Religion, Dialogue and Peace in Jammu and Kashmir Yoginder Sikand Religion, Dialogue and Peace in Jammu and Kashmir Copyright© WISCOMP Foundation for Universal Responsibility Of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, New Delhi, India, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by WISCOMP Foundation for Universal Responsibility Of His Holiness The Dalai Lama Core 4A, UGF, India Habitat Centre Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110 003, India This initiative was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The views expressed are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect those of WISCOMP or the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of HH The Dalai Lama, nor are they endorsed by them. 2 Contents Preface ................................................................................................ 5 Introduction ........................................................................................ 7 Kashmir .............................................................................................. 9 Jammu .............................................................................................. 37 Ladakh ............................................................................................ 106 Summing up and Recommendations ............................................. 148 3 4 Preface The Scholar of Peace Fellowships awarded by WISCOMP for academic research, media projects and special projects are designed to encourage original and innovative work by academics, policy makers, defense and foreign office practitioners, NGO workers and others. The series WISCOMP Perspectives brings the work of some of these scholars to a wider readership. The monograph Religion, Dialogue and Peace in Jammu and Kashmir, the outcome of an academic project undertaken by Yoginder Sikand, is the twenty third in the series of WISCOMP Perspectives. Traveling through Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, Yoginder Sikand opens conversations with a wide swathe of people belonging to different faith traditions, in an attempt to recover and articulate alternate perspectives on religion, grounded on the lived experiences of ordinary people including women. Simultaneously he critiques intolerance and retrogressive interpretations of religion both by clerics as well as by some people belonging to the different faith traditions. The study is based on the premise that religion is a double edged sword and regressive versions that can be used as tools to stir violence exist side by side with progressive interpretations that can be used as a resource for peace. While there is no denying that faith moves the lives of millions across the subcontinent, a basic dilemma that has to be addressed squarely is that reconciliation and revenge, and violence and harmony coexist in every major religious tradition and intersect in myriad ways. In introspecting strategies of dialoguing between traditions, the paradox between the spaces for reconciliation and coexistence offered by the cultural and spiritual resources of the different traditions and the simultaneous closure of spaces by a new militarized and organized religiosity needs to be factored in. This in turn leads to another question – where do we locate spaces for reconciliation and healing? Are these spaces to be found in an anesthetized areligious “secular” space or in an alternative space that does not exclude the spiritual resources and rich inter faith matrix from this part of the world? This calls for considerable introspection. The culture of militant religiosity and the liberal response to this which 5 allegedly takes the form of what some would call “secular militancy” sometimes feed on each other – consequently the challenge is to break this cycle to find creative spaces for healing and dialogue. These questions become particularly germane in the context of Jammu and Kashmir whose long legacy of peaceful coexistence as manifested in the spirit of Kashmiriyat did come under threat due to the onslaught of a certain type of religious militarism that had no lineage in the history of the region. When the armed movement in Kashmir came under the influence of foreign groups and mercenaries, the gentle Sufi traditions that played such a central role in promoting inter faith dialogue between people of different communities in Kashmir, was challenged by extremist form of Islam. In the Jammu region extremist Hindu groups fanned the fires of anti Muslim passion while Ladakhi Buddhists instituted a boycott of Muslims that lasted for several years. While acknowledging that these schisms and antagonisms are also overlaid by political factors and recognizing that the crisis in Kashmir is political in nature and is not, as some commentators would have us believe, simply imported Islamic fundamentalism, Yoginder Sikand does point out that the salience of religion in the conflict cannot be denied. In the context of Kashmir, religion has come to define an important aspect of people’s identities, and to that extent cannot be delinked from the ongoing conflict. Consequently, Sikand argues that there is a “need to bridge gaps, dispel myths and stereotypes and initiate a process of re-humanizing the other.” The “alternate” understandings of religion have to be identified and strengthened, so that it can be used as a resource for promoting “ecumenism instead of conflict”. The primary sources for this project largely consisted of in depth interviews with different religious heads, theologians, academics, officials of religious and faith based organizations, social activists as well as “ordinary” citizens. Dialogic engagement is integral to the work of WISCOMP. This work represents a bold attempt to retrieve and build on Kashmir’s indigenous powerful historical legacy of shared spaces and syncretic culture that had kept people and communities together in the past. In doing so it indicates the directions that projects of social healing and reconciliation can take. The WISCOMP Research Team 6 Introduction The political status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir has been under dispute for more than half a century now. Several wars have been fought between India and Pakistan over the territory, and in the ongoing violence that began in 1989 several thousand people have lost their lives. Religion plays a central role in shaping discourses related to the Kashmir conflict. For some Muslims it is a jihad, a struggle between Islam and ‘disbelief’, a war between pious Muslims and ‘disbelieving’ ‘infidels’. Similarly, for some Hindus, the war is a religious struggle to protect ‘Mother India’ and for the cause of the Hindu dharma against what are seen as its ‘enemies’. Religion and religious commitment, for many people, are non-negotiable things, and the salience of religion in shaping how the Kashmir issue is defined and understood makes the conflict even more intractable. Every religion can be interpreted in diverse and often mutually contradictory ways to support a range of different political projects. How a religion is interpreted depends not just on the prescriptions or commandments of a particular religious scripture but, equally crucially, on the interpreter himself or herself, on his or her own particular ideological position and social location. Any religion can, therefore, be interpreted for ill or for good, for a progressive or for a reactionary political purpose. The temptation to see religion in monolithic terms, generally following a textual or scripturalist approach, must, therefore, be firmly resisted. The recognition of the diversity of ways of understanding and interpreting each religion opens up the possibility of highlighting and working with alternate interpretations in order to promote a more progressive politics. This is precisely what this modest survey tries to do in the context of contemporary Jammu and Kashmir. It begins with the recognition of the salience of particular ways of understanding and expressing religion and religious identities that tend to promote conflict between different communities in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It then seeks to explore the alternate, more inclusive understandings of the major religions practised in the state, viz. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Dalit-related traditions. It focuses in particular on the ways in which these religions can be interpreted in 7 order to promote better relations between people of different communities, which, in turn, are indispensable for a lasting peace in the region. Recognising the fact that these alternate understandings are deeply rooted in the lives of many ‘ordinary’ people, but are often not reflected in ‘orthodox’ versions of religion, this survey documents the voices of ‘ordinary’ Muslims, Hindus, Dalits, Buddhists and Christians to present different ways in which religions can be imagined and practised in order to promote communal harmony and counter religious radicalism. This report is divided into three chapters, focussing on Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh respectively. Owing to paucity of time, the report is necessarily far from exhaustive. Given the nature of the study, the selection of my respondents was random. The voices that they articulate, therefore, are not representative but are certainly illustrative. Fieldwork for this report was conducted between August 2004 and June 2005. Of the numerous people I need