Kashmir has a well established literary tradition of its own. It is also very well known that

linguistic and non-linguistic influences. With its contemporary English writers coming up

on the literary horizon, one can say, Kashmir’s literary expression is undergoing a gradual

linguistic shift from Kashmiri to English which is precisely the theme that this particular

paper endeavours to explore but not without looking at the various phases of the broader

Kashmiri literary tradition. It will also look at how the contemporary literary culture of

Kashmir is being influenced by the specific historical contingencies that it is beset with

from the last three decades.

Keywords:- Kashmir, Kashmiri Literature, Kashmiri Poetry, Mysticism, Tradition, Culture,

Conflict.

Rishi. In its essence, Kashmiriyat was characterized by

an emphasis on the universal values of pluralism and

tolerance. Scholars have often alluded to the

“sufi/mystic tradition in Kashmiri poetry” as a case in

point of “exemplary tolerance between different sects

professing various religions’’ (Dhar 44). The personality

of Lala Arifa, or, Lal Ded, or, Lalleshwari, as she is

Then do not distinguish between a Hindu and

Muslim.

If thou art wise, know thyself

That is true knowledge of the Lord.

I gave up falsehood, deceit, untruth,

I saw the one in all fellow beings, and

Preached the same doctrine to the mind.

Lal Ded’s tradition was carried forward by a

tradition of mystics or sufis through successive

centuries. These sages or mystics or sufis are revered

by all Kashmiris regardless of their religious belongings.

Sheikhul Aalam, or, Sheikh Nooruddin, or, Nund Reshi

(b. 1378), is regarded as Lal Ded’s spiritual heir. His

personality, revered by both Pandits and Muslims in

equal measure, is another vital figure indispensable to

the connotation of Kashmiriyat. He took the universal

ideas of Lal Ded to the realm of perfection. Following

The eminent Kashmiri-American poet Agha

Shahid Ali acknowledges this fact in his poem “I Dream

I am the only Passenger on Flight 423 to Srinagar”:

She blessed her true heir: Sheikh Nooruddin

He still speaks through five centuries of poets

(TCWAP 19)

Following Lal Ded and Sheikhul Aalam, the sufi

mystic tradition of poetry was carried forward by

numerous poets like Rupa Bhawani, Arnimal, Ghani

Kashmiri (who mainly wrote in Persian), Rahim Sahab,

typical mutability, each and every condition

appropriately gets altered. Remaining oblivious to

one’s real historical conditions and taking sojourn into

escapist terrains has a potential of creating self-

indulging quietism. As the mainstream literary

historiography counts, much of the Kashmiri literature,

circumstances. The concept of Kashmiriyat itself has

under gone a great historical shift. Like other

conceptions of identity, it is not static as our history has

proved. As Chitralekha Zutshi states in her book

on a host of factors, including state and economic

structures, political culture, and the religious milieu at

particular historical moments.” (55) Agha Shahid’s

poem “Farewell”, which he refers to as a “plaintive love

letter from a Kashmiri Muslim to a Kashmiri Pandit”,

movingly alludes to this tragic aspect of the rupture in

the Kashmiri identity:

At a certain point I lost track of you.

You needed me. You needed to perfect me:

In your absence you polished me into the

Lalita Pandit, another Kashmiri-American

academician and poet, reveals this aspect in her poem

“Anantnag” in these lines:

What of that? Now you are

a stranger, an enemy. (38-39)

Children stare with

suspicion. They have learnt

to hate; they are afraid.

Hollow eyed ghosts

walk the streets. (45-49)

and conditions for the artists and poets. In the

mainstream Kashmiri literary tradition, Ghulam Ahmad

Mahjoor, who wrote in more than one language, is

noteworthy for giving a fresh impetus to Kashmiri

poetry by his attempt to “free Kashmiri literature from

the period of time achieved the standing of a

celebrated revolutionary anthem:

Winds and thunderclaps

movement against the oppressive Dogra regime in the

Kashmir of 1940s. Mahjoor outlines this pluralistic

appeal in his poetry as he says:

Mosques, temples, churches, hospices, and holy

To enter these many houses I will build but one

door way

Literary giants like Abdul Ahad Azad and Dina

Nath Nadim followed Mahjoor in the progressive

tradition. They played a significant role in synchronizing

the Kashmiri poetic tradition with the contemporary

times. The revolutionary zeal combined with excellent

creative skills is a hallmark of their poetry which

transformed the Kashmiri poetic tradition. As Azad

writes in his poem “The River”:

Kashmiri poet who has created enormous poetic

treasures like “Siyah Roode Jaren Manz” (In Black

Showers) and other collections. He seems unmatched

in his poetic greatness in the contemporary era of

Kashmiri poetry. Initially, Rahi was strongly influenced

by the Progressive movement and the revolutionary

leanings. He commemorates the suffering of the

peasants and workers by writing “Dried up the streams,

they died by drowning”, but yet his poetry transcends

any narrow bracketing as it engages with the multitude

Disease describes the adverse psychological disorders

Kashmiris faced or are facing because of the conflict. It

reminds of Frantz Fanon’s well known work on the

subject of psychological consequences of colonialism or

militarization The Wretched of the Earth. It is

After its initiation into the tragic phase of 1990s

with the beginning of the armed conflict, the

heavens, Kashmir is burning

We implore someone send a plea to the deaf

gods, Kashmir is burning

Chandrakanta is a contemporary author from

Kashmir who writes mainly in Hindi. Her novel Ailan

Gali Abhi Zinda Hai (Street in Srinagar) wherein the pre-

conflict phase characterized by relative harmony and

peace and the post 1990 phase characterized by

violence and disintegrated social order is portrayed

through the metaphorical description of a congested

realities of the conflict. These writings often betray

their own arguments by their indulgence in

propagandist and rhetorical posturing. However, with

the emergence of many indigenous voices now,

break from the previous narratives. In truly bringing

Kashmiri literary tradition on to the international scene,

the eminent poet Agha Shahid Ali could be seen as one

such example. He was certainly one of the first true

voices from Kashmir who produced fine poetry in

Solitude, and Nitasha Kaul’s Residue, to mention a few.

Memoirs like Sudha Koul’s The Tiger Ladies and

Basharat Peer’s The Curfewed Night is another literary

feat. Poets like Subhash Kak, Lalita Pandit and

Mohammad Zahid are also being increasingly

recognized in the literary circles. All these writers

mainly write in English as they yearn for a global

audience to hear and read the narrations which tell the

stories of their experience of a very complex lived

reality. In many ways, these writings indicate the

beginning of the phase of Kashmiri English writing

tradition.

It has to be said that the contemporary Kashmiri

English writing seems to have been more significantly

reality wherein a literary culture is born and bred

among certain specific historical and material

conditions—conflict and violence in this case. Besides

these poets and writers, many other young people are

taking to different artistic expression like poetry, music,

painting and graphic arts to express their profound

angst at the existing conditions of the conflict. In

significant ways, these writings provide witness to

many profound issues like identity, justice, struggle,

and oppression which are usually absent in the

counter the view of the “other” hegemonic discourses

that neglect very basic and yet very important facets of

Kashmir’s reality and experience.

In their own ways, the new generation of

Kashmiri writers reflects on the situation of the Kashmir

following words:

Kashmir conflict, thereby drawing attention to a long-

neglected human story. In doing so, these writings

represent a stream of writing which has grown out of

the realities of armed struggle and conflict. Though the

texts, under mention, grow out of a specific and critical

historical reality, they convey a multiplicity of versions

and facets that armed conflict in Kashmir has

stimulated. This cannot be categorized as merely a

“literature of protest” or “literature of propaganda” as

some self-assuming critics would lead us to believe. The

time play a very significant role. Finally, these works

the memory becomes the new metaphorical ingredient

of this type of literature. Out of its specific set of

circumstances, it tries to develop a new aesthetic out

of the elements of a lost joy and the current moments

of suffering. For instance, in his poem “Exile”, Subhash

my town a sudden perfume escaping from a

window halts my steps and I am transported to

my childhood years. (1-8)

that offer new trajectories of reality. This is happening

because history is seen as an ongoing cultural process

characterised by a constant flux, and literature is

considered a reservoir of nuanced reflections on these

fluctuations. Georg Lukacs, in The Historical Novel,

visualizes the progress of humanity as “a historical

process” and asserts that “a true historical novel” is one

which comes into its own “by virtue of artistically

portraying the rising awareness of man’s location in

time … [is] conditioned by social and economic

Instead, he looks beyond facts to the spirit underlying

those facts. This, however, in no way alters either the

10). This lends credence to the fact that an event,

which might have a mere statistical importance for a

historian or a journalist, could reveal many underlying

angles of perception when presented in a work of

fiction. To put it simply, what the historian finds

According to Barbara Harlow, the writers [in such

contexts as Kashmir] consider it necessary to wrest that

expropriated historicity back, reappropriate it for

themselves in order to reconstruct a new world-

historical order (Harlow 50). The aforementioned

Kashmiri literary narratives can be seen as gripping

histories as well as forceful tales of the human

predicament in locales marked by violent conflict. In

almost all these expressions, personal narratives have

been unearthed, processed through the literary

imagination, and re-crafted as the literary expressions

of these writers. The creative imagination of these

Kashmiri writers who write mainly in English is able to

capture the different facets and perceptions of people

flowed along an even tenor. During the days of armed

militancy, peace departed, and honour and security of

life also took their leave. With their departure, a

besieged people learnt to live under the shadow of the

gun. The life and honour of people were at the mercy

of the gun-toting armed forces and the militants. The

sense of loss is especially made palpable through

human loss that is defined and depicted in terms of

killings, tortures, rapes, injuries, other forms of physical

coercion, and even a huge displacement of a certain

the armed militants and their supporters.

All this brings to the fore the crux of the matter,

that is, the issue of identity. In the context of the

situation in Kashmir, the concept of identity is

extremely crucial, complex and intriguing. Here,

bring to prominence the fact that it would be fallacious

to assume a homogenous conception of Kashmiri

identity. In all these narratives, the protagonists seem

to struggle for their identity at the individual level, but

they find that it has a close bearing upon the larger

collective identity. For centuries, Kashmiri culture was

defined by its plurality and scope for tolerant practices

of diverse faiths and ideas that wove people together

in harmony. This interfusion of distinctive practices of

belief led to the articulation of a new cultural identity

which came to be known as “Kashmiriyat”. Kashmiri

Muslims, despite being the majority, found themselves

at a disadvantageous position in contrast to the

minority Pandits. This was because of the

changed and Kashmiri Muslim aspirations aligned with

the appeal to the religious identity. To bring this out,

Siddhartha Gigoo, in his novel, alludes to the

“reinforcement of a new cultural identity” (36). Mirza

Waheed, in The Collaborator and The Book of Gold

Leaves, and Shahnaz Bashir in The Half Mother, also

recount the surge of people’s religious passions with

the onset of the armed movement. The new Kashmiri

identity is thus shown to recast itself in religious terms,

and this has put Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits at

unexpressed dimensions of the Kashmir conflict, all

these literary narratives under discussion here

delicately draw attention to a long-neglected human

story. In doing so, they represent a stream of writing

which has grown out of the realities of armed struggle

literature. And also, by offering a discontinuity from the

dominant discourses of India and Pakistan, the

narratives, it can be said, do reflect Salman Rushdie’s

view on how literature can contest the contorted truths

of power structures in the contemporary world:

It seems to me imperative that literature enter

such arguments, because what is being disputed

is nothing less than what the case, what is truth

is and what untruth. If writers leave the business

of making pictures of the world to politicians, it

will be one of history‘s great and most abject

abdications... there is a genuine need for

political fiction, for books that draw new and

better maps of reality, and make new languages

to give an outlet to the suppressed aspirations and

collective memories of violence and loss of home. In

their narratives, memory, identity and time play a very

significant role. Against their backdrop, the

aforementioned literary works and authors give an

indirect account of the oppression and violence, the

immeasurable pain of dislocation, and the agony and

human loss arising out of a situation in which society is

fragmented, home and homeland are lost, the

immeasurable consequences of conflict are delineated,

narrativisation. Their stories can also be seen as

testimonies documenting the horrific conditions

dictated by life in areas of conflict. In this respect,

literature can be said to approximate history as it

endeavours to re-draw the maps of reality and

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