Table of Contents
  Index
  About the Author
  About the Book
  Preface
  Foreword
PART I
  Laying the Scene
  Sayyid Sharafu'D-Din
  Mir Ali Hamadani's role ...
  P.N. Bazaz and P.N.Bamzai ...
  Laleshwari - A Shining...
  Trika Paved the Way for Islam
  Kashmir - Not A Tabula Rasa
  Willing and Peaceful ...
  Extra-ideological Methods
  Compromise as Tactics
  Shihab-ud-Din's anti-Hindu ..
  'Sufi-face of Islam' thesis ...
  Sultan Sikandar -  a Cruel ..
  Mir Ali Hamdani's Advice ...
  Return of Sanity
  Na Bhatto Aham -  A Cry ...
  Crusade Re-launched
  Nirmal Kanth - A Pillar ...
  Inter-face Between Hinduism..
  Regeneration of Kashmir ...
  Mughal Annexation at ...
  Learning Not Enough, ...
  Muslims Invite Afghans
  Birbal Dhar and Sikhs
  Loot of 1931
  Loot of Landed Properties
  Loot of a Kashmiri Pandit ...
  Loot and Plunder of 1986
PART II 
  Nehru's Advice to ...
  Pan-Islamic Design
  Sponsored Terrorism
  Kashmiri Pandits -  soft ...
  JKLF - An Outfit of Killers
  Jammaat-i-lslami - ...
  Afghans Again Invited ...
  Massacre of Kashmiri Pandits
- Part 1 of 3
- Part 2 of 3
- Part 3 of 3
  Loot, Grab and Arson ...
  Destruction and Desecration ...
  Loot and Burning of Books
  Kashmiri Pandits As Migrants
  Conversions as Muslim ...
  Kashmiri Pandits and ...
  Homeland Demand Raised
  Sangrampora Massacre
  References and Notes
  List of Illustrations
  Appendix
  Book in pdf format

Koshur Music

An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri

Panun Kashmir

Milchar

Symbol of Unity

 
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Part I: Chapter 5

TRIKA PAVED THE WAY FOR ISLAM - ANOTHER MYTH

In his attempt to stipulate a philosophical basis for the spread of Islam in Kashmir, P.N.Bazaz toyed with another idea, astounding and unfounded, that Trika paved the way for Islam in Kashmir. How? He has not felt kindly to explain it in details. Ajit Battacharjee in his book ' Kashmir - the wounded Valley' has uncritically and slavishly upheld and adopted the same mish-mash thesis, thus lending legitimacy to the preposterous thesis of 'peaceful conversion' in the valley of Kashmir.

With no firm grounding in the realms of philosophy in general and Kashmir Shaivism in particular, Bazaz commits the fallacy of equating monotheism with the Absolute in the Trika, which, to him and Bamzai too, is the apt nomenclature for Kashmir philosophy of Shaiva non-dualism. It is extremely relevant to point out that monotheism in essence is a syriac concept common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam and hence has implicit in it a definite psyche and the syriac-Judaic cultural ring and ambience and contrary to it, the thought of non-dualism, the same as monism, has full-fledged history in India and naturally in Kashmir too. To his lay mind, it appears, though an absurdity, that the concept of Absolute propped upon logically structured thought-constructs led to the acceptance of Islam in Kashmir as 'one God reality' is at the centre of Islamic religion too. Unaware of finer nuances of philosophica1 structures, he seems to hold that Param Shiva or Shiva as the absolute in Kashmir non-dualism is the same God as Gods in Judaism and Islam are. Shiva is an absolute, not a God and an absolute the same way as Shuniya (Void) and Vignyan (Consciousness) are in the Buddhist philosophies of Madyamika and Shunivanvad and Brahman in Sankara's philosophy of Advaitism (non-dualism).

Had Bazaz extended the limits of his misconceived and preposterous thesis, he would have no qualms in formulating that the Indians accepted Islam because of Sankara's philosophy of Advaitism with Brahman as the coping stone of the whole facade. To him, Brahman, perhaps, is the same God as that of Islam.

Monotheism with its Semitic colour and sociological and ethnic background especially syriac and Judaic came over to Islamic realms as a borrowed bequest and if introduced in Kashmir by Muslim proselytizers led by Saiyid Ali Hamadani could not have worked wonders on the thinking plane as it had no halo of being new, original or innovative and more than most there is hardly any region and area of religion or abstract thought which the Hindus have not prolifically conceived and dilated upon with depth and mellowness.

Writes Giri Lal Jain, "There is no human aspiration and experience which lies outside the range of Hinduism."

Writes Rafiqi, "that the idea had long existed in Hinduism. Even as early as Rig Vedic hymns, we meet the idea of 'one reality'. This also is the teaching of upanishads, that whatever is, is Brahman, it is the source and end of all."

Monotheistic religion in sharp contrast to polytheism has its full accent on the idea of one God and professes and assumes the execution of His work on earth. Man in such a religion is enunciated as being highly indebted to God for all his material and tangible possessions in the world. As a sequential corollary, man is required and fiated to repose full faith in God and has to be devoted to him in all gratefulness. A monotheistic religion with the accretion of prophetism is not lost in mystical realms, but is rooted in time and history and looks forward to the end of the world when Justice would be dispensed and meted out. Its interest in the world is not only maximum but supreme as it Is God's gift to man.

Puts Krishna Chaitanya, "Polytheism sees the imprint of God's foot-steps in every manifestation of nature, in river and forest, in sun and moon. But, it too frequently degenerates into animism. Monotheism may be a higher concept, but then one God has been too frequently a jealous tribal deity.

Kashmir Shaiva non-dualism having no comparable parallels with Monotheism has an entirely different root system and soil chemistry. It encompasses and is securely modelled on a world-view, which has no meeting-ground with and not even a remote semblance to the monotheistic idea. To monotheistic religions, creation is deistic, but in Kashmir Shaiva Monism, there is no creation, instead there is perpetual manifestation or emanation and Shiva as the absolute reality is both transcendental and immanent. To Monotheistic religions, man is not accountable for all what he does, good or bad, on the earth. He becomes accountable and is subject to judgment only after he goes to the grave.

But, as per the Shaiva non-dual tenets, every individual is responsible for his actions, past and present, in this world, which is caught up in the layers and meshes of duality and his prime objective in the world is to recognise himself the same as self realisation, by treading upon the path of piety and spiritualism, of course, under the inspiring guidance of a worthy preceptor (guru).

Man has to march through time and history, but his ultimate state is self-recognition, which is the attainment and actualization of original Shiva-condition, pure and pristine, a condition beyond time and history. To Kashmir Monism, world is real, yet it in its basics is a duality and a seeker, who is not an atom in a collective herd, chooses by the exercise of his free will to journey through the zigzags of duality to a state, which is non-dual untainted by the meshes of time and history. Self-recognition is a condition of perfection, though a state attained in and through the world, yet in essence a state of transcendentalism where a self-recognised soul dwells enjoying the beauteous bliss. He may choose to be in the world for altruistic purposes but as a man having tasted the bliss of recognition is not stained by his actions in the world. He is in absolute harmony with the world which though apparently external to him is in reality his own reflection or emanation. Liberation though considered to be in the world, but in essence is beyond the world, which means beyond time and history.

Needham, F.Carr, Paul Tillich and Kausambi have offered a thesis for the peculiar Indian tendency to weave and formulate Absolutist philosophies and have found its deep rooted motivations in the Indian belief in time and history. One may not agree to the formulations that they have offered in this regard, but they have certainly spotlighted the Indian belief in time as cyclical or circular, but not linear or straight. The Indian view-point about time, to Needham, is 'that world goes down the destruction one after another'. Kausambi holds that the belief in four ages of mankind is rooted in the climatic conditions of this land.

These scholars of eminence also hold that the Indians have yet to make history and that is why they have not produced a single work on history detailing out 'a series of specific events in which men are consciously involved and which they consciously influence.'

Though Kashmir has a scintillating and coherent tradition of history-writing, yet the historians have harboured and nurtured the same notions about time and history and that is why terror, trauma and tragedy the Hindus have suffered with the on-set of Muslims in Kashmir have been negated and have not been vividly and graphically drawn and delineated. Fate, to them, is a factor that shapes historical forces and processes, which in themselves are pointless and purposeless.

The above formulations delineating the Indian positions on religious and philosophical issues lead one to postulate that Monotheism as a religious idea emerging from tribal social formations contains a view, which is absolutely at variance with an absolutist philosophy. Where Bazaz has artificially perceived a unity of thought and concept are mutually antagonistic and ideologically divergent with no scope for a rendevouz. In fact he has jay-walked into the whole issue.

 

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