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Farhana Qazi, Secrets of the Valley, Pharos, 2016.

Foreword

Victoria Schofield

Excerpt:

Kashmir remains a place of great beauty but also of tragedy. In my own travels in the region, both literal and figurative, I have found pain and yet joy. The pain I attribute to a longing for peace, combined with the anguish of people who do not feel that they are  masters of  their own destiny;  the joy I see because of the sheer magnificence of the location and the pride of being  ‘from Kashmir’.  Thousands of people of Kashmiri origin are of course  now scattered throughout the world, in Britain, Europe, the United States. Some are political exiles, some left voluntarily simply for what they believed was a better life. But the longing to remain connected with their homeland remains.

            Farhana Qazi’s book Secrets of the Valley is testimony to one individual’s feeling for Kashmir, although her home is in Texas. The subtitle – A Personal Journey to the War in Kashmir between India and Pakistan – reveals the harsh realities of a region which, ever since India and Pakistan became independent countries in 1947, has been the subject of rival claims. Three wars have been fought with the former Princely state of Jammu and Kashmir serving as the casus belli: in 1947-1949; briefly in 1965 and 1999.

            Yet still the issue is unresolved: the promised plebiscite has never been held; endless peace talks have failed.  The   state remains de facto divided on the ground.  Two-thirds is under Indian administration,  which includes the beautiful Valley of Kashmir, the sparsely inhabited yet magnificent region of Ladakh, and Jammu. One-third is administered by Pakistan: this region includes the narrow strip of land watered by the Jhelum river which leads tantalising onwards to the Valley,  and what was formerly called the ‘Northern Areas’ now Gilgit-Baltistan, whose lofty peaks rise to join those of the Himalayas.  

            Divided along a ceasefire line, known as the ‘line of control’, there is no formally recognised international frontier and so the state is classified as ‘disputed territory’. As Farhana Qazi points out, the state’s history has created several anomalies one of which is that it is now has three capitals: two in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir – Srinagar, the summer capital, Jammu, the winter capital -  and Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

            Another incongruity is the different names used by Indians and Pakistanis to describe the areas they administer. While Indians refer to the state under their control simply as Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistanis call it Indian-Held Kashmir (IHK); and while the Pakistanis refer to the area the Pakistani government administers as Azad (Free) Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) - sometimes Azad Kashmir for short - Indians refer to it as Pakistani-Occupied Kashmir (POK). This stems from the belief in India  that - by virtue of Maharajah Hari’s Singh’s 1947 Instrument of Accession -  the whole state legally is part of  India, and from the belief in Pakistan that the Indian government is ‘holding’ onto the state against the wishes of the inhabitants.

            Farhana Qazi’s concern is not AJK, nor Gilgit-Baltistan, nor even Ladakh and Jammu, but the relatively small Valley of Kashmir, constituting a fraction of the state’s territory and where since 1989 an armed conflict has been waged against the authority of the Indian government, thousands have died, been imprisoned, tortured, raped, orphaned and disappeared.  

            Part history, part memoir, through her own travels, bravely venturing from the comfort of her home in the United States, Qazi shares with the reader some of the stories of those she encounters, revealing a land where contradictions are manifest:  Kashmir, a land of conflict, Kashmir, a  haven where people wish to travel to experience its manifold beauty.

            As a woman, her focus has been creating  ‘an oral history of women and their men.’ And for Qazi the first oral history is that of her mother, who unusually   joined the Pakistani Army in 1959 to fight for Kashmir, a land she had held onto ‘like a timeless picture in a vintage frame’ believing, as did many of the older generation of Pakistanis, that because its population was predominantly Muslim, it should have become part of Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned. Subsequent chapters focus on the lives of those who have taken up the struggle: ‘Martyrs’, ‘Prisoners’, ‘Wives of Militants’ and ‘Refugees’. 

            The narrative is both moving and compelling: we encounter   Sadia the ‘bomb girl’, who chose to do more than ‘stay at home or protest’,  Anjum fighting to free prisoners, Samie a potential politician, Asiya, the well-known militant activist, Asma, whose husband wants to become a martyr in the cause of Kashmir, Hameeda , the refugee,  all of whose individual oral histories make up a collective chronicle of suffering and struggle.

            Secrets of the Valley  concludes by painting a picture of Kashmir rising like the phoenix  from the ashes as it rebuilds itself after the devastating floods of 2014. Whenever I speak or write about  the troubled situation in the Valley of Kashmir, I too am optimistic, my belief founded on the strong individuals I, like Farhana Qazi have met, whose endurance is extraordinary. I like to envisage that there will be a resolution of the conflict,  so that the characters so movingly portrayed in this book, and many others like them, can enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of their land,  living peacefully and with dignity into old age.

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