Nazima Parray
As the band started playing the very famous kashmiri sufi song in a new version an elderly lady started singing with them. Her voice was very melodious. Although she was singing in a very low tone but she received my attention as I was sitting next to her at marriage party. Tears were rolling down from her closed eyes. Unknowing about the people sitting around, she was busy in singing. Not able to understand the reason behind her moist eyes I decided to intervene her. All of sudden the band changed the track and she opened her eyes. Afsoos duniya kayse na nuv samsar sethee. May his soul rest in peace she said, by now I became more intrigue to know what made her cry and moreover whose soul she wanted to rest in peace. The enthralled voice of great legend Ammi Sufi gave ethereal and calming essence to these verses written by Rajab Hamid. The way he sings this sufi song is amazingly wonderful because he knew the essentiality of these lyrics. These young chaps can never feel quintessence of these verses how can they do justice to the highly sentimental lyrics of Rajab Hamid. She said actually these lines are composed by him only and he depicted the journey of life in this mortal world which is filled with vendetta, selfishness and greed. He started journey of man from his birth to death. Life is but a blink on the eye of death and it will try to contrive you to fall for it and till the time you understands only remorse will be left. I became intrigue to know about this person who composed these heart wrenching lines. I decided to go Kashmir University’s kashmiri department to know about him. To my surprise they don’t had any literature available related to him nor on any Kashmiri folklore, mysticism, sufisim, and not even on Kashmir itself. This thing perforated my soul. The fact that ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY has abundant literature available on Kashmir but our own Kashmir University is lagging behind reserving their own literature. We are losing our folklore and literature to other states that should be present here in Kashmir. Kashmir is having 6000 years old history but who knows about that today. Albeit our own state government has taken initiative to introduce Kashmir language as one of the necessary subject in schools but we have very lesser number of teachers in Kashmir that can teach Kashmir language in schools. Till now not a single initiative has taken to introduce kashmiri history and geography in our school curriculum. The geographical distribution of our land is well known by the outsiders but does anyone among us know the beauty of our land. Do we know the attractiveness of low lying valleys like Tawi, Chenab, Poonch, Sind and Lidder valleys? Everyone knows about the picnic spots and forests but do they know anything about the herbs, minerals, and precious stones found abundantly there. Medicinal herbs like Balladona, Hyoseyamus, Digitalis, menthol artemisis, polygola, podophyllum, rabus and trilliu grown in these forests. Industries like paper, joinery, sports goods, furniture, wood carving, herbal drugs, silk industry and manufacturing of agricultural implements and construction of railways sleepers depend on these forests. The valley of Kashmir is having many types of soils like Gurti (clay), Bahil (loam), Sekil (sandy), Nambaal (peats), Surzamin, lemb, floating garden soils and karewa soil. The canals like Martand canal (oldest canal in Kashmir), the shakful canal, the sharabkul canal, the laikul canal, the zainagir canal, the dadikul canal, the nur canal, the sumbal canal, the zarkul canal, the zainapur canal, the nandikul canal, the parimpur, the mahind, the awantipur, the kayal, the rishipora canal and the babal canal. The distribution of rocks and minerals lignite, limestone, copper, iron ore, gypsum, ochre, zinc and nickel, fuller earth, slate stone, graphite, sulphur and marble. If one will go through the history of Kashmir we see we are a peace loving people. It is our utmost duty to start teaching education for peace in our curriculum ; if we go through the process of photosynthesis and we observe the food chain every living creature follow the rule of nature and if by default this chain gets disturbed the whole process will get imbalanced. To every action there is equal and opposite reaction this is famous Newton’s law known by everyone, if we make peace we will be at peace and if we initiate war we will end up destroying everything. This means we should inculcate peace in every subject in our schools. Moral education should be considered sacrosanct in every school. Morality will initiate sense of humanity which in turn will awaken spirituality and its spirituality that takes you from contemplation to completeness. If we pay attention to the syllabus for Kashmir administrative services we shall see one has to study the Indian polity rather than Kashmir polity. The designers of that syllabus did not feel necessary to include Kashmir polity in it. This is really a matter of concern that our own cultural academy kitab ghar exist only for the sake of culture. The fact is that a real treasure of Kashmir culture is not available there also. Our museums, libraries don’t have literature available on Kashmir. The irony of the things is being a Kashmir we don’t allow our children to speak in Kashmiri. Parents feel disgraced if their children speak in kashmiri in front of others.” According to Nelson Mandela the first black president of Africa, if you talk to a man in a language he has learned in school, it goes to his head. If you talk to him in a language that he has learned from his mother, it goes to his heart.” According to psychologist 90% of personality development is seen is those children who’s speaks their mother language in their childhood. Then why don’t we encourage our children to talk in their mother language. Because of this dilemma our children are in confusion and chaos and with the result they are not able to speak any of the language in its proper way. It’s a time to retrospect lest very soon our future generation shall be seen in state of serious identity crises. We should at least be answerable to their question. It’s a time to act lest our Kashmir will lose its identity and integrity by our own preposterousness of being called modernistic.