Kashmir as a nursery of learning and religion has to its credit multi-dimensional and multi-faceted contributions to the mainstream culture and civilisation of India. There is no segment of human learning and abstract thought which intellectuals and thinkers of Kashmir have not nourished and enriched with loftiness of their thought and sublimity of their expression. The prolific faculties that they were endowed with have found remarkable expression in the annals of philosophy, aesthetics, poetics, sculpture and architecture and more than most in mathematics, astronomy and astrology. Kashmir as is universally recognised vitas a pivotal centre of Sanskrit learning and erudition and as such had been a locus of attraction for a galaxy of scholars and sawants with urges to satiate their thirst for knowledge and up-date their learning levels and scales. Kalhan, Jonraj, Srivar, Abhinavgupta, Somanand, Utpaldev, Somdev, Kshemendra et al transformed Kashmir into an intellectual centre of tremendous reputation through their scholarly attainments and this was how on the basis of trendsetting contributions to the total canvas of learning and scholarship Kashmir earned the honoured appellation of "Sharda Peeth", a hallowed centre of learning.

 

 

Islam tumbling like an avalanche upon Kashmir was ruthless in the destruction of "Sharda Peeth", its heritage, value-structure and usages. The Muslim anxiety religious in nature to destruct and root out the past of Kashmir ‘and as is well - known past lies buried in books’ generated an unabated fury to tear, mutilate and burn the treasure-trove of books that reflected like a mirror the 5000-year old cultural and civilisational history from the seminal promptings to the stages of full flowering. As the ruling cliques of Muslims sharing their ethos of intolerance, strife and disorder with their co-religionists inhabiting various regions and belts of territory were in pursuit of the malignant objective of genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, it would have remained an unfinished task of a set agenda had they not burnt their books on a stunning scale. As is amply testified by historical evidences the Buddhist, Shaivite and Vaishnavite places of worship littering over the land of Kashmir were not only cultural and religious symbols but receptacles of learning and centres of golden light of enlightenment dispelling mental obscurities and intellectual cobwebs through rare books and tomes orchestrating an ethos that surmounted the crude and un-seemly antagonism and strife generated in the name of religion.

 

 

The Muslim marauders with five hundred years of history in Kashmir have been chasing Islamisation with a view to rendering the Kashmiri Pandits as "Cultural destitutes" by destroying their "Cultural autonomy" which they presume is the prelude to their deculturation, assimilation and final decimation without any resistance. The destruction of books and libraries involved the same parameters of religious zeal and fanaticism with which destructive proselytization was pursued and realised. The Kashmiri Pandit scholars who were highly venerated for their varied contributions to learning and aesthetics were subjected to the mutilation of body-parts and gruesome killings. Men of letters were put to a whole-sale massacre and the books which they had authored were looted, torn and burnt.

 

 

 

 

Kashmir as a seminary of knowledge and literary expressions has given to the world a treasure-trove of books which can be treasured by people of any faith but the Muslims. It is apt to put that books were not destroyed and decimated in 90s but Muslims have had a history of destroying books either by putting them to fire or hurling them into the lake waters or burying them underground. It was done to uproot the indigenous culture forms to promote an alien, a foster culture form that was given a degree as "Kashmiriyat". The so-called Jehad of Muslim fundamentalists in full cry in Kashmir smacked of barbarity, communal frenzy scant consideration for civilised demeanour and above all disgust for realms of gold. They made bold to exhibit their contempt for learning and knowledge beyond the ambit of Quranic revelations. Motivated by the same creed of hatred of varied forms of knowledge other than Islamic they went whole hog in torching of books enshrining indigenous form of knowledge. It was nothing but fanatic madness.

 

 

 

 

The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits owing its perception and motivation to the Sayyids was translated into actual praxis by Sikander, the book burner, who executed interalia the deliberate plan of destruction and decimation of Hindu knowledge and learning with the objective of promoting the Islamic brand of theology and learning with alien origins. As a psychopath with theo-fascist traits and proclivities he added new chapters to the Muslim history that is replete with instances of burning of books and libraries. The books as cultural objects dilating on Hindu learning, philosophy and theology were savagely fed to the kitchen fires and bath-room boilers of Sayyids who have been acclaimed as the harbingers of Islamic faith in Kashmir. The libraries which were set on fire with impunity went on burning and smouldering for months on end. Not only did the psychopath impose punitive levies and cesses on the Pandits but also destructed their faith and its reflections and explanations in books with the vicious objective of causing a hiatus in the history of culture and civilisation that the Pandits of Kashmir had actively shaped and were a heir to. Records Srivar, "Sikander under the inspiration of yavanas (Muslims) burnt books, (saklan pustakan) the same way as fire burns hay." Being an erudite scholar of Sanskrit Srivar has deliberately taken to the plank of wrong grammar to focus, stress and disseminate Sikander's heinous crime of destructing books on an unimaginable scale. Again, he records, "All the scintillating works faced destruction in the same manner that lotus flowers face with the onset of frosty winter."

 

 

 

 

As an inveterate enemy of human knowledge and learning Sikander replicated the Muslim history of burning libraries that were bedecked with precious books on all segments of human learning and creative impulses. The Kashmiri Pandits vexed and mortified at whole-sale despoliation of their precious heritage and cultural objects fled with a portion of their book-treasure to the mountainous regions and inaccessible forest areas where they could be safe and secure from the Muslim philistines. Some Pandits extra-keen to save their tomes and manuscripts from the Muslim destructionists crossed the mountain ramparts girting the valley to the plains of India. Sikander harnessed state machinery to get the houses of Pandits ransacked and looted and the choicest books thus got were consigned to the flowing currents of rivers, oozing waters of lakes and wells and hurled into deep ditches and ravines. Records Walter Lawrence, " All books of Hindu Learning which he (Sikander) could find were sunk in the legal lake and after some time Sikander flattered himself that he had extirpated Hinduism from the valley." A Muslim historian Hassan also writes, " All the Hindu books of learning were collected and thrown into Dal Lake and were buried beneath stones and earth." On the total destruction of treasure-trove of books in the times of Muslim vandals led by Sikander, Jia Lal Kilam records, "Even in their miserable plight Pandits did not forget their rich treasures which linked them with their past. They felt that they were custodians of their past cultural heritage-the illuminating treatises on the stupendous Shaiva philosophy and other great works on literature, art, music, grammar, and medicine-works which have excited the wonder of an admiring world and wherever they went they carried these treasures with themselves. Judging from the depth of thought displayed in these works that have been preserved, their high literary merit, their insight into the depth of nature, their poetical flights, their emotional Devour coupled with an incisive logical treatment of the subjects dealt with in them, one can easily imagine the colossal loss the world has been subjected to by the acts of vandalism which resulted in the destruction of hundreds of works which contained the labours of more than two thousand years."

 

 

 

 

To push out Sanskrit from the Muslim courts and relegate it into an oblivion Persian was introduced and patronised by Muslims strutting the corridors of power. It was a big conspiracy to wean the Pandits away from Sanskrit language which had been the fountain-head of their lore and learning and was spoken even by women. The position of Kashmir in the domain of Sanskrit was so preeminent that it came to be regarded not only as the abode of Goddess of Learning, Sharda-peeth, but also as the Sarvajnapith (abode of all forms of learning). Without being prolific on the significance of Sanskrit it can be said that Sanskrit is even now the foundation of the Kashmiri cultural heritage. Banishment of Sanskrit and its replacement by an alien language was an onslaught on the essence of Kashmiri identity. What would accrue from the language policy of the Muslim rulers was to deprive the Pandits of their sustenance by keeping them away from the administrative apparatus.

 

 

But, to the shock and dismay of the fanatics, Kashmiri Pandits with an ardour for learning and scholarship took to the learning of Persian and made amazing and breath-taking contributions to the realms of Persian poesy and prose. But, Hazar Khan, the Pathan surrogate, did not take it lying down and issued orders banning the learning of Persian by the Pandits. If a Pandit flouted the flat, he as always was straightaway to be butchered. Comments Jia Lal Kilam, "The Pandits were strictly forbidden to read Persian and the penalty for the infringement was certain death. The degrading and unwholesome consequences of this order can well be understood when we bear in mind that the Persian was then the court language and the affairs of the state were conducted in this language. It is a known fact that the Kashmiri Pandits' mastery over the Persian language was second only to the Persians. The result was that they secured an entrance into the administration of the country. But Mir Hazar wanted them to be ousted for all time from the administrative machinery and this he could achieve with ease if no Persian knowing Pandit was available."

 

 

 

 

The fundamentalist forces in Kashmir that were in the processes of spreading their tentacles opened their agenda with the declaration of war on books that were not of Islamic brand and hue. Darwin was the first target as his Theory of Evolution does not conform to the Islamic tenets. The Jammaat-i-Islami as the rabid fundamentalist organisation launched a campaign to ransack libraries in the educational institutions and flared ban on books which did not correspond to their fake knowledge about man, world and God. The Kashmir university funded by the University Grants Commission and headed by the Governor of the state was denuded of two thousand books including the works of Milton, G.B. Shaw, Shakespeare, H.G. Wells and tomes on Hindu Philosphy in a Nazi style. The book-shop vending works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Morris Cornforth, Winwood Read et al was looted in broad daylight at Batamaloo, Srinagar. The library of the Information Centre run by Government of India was looted by the progeny of Halaku Khan and set on fire. The book titled as "Pachan" authored by a Kashmiri literattuer was torn and burnt on the streets of Baramulla and the author was imprisoned for no fault of his for months on end. A Muslim progressive accused of heresy for having books of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al was harassed by instituting cases against him and with the onset of Muslim terrorism he was cruelly squirted with bullets and killed.

 

 

As is well-known the Muslim insurgency backed up by the militarised Islamic forces opened its ruinous agenda in 1988 and touched a crescendo in 1989. The Muslim marauders could not but suppress their innate urge and proclivity to loot, plunder and arson the properties and estates left behind by the fleeing Pandits. They desecrated and destructed their temples, harvested their crops and annexed their lands and to cap it all looted and burnt their books as repositories of learning and knowledge. Targeting each Kashmiri Pandit house for loot and ravage as per the delineated plans the ruthless marauders acting in the name of Islam destroyed paintings in oils or in water colours and sketches of inestimable value and images of gods and goddesses and human figures sculpted out of bronze and other materials to quench their savage thirst for the annihilation of their religious foes. The Muslim destructionists chasing the grand plan of ethnic cleansing have been following to a dot the objective of uprooting and destructing the indigenous patterns of culture which are embedded and enshrined in books in the native language. There had been Muslim fanatics of the Jammaat-e-Islami breed who made a pile of the looted books in the isolated corner of a lane and set it afire chanting "death to Pandit Kaisers." A few more cunning among them harnessed the services of Kashmiri Pandit hostages staffing back in the valley and despatched them to Jammu and other metropolises to mobilise the sale of old manuscripts in Shardascript at a lucrative price. The horoscopes looted from Kashmiri Pandit houses were also a saleable item with the looters.

 

 

 

 

An officer in the state government, a literattucr by all standards, at the time of "office move" from Jammu to Srinagar way back in 1992, was shocked and dismayed to learn about the sale of the looted books at a particular shop in a down-town locality. Camouflaging his real identity he made a foray into the Muslim den and succeeded in locating the shop. While accosting to the Muslim shopkeeper putting on a well-cut beard he was plainly informed that he had been selling books looted from the houses of Pandit Kafirs who had fled the land thus rendering a damage to the on-going movement. On enquiry he was told that he himself had been looting books from the Pandit houses and then he had contacts who have been pursuing it as a profession at the behest of respectable Muslims. However, when the officer ultimately was led into the interior of the shop where he purchased 5 kgs of books for fifty rupees, on way back home he was surprised and vexed to find that the books he had purchased included Stein's Rajtarangini and two volumes of Nilmat Puran. On perusal he discovered that all the books he had fetched home bore the signatures of the Pandits who had purchased them with the moneys that they had earned with the sweat of their brow. For the officer it was a shock, but for the Muslim looter it was a religious act as he was vending off booty legitimised by the Textual injunctions. The Muslim insurgents with religious motivations ethnically cleansed Kashmir of its original natives and there was a consistent drive to destroy their cultural and religious heritage thereby robbing them of the characteristics of a religious minority with a deep-seated consciousness of its distinctive identity.

 

 

Highlighted below are the cases of 14 prominent Kashmiri Pandits who were artists, professors, activists, or well-known scholars and expressed themselves on the cultural genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits in their native land which political myopics still consider a tranquil secular oasis.

 

 

PN Kachru an Artist who had no fewer than four thousand books was looted of his treasure by the Islamic looters. In fact, his house was the first to be looted when the loot, plunder find arson of Pandit houses gained the fury of a campaign. Trilok Koul, also an artist had thousands of books on varied subjects. He, being a name in Indian painting had held numerous exhibitions at Delhi, Bombay, Hyderabad, Calcutta et al. Dr. Kashi Nath Pandita was a known scholar of Perisan who had saved each penny to purchase valuable books but all his fund was taken away and perhaps destroyed as the entire house was destroyed and turned into a public latrine in his absence on exile.

 

 

Dr. Vishva Nath Drabu when pushed out of Kashmir under a Muslim fundamentalist conspiracy started living in a camp at Muthi in Jammu. He lost everything by way of material goods. He had one thousand books which he purchased from his meagre incomes as a professor. Pandit Dina Nath Muju who was a real Pandit too would be busy reading and writing with his back erect till late in the midnight. He had nearly five thousand books which the Muslim looters looted. Pandit Anand Ji Razdan of chowgam Noms was a saintly person and had lots of books mostly devotional in contents which he had stuffed in fifteen wooden boxes. All his poems, books and manuscripts were looted.

 

 

Kanya Lal Pandita, a lawyer who owned books that he had gone in for with his hard earned money were either looted or fed to the fire. Prof. M.L. Kokiloo was a scholar of Sanskrit and an expert on Kashmir Shaivism. He had nearly three thousand books including some rare manuscripts of immense cultural value which were looted and burnt. The Kokiloos have been an epi-centre of the Kashmiri Pandit learning and scholarship. An ancestor of the family has authored a work on Sanskrit grammar which even stein has made a mention of. He possessed rare manuscripts of the works of Kashmir Shaivism and all versions of Rajtaranginis.

 

 

Badri Nath Nissar, once a reputed poet, author and journalist described his loss as, "A portion of collection of books, besides my own authored ones, Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic and Panjabi, was learnt to have been looted and burnt in Srinagar from my ancestral house at Purushayar. Chaman Lal Chrangoo had a collection of five hundred books that he had gone in for from his hard-earned incomes from time to time and the precious prized treasure was destroyed.

 

 

Radha Krishen Sher was a voracious reader who had had his own collection of books which he had purchased from his meagre incomes but as he said once “the Muslim looters did not only rob us of what we had by way of material goods but they robbed us of books which were the objects of culture and value systems." Hriday Nath Vishan was a retired lecturer in History who had collected a small library of six hundred books on different subjects and his habit continued with him till he was forced to abandon his sweet home as a result of militarised Islam. The fate of his house wasn’t in any way different from the houses of his co-religionists. It was looted, plundered and nearly destroyed. The books were looted, burnt and some sold to retailers as scrap.

 

 

Dr. Shadi lal Kachru had efficiency and calibre as a surgeon and was thoroughly known to the people of Anantnag where he was posted in the District Hospital. However, as Muslim terrorism was fast gaining momentum there were massive anti-India and anti-Kashmiri Pandit demonstrations throughout the district. He lost all by way of material goods but his losses in books were enormous. The books numbering a thousand including journals and magazines stolen from his residence were mutilated or sold as scrap.

 

 

SN Zadoo Suman, a poet who wrote under the pen-name of "Suman" had contributed numerous articles on Kashmir lore and learning to various magazines and journals. He also translated fore-most works of Shaivism into Hindi and written commentaries on them in Sanskrit.

 

 

Dr. KL Chowdhary, a reputed physician and neurologist also suffered losses by way of books and he wrote: "No sooner did I leave Kashmir on 1st May, 1990 on an indefinite period of exile than I realized that, besides being forced to foresake my motherland, I was leaving behind a legacy and a treasure spanning four generations and collected over nearly 100 years by my grandparents, parents, my wife, my children and my books, journals, encyclopaedias and reference manuals. Yes, we left behind books on art and craft, literature and language, science and religion, psychology and philosophy, classics and some rare manuscripts, books in English, Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Sanskrit and Persian and translations of great works of art from one language into another. The whole collection would not be fewer than five thousand.” He said that all he carried with him was the Bhagavat-Gita, Gitanjali, complete works of Shakespeare, Glimpses of world History by Nehru, the Rubaiyat of Omerkhayaam and the latest textbook of Medicine by Harrison. Regretting the loss of his precious books he wished he had carried more and stuffed them into the suitcase which he carried along in place of the clothes he retrieved in haste.