Bandhu Ji: We Owe Him an Apology
K. N. Pandita, Jammu
[The Author, Dr. K.N. Pandita is the former
Director, Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University.]
Yagnopavit ceremony of
the male children in our family was underway. Ours was a very traditional
Kashmiri Pandit family in Baramulla. I was so small that I can with great
difficulty recollect only dim and shadowy impressions of the occasion. I
think it was around the year 1933.
The ceremony was in full bloom and I, as one to be
initiated into Brahmanical order along with my two elder brothers, hopped in and
out of the guest rooms out of sheer thrill. There were many women; old and
young clad in white Saris. I was used to seeing them clad in baggy pherans
with a cumbersome headgear called tarangeh. The sight was uncommon and
strange. I distinctly remember the women in this new dress were a bit shy
and reserved and chuckled and smiled at each other but certainly not
uncomfortable. I could not make out the why of things, being only a
six-year-old lad.
In the guestroom, elderly persons in meticulously clean
dress sat reclining against the cushions. The hubble bubble (jajeer) and
qahwa in samovars made frequent rounds.
One of the persons, certainly not old and very elderly,
but the centre of attention of everybody, spoke gently to the people present
there. I did not understand what he said and why the audience listened
with rapt attention. Nevertheless he was the centre of attention.
Then the elderly womenfolk in our house and the
numerous female guests who had come to participate in the ceremony entered the
guest room and with folded hands said Namaskar to the person of central
attention and left. This was an unusual scene for me. The person was
neither clad in saffron nor was he too elderly nor was anything very significant
about him. Why did everybody then approach him with veneration ? I could
never make out anything of this situation.
The ceremony, as we all know, was a protracted one.
Near about dusk, when we all stood around the huge agni kund with athehfol in
our hands and the hymns being chanted, there was a pause. The same person,
to whom everybody showed his or her veneration, began speaking. He spoke
in a halting language, with confidence and in all seriousness. I did not
understand what he said. But I do remember that he used the words pheran,
nervar, tarangeh, dhoti etc. repeatedly. It was a mystery to me to make
out what it meant to speak about the items of traditional clothing of our women
folk.
It was Kashyap Bandhu or Bandhu Ji as everybody called
him. He was the centre of attention. He was speaking to the people
present there and he was the one who stole the show.
Bandhu ji had started his social reform movement for
the Pandit community. He had given a call to discard the baggy pheran and
its accessories, cumbersome, ugly and odd as these were. He had given a
call that Pandit women should shift to sari (dhoti in our local language).
An aunt of mine originally belonged to the village from
which Bandhu Ji hailed namely Gyur in Tral. This aunt came from a very
respectable and traditional Pandit family from her father's side. She had
died at a young age, but her family members on her father's side maintained
close relations with us. Since they were the neighbours of Bandhu Ji
(though they had later on migrated to Srinagar and lived in Ageh Hammam) in Gyur
village, they were greatly influnced by his social reform programme. My
father, Pandit Shanker Nath had very close and very friendly relations with late
Pandit Maheshwar Nath Bhat of Gyur, settled in Ageh Hammam, and accepted his
influence. This was the channel how Bandhu ji came to know my father and
uncle and had agreed to be the guest of honour on the Yagnopavit ceremony in our
house.
There was a lot of talk in our house about Bandhu ji's
social reform programme. The women folk secretively asked one another
whether they looked odd or not in the sari dress. My father was always an
imposing personality and he was held in great awe and respect by all our
relatives. Since he had asked his own womenfolk to change over to sari,
womenfolk in relation, one and all, submitted to his diktat; thus it was through
my father's propagation that the new dress became popular among most of our
relations in Baramulla district.
Bandhu ji was a man of vision. Greatly influenced
by Arya Samaj movement during his study period in Lahore, he wanted to introduce
the Vedic tradition into the moth-eaten Pandit culture and tradition. It
was not only the apparel of womenfolk that he wanted to change. In fact,
Bandhu ji wanted the Pandits to give up the obsolete, outdated and meaningless
rituals and traditions that had become a cumbersome burden. He was the one
who introduced the Arya Samaj movement among the Pandits.
Kashmiri Pandits are wont to gauge the success or
failure of Bandhu Ji's movement through a narrow perspective. It has to be
remembered that the Pandit ritualistic culture is rooted in five thousand years
of its history. The Pandit has developed a mindset too difficult to be
changed in a short span of time. What Bandhu ji was attempting to do was
making some inroads into that obsolete and redundant culture.
I do not think any other Pandit leader had the
futuristic vision of a society of Pandits way back in early thirties.
Bandhu ji was not just a social reformer, as the Pandits know him. He was
essentially a political observer, trying to understand the present in terms of
past and interpreting it in terms of future.
Bandhu ji's social reform movement spread out in the
length and breadth of Kashmir. With a few years, the idea of replacing the
dress and some rituals was taken up by most of the Pandit families. In
Srinagar city, followed by the towns of Anantnag, Sopore and Baramulla, Bandhu
ji's's social reform movement gathered momentum. The Pandit women composed
verses to commemorate the demise of the awkward dress called pheran and its
accessories and welcomed the onset of a new era for them. They used the
epithet "Tarachand Bulbul", as Tarachand was his real name and
'bulbul' because he was also a composer of verses in Kashmiri. May be he
used 'bulbul' as his pen - name in some of his Urdu verses.
The history of Pandit community, a very ancient
community indeed, has no social reformers to make a mention about.
Unfortunately, our seers and learned men were more a speculative lot engrossed
in introspection. Little attention was paid to the material development of
society. Naturally a reformer had a stupendous task to perform if he
decided to radicalize the society.
Kalhana does not make any mention of any great social
reformer. Abhinav Gupta, Vasubandhu, Mamat, Samkara, Laleshwari and others
philosophized or pontificated. After the fall of the Hindu ruling house in
early fourteenth century, the Pandit community of Kashmir was faced with steady
decline in political power, in intellectual pursuits, in economic field and in
social spheres. For next six and a half centuries after the Shahmiris
assumed power in A.D. 1339, the Pandits of Kashmir witnessed their gradual
decline and disintegration so much so that they ceased to be a factor to be
reckoned with in the history of mediaeval Kashmir.
Those who survived the great vicissitudes of time did
so at the cost of their once proud and powerful personality. Thus the
Pandit learnt most effectively and efficiently the art of survival. It
meant not only assumption of the status of the under-dog but also that of
becoming the worst enemy of his own community. Absorbed by the imperative
of physical survival, the Pandit had neither vision nor confidence to address
social reforms within the community. The result was that he continued to
carry on his feeble shoulders the burden of a ritualistic religion engrossed in
traditions that were out of date with the advancing times. This,
obviously, became too unbearable for some of them who could not muster enough
fortitude, and succumbed to conversions, which they thought at least brought
them some relief.
In this background, the emergence of Bandhu ji is to be
assessed in historical terms. If I say that he was the first and so far
the only great social reformer in our community, I may not be far away from the
truth. Therefore Bandhu ji deserves to be given the most prestigious place
in the annals of our history.
I know some of the members of our community did not
like Bandhu ji's decision to join the National Conference to pursue his
political objectives. Many even criticised and castigated him. He
had to suffer their taunts and abuses.
The fact of the matter is that Bandhu ji was himself a
sincere, honest and dedicated person who had a vision of future. He knew
without a shadow of doubt that the minuscule community of Pandits was under
political, economic and social oppression in Kashmir. He knew that only a
miracle could preserve them and their cultural fund in their land of origin.
But when Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference appeared on the scene,
particularly when the Sheikh converted the Muslim Conference into National
Conference, Bandhu ji, out of his sheer nationalistic fervour thought that the
impasse for the Pandits had been pierced and a ray of hope was visible. He
threw his lot with the new ideology of nationalism championed by tne Sheikh and
his National Conference. Only this dispensation could ensure the
perpetuation of the Pandit and his culture in Kashmir. Bandhu ji was
hundred per cent right.
He was made a member of the NC Working Committee, the
body that would take crucial decisions. There he could project and protect
the rights of the Pandits as long as there were recipients of a liberal and
nationalist view in that organization. Bandhu ji was right.
But the curtain fell when Bandhu ji came to know that
nationalism did not carry the same meaning for Sheikh Abdullah as it carried for
him. When on a controversial issue the Sheikh sternly told Bandhu ji in a
N.C. Working Committee meeting that he was first a Muslim and then a
nationalist, Bandhu Ji opened his eyes as to whether he was comrading a proper
company. Anybody reading his write - up "Why I resigned from National
Conference" will have no doubt that Bandhu ji had in the beginning, full
faith in NC's nationalism and believed that this was the safest political party
for the Pandits to cling to. But unfortunately, the Sheikh had betrayed
him. That was the parting of ways. Had the national leadership in
New Delhi any sense of history, Bandhu Jis' resignation from NC should have
served them as eye-opener. But, sadly, Bandhu Ji's community had been
written off the day Kashmir was given a special status in Indian Union and
Article 370 was incorporated to insulate Kashmir's exclusionist and isolationist
syndrome.
Bandhu ji left this mortal world many years ago.
Never did the National Conference or any other social or cultural organization
in Kashmir think of commemorating him and recognizing his contribution.
Even our own community, too, has hardly done anything in the direction that
would be called a befitting tribute to Bandhu ji. Those who knew him
personally and are knowledgeable about his works are quitting the scene.
Only a handul of them are still surviving. They should voluntarily
contribute whatever they know of Bandhu ji to be consigned to the annals of
history. This is a religious duty. We owe Bandhu ji an apology.
In this background, I salute the distinguished member,
and office bearers of Kashmir Sabha, Calcutta who have taken upon them the task
of collecting whatever information they could, and compile it in a special
Bandhu ji number in memory of this great son of Kashmir. In particular, I
appreciate the dedication of Dr. B.K. Moza, who met many people during his
recent visit to Jammu and exhorted them to furnish him with as much information
as was possible on Bandhu ji. At the same time, I hold myself a culprit
for having written thousands of pages on current history and politics of the
region but not a word on Bandhu Ji except Urdu to English translation of about
half a dozen of his letters and write-ups. Should circumstances permit, I
would like to make up this deficiency.
| 
From
the President
