Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee: “Kashmir was named ‘paradise’ by the 17th century poet Amir Khusro. History is a blind man with greedy hands. It has been cruel to what it considers beautiful. Between Kashmir and Kashmiris falls a long shadow of history that begun when the Mughal king, Akbar, set his eyes on it in the 16th century. Akbar exiled Kashmir’s ruler and the poet-queen, Habba Khatun’s husband, Yusuf Shah Chak. In his poem, ‘The Blessed Word: A Prologue,’ late Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali wrote, remembering Khatun: ‘Her grief, alive to this day, in her own roused the people into frenzied opposition to Mughal rule. Since then Kashmir has never been free.’ Ali rues how unkind and brutal history has been to Kashmir, and how it imposed an unending saga of grief. But he also considers grief the fuel behind Kashmir’s resilient spirit. Hope the long night in Kashmir ends now, and voices of calm prevail.” (web)
