THE JOURNAL OF KASHMIR STUDIES VOLUME VI 2012 NO.1 Editor G.M. Khawaja (alias) Meem Hai Zaffar Editorial Advisory Board Prof. Noor Ahmad Baba Prof. Ashok Aima Prof. Gulshan Majeed Prof. Nisar Ali Prof. Fida Mohammad Hasnain Editorial Staff Samir Ahmad and Shabir Ahmad UNESCO MADANJEET SINGH INSTITUTE OF KASHMIR STUDIES University of Kashmir, Srinagar The publishers are not responsible for the views expressed by the authors of the research paper appearing in this volume of the Journal. All rights are reserved, no part of the contents of the Journal may be reproduced by photo print, micro film or any other means without the written permission from the publisher. Price: Rs. 350.00 Publisher: UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Institute of Kashmir Studies, University of Kashmir Hazratbal, Srinagar-190006 ISSN: 0975-6612 ©2011, UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Institute of Kashmir Studies, Printed at: Quaf Printers # 9419436635 Designed By: Mir Shabir CONTENTS EDITORIAL Between Secular Pluralism and Religious Exclusivism 1-48 Some Observations in the Context of Peace, Sustainability and the Religious Other Muhammad Suheyl Umar Imagery of Withdrawal, Violence and Destruction in the 49-64 Kálīkrama Aleksandra Wenta Northeast and Kashmir: Problems in a Comparative 65-79 Perspective Noor Ahmad Baba Lal-Ded: The Mystic Poet of Kashmir 80-86 M.H. Zaffar Contextualizing Musharraf’s Four-Point Formula 87-105 Samir Ahmad The Fourth Buddhist Council The World’s Best Kept 107-115 Secret Mohammad Ajmal Shah The 2010 Assertion in Kashmir and The Indian 116-126 Democracy Bilal Ahmad Ganai Book Review Children at Work Depriving Future 128 - 134 Generations of Intellectual Capital Nazir Ahmad Gilkar EDITORIAL Kashmir has a tradition of speculative Philosophy that goes back to Buddhist times. As a matter of fact Kashmiri Scholars have contributed substantially, not only towards the development of metaphysical trends in Buddhism but also to the development of Indian logic. It is worth mentioning here, that Naya Manjri of Jaint Bhat is considered one of the classical texts of Indian logic. Buddhist metaphysics and logic has heavily informed Kashmir Saivism, which is practiced by Sections of Kashmiri population as a spiritual discipline, even today. Although the texts belonging to these traditions are called Buddhist or Saivite, but most of these are not at all religious texts, no religious practices are prescribed in these texts. Kashmiri Scholars mostly practiced what we may call descriptive metaphysics. Their aim was to unravel and articulate the universal experience of man; so the goal was to indicate and if possible to describe the universal truth. And these scholars attempt to achieve their purpose by describing the psychological experiences that are universal in nature. It is this universality of experience that makes these texts speak to us even today, and impress us by their freshness, truth and relevance. Thus the texts produced by the spiritual masters of Kashmir posses universal appeal, but the hurdle to appreciate this appeal is the language and the style of these texts. All the texts produced during the Buddhist and Saivite period in Kashmir, are in Sanskrit language, and our script for writing this language used to be ‘Sharda’. Unfortunately in the present day Kashmir, we do not have many scholars, who know either Sanskrit or even the Sharda script. So this tradition of knowledge has been almost inaccessible to us for quite some time now. Later on the Muslim scholars and Sufis also continued this tradition of speculative Philosophy, by composing many treatises on the human condition. These texts are a valuable addition to the already existing tradition. Most of these treaties are in Persian, the knowledge of which is fast decreasing. It is very unfortunate that the traditional speculative and logical approach towards the comprehension of the human situation is disappearing from our society. In the present volume there are three articles that remind us of this great speculative and logical tradition of Kashmir. One article is by a Pakistani scholar and Sufi Mr. Suheyl Umar. The article is entitled Between Secular Pluralism and Religious Exclusivism some Observations in the Context of Peace, Sustainability and the Religious Other and the second one is by a Polish scholar of Kashmiri Saivism, Ms. Alexander Wenta. The article is entitled Imagery of Withdrawal, Violence and Destruction in the KālĪkrama. The third article is by M. H. Zaffar. The article is entitled Lal-Ded: The Mystic: Poet of Kashmir. There are some valuable empirical studies also, for which our contributors have worked very hard and tried their best to provide a value neutral analysis of the issues of contemporary relevance. We hope our readers will critically evaluate this effort on our part and guide us with their valuable comments. I am thankful to Mr. Samir Ahmad Research Scholar, in the Institute of Kashmir Studies for checking the proof of the articles included in the Journal. Editor 1 BETWEEN SECULAR PLURALISM AND RELIGIOUS EXCLUSIVISM SOME OBSERVATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF PEACE, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE RELIGIOUS OTHER Mr. Muhammad Suheyl Umar The present day world is a strange mixture of the vestiges and outposts of secular late/high modernity, postmodern mindset and “beyond the postmodern” frontier thinking with its divergent trends of engaging with the Sacred, its ideas about the human condition and dealing with the question of Reality. Cultures and their worldviews are ruled by their mandarins, the intellectuals, and they, as well as their institutions that shape the minds that ruled the modern world– and continue to hold sway in the postmodern (and beyond the postmodern) milieu– are unreservedly secular. One, therefore, often encounters the argument, and at times it turns into an objection, that a misleading picture is being presented by bringing in religion and spirituality as a stake holder in discussions on “building democratic structures”, contours of “a South Asian sensibility”, as well as the questions of “human functioning and social responsibility” and “new relationship between humans, nature and production to sustain life”; the themes that are being addressed in our discussions. Both within and without the Islamic faith, many would make such an observation and the secular mindset is, obviously, averse to it. But if the ground realities are taken into consideration, these alert us to another situation. We live for the first time in history in an age of multiculturalism and it is utterly important and central that we think in plural terms about Director, Iqbal Academy Lahore, Pakistan Journal of Kashmir Studies 2 faith. The most towering problem facing people in the 19th century was nationalism and in the 20th century it had been ideology as, for most of the century, the nations were located on the opposite sides of the ideological divide and the cold war conflict. But now when the war is gone and the ideological conflict is over, the greatest problem that faces the 21st century is the ethnic conflict and because those conflicts are powered, in part, by multiple faiths clashing with one another it is important that we turn over attention to that danger and do our best to annihilate whatever problems in our human collectivities that we face now or that may come down the road. I would offer a few observations in relation to the ground realities of the situation. Since everyone comes to the discussion with one’s own specific tool kit and training I would exclude all practical considerations and try to say something philosophically or theologically as, like the medieval Muslims, Christians and traditional Hindus, I too consider philosophy to be the long arm of theology and see religious arguments at work behind attitudes and actions and societal behaviours that apparently seem to have nothing in common with religion, even in mundane matters like the way Muslim, Hindu and Christian males treat their females! Moreover I do not agree with the way mostly common responses are made to the misplaced religious arguments and bad logic used by the present day extremist Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Most often the response is made by dissociating oneself from the monstrosities by saying that this is not true Islam or this is not true Hinduism or Christianity. But that amounts to side stepping the question and turning a blind eye to the fact that the groups in question from among all the faith communities are putting forward religious arguments to validate their actions and the conceptual framework and basic assumptions through which these operate are claimed to be supported by their basic religious texts. In this case one cannot absolve oneself of one’s responsibility by simply disowning the group or groups in question. One must place the sin at the doorsteps of a definite group, school of thought or mode of interpretation in one’s community and try to hold a mirror to their thinking.1 Until quite recently, most of the writers tended to keep religion out of their scenarios of the future. Today, projections of a simply secular future seem less persuasive. The shift in perception could have diverse reasons but one might argue that this perception is just catching up with the reality obscured by the expansion of Communism earlier in the 3 Between Secular Pluralism and Religious Exclusivism twentieth century and by the influence, especially in the media and education, of a largely secularized Western-educated elite throughout that period. Probably between 4 and 5 billion of the world’s more than 6 billion people are directly involved with a religion today, and this picture seems unlikely to change a great deal during the rest of the twenty-first century. So during the lifetimes of all of us now alive we would do well to reckon seriously with religions as shapers of our world, for worse or for better especially when there is no widespread confidence that ‘the secular project’ can adequately resource any society in areas such as personal and family life, ethics and politics, health and environment, civic and international responsibilities.