Sufi healing for Kashmir

[1]

Muzaffar Ali [1]

What does one mean by “the healing touch”? In a world torn with strife this is a question one must be prepared to answer anytime, anywhere. Are we sensitive to understand where healing is needed? The human situation is extremely vulnerable and we in our own way have seen or lived several situations that are unpardonable.

Kashmir is the least understood part of this land. As I said in my last article, quoting Saadi, the world is like a human body — when one part of it is in pain, the whole body should feel it. Unfortunately, the media draws our attention to this pain but is quick to take us away from it no sooner we begin to offer a healing touch.
I am sure all of us feel depressed even thinking of Kashmir and are looking around to see from where a healing touch could possibly emerge.
It has to come from the mystics. And the people of Kashmir have to find this mystic from among themselves. This has been their history. Whenever their rulers have disturbed the balance, a voice, which is not seeking power, has risen as a soothing balm and extended its healing touch on an unprecedented scale for long spans of time. And when people themselves lost their faith, the touch vanished.
Kashmir was called Rishiwaer, a Garden of Saints, an abode of mystics, not a mere playground of the Orient. The sufis and rishis of Kashmir were not insular people. They were global in their thought and vision. They figured beforehand what was about to happen. They knew how to avert situations which would eventually require a healing touch. They knew what shaping of history was all about and were the balancing force. Today we are so detached that we cannot comprehend these enormous forces of nature which are always for the human good, and feel helpless and faithless in these times.
In 14th century Kashmir there was an intolerant ruler called Sikander-Butshikan (breaker of idols). He unleashed a rein of terror on his Hindu subjects. He broke their idols. But then came a rishi, Sheikh Noor-ud-din Wali, born in 1378. One after another he humanised all the Sultans during his lifetime. The last was the most compassionate and tolerant of all, Sultan Zainulabidin. Zainulabedin devoted one day of week to each religion. When Nund Rishi, as Sheikh Noor-ud-din Wali was called by his Hindu devotees, died, the Sultan walked barefoot in his funeral procession.
Among the brothers of same parents,
Why did you create a barrier?
Muslims and Hindus are one
When will God be kind to his servants?
Today, when media and politics can do so much and no more, the people of the Valley and their friends in India and around the world have to think and extend themselves. But before that it is important to understand what is Kashmir and Kashmiryat. The field is vast — Kashmiryat is an experience in which the people of the Valley too have to immerse themselves to know what they are. The people of rest of the country may get away by knowing less about themselves, but the Kashmiri has to indulge himself in his very rich cultural ethos, much of which lies in poetry and music. He has to indulge in it to such an extant that he is bursting with the desire to share. Today he does not know what to share and what people would like to share with him. So the quest has to emerge side by side, with the urge to share. This is very much a sufi phenomenon, but in modern times it is a specialised effort in communication design, from which we need not shy away.
The first thing that happened to make the Kashmiri youth helpless was to severe them from the sufi traditions of poetry, music and way of life. Who did this is anyone’s guess. It was obvious that whoever did it wanted to control their destinies and take away their freedom.
I feel lost in this sea of helplessness. I don’t have the power or the means to reach out. Zooni, my film on Habba Khatoon, the 16th century poetess queen of the Valley, was aborted. I don’t know how to connect anymore. Yet, I feel the need to do so now is greater than ever.
I can offer my humble effort through Rumi Foundation, and its journal HU — The Sufi Way, dedicated to the sufis and rishis of Kashmir. But this is barely scratching the surface. Only once we extend ourselves will there be a spring in the Valley, an eternal bloom, with sufiana kalaam flowing like a timeless, endless stream.

n The efforts of the Rumi Foundation, through its journal, Hu — The Sufi Way and Jahan e Khusrau, a world sufi music festival, is to invite the youth into the realm of the heart and spread love through mystic verse.

— Muzaffar Ali is a filmmaker and painter. He is the Executive Director and Secretary of the Rumi Foundation. He can be contacted at www.rumifoundation.in [2]