A Kashmiri truth

Today, it saddens me and my Hindu Dogra friends to see the beautiful valley of Kashmir and, for that matter, the entire world being cleaved ...

Today, it saddens me and my Hindu Dogra friends to see the beautiful valley of Kashmir and, for that matter, the entire world being cleaved into an Islamic and non-Islamic one by the terrorist elements. Having grown up in Kashmir, I never saw my non-Muslim friends as 8220;Hindus8221;. I have always viewed them as human beings and so do they view me!. Islam has taught me Lakum dinokum waley yadeen You follow your religion, let them follow their religion. A big truth of my existence is that my best friends are not of my own community8212;they are Hindus. Even during the time of communal conflagrations, there was no sense of uneasiness between my Hindu friends and me. In turbulent times, we would prefer to visit the shrines of the Kashmiri Sufi saints and rishis.

The selective killing of Hindus and Sikhs in the Valley is a new phenomenon, utterly ghastly and repugnant to the composite ethos of Kashmiri Islam, so very firmly cemented in the Indian soil. Islam in Kashmir is renowned for its sponge-like quality of absorption, broadmindedness, its deep commitment to tolerance of all faiths and streams of thought.

In the Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri,, Jahangir writes: 8220;The Kashmiri Sufis and Rishis neither eat meat nor marry. They always plant fruit-bearing trees in uninhabited parts, so that they may benefit people. But they themselves do not hope to reap any advantages from these trees.8221; Kashmiri writers Bum Sadhu, Baba Naseeb Rishi and Baba Dawood Khaki, have affirmed this tradition.

Today, the images of Kalashnikov-toting kids and venom-spewing clerics flash across the mind when speaking of Kashmir. To all the orthodox clerics and ulema Muslim theologians who propagate hatred for Hindus, I would like to ask, if Hindu tenets propagate violence and destruction as they would have us believe, how could it possibly have given birth to something as beautiful as Shaivite bhakti?

Like Sufism, Shaivism is synonymous with love, tolerance and humility. It is a faith that believes in the immense goodness of the human soul. Is the Sufi tenet, Hama Ost 8212; God is in Everything, any different in essence from the Shaivite belief enunciated in the Upanishads, and similar to the concept of Atma and Paramatama? Besides, there is also a common bond between the theory of Advaita and Sufism. In the Brihadaranayaka Upanishad, Janaka asked Yajnavalkya, 8220;When the sun has set, and the fire has gone out, and the speech is stopped, what light does a man have here?8221; The answer was, 8220;The Atma, is the light, for with the Paramatama, indeed, as the light, one sits, moves about, does one8217;s work and returns.8221;