Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

It is commonly assumed that here people believe in God. In fact belief in God implies certain things that we can measure or observe to some extent. Traditionally belief is testified by good deeds. These two can’t be separated. Applying this test we can examine the thesis that Kahmiris are God fearing people. To believe means one believes in the Fatherhood of God, in unity of spirit that constitutes all of us. It means loving one’s neighbour because he is us as he shares Spirit or Self that is one and indivisible.  It implies a culture where people trust one another because they trust God. Once upon a time, the question of mistrust was not there as there was no need to tell a lie and no imperative to fool the other as people were united with Heaven. Law was honoured. People had no greed. This is the narrative bequeathed to us by traditions. This is true about the mythical golden age. But then degeneration set in and laws were formulated as Taoist scripture tells

There is a village in Azad Kashmir that has so far not recorded a single case of cancer. This is attributed to organic food locally produced. Few decades ago the similar story was of this part of Kashmir. Where have we gone wrong? Today we lament Green Revolution, we think agriculture is no longer worth investment, we find massive unemployment of farmers. All this implies catastrophe for a population that heavily relied on agriculture for livelihood. Let us understand how we destroyed our traditional basis for livelihoods and replaced it with something that is elusive and deceiving. And we end up with hardly anything worth having at such a huge cost. I illustrate the case by turning to Ladakh that has been very recently modernized and can be seen as almost a contemporary case for anyone to see. I simply reproduce few passages from a book  Ancient  Futures  written on modernization of Ladakh by internationally acclaimed scholar Helena Norberg-Hodge that traces the tragedy with all its

A Critique of our Mushaira Culture I think it can be safely asserted that much of poetry today bombarded in mushairas is second rate if not third rate.  One of the biggest scandals of modern day literary criticism is that it is not qualified for the job as it doesn’t take due note of God or Transcendence. Without proper understanding and orientation towards First Principles, poetry and its criticism are hardly worth attention. Much of what is published in the form of ever growing corpus of poetical collections by new poets largely constitutes a scandal. This poetry is anything but not poetry as understood by the best minds of all traditions, all ages. This poetry is narcissist, expresses rather than transcends personality, and fails in requisite moral qualifications  that are a condition for true poetry. We can’t just, for formality’s sake, begin poetic collections with Hamd and Na’t . All poetry is prayer. Let us see how. As Dante has said about the Commedia: "The purpose of t

A common complaint today is there is no trust between people, even between relatives or close associates. In our case, we see that Kashmiris began to lose trust at the mass level in the last decade of the 20 th  century. Why was this so and can we do anything about it? How is it connected to the changing politico-economic scenario of the world? First we may note that there is hardly any trust in the broader sense of the term though there is much in the narrow legalistic sense. A world made safer by technology and police and jail and what Foucault called Panoptican is not necessarily a world where trust counts. A world that can be blown up anytime by the whim of any nuclear power, a world that spends billions on checking and verifying travel documents, a world where markets are so unpredictable and crises and crashes never too far, a world that is fighting dozens of small wars at the same time, a world where regional, ethnic, tribal, religious identities are always finding it difficul

Today almost all of us are skeptical about the possibility of K resolution in near future? Why? Because we at least unconsciously do understand that the forces that want conflicts are stronger. That neither India nor Pakistan nor Kashmiris are really free to solve the issue. Let us try to understand the point and many related questions that we need to handle for the purpose. Kashmir is more an economic than a political issue. There are no political issues which don’t involve mostly economic privileges. Once upon a time many people believed it is a religious issue. Later even the hardliners in religion came to understand that it should be approached as a political issue. But political issues are not very difficult to resolve. More than six decades and three wars would not be needed if it was a mere political issue that a farseeing or smart pacifist prime minister at the Centre could resolve.  Tossed among contending Stakeholders such as US, China, Pakistan, India and Capitalist forces

In Kashmir we are today witnessing sectarian fights. We have largely forgotten both Rishis and the legacy of Shah-i-Hamdan and the great Sufi poets. We debate books published by lesser mortals who are neither accomplished theologians, nor metaphysicians, nor thinkers, nor even well informed regarding important things. We say this scholar or sermonizer or TV debator has said this and that. We have forgotten the adage “Never consider inferior thinkers.” We have, to give one illustration, forgotten our great predecessors like Ibn Arabi who has been decisively shaping not only Muslim thought in general but Kashmiri Muslim consciousness through the impact of Shah-i-Hamdan and most of Kashmiri Sufi poets. So let me recall our heritage and point out the great gap that exists between our aslaaf and us. The world is rediscovering Rumi and Ibn Arabi and we are debating only certain political appropriations of them. So where is an attempt to recover or even know our great intellectual and spiri

Reading Political theory on Ethics and Bureaucracy Bertrand Russell has a collection of essays called Unpopular Essays. Today I am not commenting on it but attempting to write an unpopular essay. Though often reminded of Mark Twain who when asked to comment on heaven and hell said, “No comments. I have friends on either side”, I wish to express suspicions/questions that have haunted me and compelled me not to pray for success to anyone who requests when administrative exams are on. I try to pray instead with Iqbal: Meri dua hae ki teri aarzu badal jayae (I pray that your wish changes). These questions include: •Generally speaking, masses have felt alienated from bureaucrats and great social thinkers from Marx to Max Weber to Foucault have explained why this alienation is a product of the very system. Modern democracies are controlled by the interests of the Capital or are instruments in the hands of an elite class that has ascended in social hierarchy by a system that ultimately r