What About Insāniyat?

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 40 Number 1 Article 8 November 2020 What about Insaniȳ at? Morality and Ethics in the Pahars of Kashmir Omer Aijazi University of Toronto, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Aijazi, Omer. 2020. What about Insaniȳ at? Morality and Ethics in the Pahars of Kashmir. HIMALAYA 40(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol40/iss1/8 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. What about Insaniȳ at? Morality and Ethics in the Pahars of Kashmir Acknowledgements The research was supported by Shehzad Aslam, Nusrat Jamal, Fawad Aslam, Saeed Khan, Ambreen Khan, Mubashir Nawaz Khan, Muhammad Shoaib, Aurangzaib, and Abdul Shakoor. Sukhi Development Foundation and Haashar Association provided guidance and logistical support. Funding was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; UBC Public Scholar Initiative; University of Toronto; IDRC; UN OCHA; and the Pakistan Strategy Support Program. Earlier versions of this manuscript benefited from discussions at the ‘Mapping Emerging Scholarship on South Asia’ conference at LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan and the seminar series at the National Institute of Pakistan Studies (NIPS), QAU, Islamabad, Pakistan. The author thanks Haley Duschinski and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions. This research article is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol40/iss1/8 What about Insaniyat? Morality and Ethics in the Pahars of Kashmir Omer Aijazi What about insāniyat (humanity)? Or put something more—both within and outside the diferently, how are morality and ethics realm of possibility and articulation. insāniyat, compelled and shaped in the pahars as a lens, helps illuminate moral and ethical (mountainscapes) of Kashmir? insāniyat striving in a way that does not lend itself only in is an emotion and ethics that expresses relation to state-based violence or directional interdependencies between people. Insāniyat responses to it. This, in turn, has the potential to is moral and ethical proclivity. It is not enforced open conversations on decolonial, rather than by an external authority but inheres in human only postcolonial, notions of sovereignty. encounters. I explore the question of insāniyat Through the use of narrative, parallel storylines, with the help of Qari Safr, a village Imam photographs, and recipes, the paper brings in the pahars of Neelum valley of Pakistan- into purview the difuse nature of violence administered Kashmir. in Kashmir’s pahars and its saturation of life Devoted to the circulation of an Islamic-informed therein. It atempts to think about Kashmir and integrity of life, I read Qari Safr’s aspirations its people on their own terms. In doing so, it for himself and his community as extensions pays atention to the ethical, ontological, and of wider struggles for Kashmir. I juxtapose his epistemological aspects of thinking and writing. strivings to regain and nurture insāniyat with In its atentiveness to ethnographic emergence, the multiple forms of violence which shape his the paper contributes to the creation of diverse life. Qari Safr helps us appreciate moral and epistemic and discursive spaces where Kashmir ethical striving as a political project, and his work (and Kashmiris) are not diminished by available towards an imagined, utopic destination (where language. insāniyat is commonplace) as emblematic of Keywords: Kashmir; violence; decoloniality; epistemic Kashmiri futurities which are insistences for disobedience; political theory; Muslim lifeworlds; ethnography 30 | HIMALAYA Fall 2020 Introduction integrity of life, I read Qari Safir’s aspirations for himself and his community as extensions of wider struggles for “Between what is said and not meant Kashmir. I juxtapose his strivings to regain and nurture And what is meant and not said insāniyat with the multiple forms of violence that shape Most of love is lost” his life. This includes the permutation of forces that - Gibran Khalid culminated in the withdrawal from his lifelong dream of becoming an alim (Ud; religious scholar) to take on the In our very first meeting, Qari Safir1 declared: “Kashmir role of the village Imam in a context of intense anxiety main insāniyat khatam hogayee hai (Kashmir has lost its and suspicion, and to care for his ailing father. Qari Safir humanity)2.” What is the insāniyat (Urdu, Ud; humanity) helps us appreciate moral and ethical striving as a political that he speaks of? Surely, this is not the same ‘humanity’ project, and his work towards an imagined, utopic desti- that is invoked by human rights discourses3? nation (where insāniyat is commonplace) is emblematic Qari Safir is a village Imam4 in the pahars (Ud; mountain- of Kashmiri futurities. This may be an orientation of the scapes)5 of Neelum valley, Kashmir. We met during my future which, despite the lack of precise definitions, are research in the region between 2014 and 2016. Neelum is insistences for something more—both within and outside part of Pakistan wala (Ud; donates possessiveness) Kashmir, the realm of possibility and articulation. the portion of Kashmir currently under Islamabad’s A growing body of scholarship on Kashmir has sought to administration. The Line of Control (LoC), the de-facto center state-based violence and bring into purview the border that divides Kashmir into India and Pakistan, cuts rampant violations routinely inflicted on Kashmiri bodies through Neelum, and in this way, encodes everyday life to reignite conversations on the region’s sovereignty, into the materiality of no-go zones, army barracks, and along with calls for greater rights and freedoms (e.g., Ali security checkpoints6. From 1990-2003, during the peak of 2019; Bhan 2013; deBergh Robinson 2013; Duschinski et the Kashmir insurgency, Neelum was at the heart of the al. 2018; Kak 2013; Malik 2019; Zia 2019b). This urgent cross-border conflict between India and Pakistan until a body of work has paved the way for further pressing shaky ceasefire was eventually reached. Just two years questions, including an examination of the very analytical after the ceasefire, a massive earthquake devastated the frames used to center Kashmir and Kashmiris. However, region (in 2005), followed by unprecedented monsoon efforts to center state-based violence can inadvertently flooding (in 2010). In one way or another, residents of risk reducing Kashmir to a perpetual dialectic between Neelum, like the rest of Kashmir, have lived and continue subjugation and subjugator, where only the vocabularies to live in a recurring state of emergency, always under the of resistance, resilience, and agency are permissible7. For scrutiny and manipulation of the nation-state, its military example, in her work with Kashmiri refugees displaced and security apparatus, and to some degree humanitarian across the LoC into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and development organizations (see Aijazi 2018; Ali 2013, deBergh Robinson (2013) comes to understand Kashmiri 2019; deBergh Robinson 2013; Snedden 2012). political subjectivity as a struggle to establish the security So, then, what about insāniyat? Or, put differently: how are of Muslim bodies against political violence, torture, and morality and ethics compelled and shaped in the pahars of rape. I, on the other hand, do not wish to foreclose my Kashmir? I explore this question with the help of Qari Safir examination of Qari Safir’s strivings for insāniyat with the to illuminate the diffuse nature of violence in the pahars same robustness and certainty deBergh Robinson suggests and its saturation of life therein. A more subtle ambition of for her interlocutors. My ambitions are different; I seek to this paper is to encourage transparency in the scholarship suggest insāniyat as a lens to illuminate moral and ethical on Kashmir by laying bare the contours of my entangle- striving in the pahars in a way that does not lend itself only ments with Qari Safir. These entanglements also hint at in relation to state-based violence or directional responses the burdens of truly reciprocating relationships. As moral to it. Rather, I am interested in revealing those other philosopher Emmanuel Levinas reminds us, we are never investments in life, which also poignantly convey efforts really capable of meeting the ethical demands that others at establishing a moral presence in place. As Nixon (2018) place upon us (Levinas 1985, 2003). reminds us: “not all stories need to be resistant or resur- gent to be true” (47). Qari Safir runs a modest masjid (Ud; mosque) where he leads the men of his village in daily congregation prayers Inspired by the post-structuralist works of Rosi Braidotti and teaches children how to recite the Quran. Devoted (2003, 2011) and her insistence on “figurations” that to the circulation of an Islamic-informed morality and are multilayered, hybrid,

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