Locating Kashmiriyat in Ancient History: Tracing the Genealogy of Kashmir’s Syncretic Culture

Abstract

The discourse on Kashmiriyat (or Kasheryut) was majorly invoked in the late twentieth-century Kashmir by diverse, often conflicting, ideological strands to legitimize their respective political positioning in the context of post-1947 political stirrings in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the discourse has remained shrouded in ambiguity owing to the multiple, disparate meanings and connotations attached to it. More commonly the term has been understood to imply a syncretic culture of Kashmir devoid of religious fundamentalism and exclusion.KL

So far as the historicity of Kashmiriyat is concerned, the existing scholarly writings on the discourse have tried to locate its origins in the medieval times when the interaction and subsequent synthesis occurred between Hinduism and Islam in Kashmir; a mystic manifestation, Rishism, is often referred as the best example of this ideational formation. However, the paper attempts to argue that while the idea of Kashmiriyat as syncretic culture of Kashmir devoid of religious fundamentalism holds ground, it cannot be clearly steered away from a particular religious affiliation altogether. Secondly, this paper challenges the existing historicity and ideational trajectory of Kashmiriyat and instead attempts to trace its genealogy to Kashmir’s ancient past.