Remembering the Professor
Remembering Professor Bashir Dabla is not a nostalgia, but a powerful story to tell. A story that can hold the interest of the students not only in the discipline of Sociology, but also ensure their confidence in the ‘structuration’ of their society. I met Professor Dabla first time in 1977, at the old campus of JNU, where he had taken admission for his masters in Sociology. I had completed my masters in Sociology from Banaras Hindu University. He was clean shaven young handsome boy, full with excitement about the new learning from Professors like, Y. Singh and T.K. OOmmen. These two were big names in the country. Their affiliation was something that one would cherish and feel proud in stating. The Department of sociology, Banaras Hindu university, was also diversified. It was rich in its faculty. Although the courses offered were in line with the curriculum of JNU, the Center for Social Systems of JNU was highly ranked and better recognized than the Department of Sociology of Banaras Hindu University. Notionally, I had this feeling when I met him.
He was effervescent in his expressions of sociological semantic and vibrant about the discussions in his school of social systems. In our meeting lasting for an hour, he would cite the names of two mentioned professors, invariably. It made me uneasy, for I was not much sure about my learning being adequate. I could sense that his certitude in the discipline was firm. I had lasting impressions of this meeting. Later on, we settled down of our own, but there was no correspondence between us. I had joined, as a faculty in the Banaras Hindu University and he too had struggling career, before being appointed as the founding Head of the Department of the newly established Department of Sociology at the University of Kashmir. Years glided over, came the eventful decade of 1990s; I had lost any hope to visit Kashmir again. A visit to the Department of Sociology indeed was my cherished dream, but unthinkable.
In 2012, my cousin invited me to visit Kashmir. He was stationed in Srinagar and offered his hospitality, before his retirement. Despite having inhibitions, we did not want to miss it. With vivid reticence, we landed at Srinagar airport at noon. It was mixed feeling of fear of present and throbbing of past. Instinctively, my childhood friends and my professional colleague, Professor Dabla came to my mind. Just like that I called him, presuming at least a mute response would give me a sense of wellbeing. Professor Dabla was on the other end. Hearing it that I was in Kashmir, he instantly invited me to the university. His excitement and warmth were evident in his conversations. It gave me a new belief and I instantly hailed it.
Our weeklong stay was hosted by him in the university campus. My cousin was happy about it and he did not mind cancelling our Houseboat accommodation. Professor Dabla had arranged a room in the Zabarwan guesthouse at the university campus, indeed a dream stay. It is on the bank of charming Nagneen lake, under the threshold of imposing mystic Zabarwan Hills. At the guesthouse, Professor Dabla received us and soon we sat for the soft conversations. This time his effervescence of expressions did not make me uneasy, but removed all my inhibitions with assured bond of mutual respect and trusted closeness. His only condition was that I should give three lectures in the Department of sociology. He made me feel relaxed. I gave three presentations. Professor Dabla was elated with our interactions. A day before our departure, he sat with me for a long afternoon conversation in the lush green lawn of the guesthouse. It was to renew the bond for the common academic studies.
Despite being weakened with that longstanding Parkinson disease; he had done huge empirical work on women and children of Kashmir, after it was affected by the militancy. His empiricism was contextual. With sociological imagination, his studies revealed how women and children had become marginalized social categories, as a result of violence and new market rationale. His books are quite in number. I asked him how he could change his focus from the political sociology of Kashmir to the pure sociological categories to study a Kashmiri society, when at a time everybody would deal with political upheaval in its textual history. He had an interesting story to tell me.
He was keen to go to Pakistan, soon after his employment in Kashmir. He did not reveal me the date. But he made this visit with the help of a friend in London. The moment he landed in Pakistan, he kissed the land, as per the wish of his father. The minute he stood up to leave out from the Lahore/Karachi airport, he was held in a nearby building, as a captive without any civilities. He was held like a prisoner. What he had presumed to be a trip of joy, turned a nightmare of ten day confinement. Afterwards, with some friend’s help, he was allowed to move out freely that he refused.
He chose to close up his visit and returned to Srinagar. It was a sigh of relief for him to be back home. He had no answer to his father’s imagined world, after his return. But it was a huge moment for his disillusionment. However, he used it, as an opportunity to work on the conversion of cultural capital and its political dynamics. The new market demand and imagined rationale, the breakdown of social institutions became his immediate concerns. His central theme was to understand these micro level social changes in the institutions, as degenerative process of new times. It needed fresh perspectives to understand the ramifications of these happenings in the society.
Dabla was a sensitive scholar with inside experiences of political culture of the valley. With intellectual moorings of JNU and experiences working at AMU as well; he took these social categories as the fundamental sociological categories to look at the existing theories of the society. He established the Department of Sociology in the University of Kashmir in 1989. Subsequently, since then, until his death in 2015, he brought out significant books, and accumulation of huge data on the primary groups of Kashmir, which were undergoing rapid alterations in a qualitative mode.
Disillusioned with the existing literature, he revisited these social institutions of family, caste, marriage, villages to understand the process of change. He would be with his team of researchers analyzing huge data, collected through empirical methodology to reset the theoretical field of the discipline. His work throws deep discernments about the manifested and latent functions of the post 90’s developments on social institutions of the valley. In a way, he created space and enough rationale for social reformation of these institutions. His books are based on empiricism, which are reflective understanding of social institutions affected by post 1990 developments. It has visible social tipping in domestic violence, child labour, Pandit migration and changes in the marriage institution. It was his desire to collaborate intellectually for regaining our cultural capital.
Professor Dabla left us at a young age of sixty-one, in 2015. His mammoth sociological data with passable analysis of social institutions and other social concerns have long range implications for the practitioners of the discipline, as well as, for the political and social reformers. He has played his role with honesty, defining the boundary for reformation. It is up to the new generation sociologists of Kashmir to take the lead. Now that Department of Sociology is rich in scholarship with three full-fledged professors, it is time to remember Prof Dabla, at least by organizing yearly conference on the themes that were dear to him. The Department of Sociology, University of Kashmir, owes its intellectual debt to him.
Prof. Ashok Kaul, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, BHU.
