2, 060. Excluding the oil exporting countries, none of the Muslim countries of the world had per head incomes above the world average of $ 7, 350. (The News October, 2006)
The League of Arabs States has 22 members, with 330 million Muslim men, women and children living under the traditional monarchies or authoritarian regimes. Against this “League of Dictators”, Israel-a Zionist state-is the only parliamentary democracy in the region. The World Bank report on Arab Development says that ‘Israel spends $110 on scientific research per year per person, while the same figure for Arab world is $2.’ Another report shows great strides Israel made in higher education and technology. ‘The state of Israel now has six universities ranked as among the best on the face of the planet. Hebrew University Jerusalem is in the top-100. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University and Weitzman Institute of Science is in the top-200. Bar Ilan University and Ben Gurion University are in the top-300. The Arab League does not have a single university in the top-400’.
          Israel has more engineers and scientists per capita than any other country. ‘For every 10, 000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or scientists. Israel ranks among the top-7 countries world wide for patents per capita. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Israel’s is pharmaceutical giant, is the world’s largest producer of the antibiotics ………..Israel produces more scientific paper per capita than any other country (109 per 10,000 Israelis); the Arab world next to nothing.  Six million Israelis buy 12 million books every year making them one of the highest consumers of books in the world.’ (The News: 21 December 2006)
          There are 57 Muslim countries in the world gifted with precious resources, yet they have only 500 universities and none of these universities rank in the top-500 Universities in the world. In Christian nations, 40% of the population attend universities but in Muslim countries only 2% make it to the universities.
          Jews constitute 14 million of the worlds population. But their research-oriented intellect have given to world 180 Nobel Prize Winners. Against this 105 billion Muslims have produced just three Noble Prize Winners__ Dr. Abdus Salam being the first Pakistani and First Muslim who got this covetous prize in physics in 1979. Apart from excelling in science and technology and other fields, many of the multinational and transnational companies are owned or managed by the Jews. They dominate print and electronic media also.                                    
          Tail Piece: ‘National Pride’, as Hussein Haqani rightly remarks, ‘in Muslim world is derived not from economic productivity, technological innovation or intellectual output but from the rhetoric of destroying the enemy and making the nation invulnerable’. Raising clinched fists in air won’t scare anyone. It will invite sniggers and humiliations only. Our past is glorified, so what? We live in present. Graves don’t open for Renaissance. Nor for swords of Sallahudin Ayubees. The root to our success, mind it, goes through scientific knowledge and upright integrity. Ignorance and backwardness kill nations or make them just minnows. Imam Ali Ibne Taleb delivered a warning nearly 1500 years before: ‘If God were to humiliate a human being, he would deny him knowledge’.

RESTORE SOVEREIGNTY IN KASHMIR,ENSURE PEACE

Kashmir is a lingering international dispute, Basically a simple political issue involving the future of people of Kashmir, who have to decide its course through a promised plebiscite. But the chauvinism of the Indian rulers rendered this dispute complicated and confounded it. 
Kashmir, which is having 5000 year old history, lost its sovereignty at the hands of Mughals on 1585 A.D. Thereafter Mughals came Afghans, then Sikhs, then Dogras and then afterwards claiming itself as world’s largest democracy, laid her hands on this through fraud, foul play, treachery and using military interference. The real trouble began when on June 4, 1947 Lord Mountbatten brought the plan for partition of India called Indian Partition act 1947. According to this act, area comprising of Muslim majority will constitute a new country Pakistan and rest of the areas having non-Muslim majority will remain as India. But this act was applicable only for British India, not for princely states which were near about 564, and were under indirect control of British. These 564 states were given choice either to choose to remain Independent or join any one of the two dominions in keeping two things under consideration. First, majority of subjects, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, and second, continuity of their states borders. 
As for as Kashmir is concerned, it was a princely state with 85% Muslim population and its border has continuity more with Pakistan than with India. So there were only two options before Maharaja of Kashmir: either he should have declared Independence or announced accession with Pakistan. The laws relating to partition were never honored sincerely. India used its force and captured Hyderabad and later invaded Junagarh on the pretext of being Hindu majority area and violated the same by invading Kashmir. The state of Kapurthala had Muslim majority but the non-Muslim ruler, which with the help of hindu mahasabha, succeeded in eliminating his Muslim subjects, and same was repeated in Alwar and Bharat Pur. These tactics were also used in Jammu province, where 5 lakh Muslims were butchered and lakhs were forced to flee mostly during November 4th, 5th, and 6th to turn it into a Muslim minority area. 
Thereafter this dispute went to U.N, which passed resolutions declaring it a disputed territory whose future is to be decided by its people through a referendum to which both India and Pakistan agreed. The beauty of Kashmir and its picturesque and breath taking serenity always lured many Mughals, Afghans and Sikh governors to think of declaring themselves as independent of their masters. Akbars subedar Mirza Yadgar, Raja Sulkhjiwan and Amar Khan, two protégés of Ahmad shah Abdali, Sheikh Gh. Muhammad governor under the Sikhs toyed with the idea of Independent Kashmir.  Even Maharaja Hari Singh personally desired of Independent Kashmir. Chaudhary Hamidullah Khan (then acting president of Muslim Conference) also urged Maharaja to declare Independence and assured him cooperation in this regard. In May 1953, Adali Stevenson met Sheikh Abdullah in Srinagar and on the same year on 13th July during martyr’s day speech, he said “the Kashmir position was such that it should have the sympathy of both India and Pakistan- it is not necessary that our state should become an appendage of either India or Pakistan”.  After the failure of operation Gibraltar and Indo-Pak war of 1965, many Kashmiri stalwarts like K..H. Khursheed and Shaheed Maqbool Bhat started to think of Independent option in practical terms as an only viable solution possible. Moreover India and Pakistani leaders have time and again made commitments to Kashmiris regarding their Independence.
Recently former Finance Minister Tariq Qarra had laid proposal of Kashmir having its own currency, which it was enjoying before 1947 but due to unknown reasons it was shelved. May be due to the reasons that it didn’t suit those who matter at the higher echelons of power. Kashmir having its own currency has the potential of being a sovereign state. Though due to recent Mumbai attacks the fragile peace process has received a jolt mainly due to jingoism and belligerence of India, but the main cause and core dispute of Kashmir can’t be put on backburner forever as its nature wouldn’t allow both countries to do so. So it is better for India’s own security and progress to shun obduracy and intransigence and come to negotiation table with open heart and mind. Both India and Pakistan are nuclear states, so they can’t afford war. Therefore the best for them and for entire South Asia would be the restoration of national sovereignty to the people of Kashmir.

COURTESY-GREATER KASHMIR NEWS PAPER