Kashmir as a nursery of learning and religion has to its credit multidimensional 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.

 

 

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 destroyed 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.

 

 

 

 

Kanya Lal Pandita was a lawyer who graduated from the University of Kashmir. He had been a practicing lawyer and in the wake of Muslim terrorism he like majority of his co-religionists tied his native land to a secure zone in Jammu. He owned three houses which were burnt by the Muslim arsonists.

 

 

Kanya Lal had a well-equipped library of law-books and reporters which catered to his requirements as a practitioner of law. The books that he had gone in for with his hard-earned money were either looted or fed to the fire. With the grievous loss of his books he felt crippled as a lawyer and had to refurbish his library with new tomes. The losses he suffered in terms of the books lost were: All India Reporter 1950 (12 parts ), All India Reporter 1951 (full set), All India Reporter (full sets) 1952 to 1961, Civil Procedure Code (3 Vols), All India Service Reporter (1950 to 1989), Service Law, Law of Writs, Chandigarh Law Reporter (1970 to 1989), Mitra Limitation Act, Medical Jurisprudence, Six versions of Quran in English gifted to him by a Muslim separatist now abroad namely Mohammad Ayub Thakur, Kashmiri Version of Bhagavad-Gita written by Pt. Tara Chand, a scholarly person, History of Kashmiri Pandits after 1947 in manuscript form written by Prakash Ram Pandita, Bible and Guru Granth Sahib to name a few.

 

 

As the subjects of the aforesaid books reveal, the collection that lawyer Kanya Lal Pandita had, was no less than a whole custody of varied heritage of Kashmiri cultural heritage that he as a custodian not only assembled but also tried to preserve for the future generations to come. But unfortunately, the loot and burning of the valuable collection by Muslim conspirators led to the decimation of versions of that precious treasure. The destruction of books and libraries involved the same parameters of religious zeal and fanaticism with which destructive proselytization was pursued.

 

 

 

 

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 the Government of India was looted by the progeny of Halaku Khan and set on fire. The book titled as "Pachan" authored by a Kashmiri literate 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.

 

 

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 they (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."

 

 

The destruction of books as leitmotifs of Hindu worldview, Hindu philosophical probes into suppressible realms, Hindu historiography, Hindu aesthetics did not diminish in its fury even in the comparatively peaceful times of Zain-ul-Abidin popularly known as Budshah. It is surprising that before his conversion to Shriya Bhat he is said to have constructed a cause-way from Naidkhai to Sopore with the temple stones and pillars along with invaluable stock of books that were looted from the temples, libraries and Pandit houses. He is the same king that rehabilitated the Pandits after their first forcible and massive exodus from their natural homes to unknown destinations.