Kashmir: Paradise called Dispute

This book is about Kashmir. Not Kashmir, the ‘paradise on earth’. But Kashmir which, over the past five decades, has earned many new, but unsavoury, sobriquets for itself, like, Conflict, Dispute, Strife, Problem, Tangle, Issue, Discord, Imbroglio, questions, and Bone of Contention. Today mere mention of Kashmir, anywhere in the world, brings up in one’s mind the images of terrorism, violence, blasts, suicide attacks, massacres of innocent people, armed confrontation and unending tension between two neighbouring countries. This book is not about Kashmiris whose creed, once upon a time, was learning, peace non-violence and tolerance; who sang songs of love as they toiled in rice fields; who danced to the music of mountain streams, and who wrote great works of philosophy, literature, poetry and spiritualism, sitting under the shade of Chinars on the banks of rivers and rivulets. This book is about Kashmiris of today whose political circumstances over the past half a century and more have driven them into a mindset of uncertainty, ambiguity and ambivalence. It is this mindset which nor largely determines and influences their political and social behaviour. Many kashmiris, especially their self-styled leaders, have thrived in this phenomenon, as has been amply established during the past fifteen years or so. This book is about those kashmiris who firmly believed that they were true, loyal, patriotic and law-abiding citizens of the country, of which their small state, their land of birth, is a part. But they had to pay a heavy price for this. They were hounded out of their land of ancestors, their home and hearth, and they now live in diaspora, scattered all over the country, in the fond hope that one day they will be back in their homes in Kashmir. Here in these pages, are also some true and touching episodes of bonds between Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims, which, fortunately, have not yet died down fully. This is true, despite the immense and almost irreparable damage done by the rise of fundamentalist militancy to these centuries old relationships. The book contains portrayals of some distinguished Kashmiris whose laudable contributions in different fields have not been suitably recognized and acknowledged.