Reflections on Resh Wa’er

Professor Manzoor Fazili  was a charming personality with style and conviction. His sense of clothing, art of conversation and carrying on in style would make him distinct from his group. I was not a political science student that he would teach, but during my studies in the college I came to know him, closely. He was one of the judges, beside Professor Bacha and Prof Soz, who chose me to the joint Secretary of the Government Degree College, Sopore, in the autumn of 1972.

He was in that class of teachers who would command respect, both from his colleagues and from students all alike. He had come from a family, which was a pioneering Muslim educated middle class of Bandipur that had benefited from the regenerative education policy of monarchial governance. Leftism and socialism had immense influence on this newly educated middle class youth, when Kashmir along with the National Movement was witnessing anti monarchy movement. No wonder, young Fazili was swayed by this doctrine at his early age.

Late in his career, he did his doctorate dissertation on ‘Socialist Ideas & Movements in Kashmir (1919-1947)’. The conviction he held dear that the world was moving towards socialism. Disillusioned with the collapse of ideology and emergence of religiosity at the close of previous century, Professor Fazili turned towards indigenous Reshi order, as an alternate political doctrine, which essentially is a variation of socialist doctrine.

I met him in 2011 in a park in Bandipur, where he was with his grand children talking to his friend, Dr Jabbar Sahib of Watapora, Bandipur. It was a meeting full of excitement, after years of separation. The first thing he told me that he was missing Raz Sahib, Pt. Ved Lal ji Kaul, ‘What a great poet and extraordinary teacher he was, equally luminous in Urdu and Kashmiri poetry.’ said Jabber sahib. Then Fazili Saheb added that they were our Reshis, like older times they had stayed on hill tops, now in their times they had gone away from the valley. He then recited many verses from Raz Saheb’s poem’ Machra:

Husnus Cha Bosha, iet Akh Gumana,

Lolas Chuh Chava iet Akh Dava

Husna t lola  Doshwye Cha Machra

iet Aakh Machra  Huet Akh Machra

Harie kus t Zaine Kus  Ahman Cha Rutnakh

Samsar Shatranj Cit   Mohar Akha

Zaenun t Harun  Doshwaye Cha Ma

iet Aakh Machra Huet Akh Machra’

 He told me that this poem would immortalize Raz Sahib, for it takes this world in the spirit of Reshi phenomenon, worth experimenting.

I did not know it that he was working on Rysh wa’er. He had promised me to visit Varanasi to discuss something significant. But then he had gone unwell. Professor Manzoor Sahib passed away in 2013, without visiting us.  His book ‘Rysh Waer’ was published in 2015, posthumously. I am sure if he would have lived a few years more, he would have brought the methodological intricacies in his rich contents to bring out an alternate philosophy of social existence in this book. This might have been in his mind to discuss it with us in Banaras Hindu University. For I sincerely feel that without elaborate text and context of Lalla, ‘the Rysh Wa’ar’ remains incompletely comprehended.

This book is an attempt to bring the two opposite contrapuntal political philosophies of East and West in assessment; the one centering round compassion, love and rhythm of life, while the other, revolving round individual interests, and bringing relativism in the process of self and  othering.

Our native tradition is a blending tradition of give and take of civilizations that has given us a moral space, where values remain continual in common accommodation sphere. Despite professing different faiths, the Reshi universe, ‘Rysh waer’ has been a gamut of these values.  Though its harbinger was Lalla, Nund Reshi became its fountainhead in generating the cult of Reshi order. This culture remained a sub-stream culture beneath the governing dominating mores of non-native power elites. Since it was a fusion of lived religion and common culture, its language was simple but metaphoric. It was not a codified thought, but a continual process of generating moral spaces linked with day to day social and economic interactions. This produced a culture of blending in pluralistic society. It stressed on the values of compassion, trust, beauty and goodness in our social exchanges, through symbolic language that brings humans in oneness with supreme.

Contrary to it, the western political thought has emerged from Greek philosophies, articulated in modernity on the individual interests and structured altruism. It was legitimized through the systems of the state that sets the boundaries and limitations for its control and governance. This brings western political thought close to ‘Vandur Raj’ in essence. Foucault visualized it, an order based on ‘epimilia’, take care subjectivity. Fazili sahib puts it, ‘a destroying order, as monkey does to the grain fields’. Despite Rousseau’s concept of ‘natural pity’ and Locke’s moral laws, the contradictions of western philosophy are built in Hobbes ‘Leviathan’. It is the instrumentality of the sovereign state to control and punish to suppress the dissent. In the final analysis, the western political thought has produced domination and hegemony of the Europe all over the globe through consensus on western referent.

The comparison of Rysh order and Vander Order has emerged from Lalla’s coin, ‘Tele maale aese Vander raj’, a premonition that future would hold an order of grabbing and snatching. This is evident in the hind side narrative of modernity that has been European colonization, plundering of materials and social engineering on the process of exclusion, which our power elites have  also adopted in our day to day happenings. Contrary to it, Ryshi doctrine would produce a moral space, where irrespective of religion and faith, each one would feel part of the whole in sustained trust, through the rhythm of everyday social interactions. Rysh wa’ar is a universe of moral order that gives meaning to existence, the ultimate agenda of human project. Professor Manzoor Saheb’s work needs to be completed. It has opened the debate for alternative modernity. The Reshi Thought has capacity to reinvent the philosophy of pluralism.

Manzoor Sahib had seen the niche of ‘Bazme Adab' of Bandipur. He was its president in the mid seventy’s, when it was undergoing stir up. He could not hold it together. The imposed literary engineering from outside weakened it, created divisions. Bazme Adab lost its voice. Its rich treasure of poetry remained unpublished, mostly vanished in the ravine of subsequent decades of turmoil. Manzoor Sahib desired to assemble those precious threads, but it was late for him. Kashmir had taken a different turn. Manzoor Sahib in the end was a poignant person. In his letter to Raz Saheb, his melancholy was evident. His search for episteme for order making needed them to work together, for the revival of ‘Bzam Adab’, which did not happen. His project has a moral purchase.

Prof. Ashok Kaul, Emeritus Professor in Sociology, Banaras Hindu University