Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Ideal and Reality of Kashmir’s Azadi Love is more otherworldly than this worldly phenomenon. It is a currency recognized by poets, thinkers, saints and  lovers, especially youth. Worldly wise people, politicians, traders etc. hardly count it. To live under its sacred ambience calls for nothing short of metanoai of which only few individuals are capable and not larger communities. Man lives for it and by it but more as a vision, as a noble dream, as a distant horizon of his imagination and an object of contemplation  that pulls one higher and higher. It owes its terrible beauty to the freedom it evokes. It postulates a Republic that is not necessarily this worldly state. With Eric Voegelin who has been described as modern Plato, we need to note that Plato’s Republic was written as “a dramatic dialogue about human existence in society and  history and not a policy paper for reform or an ideological tract calling for apocalyptic revolution.” Its heart is the vision of the Good. Pl

Peep deep into the heart of Kashmiris and see the image of the beloved being worshipped. No guesses.     Lovers choose to die and don’t listen to pleas for abandoning “infatuation” or juvenile romantic fantasies. Death dance they indulge is a perceived by them – and by many great tragedians – as a ritual of healing. Souls are healed and what happens to the bodies and other this-worldly businesses is not important in their view. And there are at least bouts of such “infatuation”  if not fully involved love affair in almost every Kashmiri. And occasionally this passion asserts and burns everything on its way. And that is precisely what is happening post-Burhan. Peep deep into the heart of Kashmiris and see the image of the beloved being worshipped. No guesses. All these unmistakably point to a diagnosis of affliction of love. And it doesn’t matter what the object of love is or how rational it is or what possibility of consummation of such a relationship is. For them Tolstoy expressed

And politicians are not trained to consider the affairs of the heart, the logic of the impossible. The heart of Kashmir problem is incurable and apparently inconsolable, and thus tragic – but gracefully redemptively tragic –  love affair with Azadi. This is like the love of the impossible in the sense loving God is impossible for John Caputo. And politicians are not trained to consider the affairs of the heart, the logic of the impossible. Many great political battles in history had some association with love affairs or pursuit of great beauty all of which are parasitic on the idea of transcendence which grounds the notion of freedom. Kashmir issue is better understood in this light. Let  me  explain.       Since Kashmir’s heart yearns for a home/beloved that it feels isn’t in sight in present dispensation though its head might advise it to resign to status quo or opt for this or that particular ideological or pragmatic solution for fulfilling economic, political and other goals, a

Clues from Heidegger’s What is Called Thinking? “The most thought-provoking thing about our thought-provoking age is that we are still not thinking,”______ Martin “The wasteland grows and woe to him who hides the wasteland within.” ______Friedrich Nietzsche While both Nietzsche and Heidegger said the words quoted in the beginning in somewhat different though not quite unrelated context, one recalls them readily when trying to “think” Kashmir in the context of proliferating debate on Kashmir (I don’t presume to apply Heidegger on thinking to Kashmir – this I leave to Heidegger scholars and thinkers – but only to underscore the difficulty of the task of engaging with Kashmir in the manner talk shows, conferences, political parties, gossip parties seek to do). Heidegger’s problem or objective is not to provide a map for resolving political issues but to help us attend to the deeper issues that underlie political issues. The tragedy is that one is only asked to give opinion o

To seek or not to Seek Pir Do we need to seek a Master? Shah Waliullah, one of the greatest Sufis of the subcontinent, in his last testament, surprisingly and shockingly, advised against seeking Shaykhs and advised to read Awariful Maarif  by Suharwardi as that is a safer guide. He grants the possibility that one may get to meet some Shaykh and says that we shouldn’t worry as God arranges for it. Anyway it is working an implication of the logic of grace. Grace comes – “The Spirit bloweth where it listeh.”   We can’t invite grace by our effort; Grace finds us and drops us in the lap of God. Even against our will which would otherwise resist baptism by fire – the gift of suffering. Who doesn’t suffer in some way? And that could well be, unknown to us, gift from the Master. The best wazeefa could well be the “curse” – “Khoda tchinney doad” (May God send you some problem, some pain, some calamity).  How thankful we should be to those who send us such curses. Perhaps most of our mo