Kashmiriyat and Islam

Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity and, the Making of Kashmir

By Chitralekha Zutshi

Publisher: Permanent Black, Delhi

Year: 2003

Pages: 359

Price: Rs. 695

ISBN: 81-7824-060-2

Standard Indian journalistic and even purportedly 'scholarly' accounts of the emergence of the mass uprising in Kashmir tend to portray it as an externally inspired 'Islamic fundamentalist' movement against the supposedly secular Indian state. This is course a misreading of a very complex phenomenon. While the religious aspect obviously cannot be ignored, the Kashmiri Muslim resentment against Indian rule cannot be said to be simply a result of inherent antagonism between Islam and Hinduism or between Muslims and Hindus as such. For one thing, the very notion of the Indian state (against which the Kashmiri movement for self-determination defines itself) as 'secular' is questionable. Furthermore, the argument that the Kashmiri movement is in essence an 'Islamic' or a Muslim 'communal' one ignores the fact that long before the Islamists entered the scene, the movement was led largely by secular elements, such as the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, who, while advocating independence for Kashmir, were opposed to the notion of an 'Islamic' state, at least of the kind proposed by Islamists active in Kashmir today, such as the Lashkar-i Tayyeba and the Jama'at-i Islami.