Know-all and know-nothing commentators on Kashmir, alike, would agree. If there?s any place on earth where natural beauty and happiness share an uneasy relationship, it is this, it is this, it is this. Take an elevated look at the two lakes in the valley from atop Srinagar?s Shankaracharya Hill, and you sense a supreme sort of serenity, superimposed by a cynically engineered crisis ?it?s enough to moisten the view. Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), we all know, is tense, tugged as it is by both India and Pakistan. J&K, we all know, deserves better. It deserves peace.
Written by Andrew Whitehead, A Mission In Kashmir draws into sharp focus the events of one single day, October 27, 1947. And with a clear purpose: ?A necessary step to resolving any crisis? is gaining an understanding of how it started. Not to indulge in recriminations, but to appreciate the sequence of actions and jumble of claims and grievances that tangle and snag [that] moves towards compromise. If ever there could be an agreed narrative of Kashmir?s modern history, other forms of accord should not be far away.?
Unlike William Dalrymple, whose The Last Mughal kept me half anchored to our houseboat on a mid-October visit this year, and even more unlike Daniel Lak, whose Mantras of Change has an air of Catch-22 absurdity, Andrew Whitehead does not let comic interludes interfere with what is essentially a pretty grim tale. Just as well. Precaution, as we too found, is de rigeur around here. This is Kashmir, after all, a land of one oh-oh after another. Come to think of it, the o-obsession has left a legacy even on the signboards, be it the ?tool plaza? enroute to Pahalgam or customer satisfaction as the houseboat?s ?mottoo?.
Whitehead?s book is less enthusing on that score. It offers an oh-upon-oh experience that?s rather too glum. Oh, the Jhelum river valley is a geographical continuum from Srinagar to Rawalpindi. Oh, J&K?s Maharaja Hari Singh was intent on keeping his princely state independent. Oh, and this is truly bizarre, neither India nor Pakistan had any armed forces quite under its sovereign command after partition. Oh, it?s the diary of Sir George Cunningham, post-partition governor of Pakistan?s own wild west, that glistens out of the factual thicket of how tribal invaders rip-roared their way through J&K?s Jhelum valley in their own boisterous bid for paradise.
It was on October 27, 1947, that this unruly ragtag army from Waziristan or thereabouts stormed into Baramulla?s St Joseph?s mission, an attack that spawned several accounts high on myth and low on fact. It was on that very day, too, that Maharaja Hari Singh signed J&K?s accession to the Indian Union and Indian troops began landing in Srinagar to stave off the northwestern invasion and secure the state.
Yet, what really happened that day remains something of a cubist conundrum, with different angles revealing different stories. Whitehead attempts to expose the claims made by both India and Pakistan. That J&K?s accession was signed before Indian troops descended on the valley, he writes, qualifies for doubt under all the circumstantial evidence of the actual sequence of events. And nor can Pakistan deny any official role in the October incursion, given the credibility of accounts to the contrary.
Nobody?s case is good. And nobody emerges as a hero. It?s quite clearly a post-nationalist book. A pragmatic book, though, would be more concerned about the future than the past, even if it?s going to be just as fuzzy. So, is this a pragmatic work? Well, let?s just say that Whitehead deserves credit for his sense of reserve. He would rather have the ?Kashmiri voice? discuss the future. Fair enough. This is a voice muffled for far too long, a voice that has been choked by power pacts much too often. It is still nervous. Look too closely at a face, and you detect an anxiety not to let on more anguish than can be helped. Does anybody care? If not, why speak?
Yet, it?s still possible to recognise J&K?s core story as one that is looped at the lower end and open-ended on top: and thus amenable to a variety of peace plans. Surely, finding a consensual one should not be so difficult? India, clearly, will not have a new map imposed upon the state: ?No redrawing of borders!? Pakistan will not have partition?s rupture hardened: ?No converting the Line of Control into an international border!?
Those are India and Pakistan?s respective stances, as articulated some time ago? and there has been a diplomatic silence ever since, a formless sort of gap between two movements of a santoor recital that nobody dare disturb who has any sensitivity to beauty and/or bliss.