Class Consciousness in Kashmiri Language
Language is deeply imbricated in the flesh of civilisation. Chomsky beautifully explains the relation between language and freedom and how “language, in its essential properties and in a manner of its use provides a basic criterion for determining that an organism is a being with a human mind”. Therefore, the will to express is the basis of language, it is not a static concept that is free from social transformation. Antonio Gramsci powerfully formulates the principle that language does not merely produce other languages by reacting solely upon itself: on the contrary, innovations occur through the interference of different cultures.
The language is a prime playground for communicative, social and political identities: where power-language dynamics play a major role: manoeuvred, augmented or controlled to convert one power into another.
Kashmir language and literature has not undergone parthenogenesis. It has come to evolve through numerous terse interactions with social and political order over hundreds of years, one constant theme in that order being “Social inequality”.
Around two millinea back Sanskrit was the language of the ruling class. Grierson confirms that for upwards of two thousand years Kashmir had been a home of Sanskrit learning and from this valley were issued Sanskrit masterpieces of poetry, history, philosophy and fiction. However, its usage remained largely limited to the elite circles and the common masses used Kashmiri as the medium of expression. Use of Kashmiri back then can be substantiated by many verses in Rajtaranghni where Kalhana uses vernacular Kashmiri proverbs e.g “nov sheen chou gallon preanis sheenas” ( Book 5, verse 401) or “rangas helu dyun” (Book 7, verse 441–443). The elites considered it the language of the unlettered, the “apabhramsa”, synonymous with poverty. Why would Jonaraja otherwise reprimand his beloved Jaina (Zaina-ul-Abdieen) from using this “vulgar language”?
With change in the ruling class and Persian becoming the court language, a new brand of functionaries was brought to the fore who chose Persian over Kashmiri and Sanskrit to stay in the echelons of power. To the peasant it mattered the least, he still held Kashmiri close to heart and Kashmiri literature enshrined home traditions and emotions.
The class consciousness in Kashmir languages becomes visible in the writings of Lal Dad and Noor-ud-din Rishi. Lal Ded was born when Kashmir came under the attack of the Mongol invader Dhulchu. She witnessed the conversion of the Tibetan ruler, Rinchana to Islam and establishment of the Muslim Sultanate in Kashmir under Sultan Shamsuddin. Far removed from the proclivities of the courtly writers she was able to capture the change in the social landscape via her simple Kashmiri verse. Lal Ded’s writings are full of questioning the elite cultures, presenting society in a state of flux, where religious and regional identities were in a state of redefinition.
She was vehemently critical of orthodoxy, its dogmas and rituals, its hypocrisy and exclusiveness, its division and particularism. She came from a Brahmin family herself but was highly critical of ceremonial pieties of religion as is seen in her vaakh:
Many of her ‘vaakhs’ are rife with tirades against the proponents of the prevalent order based on ‘superiority by birth’. She believed that only work, kindness and compassion towards fellow beings can make one superior; everything else being corruption of the elite.
Lalla’s poetry created micro-culture which drew its essential vitality from a conflict and struggle created in individual psyche by the challenges posed to the social order by her universalism. Her writings are immanent with a tussle against religious ethnocentrism and economic monopolies and asserting rights of the underprivileged through universal egalitarianism.
Sheikh Noor-ud-din’s poetry is replete with the sense of identity and place. As Mohammad Ishaq Khan rightly points out regarding his role on Kashmiris and their language, “Kashmiri, in the ultimate analysis, is the verbal correlative of people’s genius; it symbolises …. A way of life”. There is a deep sense of class consciousness in his writings, his protracted battle against the clergy, the feudal lords, bureaucracy and the despotic ruling elite, an aspect which has largely been ignored by the people of literature.
(I left the fertile seeds and sowed the infertile ones
I spent whole days and nights looking after them
I left the gold and silver and cried for brass
Breaking my sword I chose to turn it into a sickle)
He extensively uses the metaphor that his country men are well acquainted with, to convey his message of worldly escape. The first important aspect of this metaphor is found, undoubtedly, in the strength of their domestic attachments. In his poetry, we find scenes that are typical of the home life of the majority of the peasants of his day.
(How can you expect good crops from your God
When spring sowing is spoiled by windy rain)
The peasant would start and end his day on the soil. It was his means of sustenance, his only worldly belonging which he understood better than anything else. Noor-ud-din attaches a great deal of significance to it and uses it as tool for the dialogue of knowledge. (Let’s think the value of earth Precious are coins and all gold coins All originate from earth)
His poetry is highly critical of the exploitative practices of the high caste Hindus and Muslims, that deprived the poor of their hard earned living.
(The swindlers are there to loot the wise
They astute wild wind of their greed; The pious do not get a morsel even in group feasts
The evil enjoy meat-pulao to their full)
(The masquerading Mulla walks to the feast,
As weavers reed moves to carry the thread)
His activities earned Noor-uddin many enemies. There were numerous attempts on his life. One incident that is particularly famous is when he converted Bhum Saad to Baamuddin Rishi and a mob of over 1200 men who tried to burn down his dwelling place. His criticism of the state as Vander Raaj also earned him foes within the royalty. His teachings were considered outside the purview of the state and the ruler Ali Shah ordered his incarceration.
In “The Defence of Poetry” 1821, Shelley claimed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. Walt Whitman called “poetic lore … a conversation overheard in the dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few broken murmurs.”
This class consciousness was not only the character of medieval Kashmiri writers but continued to form a major theme in poetry of more contemporary writers.
Abdul Ahad Azad was born into a peasant household of Raanger, Budgam in 1903. He grew up to witness the condition of his countrymen under the heavy taxation system of Dogra rule which imbibed a deep sense of class in him. He is often considered as the first revolutionary poet of Kashmir who, for the first time, infused the progressive ideas into the Kashmiri poem. He was full of revolutionary zeal and called unto his brethren to muster courage against centuries of oppression and slavery.
(Get on your feet and rise, this is the moment,
The road to emancipation is long, get going O young man)
Azad’s poetry main theme was emancipation of Kashmiri youth from the centuries old oppressive hierarchies prevalent in society.
(Get up and be your your own light and leader
Prophets and Sages don’t come anymore)
He was a great critic of capitalism and considered it the worst form of inhumanity meted out by a man on a man.
(O slave this slavery doesn’t behove you
The oppression is but a trick of Capitalism on you.)
The poetry of Azad went a long way in rousing nationalist tendencies in Kashmir which was only acknowledged after he left this world. (The world shall remember Azad Azad Ishallremindyouofitmybeloved) Kashmiri poetry and literature, unlike Persian and Sanskrit, had roots in folk songs and ballads. Songs of harvest, surplus, scarcity and famine carried forward the deeply ingrained tradition of mysticism intrinsic to the meadows and mountains.
A notable folk poet, Sabir Tilwony, in one of his poems titled Yarqand anoan zeinaan, sings of the valour of Kashmiri labourers who participated in the construction of the Gilgit Road under the begar or forced labour system. The poem presents the worship of tyranny that the gullible peasants had to project and endure.
Maqbool Kralwari’s Mathnavi gries naamah also gives insight into the prevalent socio-political conditions of his time. In this social satire, Maqbool goes on to criticise the clergy for looting ignorant peasantry and extorting money from them by keeping them submerged in the mire of superstition. Kralwari employed local tirades, proverbs and even cuss words to convey to the reader the nervous urgency with which he wanted to address the predicament of the labourers.
When the document of ‘Naya Kashmir’ was drafted it recognised Urdu, with Persian (Nastaliq) script, as the official language of Kashmir. The document in its section 48 dealt with the state languages and section 37 clearly mentioned that Urdu shall be the language of courts. After 1947, various political necessities asserted that Urdu shall be the official language, but English language shall continue to be the language of choice for official purposes. However, Kashmiri continues to be the language of the artisan, the fisherman and the farmer. It continues to reverberate the household and the countryside culture of the proletariat Kashmir.
Dr Khawar Khan Achakzai is a cardiologist and a published author based in Kashmir with interest in history, literature and politics