I am still too stunned to speak of the violence, the reprisal, the counters and encounters that pause but don’t stop.
Too Sikh to take sides
Too diasporic to have a stake
Of the land but not of the binaries…
Hindu-Muslim, Kashmiri-Dogra, For or Against, Secular or Nationalist.
I’m told that Kashmiriyat is officially Dead.
That it was a political invention anyway.
I also hear that it was real in the Sufi music schools,
In the composite culture of phirans, festivals, folklore.
Not without schisms
Not live side-by-side and trot-out-your-culture on Harmony Day.
But syncretic
And alive.
And sometimes revived.
I haven’t been back since I was a teenager
So how can I transcend this hearsay?
Yet I know it was alive where I went to school in Jammu
And alive on the street I grew up in Which still houses an Idgah, a Catholic school, and the headquarters on the National Conference party
While being metres away from Raghunath Mandir.
This wasn’t mere coexistence or tolerance.
There was reciprocity, respect and witnessing.
The lived reality that makes me crave for a deeper multiculturalism where I am today.
Kashmiriyat is alive in the memories of those who lived through it
In the hearts those who still believe in it
And in the minds of those like me who grew up with its residues and its ashes.
I don’t know what governments and non-state actors in the region are capable of.
I know only that the region has done better.
I recall times when explosions were seen as divisive.
I remember people not taking the bait and turning on their neighbours.
It later dawned on me that resentments were harboured and unleashed when encouraged to come out en masse behind screens.
And I still held on to hope that this was a mere pause.
Because a fragile peace is perhaps better than a cold peace.
And Kashmiriyat Now will mean new things and new ways and new memes.
