LoC, arguments about the proper use of the term erupt regularly in daily life. Three cases illustrate the constant work required to maintain the category Kashmiri as a political identity. In each of these cases, political organizers, appointed delegates, and elected representatives disputed the limits of inclusion in the community of Kashmiris and deployed the designation Kashmir in very different ways when they were speaking in formal political contexts versus when they used the word in casual interpersonal speech. Each, in speech not circumscribed as political, used the word to describe a sense of cultural difference and the speaker’s affective attachment to that difference.
Farida Begum criticized a political rival for implying that anyone within the borders of the state (as they had been in 1947) could possibly be a refugee. Her objection to the use of the term muhājir highlighted the utility of the term Kashmiri to reject a political distinction between hereditary residents (qaumī bāshindah) and resettled refugees (muhājirs) that might delimit a differential evaluation of rights based on the current divisions of territory. Yet, in private discussions with me, Farida Begum was very interested in drawing distinctions between “this and that Kashmiri” in the domain of culture and language. Likewise, as an official diplomatic representative, Arif Obaid maintained a similar although apparently inverse distinction to the one made by Farida Begum—that the same relationship to territory that makes people “refugees” also secures their identity as “Kashmiri.” In personal conversation, however, Arif Obaid expressed his interest in refugees from the cultural center of the Indian Kashmir Valley; while he had a political obligation to the “mountain people” as a representative of a transnational Kashmiri political party, he clearly did not feel an affinity with them. In Islamabad, the residents of one squatters’ colony so effectively mobilized their claims to be “Kashmiri refugees” against the government of Pakistan that their colony, located within view of the parliament, was one of the last kacchī ābādīs remaining in the capital of Islamabad after residents of other such settlements had been forcibly relocated to the outskirts of the city. Their representative to the AJK Legislative Assembly, however, denied their requests for patronage, because the government of AJK, concerned primarily with tracing the contours of displacement across the LoC, was uninterested or unwilling to take up issues particular to the condition of people displaced from the other Pakistan-administered areas into Pakistan.
In AJK and Pakistan, not all people who self-identify as Kashmiri garner recognition from others in all domains; informal, casual slippages often belie formal political speech, revealing rifts of cultural attachment and social ambivalence. In speaking to and about each other, Kashmiris sometimes become vexed by the multiple possible references of the designation, and these disagreements reveal the ambiguous and contingent quality of the term.
“Not Refugees in Their Own Homeland”
The municipality of Murree has historically been an important crossroads between the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), the Punjab, and the Jammu and Kashmir territories. The town has had a resident community of Kashmiri refugees since 1947. In 1946, it was a hill station retreat for the colonial administrators of British India and a military outpost for the British Colonial Army. Organizers of the tax rebellion in the Poonch region in 1946–1947 smuggled weapons into the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir from Murree and brought their families to the town in order to protect them from the Maharaja’s army. In 1948, refugees arrived in Murree from the other areas in Jammu District that were most profoundly affected by frontline fighting between India and Pakistan. In the same period, prominent political supporters of the Muslim Conference from the Kashmir Valley came to Murree after being forced out of Srinagar during the violent political party contests between National Conference supporters and the AJKMC. This community of political elites from the Kashmir Valley made Murree a hospitable resettlement community for other exiles who supported the pro-Pakistan movements during the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971 and had to leave Indian Kashmir because of later political retaliation. Murree is now a center for the constituency of one of the six KV (Kashmir Valley) seats and for one of the six JC (Jammu City) seats that are reserved for muhājir-ekashmīr (Kashmiri refugees) in the Legislative Assembly of AJK.
Farida Begum was my hostess for several days while I stayed in the town, meeting with Kashmiri refugees. Her husband had been a Member of the AJK Legislative Assembly on several occasions, elected to one of the town’s refugee seats. She herself had been a close partner in his campaigns, advocating his candidacy in women’s circles and household networks. My hostess had lived in Srinagar until she was a young woman when her family arranged her marriage to the son of a friend who was living as a refugee in Pakistan. Her own closest connections were to other Kashmiri-speaking refugees from Srinagar who traced family connections through several generations and several villages and urban neighborhoods on both sides of the LoC. Farida Begum was eager to talk about the importance for muhājirs (refugees) from the Kashmir Valley to maintain their language and traditions; she said that it was more difficult for them than for refugees from Poonch or Jammu, where the regional languages were closer to the Hinko and Punjabi their neighbors spoke in town and to the Urdu their children spoke at school. She and her husband spoke only the Kashmiri language (Koshûr) to their children, and she hoped to give her daughter in marriage to a Srinagar family so that her family’s connection to Srinagar would remain strong until they could all return to their proper homes.
One day, we were invited to the home of the former president of the other major political party that represented the town’s refugee community. We were graciously received, and we waited a short time in the formal guest receiving room, where there were many photographs of the political leader. He had served several terms as the Prime Minister of AJK, and the photographs showed him shaking hands with several of the Prime Ministers and Military Administrators of Pakistan, including Nawaz Sharif, who was then in office. Our hostess, the politician’s sister, received us with tea and refreshments and discussed the specific history of her family’s contribution to founding AJK and establishing a place for Kashmiri refugees in its territory and within its government.
As she spoke, Farida Begum became increasingly agitated. At last she interrupted our hostess: “We are all Kashmiri, there is no difference that you can name to draw a distinction between this Kashmiri and that Kashmiri. Is it not so?” Our hostess agreed by inclining her head slightly to the side, but it seemed like a polite acquiescence to me, the kind a hostess might extend to a guest. Apparently Farida Begum was not satisfied, because she interjected again:
Then what is this that you are speaking of muhājirīn [refugees] in Poonch? Yes, it is fine, you may call me this, a muhājir, and you may even call yourself a muhājir, since you are now in Pakistan and not in Poonch. But how can you call a muhājir those people who are living in their own country? They have not crossed any border that you should call them muhājir. It is all our one Jammu and Kashmir, and they are not refugees in their own homeland!
The lady of the house agreed, but in a way that suggested that she was loathe to contradict, and she resumed answering my questions and talking about her family’s history. But she found it difficult to tell her story without using the words that upset my companion.
Soon Farida Begum turned to me and suggested that we ask to be excused. We began the long walk back to the center of town, and I noticed how very angry she was. Her lips pursed slightly and she walked quickly. She had pulled her veil briskly about her face and the broad cloth draped her shoulders and torso, but I could see the rigid set of her shoulders, and on the busy streets and narrow alleys, men pulled slightly aside to let her pass. I struggled to keep pace with her as we wound our way through the steep back alleys of the Pakistani hill town. When we arrived at her house, I tried to beg her pardon for asking her to accompany me to the home of a political rival. She dismissed my concern:
I campaign for my husband, she campaigns for her brother, that’s just politics. Didn’t you notice how well she received us for tea? After all, we are all Kashmiri. But she should not call them muhājirs when they are in their very own homeland!
“Just Mountain People”
On
