"The
Tiger Ladies": Not Just a Simple Memoir
The Kashmir Tragedy
which tore up Muslims, Hindus
Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI: Sudha Koul's book 'The Tiger Ladies' is more than a simple
'memoir of Kashmir' as she calls it in the subtitle -- it is the
literary encapsulation of the tragedy of a hauntingly beautiful
territory high in the Himalayas, whose Muslim and Hindu inhabitants
have been torn asunder by the greed of others.
Kashmir,
according to Pakistan's present military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
is the ''unfinished business of the Partition'', under which Britain's
former empire in India was violently torn into two countries on
the basis of religion.
Pakistan's attempts to gain control over Kashmir since 1947 have
been through a mix of pitting its army against India's far bigger
armed forces as well as through the use of irregulars -- first
as 'Qabailis' or fierce Afghan Tribesmen, and in more recent times
as 'jihadists' or religious fighters armed with automatic weapons.
Koul, a Kashmiri Hindu, describes how the 'Qabailis' were driven
back by resistance put up by both Hindu and Muslim Kashmiris when
they invaded the valley in 1947, forcing the Hindu Maharaja Hari
Singh who wanted to remain neutral, to accede to India for sheer
safety.
Koul, who was born in that momentous year, was later told by her
doting grandmother that the 'Qabailis' came ''hunting infidels
and treasures and beautiful women''.
Like other Hindus who lived in the valley, Koul and her family
were taken into the homes of their Muslim neighbours and hidden
at great risk. ''I am in my mother's belly and she is also hiding
in the dark, waiting for deliverance with the rest of the family.''
Help arrives in time in planeloads of the Indian army. ''The 'Qabailis'
are sent back without any carpets, infidels or beautiful women,
but they do manage to extricate an odd gold tooth or two pulled
out of the mouths of some hapless Irish nuns they attack at a
rural outpost of the order,'' Koul writes.
But the conflict only began with the beating back of the 'Qabailis'.
Pakistan
and India were to fight open wars over the territory, carving
it up into two halves separated by the Line of Control (LoC) or
ceasefire line. It is not very well known, but Kashmir became
embroiled in the
Afghan war by the 'mujahideen' to evict the Soviets in the eighties.
As Koul puts it: ''Within a short time Kashmir also started deconstructing
at an incomprehensible speed and the violence there became a regular
part of the news. ..The valley was saturated with Kalashnikov
rifles, smuggled surplus from Afghanistan and every other young
Kashmiri
was a militant.''
Koul blames the Indian government, in which she served briefly
as a ranking administrative officer, for its ham-handed handling
of the problem. ''There are so many examples of mismanagement,
humiliation and short-sightedness by the Indian government that
even sympathetic Kashmiri Muslims are disgusted.''
In the process the trust that long existed between Kashmir Muslims
and Hindus, cemented by intertwining traditions and the worship
of common saints, is shattered -- perhaps forever as the Hindus
flee the valley and their homes are looted and destroyed by fundamentalists.
For Koul that tragedy is best represented by Fatha the fishwife
who brought fresh fish to her doorstep but was nearly driven insane
by the fate of her son, who joined the militants and paid for
it by being tortured to within an inch of his life by police.
''The old city is full of foreigners who do not speak Kashmiri.
We cannot see them; they only reveal themselves to our boys like
angels of doom,'' Koul was informed by Fatha.
Essentially, 'Tiger Ladies' tells the story of Kashmir through
the experiences of ordinary women like Fatha. It also tells the
story of the women of Koul's own family, spread across three generations
and the saints and goddesses they worshipped -- in particular
the goddess that rides a tiger and who has her temple in Jammu,
just outside the valley.
It also affords a peep into the syncretic culture of Kashmir through
the extraordinarily rich folk traditions of a region that is unique
in South Asia and now seriously threatened by Islamic extremism
and by the attempts to counter it by the Indian army.
But more than anything else, 'Tiger Ladies' is the story of Kashmiri
Hindus or the Pandits, and the loss of the homeland in which they
were highly respected.
It is about the loss of innocence and of paradise as represented
by growing up in a large extended family with small but meaningful
comforts.
Among these could be the 'kangri' (the small pot of glowing coals
worn by all Kashmiris to stay warm) to a large, loving extended
family and the legends, folklore, rites and rituals they are repository
to.
But there is a sense that all this worked only in the enchanted
valley of Kashmir, now often described as the most dangerous place
in the world because both Pakistan and India are ready to use
nuclear weapons rather than part with it.
Koul herself explains the agony of her own exile in New Jersey
through her mother-in-law's thoughts as she lay in her deathbed
in a hospital in Buffalo -- the only relief coming from the fact
that the doctors there were Kashmiris, both Hindu and Muslim.
''They (the doctors) called her 'Mother' because she loved them
like her own sons and daughters. I suspect that to them as to
us, she was a relic from a golden time in Kashmir,'' Koul writes.
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