Sultan Zain-Ul-Abiden (1420-70)

The Apostle of Communal Harmony

"Time is endless and great is the expanse of the world so that some future kings in some distant country may believe it possible for them to perform such worthy and enterprising acts and accomplish deeds which may almost rival his".

So wrote the chronicler Srivara about Sultan Zain-ul-Abiden of Kashmir (1420-1470 A.D.), who had achieved the summit of glory and was affectionately respected by all the Hindus and the Muslims of Kashmir and is still remembered as Badshah, the great king. Love of secularism and respect for all religions were the strongest passions of his soul. He made Kashmir the centre of a great culture and acquired a halo in popular imagination which still remembers his name in spite of the lapse of more than 500 years.

Undoubtedly, many Muslim kings of Kashmir have been just, beneficent men of learning and cherishers of their subjects with many great attributes of kings, but the reign of Sultan Sikander (1389-1413 A.D.), the father of Zain-ul-Abiden, was the darkest one for the Hindus in the annals of Kashmir. History does not often record tragedies as poignant as that of Kashmiri Hindus during that period.

Kashmir, the Garden of Paradise, was chilled by the cold blasts of communal ferocity; most of the Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam, many of them killed and many also ran away with grim soldiers following vengefully at their heels to the plains of India. Only a handful of Brahmins were left to live with assassins lurking in every corner. The arch villain of the whole tragedy was the chief minister and commander-in-chief, named Suha Bhatt, a recent convert to Islam. He was assisted and goaded by Sayyids, a group of Persian immigrants. The heady wine of communalism served by the Saiyyids to him so intoxicated him that he was driven into frenzy of religious persecution of the Hindus.

"Suha Bhatt's zeal in the persecution of his former co-religionists is perhaps unparalleled in the history of religious turn-coats", says Dr. R.K. Parimu. Sultan Sikandar was surrounded by ruthless, irresponsible and bigoted counsellors who influenced him. He thus conveniently shelved his conscience.

Among the stream of people running away helter skelter from Srinagar under the cover of the night's darkness bracing the chilly winds was Shri Bhatt, the Great Physician. Far away in a village perched on a high hilly a kind Muslim gave him shelter and security. Nothing could have pampered the sadistic instinct of Suha Bhatt than to have him slain.

The wheel of time turned. Sikander was dead. Suha Bhatt, the scourge of God, also died by inches with consumption, for there was no efficient physician available to treat him. Suha Bhatt is a fit study not only for the historian but for the psychologist too who suffered from a unique religious aberration.

Then a curious thing happened that has the strangeness of fiction. One day as dusk fell, Shri Bhatt felt agony; there was no call of the conches and the peal of the tempJebel ls hailing the Hindus for the evening prayers. Only he heard:

"Alla-hu-Akbar! Ya Allah, save the life of our Sultan". The loud voices of the prayer coming from the village mosque sounded as a funeral wail.

There at the royal palace in Srinagar Zain-ul-Abiden was tossing on his sick bed. He had ascended the throne of Kashmir in 1423 A.D. He was broken in health and the shadow of death seemed close by. He was groaning with intense pain caused by the development of a malignant boil on his forearm. No physician could prove efficient enough to cure him. "Only Sri Bhatt Hakim", said a hook-nosed chief, "could cure him." Grey heads nodded their heads in assent. But everyone was ignorant of his whereabouts. However, after searching the length and breadth of the country, he was located and persuaded to treat the Sultan. His treatment proved successful.

"Great Brahman, ask for any reward: it shall immediately be granted to you," spoke the king in gratitude.

"May the king be adorned with perfect wisdom. I want nothing. If you must favour me, then ameliorate the condition of the Hindu inhabitants, who are being harassed. Oh Shanshai blund akhtar! grant them religious freedom" said the Pandit firmly in a soft and smooth voice.

It touched the sympathetic chord in the Sultan's heart and he thrilled when he heard the voice of his conscience "brother of man". His face lit up with a smile as Shri Bhatt waited with eager expectation.

"Your wish is granted. Forthwith you are appointed officer-in-charge for the revival of the Brahmanical religion and rehabilitation of the Hindus," the Sultan spoke in awed admiration of the Brahman physician.

Although Shri Bhatt, the physician, brought a cataclysmic change in the mind of the Sultan but his love for all the religions could be traced back to the following factors. First, the teaching of religious toleration by his pious mother in the early impressionable days; second, the inspiration and lessons received from the Sufi saints like Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Rishi of Kashmir and thirdly, as a boy he was under the tutorship of Maulana Kabir, a believer in communal harmony and secularism.

Thus the gentle and favourable breeze blew and turned the dark pages of Kashmir's history and started a new chapter of peace and harmony in ail aspects.

Sultan Zain-ul-Abiden promulgated complete freedom in Kashmir and invited Kashmiri Hindus who were living elsewhere and promised them security of life and property, besides freedom of religion. The result was that they immediately returned to their land of birth.

His loving justice removed the discrimination in services on the basis of religion. He shocked the privileged class by throwing open the highest posts in the realm to merit regardless of creed. So it came that Hindus came to fill peak posts in the civil administration and military high command. Shri Bhatt, Tilakacharya, Shiva Bhatta, Kapur Bhatt, Rupya Bhatt, Bodhi Bhatt and Srivara were some of the Hindus who rose to power under him. "The administration", says Bamzai, "was completely run by the Kashmiri Pandits who at his bidding studied Persian, the new court language".

But the greatest of his secular acts was to allow those who had recently become Muslims under compulsions to return to their old religion without "any social, religious or political disability". Then he got repaired Hindu temples and himself built some new ones. He forbade cow-slaughter and killing of birds and fish in several springs sacred to Hindus. In Rajtarangini is mentioned that the king encouraged the Hindu pilgrimages and festivals. In fact, he himself took part in the annual Nagayatra festival, when he would put on the robes of a Hindu mendicant and perform the pilgrimage in the company of Brahmans and on the way distributed food and clothes to thousands of the Brahmans. He built numerous homes for the widows of the Brahmans killed during his father's reign.

Mankind in its onward march since Zain-ul-Abiden's reign has picked many progressive ideas and thoughts of religious toleration which may not now appear to us as revolutionary precepts. But Zain-ul-Abiden should be seen against the setting of his own century. Then alone will his greatness be illuminated. He dared to say, "I belong to Hindus just as much as to the Muslims, no humbug about that". The idea of Zain-ul-Abiden has transferred itself from a gaseous into solid, palapable form-brotherhood of the cry of the day. Akbar later on also took up this philosophy of Zain-ul-Abiden-the universal love and brotherhood.

Srivara informs us that he performed havans, studied Nilamata purana, Vasishta, and Gita Govinda and practised yoga.

Sultan Zain-ul-Abiden realised that Islam was being distorted and misused as a convenient weapon of economic exploitation. That was the meaning of Jazia, the cremation tax, and the other taxes levied on Hindus, a penalty for adherence to their faith. Heat once removed tax impositions. That was the reason why the temples were plundered and images broken. He, therefore, turned his attention to the economic advancement of the people and thereby the religious barriers fell down automatically. Kashmiris, cushioned by affluent economy, based on agriculture and small industries, would not use religion as a force to tear themselves apart.

The Sultan engaged them in the manufacture ofarts and crafts. He got master artists from Samarqand, Bukhara and Persia to whom he paid high salaries. They taught the Kashmiris the various arts and crafts like stonepolishing, stone-cutting, papier mache and silk, shawl and carpet weaving, whose beauty and excellence made Kashmir world famous. Dr. G.M.D. Sufi writes: "In most of his enterprises, the Sultan was guided by his experience gained in Samarqand during his eight years stay there".

Lest the labourers should remain unemployed and get restless and start communal riots he made them work on various irrigation canals, whereby the food production, too, increased and the country became prosperous. He kept the carpenters, masons and other artisans engaged in the construction of buildings, palaces and towns. Thus these people forgot their petty jealousies and communal feuds and called each other brother.

In order to promote the Hindu-Muslim concord and national prosperity he established residential, non-sectarian educational institutions where students were provided food, clothes, books, etc. free of charge. He introduced the mother-tongue, Kashmiri, as the medium of instruction. The young men were nourished on the ideas of communal harmony. Knowing nothing of prejudice these young boys got a continuous infusion of new secular blood.

He tried to bridge the cultural gap between the Hindus and the Muslims and for this he got the great works of one religion translated into another. He established a translation department where selected books from Sanskrit were translated into Persian and even Kashmiri. He himself was a linguist and knew Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit and helped in these ventures.

Although he had liberal ideas about religion and respected all religions, he at the same time, was a pious Muslim who led a saintly life in the company of derveshes and sufis. He strictly performed nimaz five times a day and fasted during the period of Ramzan and would not take any meat. He did not, like other Eastern kings, have a large seraglio. He gave lot of money in charity. He consulted the Muslim religious Qazis in matters of the State. Like the Calif Harun-ul-Rashid he used to roam about the streets incognito to find out for himself the condition of the people as also to see nobody chastised or harmed a Hindu or a weaker person.

During the last days of his life he asked Srivara to recite the Samhita which gave him consolation. The Sultan died in 1470 and thus lamented the poet:

"Sultan Zain-ul-Abiden khima dar khulde barim
Be noor shud taj o nagin be nur shud arzo sama
Az bahru Trakhash ayan be sar shuda under jahan
Adlo karam, `ilam o'alam jah o hasham, sulh o safa".

(Sultan Zain-ul-Abiden passed away to heaven. The throne and the seal lost the glitter, heaven and earth lost its gaiety. From that date the world lost its head, justice and generosity, learning and power, glory and splendour, peace and tolerance.).