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Differentiations and
Contradictions
By Prof. Mohan Lal Koul
"The guardians of the
shrines, living easily with marvels, said the
mosque had been built by Mohammad Bin Qasim who
had conquered Sindh in 710 A.D. & that the tree
was also from that time it would have been a
tree Mohammad Bin Qasim knew. The tree might not
have been as old as that; and the mosque was
certainly later. But the mosque had been given
the Mohammad Bin Qasim association to celebrate
the conquest-the faithful no longer saw
themselves as the conquered--also claim the
ancient site for the new faith."
‘Islam in its
origins is an Arab religion. Everyone not an
Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not
simply a matter of conscience or private belief.
It makes imperial demands. A convert's
world-view alters. His holy places are in Arab
lands, his sacred language is Arabic. His idea
of history alters. He rejects his own; he
becomes whether he likes it or not a part of the
Arab story. The convert has to turn away from
everything that is his."
- V.S.
Naipaul, a Nobel Prize
Laureate from
Prologue to Beyond Belief
Deeply embedded in the
rural ambience of Kashmir Nund Rishi, a first
generation convert of Rajput origins from
Kishtwar, can be characterised as the saviour of
peasant masses in the wake of their conversion
to the Islamic faith through ‘Qahran va
Jabran’ as history frankly told in the
Baharistan-i-Shahi, a Muslim chronicle in
Persian. Inspired by ‘old inheritance’ and
‘indigenous culture model’, he in a saint-like
humility placed himself in the uninterrupted
line of rishis thereby aligning himself
with the entire repertoire of rishi tradition
rooted in the vedic age. The Sayyid-sufis
as fugitives from Central Asia operating under
the protective shield of the Muslim state power
brought about the destruction and forcible
occupation of the hermitages (ashramas)
radiating the light of humanitarian
spirituality. As evidenced by the Neelmatpuran,
such hermitages set up within the locales of
secluded spots were littered over the entire
picturesque landscape of the Valley of Kashmir.
The present day ziarats or astans
(asthapans) of rishis were the same old
hermitages that were cruelly destructed and then
used for installation of graves or samadhis
of the rishis who in the apt and pithiful words
of Abul Fazl formed a specific cult within the
matrix of Hinduism. Islam in Kashmir was just
sixty year old when Nund Rishi emerged on the
scene to assert the native roots and ethos which
were under onslaught from the Central Asian
Sayyid-Sufis and Ulemas.
The whole lot of Sayyid-Sufis
and other theologians were wedded to mundane
politics and were fully conversant with the role
and importance of political power to weed out
infidelity as a pre-requisite to expand the
space for Islam. As an expression of their
religious culture they were extremely
uncharitable in condemning the natives as ‘kafirs’
and their religious practices and customs as
‘heretical’. Shariat (Islamic law and
precedent), to them, was the light-house and
Persian, their native language, was the
store-house of all knowledge. Having a deep
streak of hubris and arrogance in their personal
culture they openly spurned the natives of all
shades as ‘wretched people’ given to
polytheistic, animistic and other pagan
practices. As they had no smattering in the
local dialect they could not have close rapport
or inter-action with the natives with a view to
transforming their pagan behaviour for a new
baptisation. Yet they created a critical
situation for the natives through cynical
rejection of indigenous belief systems,
traditions and mythic lore without filling in
the empty space thus created by an alternate
culture model, which is the product of
generations of value accumulation. In view of
resistance from the sub-jugated natives they
made lot many compromises which despite their
orthodoxy could not be termed as truly Islamic
in content and spirit. Prayers as per the
Islamic way were not digested as spiritually
elevating and the Sayyid-Sufis and Ulemas meekly
gave in to allow the Hindu manner of
hymn-singing (kirtan) though with a
changed content of alien origins. Over-awed by
the sweep and vast range of indigenous social
codes and axiologies the Sayyid-Sufis in a steep
climb-down introduced Hanafi brand of
jurisprudence for the natives lest they should
slip out of the tenuous Islamic fold to their
birth religion which appeared to them more
liberal than the new imposition. Stuck to
orthodox religiosity they were the least
spiritual and their concepts and precepts about
spiritual goals and trajectories were dim,
feeble and blurred. Many an eminent sociologist
has termed conversions in Kashmir as anything
but spiritual for the converted lot, termed as
‘statistical Muslims’ never abandoned their
Buddhist-cum-Hindu practices, customs, attitudes
and value systems.
As a prescient
representative of native roots, ethos and milieu
Nund Rishi spear-headed a rishi cult, purely
spiritual in content and perception, to revive
and reinforce the ramparts of the indigenous
identity of natives who were completely
alienated from the foreign Sayid-Sufis and
Ulemas enjoying unprecedented favours and
patronage from the Muslim state that had negated
and rendered false the so-called e galitarian
content of Islam through pursuit of paradigms
that were iniquitous and crass cruel. Nund Rishi
was in the theologian by culture and
orientation. He called himself Nunda Sanz stands
testified by his shrukhs (slokas)
and also by the elegy written by Shyama, an
inmate of the khanqah, in the wake of his
death. Jonraj in his Rajtarangini names him as
Noor-ud-Din and that testifies to his having
been re-christened as Noor-ud-Din by the same
oppressive forces even though he had flimsy and
cosmetic Islamic bring-up. He provided
substantial cultural succour and support to a
large section of peasant masses through his
poetical outpourings that are suffused with
indigenous lore and learning, cultural moares
and motifs. Given to asceticism and
self-mortification he struck a note that evoked
a vibrant and spontaneous response from the
peasant plebians who were the recipients of
ascetical and introspective mind and temperament
as heritage from the Buddhists and Vedantins of
yore.
What can be gleaned from
historical and other literary sources is that
caste barriers in Kashmir were not the same
rigid and hide-bound as we find them in the
Smriti-Puranic belt. As an impact of the
Buddhist ideology and committed egalitarianism
the caste hierarchies had loosened, weakened and
nearly crumbled. The crippling conversions
unleashed by the Sayyid-Sufis with an active
support of the Muslim state had no social
significance in the sense of regeneration and
revitalisation. As a paradoxical social milieu
the amorphous ranks of Muslims, better termed as
‘statistical Muslims’, got vertically divided
into ‘ashraf’ and ‘ajlaf’, one
comprising high-brow and high-bred foreigners
from Central Asian lands and the other
comprising the mass of neo-converts, dubbed as
deviants, idolatrous and ‘wicked’. The Sayyids
as a distinct class of glory and grandeur
crowned the battered social pyramid for the
affinity they claimed to the Prophet’s family.
The mass of ‘cultural destitutes’, a phrase from
Nirad C. Choudhary, suffered a severe trauma
both psychological and social, as they had no
such lineage as could get them closer to the
people of foreign extraction. In utter
desperation some of them invented their new
genealogies which were rejected as absurd and
ludicrous by the superior brand of Muslims
treating them as ‘low as dust’, a phrase from
Srivar. Having realised the predicament of the
‘cultural destitutes’ floating in mid-air, more
Hindus, less Muslims, Nund Rishi assured them of
an equalitarian status in the rishi cult
with khanqah as its fulcrum. Be it said
that khanqah as an institution is a
variant of the Buddhist Vihara.
The foreign Sayyid-Sufis
were a breed entirely different from the
native stock of rishis. They were
vituperative hard-liners sticking to shariat and
at one stroke they polarised the broad waters of
Kashmiri society into lagoons of Hindus and
Muslims. Sufism by and large has supposedly been
associated at least in theory with love,
humility, philanthropy and more than most belief
in brotherhood of man. But the Central Asian
sufis who poured into Kashmir as persecuted
people sowed the seeds of hate and incoclasm and
invoked ‘divine sanctions’ and ‘quranic
tenets’ for eradication of infidelity and
infidels. They as it appears can be featured as
the direct recipients of the spirit of old
Israel. They preached and practised blatant
discrimination and hatred on grounds of race,
religion, and creed and harnessed the Muslim
state power for forcible conversions and
destruction of indigenous roots. The author of
the Zakhiratual-Muluk, a Kubrawi Sayyid-Sufi,
has drawn a catalogue of twenty conditions
for application to non-Muslims and prescribed
without any qualms loot and murder of hard nuts
daring to flout them. The Tohfatul-Ahbab, a
Muslim work in Persian, has delineated the
Sayyid-Sufis battened on beef and
enormous quantities of food waging war on the
natives who thwarted and resisted their
iconoclastic activities.
Islam, to the Sayyid-Sufis,
was imposition, infact, imposition at pain
of death. It had no humanistic facets which have
been the essence of Hindu faith facing
extermination at their hands. They conceived of
nothing but conversions and beyond that they
harboured no visions to re-orientate and
rejuvenate the society as a whole on the sound
foundation of equity, humanism and justice. They
were so narrow-minded that they could not see
all shades of humans emanating from the same
Divine Essence. The Central Asian Sayyid-Sufis
including the Khurasanian brand, no doubt,
carried the imprint of Buddhistic and Vedantic
influences. But, despite that, their views on ‘kufra’,
‘religious conversions’ and ‘treatment to be
meted out to men of other faiths’ were the same
hide-bound and fanatical. They were not only an
integral part of the unjust system established
by Muslims but also perpetuated it through their
scholastic tradition.
The native rishis
as models of ascelicism and quietism with no
interest in affairs mundane walked not in
harmony but in total discord with the foreign
Sayyid-Sufis out to spill blood in the
name of Islam. They were holymen of peace,
harmony, piety, non-violence and non-injury. The
assiduous cultivation of noble qualities as
already mentioned was a ‘value’ with them. They
were so much humanised that they saw life and
its vital pulsations in all manifestations of
natural life. Any injury inflicted on any form
of Divine manifestation was detested as sinful
and ignoble. Generation of debilitating
conflict, discord and disharmony was never their
mission. ‘Peace with all’ as a Buddhist value
was their hall-mark. The message of rishis
was to endeavour to tear away from meshes of
the world for attainment of a new uplifted
incarnation through emergence into and identity
with God. They shunned and detested the company
of greats like kings, nobles and glamarous
people in the corridors of power. They were
humble, calm and spiritually on higher perches
with contempt for material goods and material
well-being.
The Sayyid -Sufis
and Ulemas under the motivations of their
religio-political culture totally rejected the
spiritual goals of rishies and also the
methodologies that they adhered to for
attainment of the objective of their quest. The
native concepts of spirituality were beyond
their ken and experience. Deficient in sense and
spirit of enquiry they had no faculties to know
and learn about them even from theoretical
perspective. Cynical rejection was all that they
could conceive of. They spurned the rishis
as a class of recluses having no credibility
as per the Islamic tenets. The practice of
visiting the graves or samadhis of
rishis to implore for their intercession had
no sanction from Islamic authorities. So the
Sayyid-Sufis detested them as shirk, a
deviation from the real Islam. Rishis
detested meat-eating and lived on locally grown
specific greens. Many of them had given up even
the greens and lived just on water. To induce
them to meat-eating of all types termed as ‘halal’
hagiographers mostly of foreign origins have
figmented spiritual conferences to impress its
obligation under ‘Suna’ and ‘Shariat’.
Hari Rishi was denounced for breaking his
rigorous fasts with pebbles and stones. To the
Sayyid-Sufis Nund Rishi was illiterate
and ignorant having no knowledge of Islamic
scriptures. His going into lent (Chillas)
was a practice that was denounced totally as
un-Islamic. The rishis as a class had
gained popularity with the mass of devotees not
for their strict adherence to Hadith and Sharia
but for their asceticism, meditation and hard
living like the native ‘hatha-yogis’.
The Sayyid-sufis
of various orders (silsilas) failed to
present a cogently structured teleological view
of spirituality. Being poetical in their
approach and premise the exponents of such
orders (silsilas) stipulated varied
positions in regard to the essential issue of
ultimate destination of a seeker. The pull of
concordance and conformity with the fundamental
concerns of Islamic theology had the concomitant
outcome of stunting the sovereign growth of the
Sufi orders (silsilas) as
thought-models based on theoretical constructs
buttressed by lived praxes.
It is apt to state that
Sufism holistically could not achieve
recognition as a well-defined thought-system in
keeping with its original nuances and
motivations of heralding a thought-force in
conflict with the rigidities of Islamic law and
doctrine. Like the Kharigies (externalists), the
outbursts of numerous sufis under the
impact of neo-platonists and Buddhists and
Vedantins were ruthlessly suppressed by
denouncing them as rebellious and heretical,
thus stilling the voice of dissent and
difference.
The rebellious expression
of Bayazid that his banner was greater than that
of Mohammad and the stunning cry of Mansur that
he was God/Truth rendered all hues of sufis
suspect in the eyes of the dogma-ridden
Muslim world. They were sternly censured and
severely condemned. To the utter shock of
religious liberals Mansur was physically
eliminated after torture. The idea of 'fana' as
the telos of spiritual journey stunned the
hide-bound Muslim dogmatists as it devalued and
belittled the observance of ritual obligations.
Ibn-i-Arabi, was condemned as a heretic for his
'Wahadatul Wujud' formulation which not only
contradicted but also negated the Quranic
doctrine of 'tawhid' by confounding God
with world. Zikr (remembrance of God), borrowed
from the Hindus, was permitted as a tool for
spiritual orientation. But 'sama' (dance
and singing), equally popular with the Hindus,
was denounced as 'heretical'. The Sayyid-Sufis,
who came over to Kashmir carried with them
the legacy of a perennial conflict between
mysticism and theology and its rigours. Steeped
in orthodoxy, they, donning the robes of
sufis, made a cocktail of mysticism and
theology and presented it as an intolerant and
proselytizing faith and posited it against the
native religious-cum-spiritual expressions, not
only highly tolerant but also assimilative of
dissent and difference.
It is well-known that
love is the key motif of Sufism. In the
domain of Persian poetry love has found artistic
expressions and has been typified as a symbol to
intensify mystical love. Theoretically love has
not matured into an effective symbolism as to
resolve the perennial conflict between mysticism
and strait-Jacket of theology. The sufis
for fear of persecution weakly accepted the
Quranic dicta defining love and its parameters.
They showed no intellectual boldness and
spiritual independence which could have set them
apart from the theological rigours thereby
setting ablaze a trail of new development in the
domain of sufism as a mode of thought.
They could not establish a love-nexus with God
for mystical heights. The Quranic injunction
that God as the creator of man cannot have any
love-bond with the created clipped the wings of
their thought and spiritual conceptualisations.
They could not conceive of any meaning of love
other than that of obedience or submission.
In sharp contrast to the
semitic colour of love symbolism, the native
visualisation about love is spiritually
elevating and exhilirating. As a highly emotive
state of human psyche it exponentially upswings
a seeker to the condition of synthesisation as
one with God. Music, dance and hymn-singing in
ecstasy are recognised as pious accoutrements to
heighten love and its allied states with the
clear objective of attaining synergy with love
i.e. God.
Mira as a seeker of
love-nexus with Krishna, her destination of
love, ascends to the state of total absorbtion
into her love i.e. Krishna. In native parlance,
love and God are interchangeable. Love is God
and God is love. Unimpeded union with love is
bliss and separation from love is pains. Love
has spiritual contours and is suffused with
spiritual content. To be exact, love is defined
as spirituality incarnate. More than most, love
is pregnant with humanistic content and has
served as a source to renaissance stagnant
societies to achieve new dynamism and flowering.
As models of ossified
orthodoxy, the Central Asian Sayyid-sufis
were stunned to find the natives harbouring a
maze of beliefs strung together by love as an
elevating elixir potent enough to push a seeker
to the state of unity with God. Such a belief,
to them, was sheer heresy controverting the
Quranic position. That there is a yawning chasm
between man and God and God leaves the world to
its own fate after He creates it was what
chilled their philosophical and mystical
insight.
The Sayyid-sufis
when in Kashmir were completely dazed to find
the natives sticking to the concept of God as
transcendental and immanent too. Even after
crippling conversions the natives continued with
the cultural inheritance of Shiva as the creator
of cosmos. In manifestation mode He was Shakti
which at mass level was known as 'She', an
abbreviated form of Shakti. To dis-inherit them
from their cultural treasure as a precious
legacy the Sayyid-sufis devised a
plethora of measures to re-baptize them after
coercive conversions through Jazia (poll-tax)
and levers of state power including army.
Absolutely deficient in
arduous cultivation as inquisitive and enquiring
minds the Sayyid-sufis made not even
meagre efforts to have a casual peep into the
native mind and its creative expressions in
varied segments of human knowledge including
aesthetics. As representatives of a civilisation
that had long back frozen in time and place,
they as hard-core missionaries embarked upon an
insidious mission of ravaging, looting and
arsoning the architectural heritage of the
natives which they derisively called
idol-houses, where devotees (bakhtas)
prayed and sang in accompaniment with
indigenous musical instruments for value
enrichment and spiritual enhancement. Having
inherited legacy of boorish contempt for music,
dance and hymn-singing as spiritual components,
they as votaries of Shariat and Sunna carried
the burden of responsibility for the imposition
of barbaric ban on music, dance and hymn-singing
that the natives were wedded to. At the prodding
of a Sayyid-sufi of Kubrawi variety,
Sultan Sikandar, launched a genocidal onslaught
on the religious leitmotifs of the natives with
a view to stamping them out. Temples of
aesthetic and cultural import were brutally
levelled. It is shocking to recall that Sultan
Sikandar made use of gun-powder known as
hard-ware of war to shatter the Martand Temple
acclaimed as 'epitome of architecture', 'music
in stone' and 'gem of Indian architecture'.
Prior to the destruction of the temple he
deployed a team of sadists who cruelly hammered
its sculptural wealth of high artistic value and
merit to smithereens. Mir Ali Hamadani, a
Kubrawi sufi, said to be a Shia-Muslim by
faith, was the first to write the iconoclastic
chapter of Kashmir history. Baharistan-i-Shahi,
a Muslim chronicle in Persian, applauds him for
demolition of the Kali-shree temple, an icon of
native faith and religion, to raise a Muslim
prayer-place at the site. Mir Shams-ud-Din
Araki, again a Sayyid-sufi of Shia faith
was a highly motivated Vandal who fanatically
destroyed numerous temples throughout the
Valley.
As evidenced by Jonraj,
the author of second Rajtarangini, Sultan
Sikandar spared no effort worth the name to
erase all traces of indigenous knowledge and
learning as enshrined in books with the sole
purpose of cleansing the land of infidelity. As
a psychopath he added new chapters to the Muslim
history of burning books. The Hindu houses were
ransacked and looted and the treasure-trove thus
got was pitilessly burnt or consigned to rivers,
lakes and wells or buried down the earth.
Records Srivar -
'Sikandar burnt the
books the same way as fire burns hay. verse - 75
'All the scintillating
works faced destruction in the same manner that
lotus flowers face with the onset of frosty
winter'. verse - 77
'The erudites of that
period witnessing the enmass destruction of
books by Muslims fled their land with some books
through mountain routes'. - verse-76
With a view to
eradicating the well-entrenched spiritual
foundation of the natives the Sayyid-sufis
drawing tremendous support from the ruling
Muslim dispensation removed their sacred threads
as a mark of their initiation, forced them to
recite kalima, got them circumcised and
thrust lumps of beef into their mouths. As most
of their religious literature especially 'Yogavashisht'
and 'Bhagvat Puranum' was destroyed,
they were anguished to have hand-written copies
of the Quran which they could not read or recite
nor were there local pirs or mullahs
who could have provided them the initial
lessons. The natives placed under siege to an
alien religion were huddled in groups to say
prayers in the Islamic mode, but soon after
dispersal they visited their destructed temples
to bow to their gods of ancestors. After
strictness was enforced the natives hid
shiva-lingas under their sleeves before they
were herded for prayers which they never
considered of any spiritual essence. When the
practice was detected, they were forced to raise
and down their arms before they settled for
prayers. Though converted to Islam, the natives
were suspected of pursuing their instinctive
practices and when most of them were decreed to
say prayers in their homes in presence of
Sayyid-sufis acting as moral and
religious police, they placed their haunches on
the sacred text and recited their old hymns and
litanies. Shell-shocked by such defiance, they
were stigmatized as apostates and put to the
sharp blades of a sword on days sacred to
Muslims. For such horrible details
Baharistan-i-Shahi and Tohfatul Ahbab as the
Muslim chronicles in Persian can be consulted
for corroboration and gruesome details.
When in the highly
fertile soil of Kashmir blessed with salubrious
climate, the Sayyid-sufis settled in the
land of natives, practically as aliens, in fact,
bewitched by its beauties taking it as the land
of paradisal legend as they had read in the
Quranic accounts, most of them married the
native converts and acquired Jagirs through
favours from the Muslim state. Their missionary
zeal over the years evaporated as a result of
better prospect of life which they could not
have dreamt of in their native places. Mir
Shams-ud-Din Araki as a purist of classical
variety castigated the mullahs for
following the ways of the kafirs
(infidels) while giving send-off to their
daughters at the time of their marriages.
Over-lording the bands of new-found followers
begging for ordinary doles the Sayyid-sufis
drafted them on missions of demolishing
temples housing the venerated gods and goddesses
of the natives and temples of learning. As there
were ethnic and cultural affinities between the
neo-converts and the resilient natives the
Sayyid-sufis drilled their de-humanised
followers into the lessons of hate and contempt
for the resilients for being 'kafirs'
(infidels) and idolatrous. A handful of Sayyid-sufis
continued with the mission of conversions by
establishing langars (eating places) as a
source of allurement for the new entrants to
Islam and as a weapon to keep the converted to
Islam. Such public-kitchens were financed by the
government agencies through grant of Jagirs to
the zealots donning the robes of sufis.
The public-kitchen of Bulbulshah was financed by
Rinchen, a Ladakhi born converted it Islam. Mir
Mohammad Hamadani was heavily financed by Sultan
Sikander for all his missionary enterprises
including setting up of a public-kitchen for the
converts. Mir Shams-ud-Din Araki was given gold,
silver and jewels by Musa Raina, the Prime
Minister of Sultan Mohammad Shah, for purposes
of building worshipping places for his Shia
followers at the sites where he had destructed
Hindu temples and shrines. The Sayyid-sufis
utilised the revenues accruing from the
Jagirs granted to them by the Muslim rulers of
all hues for subversion of the land in terms of
politics and religion. The strong contradictions
between the local converts and the alien Sayyid-sufis
led to battles resulting in the expulsion of
the Sayyid-sufis from Kashmir. The native
converts coined 'Saad makar' or cunning
Sayyids as a derogatory nomenclature for them
when they practically took control of government
machinery and turned it into an instrument of
coercion and oppression.
If they are called
terrible actors veering between belligerence and
prietism it might not shock many.
The so-called researchers in the Shah-i-Hamadan
Institute set up under the aegis of the
University of Kashmir, Srinagar seem to be
motivated by sectarian prejudices when they
extol and trumpet the role of Sayyids and Sayyid-Sufis
in Kashmir in blatant violation and
transgression of historical facts and other
relevant materials. The fact remains that the
Sayyid foreigners are responsible for erosion
and destruction of indigenous ethos that had
formed as a result of historical, cultural and
civilisational processes. The version of Sayyid
influx which they present is the privileged part
of Islamic history in Kashmir.
As is well known Kashmir
as part of a vast cultural and civilisational
mosaic had existed and emerged as a distinct
identity much before the advent of these
foreigners and had made amazing contributions to
all segments of human knowledge and development.
And no serious researcher can easily ignore it
or berate it. That the Sayyids were responsible
for transmuting the religious complexion of
Kashmir and sowing the bacilli of iconoclasm in
Kashmir is being glorified through
re-inventions, distortions and farrago of
unfounded constructions. No attempt can be
evaluated as laudable if Kashmir is presented as
the creation of some foreigners in terms of its
origins, its store-house of myths and
traditions, its literary treasures and aesthetic
theories and finally its history of evolution
and flowering. The researchers appear to be
'turning away' from Kashmir and trying hard to
justify the scars inflicted on the essence of
Kashmir, its soul, by the foreign zealots and
proselytizers.
The Sayyids and Sayyid-
Sufis, perhaps two sides of the same coin,
poured into Kashmir in the wake of entrenchment
of Muslim rule in Kashmir. The majority of them
came from Persia and Central Asia where they had
suffered severe persecution at the hands of
Muslim rulers abhorrent of their political
activities and religious predilections. Sayyid
Sharf-ud-Din under persecution in his native
land fled to Kashmir where a Hindu ruler,
Suhadeva, granted him refuge and permission to
practice and preach his religion. Mir Ali
Hamadani alongwith seven hundred Sayyids was
forced to abandon his native land by Timur who
detested all Sayyids including Kubrawi Sufis.
Mir Mohammad Hamadani, son of Mir Ali Hamadani,
accompanied by three hundred Sayyids, poured
into Kashmir in the times of Sultan Sikandar who
at his prodding and motivation unleashed a
genocidal war on the native population of
Hindus. Ultimately a trickle changed into a
torrent and thousands of Sayyids flooded the
territory of Kashmir. They had hide-bound views
on religion which motivated them to extirpate
infidelity from Kashmir and with few exceptions
had personal ambitions of gaining positions of
power and panopoly.
Every student of Kashmir
history is aware that Zain-ul-Abidin after his
demise was followed by a crop of worthless and
incompetent rulers. There was total chaos and
anarchy prevailing in the territory of Kashmir.
The Sayyids proved deft enough to utilise the
chaotic and turbulent conditions to their
advantage and missed no opportunity to entrench
themselves in various layers of power structure.
They emerged strong and formidable and gained
absolute sway over the entire political scene.
They cornered high positions and lucrative
offices for themselves and their kinsmen. Rich
and affluent they married in royal and
prestigious families. Dazzled and baffled by the
enormity of their wealth and assets the native
converts seethed with anger and burning in their
hearts as they were treated as low as dust, an
expression from Srivar, a noted historican of
Kashmir. The Sayyids as known to them all had
come to Kashmir as punies, but through the
lavish patronage of Muslim rulers of all hues
they rose to the positions of power and pelf. As
both power and riches have a corrupting impact
the Sayyids grew haughty and arrogant too and
maligned and hated the neo-converts as
brahman-zadas (sons of brahmans), half Muslims,
deviants, and idolators. Capitalising on their
title of Sayyids they missed no opportunity to
brighten their personal prospects, amass as much
of wealth as they could and worm their way into
money-spinning positions.
Records Srivar, "these
foreigners had become rich after coming to this
country and had forgotten their previous
history, even as men forget their previous life
on coming out of the womb. They oppressed the
people".
The Sayyids in corridors
of power manning the state machine were so much
self-engrossed that they did next to nothing to
ameliorate the lot of converts who were left
high and dry after their forcible conversion.
They, in fact, chopped off every twig from the
tree of mercy. They were ruthless in fleecing
people, oppressing them and though expected to
be models for emulation they flouted all norms
of decent moral conduct. They were highly
corrupt and venal. They exerted maximum to
extract as much of booty as they could. They
were the worst exloiters that the Kashmiris of
all shades had ever seen and known.
Writes Srivar, "Accepting
bribes by them was virtuous, oppressing people
was wise and indulging in drinking and sex was
happiness".
Sayyids had a deep streak
of bigotry in their mental structure. They
opposed tooth and nail the policy projections of
Zain-ul-Abidin regarding rehabilitation of the
Hindus who had fled their land in the wake of
genocidal war waged on them. The tryst of Hindus
with peace and respite proved short-lived when
Sayyids launched a furious campaign of calummy
and hatred against them forcing them to quit
their native place or else get converted. In the
fag end of Hassan Shah's reign the Sayyids got
the Hindu places of worship looted, ransacked
and burnt. They were cruel to Hindus, terrorised
them and reduced them to the position of dust in
their own land which they had nurtured through
ages. Sayyids having come from distant lands for
refuge and shelter devastated Kashmir and
reduced it to a jungle where wild and ferocious
animals had a free play.
Under the hegemony of
Sayyids the Hindus could not even lodge a
complaint if their properties were looted or
trespassed. A respectable Hindu lodged a mild
complaint against the trespass of his land to a
Sayyid officer who out of religious hatred
fiated the destruction of his entire property
and also the devastation of properties belonging
to all Hindus living in that locality. This
incident can typify the treatment meted out to
the natives not bearing the Islamic tag. They
were the same brand of Sayyids that had actually
fled their lands due to persecution and found
shelter in Kashmir already under Muslim
hegemony.
To detail it out further
the Sayyids were wild crusaders against the
native Hindus whose position had already reduced
to a wafer-thin minority. They always kept them
on tenter-hooks, denied them safety of life and
limb and incessantly harassed them. Under the
instructions from Sayyids the squads of Muslims
entered the 'private houses of Hindus, ate from
their pots, disrupted their usual modes of
worship and indulged in bouts of drinking and
carousing'. They were looters who robbed the
converts and Hindus alike of their 'domestic
animals, rice and other necessities of life and
the most avaricious among them went to the
extreme of killing them in their own houses'.
The lands belonging to Hindus were confiscated,
thus depriving then of sustenance. A well-known
physician, Buvaneshwar by name, was barbarically
killed and his decapitated head thrown on road
to instil terror among people dead-set against
their oppression.
A vaishnavite Brahman,
Muni, rose in open revolt against the Sayyid
oppressors who were out to decimate the whole
race of Hindus in Kashmir. The homes and hearths
of Muni were ruthlessly ravaged and destroyed.
His supporters met the same fate. Women-folk
were lifted and sold to zealots for a price.
Tazi Bhatt, a local
neo-convert, though a fluke, raised a banner of
revolt against the Sayyids when they rebelled
against Hassan Shah, the Muslim ruler of
Kashmir. He represented the wide-spread
sentiment against the Sayyids as oppressors when
he crusaded for their expulsion from Kashmir and
confiscation of their incalculable assets which
they had amassed in Kashmir. Hassan Shah sensed
the trend of events and to ward off a popular
uprising he ordered the externment of a large
number of Sayyids from Kashmir. There was a lot
of jubilation over the development and people
heaved a sight of relief as they had plucked out
a painful 'thorn' from their body politic. Tazi
Bhat was hailed and cheered as a national hero
and his graph of popularity notched upto an
unprecedented mark.
Says Srivar, "when the
country was rid of these 'thorns', people were
happy under the good administration and they
occupied themselves in marriages and festivities
in building good houses in dancing and
processions and they thought of nothing else".
The extreme popularity
and political strength of Tazi Bhatt was not
savoured well by Malik Ahmad who was the Prime
Minister. With a view to undermining Tazi Bhat's
position he as a strategm opened channels of
contact with the expelled Sayyids who had not
gone to their native places but had taken
shelter either with their kinsmen in Delhi or
some tribal chiefs of mountainous borders of
Kashmir. Malik Ahmad was encouraged and assisted
in recalling the Sayyids by the queen, who
happened to be the daughter of a Sayyid. The
Sayyids returned to the Valley to regain and
re-consolidate their old lost positions and
enormous possessions. But the people got enraged
and severely opposed the PM's act of recalling
the Sayyids who had oppressed and virtually
looted them. They termed the act of the PM as
foolish and extremely unpatriotic. A prominent
Muslim damar dilated on the evil consequences
ensuing from the return of the hated Sayyids.
Malik Ahmad had his own calculations and
expected the Sayyids when back in Kashmir to act
as his surrogates and flatterers.
But the Sayyids proved
defter than Malik Ahmad. The moment they
recovered their possessions and had them in full
hold they pounced on people and their leaders to
avenge their disgraceful externment. Tazi Bhatt
was their main target and they had plans to
imprison him and abduct his wife. But to the
good luck of Tazi Bhat he was informed of the
designs of Sayyids by his supporters and took
shelter with the Prime Minister who happened to
be his adopted father. The Muslim ruler sensed
it as the formation of a new grand alliance
against him and sent forces to arrest Tazi
Bhatt. But the people revolted against this act
of the ruler, who stopped in his tracks from
arresting Tazi Bhatt, thus saving his crown and
sceptre.
Though recalled to
Kashmir by Malik Ahmad the revengeful Sayyids
always took him as their sworn enemy. The Muslim
ruler instigated by Sayyids imprisoned him and
confiscated his whole lot of enormous wealth.
The Sayyids without any visible rival in the
field exercised full powers without check or
restraint .
Records Srivar, "they
became unruly after this triumph, they placed
the king under their control and regarded the
people of Kashmir hardly even as grass".
The Sayyids reduced the
Muslim ruler to a mere puny puppet. They made
him to dance to their tunes. He was just there
on the throne, not even a figure head. The
country was seething with discontent and
indignation at the phenomenal rise of the
foreigners, who had insatiable lust for power
and had risen from rags to riches at the expense
of the Kashmiris.
Writes Srivar, "He (King)
lost all interest in the administration of the
country and remained indifferent to the doings
of his servants. His mind was influenced by his
wife and the Sayyids..."
There was an open revolt
against the Muslim ruler and his Sayyid advisers
and henchmen. Winter was chosen as the timing
for unleashment of revolt when it would be near
impossible for the army to move about freely.
The revolt was mercilessly suppressed by the
army headed by the Sayyids. Conveys Srivar:-
"The army headed by the
Sayyids scattered itself throughout the length
and breadth of the Valley and inflicted untold
atrocities on the people. The inhabitants were
robbed of their domestic animals and rice and
wine and other things...."
The Sayyids consolidated
their power after the death of the ruler, Hassan
Shah. To fill the vaccuum Sayyid Hassan
installed seven year old son of his own daughter
on the throne of Kashmir. The people were
mortified by the absolute power that the Sayyids
wielded. They were rejected as non-entities and
treated with absolute disdain. Writes Srivar:-
"Haughty in their conduct
and cruel in behaviour those arrogant men, urged
by excessive cupidity, oppressed the people even
like the messengers of death".
The Kashmiris reviled and
treated as dust finally geared and girded up
their loins to wage a final battle against the
tyrannical and treacherous rule of the Sayyids.
Saifu-ud-Din Dar, a local noble, led the
uprising. A plot was organised to kill all
Sayyid leaders who manned the levers of power.
The fort at Naushahr was seized and Sayyid
Hassan alongwith his relatives was murdered.
Despite Sayyid retaliation the people's morale
never got downed or dipped. The popular army
captured the whole of Valley. The Sayyids with
politics in their blood opened up negotiations
but the leaders of the uprising rejected all
such offers. They sought military aid from
Sayyids in the Punjab and Delhi. The indigenous
battle against the Sayyids met its waterloo
because of many factors, the main factor being
treachery.
Intoxicated by the
victory the Sayyids indulged in extreme
revelries and massive plunder of the local
population, both Hindus and Muslims. Innocent
and unarmed citizens were murdered in cold
blood. Learned men among the Hindus were put to
the sword. Writes Srivar:-
"They fixed several heads
on poles in order to strike terror into the
people they placed them like rows of lamps on a
piece of wood on the banks of the vitasta".
But ultimately the battle
against the Sayyids fructified into a dazzling
success when Jehangir Magrey took the lead of
the popular army. The Sayyids were chased in the
streets of the city. They were given the
appellation of 'Saad makar'--the cunning Sayyids.
Their properties were either confiscated or
totally destroyed. The converts and their
popular army showed them no mercy. Most of them
were expelled from the land.
Sayyid Sufis - Muslim Theologians
‘To be in the
company of God’ or ‘Shine in God’s light’ or to
live in the presence of God’ are semitic
expressions which the native rishis were not
aware of. Even the efficacy of prayer was
unknown to them. They had no worldly
attachments, lived poor and never chased
material goods. Though denounced as ascetics by
all brands of Sayyid-sufis, they lived as
ascetics and recluses much after the manner of
the native Buddhist and Vedantinst and never
bothered for conformity to the theological
requirements as enunciated in the religion of
the colonisers.
The way the rishis lived,
the manner of their thought and nuances, the
spiritual path that they trod upon leave no
doubt about their Hindu or Buddhist credentials.
The pontifs of the colonising religion had no
qualms to conceal their abhorrence for them and
their anti-Islamic positions. They rejected them
as illiterate and ignorant. The prophetic
mysticism as espoused by them remained
circumscribed to the circle of their followers
and failed to percolate down to the broad
sections of converted masses addicted to the
practice of native spirituality and its allied
axiologies based on high moral ground of
humanism and liberalism.
The followers of diverse
‘Sufi Silsilas’ in central Asian lands had not
the same spiritually tempered minds as we find
in the native rishis. They were ordinary mortals
swayed by emotions of hate, malice and greed.
They bitterly opposed their rivals and enemies
within their silsilas or outside them. Most of
them were involved in personal feuds either with
the Muslim rulers or Sufis of rival factions.
Even a surface analysis of their social
behaviour establishes them as men indulging in
petty jealousies and chasing pursuits that had
under pinnings of greed and avarice. If a
sayyid-sufi wormed his way to the seat of power,
many others hatched intrigues to distance him
away from the ruler only to usurp his place. Mir
Mohammad Hamadani had his enemies in his native
land who forced him out and even in Kashmir he
had his principal enemy in Sayyid Hissari who
castigated Sultan Sikander for having been
trapped by the Kubrawi sufi.
As against this, the
native rishis, poor and recluce, had no culture
of indulgence in hate, greed, avarice, jealousy
and such other base emotions. As a spiritual
requirement they had absolutely abandoned them
and gained self-control to reach the blissful
summit of union with the God. They loved all
and hated none. They had no greed and had
abandoned and suppressed all worldly desire and
yearnings. The thousands of Kubrawi Sayyids who
had entered Kashmir carried with them the legacy
of feud and factionalism and as a result of
their political orientation they grabbed the
state apparatus and turned it into a repressive
machine. Some of them are looked upon as saints
and the converts with Hindu instincts seek
their intercession, which as a practice is
detested as un-Islamic. That the Sayyid-Suffis
strengthened and reinforced Tauheedic
consciousness among the converts is an illusion
fostered by those who have replaced history by
hagiology and sociology by blind faith with the
sole purpose of concealing the political and
religious role of the colonisers.
The essential question
about the Sayyid -Sufis from central Asian lands
is what form and vintage of Islam and what type
of thought content allied with it they brought
with them. They were expelled from their native
places at a time when the verve of the Islamic
civilisation was no longer there and its unity
and moral force had quagmired. The Muslim empire
had fallen. The decay had set in when the Arabs
reduced the Persian civilisation assiduously
built by Cyrus and Darius. The Persians though
reduced and subjugate took their revenge by
rupturing the seat of Caliphate. The unity of
God head though in no way unique for Indians
suffered a shocking jot when Bayazid decried
Tauheed and Mansur yelled that he was God.
With the death of Mansur
the liberalist trend was decapitated. The Sayyid
-Sufis as inheritors to the Islamic dogmas
unleashed no revolution in the thought ways of
the natives of Kashmir. They through the use of
force, and tampering with the stories about
yogi's suppressed the natives to convert them
and after conversion left them languishing and
reeling under the repressive state machine which
they had propped up.
As the prisoners to dogma
when in Kashmir the Sayyid-sufis could not think
of drinking deep at its fountain head of
knowledge and learning. They urged and
instigated the Muslim ruler through quotes from
scriptures to change the religious complexion of
Kashmir and destroy the native traditions,
culture forms and usages as products of
generations of cumulative experiences. Admired
in literalist tradition of Islam they acted as
Muslims who were ordered in literalist tradition
of Islam. They acted as Muslims who were ordered
to punish the natives who refused to accept
Islam. The Quranic verses expressing deep hatred
for non-Muslims had literally gripped them. The
verses ordaining Muslims to use corcion and
violence against the non-Muslims had shaped
their over all demeanour unto the natives of
Kashmir. The motivations from the text had made
them believe that conversion to Islam of those
outside its orbit was a goal of super religious
value and weapon of force used for getting
converts was justified as ordained by religion.
Islam as the Arab religion could move out of the
desert tracts only through military action and
in its expansion in the Indian sub-continent the
Muslim missionaries in the guise of sufi-sayyids
played their role in tandem with Muslim state
power established through ravaging raids and
assaults.
As is well-known in
scholarly circles that the conceptions about
‘Sharia’ were put in the form of formulations in
Medina, Egypt and Iraq. After Arab conquests of
many regions the Muslim theologians controlling
the brain-boxes of the rulers deemed the
conquests as incomplete without imposition of ‘Sharia’.
Serious conflicts arose between the imperial
conquerors imposing ‘shlaria’ on the natives the
subjugated people defending their own
traditional laws and precedents against the
onslaught. The Sayyid-Sufis as stickers to
Sharia used it as a weapon to create discord,
disharmony and religious strife in the land they
wanted to subvert. As a matter of strategy
everything belonging to the native roots as a
manifestation of civilisational growth and
creativity was to be stamped out. Sharia when
imposed did away with most of the native
practices and by labelled them as irreligious
conventions.
Mir Ali Hamadani was well
versed in its political significance and
efficacy. That is why he urged the Muslim ruler
to introduce sharia in his Hindu dominated
state. His sole aim was to create a crisis
between the ruler and his Hindu subjects and
between the majority of Hindus and a small
colony of Muslims. His well calculated attempt
was to precipitate matters where the Muslim
state would get involved in extirpation of
infidelity. In his subsequent two visits he
succeeded in involving the state power and that
is how he got some substantial conversions to
Islam. Mir Mohammad Hamadani translated the
sharia formulations blatantly for conversions
and instigated and harnessed sultan Sikander to
use his army and punity jazia for conversions
thereby forcing the natives either to flee their
land or get converted or get killed . ‘Sharia’
was used as an instrument to polarise, divide
and disharmonise a society predominantly Hindu.
The rishis were strict
vegetarians and never touched meat of any
animal. It being not in tune with Sharia and
Sunna the Sayyid -Sufis abhorred them and
avoided to touch them even with a bargepole.
The Sayyid-Sufis and
their followers with political orientation were
responsible for distortion of the role and
context of native rishis in view of their
acceptance and popularity. They in their beliefs
and practices were taken as signorant of Sharia
and Sunna. Yet for purpose of roping them in
within their fold they wove yarns and fictitious
stories about their acceptance of Sayyid-Sufis,
especially the Kubrawis.
The followers of the
Kubrawi Sayyid-Sufis painted the local rishis as
reformers. If the native rishis were reformers,
that surely implies that they either as a group
or as individuals failed to share the sense of
victory that outsiders had scored in Kashmir.
Reform is sought, not by the victor, but by the
vanquished. If rishis shared the victory of
Muslims in Kashmir, they in no uncertain terms
were on ascendancy and hence had no reason to
reform their society which was up-beat with
political and religious victories. Rishis as
reformers throw up a vital information about
Islam in Kashmir which as an imposed cementing
force had failed to re-vitalise the
socio-religious fabric of the neo-converts cut
as under from their native moorings and roots
and thus were sunk in psychological and moral
morass and needed a reform for a renewal and
revival. Again, if the rishis were reformers
their spirituality is jeopardised. The
neo-converts mainly the peasants of Kashmir,
love them not as reformers, but as intercessors
for final redemption. If rishis as a
distinctive native tribe of tradition
perpetuators had taken to reform, that is proof
enough that they had deflected away from their
native goals of supreme spirituality and were
semitised to play the role of reformers. The
life-style and thought ways of rishis even after
tremendous distortion of their poetical
expressions do not seem to support it.
The published poetical
materials of Nund Rishi, never authentic in any
way, contain many shrukhs (slokas)
which are highly critical of the mullahs. The
accusations against them are that they undertake
evil and vicious practices which are not morally
and religiously sound as per his axiology. If
after conversions Muslim society which was a
flush with new victories and new value systems
rejecting the Brahmanical tyranny, how come that
a handful of Mullahs had caused its corruption
just within a short span of sixty years. The
diatribe against the Mullahs pinpoints the
decadence that had set in Muslim society soon
after it was born from religious turmoil. In
objective terms Mullahs if they were conversant
with the Islamic lore and learning played a
great part in mediating Islam through indigenous
culture forms. They could be accused of diluting
Islam with the native religious expressions
thereby syncretizing it. But the question that
crops up is about the very knowledge of Nund
Rishi about Islamic theology. All sources are
unanimous that he was no theologian and had no
knowledge of Islam and its essential positions.
If he opposed the Mullahs for their syncretic
dilution, he could not determine the dilution
for want of requisite knowledge and he could not
have opposed the dilution for he himself was the
product of co-mingling of many native strands of
thought and trends at mass level. Hence it is
averred that the shrukhs epitomising diatribes
against the native Mullahs are later day
distortions either by the authors of Noor-namas
or other minds aware of Nund Rishi’s thought
content shaped by the surrounding spiritual
ambience.
The same Sayyid-sufis
especially their few followers have posed the
rishis, mainly Nund Rishi, as proselytizers.
Sayyid Ali, a follower of Kubrawis, has drawn a
ridiculous portrait of Nund Rishi entering into
a cave-temple of Buma rishi only to exhort him
to get converted to Islam. A rishi of native
variety steeped in this native lore and learning
with a bias against practices legitimised under
Sharia and Sunnah is drawn as the worst brand of
proselytiser wearing the blood dripping hide of
a cow. The word portrait of the Rishi drawn in
such an offensive form is to offend his
indigenous sensitivities two hundred years after
his deather. All Kashmiris know it fully well
that Nund Rishi was a strict vegetarian and had
abhorrance for all type of meat. The fanatic
follower of the Kubrawis protrayed him thus to
castigate him for a conduct not in conformity
with Sharia and Sunna. Hardi Rishi was also a
vegetarian and hagiographers of the same fanatic
variety have figmented a spiritual conference to
rub home to him the importance and efficacy of
beef-eating only to live up to the ideals of
Sharia and Sunna. The Sayyid sufis of the
Kubrawi brand have deliberately and
mischievously heaped violence on the native
rishis who had allegiance more to their native
roots than the foreign impositions.
The Sayyid-sufis and some
native converts who fail to see themselves as
converts have woven stories and myths about the
involvement of rishis in processes of
proselyisation. It is directed to the end of
establishing that the combine of the Kubrawi
Sayyid-sufis, Sultan Sikander and other Muslim
rulers had no role to play in conversions and
conversions were voluntary or induced by the
rishis through their asceticism and simple style
of life.
After a careful analysis of the politico
religious conditions of the times, Nund Rishi
came to over-lord as an indigenous saint, one is
led to conclude that large scale conversions had
already taken place especially of the peasant
masses through imposition of Jazia and use of
armed forces. The temple and shrines as icon of
Hindu faith were smashed and those who lived
there as their keepers or as practitioners of
native faith could not have withstood the
sweeping hurricane of bigotry. The role of
rishis was only to fill in the vacuum that was
created by shifting of religious loyalties to a
foreign faith which for a long time was more a
force than a reality.
Militant Sayyids
The
so-called researchers in the Shah-i-Hamadan
Institute set up under the aegis of the
University of Kashmir, Srinagar seem to be
motivated by sectarian prejudices when they
extol and trumpet the role of Sayyids and Sayyid-Sufis
in Kashmir in blatant violation and
transgression of historical facts and other
relevant materials. The fact remains that the
Sayyid foreigners are responsible for erosion
and destruction of indigenous ethos that had
formed as a result of historical, cultural and
civilisational processes. The version of Sayyid
influx which they present is the privileged part
of Islamic history in Kashmir.
As is well known Kashmir
as part of a vast cultural and civilisational
mosaic had existed and emerged as a distinct
identity much before the advent of these
foreigners and had made amazing contributions to
all segments of human knowledge and development.
And no serious researcher can easily ignore it
or berate it. That the Sayyids were responsible
for transmuting the religious complexion of
Kashmir and sowing the bacilli of iconoclasm in
Kashmir is being glorified through
re-inventions, distortions and farrago of
unfounded constructions. No attempt can be
evaluated as laudable if Kashmir is presented as
the creation of some foreigners in terms of its
origins, its store-house of myths and
traditions, its literary treasures and aesthetic
theories and finally its history of evolution
and flowering. The researchers appear to be
'turning away' from Kashmir and trying hard to
justify the scars inflicted on the essence of
Kashmir, its soul, by the foreign zealots and
proselytizers.
The Sayyids and Sayyid-
Sufis, perhaps two sides of the same coin,
poured into Kashmir in the wake of entrenchment
of Muslim rule in Kashmir. The majority of them
came from Persia and Central Asia where they had
suffered severe persecution at the hands of
Muslim rulers abhorrent of their political
activities and religious predilections. Sayyid
Sharf-ud-Din under persecution in his native
land fled to Kashmir where a Hindu ruler,
Suhadeva, granted him refuge and permission to
practice and preach his religion. Mir Ali
Hamadani alongwith seven hundred Sayyids was
forced to abandon his native land by Timur who
detested all Sayyids including Kubrawi Sufis.
Mir Mohammad Hamadani, son of Mir Ali Hamadani,
accompanied by three hundred Sayyids, poured
into Kashmir in the times of Sultan Sikandar who
at his prodding and motivation unleashed a
genocidal war on the native population of
Hindus. Ultimately a trickle changed into a
torrent and thousands of Sayyids flooded the
territory of Kashmir. They had hide-bound views
on religion which motivated them to extirpate
infidelity from Kashmir and with few exceptions
had personal ambitions of gaining positions of
power and panopoly.
Every student of Kashmir
history is aware that Zain-ul-Abidin after his
demise was followed by a crop of worthless and
incompetent rulers. There was total chaos and
anarchy prevailing in the territory of Kashmir.
The Sayyids proved deft enough to utilise the
chaotic and turbulent conditions to their
advantage and missed no opportunity to entrench
themselves in various layers of power structure.
They emerged strong and formidable and gained
absolute sway over the entire political scene.
They cornered high positions and lucrative
offices for themselves and their kinsmen. Rich
and affluent they married in royal and
prestigious families. Dazzled and baffled by the
enormity of their wealth and assets the native
converts seethed with anger and burning in their
hearts as they were treated as low as dust, an
expression from Srivar, a noted historican of
Kashmir. The Sayyids as known to them all had
come to Kashmir as punies, but through the
lavish patronage of Muslim rulers of all hues
they rose to the positions of power and pelf. As
both power and riches have a corrupting impact
the Sayyids grew haughty and arrogant too and
maligned and hated the neo-converts as
brahman-zadas (sons of brahmans), half Muslims,
deviants, and idolators. Capitalising on their
title of Sayyids they missed no opportunity to
brighten their personal prospects, amass as much
of wealth as they could and worm their way into
money-spinning positions.
Records Srivar, "these
foreigners had become rich after coming to this
country and had forgotten their previous
history, even as men forget their previous life
on coming out of the womb. They oppressed the
people".
The Sayyids in corridors
of power manning the state machine were so much
self-engrossed that they did next to nothing to
ameliorate the lot of converts who were left
high and dry after their forcible conversion.
They, in fact, chopped off every twig from the
tree of mercy. They were ruthless in fleecing
people, oppressing them and though expected to
be models for emulation they flouted all norms
of decent moral conduct. They were highly
corrupt and venal. They exerted maximum to
extract as much of booty as they could. They
were the worst exloiters that the Kashmiris of
all shades had ever seen and known.
Writes Srivar, "Accepting
bribes by them was virtuous, oppressing people
was wise and indulging in drinking and sex was
happiness".
Sayyids had a deep streak
of bigotry in their mental structure. They
opposed tooth and nail the policy projections of
Zain-ul-Abidin regarding rehabilitation of the
Hindus who had fled their land in the wake of
genocidal war waged on them. The tryst of Hindus
with peace and respite proved short-lived when
Sayyids launched a furious campaign of calummy
and hatred against them forcing them to quit
their native place or else get converted. In the
fag end of Hassan Shah's reign the Sayyids got
the Hindu places of worship looted, ransacked
and burnt. They were cruel to Hindus, terrorised
them and reduced them to the position of dust in
their own land which they had nurtured through
ages. Sayyids having come from distant lands for
refuge and shelter devastated Kashmir and
reduced it to a jungle where wild and ferocious
animals had a free play.
Under the hegemony of
Sayyids the Hindus could not even lodge a
complaint if their properties were looted or
trespassed. A respectable Hindu lodged a mild
complaint against the trespass of his land to a
Sayyid officer who out of religious hatred
fiated the destruction of his entire property
and also the devastation of properties belonging
to all Hindus living in that locality. This
incident can typify the treatment meted out to
the natives not bearing the Islamic tag. They
were the same brand of Sayyids that had actually
fled their lands due to persecution and found
shelter in Kashmir already under Muslim
hegemony.
To detail it out further
the Sayyids were wild crusaders against the
native Hindus whose position had already reduced
to a wafer-thin minority. They always kept them
on tenter-hooks, denied them safety of life and
limb and incessantly harassed them. Under the
instructions from Sayyids the squads of Muslims
entered the 'private houses of Hindus, ate from
their pots, disrupted their usual modes of
worship and indulged in bouts of drinking and
carousing'. They were looters who robbed the
converts and Hindus alike of their 'domestic
animals, rice and other necessities of life and
the most avaricious among them went to the
extreme of killing them in their own houses'.
The lands belonging to Hindus were confiscated,
thus depriving then of sustenance. A well-known
physician, Buvaneshwar by name, was barbarically
killed and his decapitated head thrown on road
to instil terror among people dead-set against
their oppression.
A vaishnavite Brahman,
Muni, rose in open revolt against the Sayyid
oppressors who were out to decimate the whole
race of Hindus in Kashmir. The homes and hearths
of Muni were ruthlessly ravaged and destroyed.
His supporters met the same fate. Women-folk
were lifted and sold to zealots for a price.
Tazi Bhatt, a local
neo-convert, though a fluke, raised a banner of
revolt against the Sayyids when they rebelled
against Hassan Shah, the Muslim ruler of
Kashmir. He represented the wide-spread
sentiment against the Sayyids as oppressors when
he crusaded for their expulsion from Kashmir and
confiscation of their incalculable assets which
they had amassed in Kashmir. Hassan Shah sensed
the trend of events and to ward off a popular
uprising he ordered the externment of a large
number of Sayyids from Kashmir. There was a lot
of jubilation over the development and people
heaved a sight of relief as they had plucked out
a painful 'thorn' from their body politic. Tazi
Bhat was hailed and cheered as a national hero
and his graph of popularity notched upto an
unprecedented mark.
Says Srivar, "when the
country was rid of these 'thorns', people were
happy under the good administration and they
occupied themselves in marriages and festivities
in building good houses in dancing and
processions and they thought of nothing else".
The extreme popularity
and political strength of Tazi Bhatt was not
savoured well by Malik Ahmad who was the Prime
Minister. With a view to undermining Tazi Bhat's
position he as a strategm opened channels of
contact with the expelled Sayyids who had not
gone to their native places but had taken
shelter either with their kinsmen in Delhi or
some tribal chiefs of mountainous borders of
Kashmir. Malik Ahmad was encouraged and assisted
in recalling the Sayyids by the queen, who
happened to be the daughter of a Sayyid. The
Sayyids returned to the Valley to regain and
re-consolidate their old lost positions and
enormous possessions. But the people got enraged
and severely opposed the PM's act of recalling
the Sayyids who had oppressed and virtually
looted them. They termed the act of the PM as
foolish and extremely unpatriotic. A prominent
Muslim damar dilated on the evil consequences
ensuing from the return of the hated Sayyids.
Malik Ahmad had his own calculations and
expected the Sayyids when back in Kashmir to act
as his surrogates and flatterers.
But the Sayyids proved
defter than Malik Ahmad. The moment they
recovered their possessions and had them in full
hold they pounced on people and their leaders to
avenge their disgraceful externment. Tazi Bhatt
was their main target and they had plans to
imprison him and abduct his wife. But to the
good luck of Tazi Bhat he was informed of the
designs of Sayyids by his supporters and took
shelter with the Prime Minister who happened to
be his adopted father. The Muslim ruler sensed
it as the formation of a new grand alliance
against him and sent forces to arrest Tazi
Bhatt. But the people revolted against this act
of the ruler, who stopped in his tracks from
arresting Tazi Bhatt, thus saving his crown and
sceptre.
Though recalled to
Kashmir by Malik Ahmad the revengeful Sayyids
always took him as their sworn enemy. The Muslim
ruler instigated by Sayyids imprisoned him and
confiscated his whole lot of enormous wealth.
The Sayyids without any visible rival in the
field exercised full powers without check or
restraint .
Records Srivar, "they
became unruly after this triumph, they placed
the king under their control and regarded the
people of Kashmir hardly even as grass".
The Sayyids reduced the
Muslim ruler to a mere puny puppet. They made
him to dance to their tunes. He was just there
on the throne, not even a figure head. The
country was seething with discontent and
indignation at the phenomenal rise of the
foreigners, who had insatiable lust for power
and had risen from rags to riches at the expense
of the Kashmiris.
Writes Srivar, "He (King)
lost all interest in the administration of the
country and remained indifferent to the doings
of his servants. His mind was influenced by his
wife and the Sayyids..."
There was an open revolt
against the Muslim ruler and his Sayyid advisers
and henchmen. Winter was chosen as the timing
for unleashment of revolt when it would be near
impossible for the army to move about freely.
The revolt was mercilessly suppressed by the
army headed by the Sayyids. Conveys Srivar:-
"The army headed by the
Sayyids scattered itself throughout the length
and breadth of the Valley and inflicted untold
atrocities on the people. The inhabitants were
robbed of their domestic animals and rice and
wine and other things...."
The Sayyids consolidated
their power after the death of the ruler, Hassan
Shah. To fill the vaccuum Sayyid Hassan
installed seven year old son of his own daughter
on the throne of Kashmir. The people were
mortified by the absolute power that the Sayyids
wielded. They were rejected as non-entities and
treated with absolute disdain. Writes Srivar:-
"Haughty in their conduct
and cruel in behaviour those arrogant men, urged
by excessive cupidity, oppressed the people even
like the messengers of death".
The Kashmiris reviled and
treated as dust finally geared and girded up
their loins to wage a final battle against the
tyrannical and treacherous rule of the Sayyids.
Saifu-ud-Din Dar, a local noble, led the
uprising. A plot was organised to kill all
Sayyid leaders who manned the levers of power.
The fort at Naushahr was seized and Sayyid
Hassan alongwith his relatives was murdered.
Despite Sayyid retaliation the people's morale
never got downed or dipped. The popular army
captured the whole of Valley. The Sayyids with
politics in their blood opened up negotiations
but the leaders of the uprising rejected all
such offers. They sought military aid from
Sayyids in the Punjab and Delhi. The indigenous
battle against the Sayyids met its waterloo
because of many factors, the main factor being
treachery.
Intoxicated by the
victory the Sayyids indulged in extreme
revelries and massive plunder of the local
population, both Hindus and Muslims. Innocent
and unarmed citizens were murdered in cold
blood. Learned men among the Hindus were put to
the sword. Writes Srivar:-
"They fixed several heads
on poles in order to strike terror into the
people they placed them like rows of lamps on a
piece of wood on the banks of the vitasta".
But ultimately the battle
against the Sayyids fructified into a dazzling
success when Jehangir Magrey took the lead of
the popular army. The Sayyids were chased in the
streets of the city. They were given the
appellation of 'Saad makar'--the cunning Sayyids.
Their properties were either confiscated or
totally destroyed. The converts and their
popular army showed them no mercy. Most of them
were expelled from the land.
Source: Kashmir
Sentinel
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