'The Last Queen of Kashmir' - Author Interview

namaste before watching this episode please hit the subscribe button and be sure to share with your friends my guest today is Rakesh call an author historian cultural ambassador of Kashmir his recent book the last queen of Kashmir is making waves it will there was an event locally here in Princeton I wasn't able to attend my wife did and as a result she spent many many days reading his book reading out except for me she couldn't be here in the Rani but we will have other occasions to host Rakesh and discuss more about his amazing stories about Kashmir welcome Rakesh thank you for having me Rajeev I'm really grateful to Indrani for her sponsoring me here she is actually a greater master of your work because she really loves this book and if she were here she would be holding it up and saying you know everybody should read this book so we're going to have an interesting discussion I am going to pick Rakesh his brain because he's done so much work on it on the history background of Kashmir then talk about this particular queen on whose story the whole book is based and then we talk about current issues current affairs and so on but let me first tell you a little bit about revocation Rakesh has a similar background to me he came in to the u.s. in 72 I was here in 71 he pursued he has a tech background as as I do he pursued a corporate career very successfully and then for the last 15 or more years has been involved in the pursuit of knowledge about his culture Kashmir is their affair that's a very good summary yes and one other before we go into the subject matter a major accomplishment is that he because of his intervention the German Chancellor personally returned a very important Durga Multi a very historical piece to Prime Minister Modi in 2015 yes that's correct so the picture you are seeing is the Chancellor handing it over to Prime Minister Modi and that tell us a little bit about what happened I mean not in too much detail because that's a long story I tell I guess but what happened so I had a dinner meeting with dr. pol Pratap Aditya one of India's great art historians and he told me it's a Rakesh I want to tell you the story of the thing apart Durga but the sad thing is you can do nothing about it and that was the beginning of the journey where I took a sacred oath that I would recover this Durga which is the oldest continuously worshipped Durga in the Indian subcontinent that was stolen by a chain of zealots smugglers criminals brought out from Kashmir to New York to Germany and it took me many years but I was relentless I was not to be denied and then in partnership a very successful partnership with the Archaeological Survey of India with the Indian ambassador in Germany with other wonderful friends we got it back it's the first time that a foreign government returned antiquity back to India because of the pressure that was brought on it by an individual and the Government of India working together fantastic so that's a mystery tale with all intrigue and so on we'll have to have a special session on how you ain't about doing this I will gladly do that because your viewers will be inspired by it and we have so many treasures all over the world which now I have travelled - when you have traveled to and seen and those all have to come back home they have to come back home so let's move on to the Kashmir story which is which is very exciting yeah before we talk about the book I think it'll help our viewers who may not be historians of this topic to tell them a little bit about given kind of a grand sweep of history of Kashmir mm-hmm tell us Kashmir has the oldest continuous written history of humanity in it going back over 5,000 years and this book is the first book that studies that inflection point that occurred in early 14th century which should be of interest to military officers do media to government all over the world so but starting back in earlier times yes tell us about the philosophy the spiritual traditions because you know share ism has its origins there it is a home of Shiva this is Buddhism has a lot Buddhism's export to the northern places you know Japan I mean certainly Tibet in that Kashmir has a lot to do with it and part of the Silk Route so it's it's got a grand history before the arrival of the Muslims so the pre-islamic Kashmir needs to be understood so tell us a little bit about it so Kashmir started the history of Kashmir starts really over 5000 years ago when in the Mahabharata you hear this encounter with Balram coming and reporting that the surface river was drying and the source for diamonds a group of them migrated to Kashmir there is a very poignant moment where they come to King nila and one of the parents says tell us how can we migrate and live permanently in cash that's the first immigration contract that we have in history and we'll talk more about the agreement that was reached between the Nagas and the Kashmiri social Brahmins at that time and a contract that we honor to this day we can talk about a story later but once they entered Kashmir what a grand civilization was created your viewers will be astounded to know that whatever aspect of life Kashmir touched on it when you talk about literature the words idea came from Kashmir when you talk about yoga Sutra Patanjali the cash million wrote about it Sanskrit grammar money me when you look at Charaka for medicine when you look at the number zero the first record of the number zero is the partially manuscript which was found in that area of Kashmir when you look at the great theory of aesthetics which is nowhere to be found in the world Russia over a thousand years that was developed in Kashmir when you look at the technology of story writing punch Tantra 200 BC followed by catasaurus Sagar I can just keep going on but this was a civilization that was founded on the principles of Shiva which is freedom I am sovereign I am free it's a civilization which was founded when you're washed a text of Kashmir washes tells ran around if the baths are on one side and they tell you one thing and truth is on the other side and you know the truth then ROM ignore the gods but follow truth this was a civilization that was not a blind believer of any religion it was a truth seeking framework and that extraordinary framework created share Islam it created very few people know this Buddha gave us wisdom it was Kashmir that injected compassion and Buddhism it is Kashmir that sent more scholars and thinkers and wise people to China to Korea to Japan then all of India put together they went to kill Gaston they went to Kazakh star and they carried the message it was in the opinion of most people the one spot on the globe that had greater impact on the known world than any other place in fact you can think of Kashmir Valley pre 14th century as having the same impact that Silicon Valley is having today important so as an export hub for Indian civilization to other parts of Asia the Kashmir as a major exporter because of its location on the Silk Route land route that may be one reason that's true and but most importantly it was a magnet civilization it was a magnet civilization where people came from all over the world in fact I have written a scholarly article where I have traced that in the temple of Solomon the incense that was burned the key ingredient costas came from kashmir well that's something very interesting I'd share with my Jewish friends yes an important point it's very interesting that al biruni whose history studied in India and he mentions with some degree of envy and anger because he was denied admission into Kashmir he said a very special land where meritorious people are allowed to get in including Jewish people because in their eyes Jews were not good but in India of course everybody is right so Jewish people are allowed into Kashmir and so it was a land where they were James there were power sees every fateful every part I was there now this is a an amazing place for a very long period of time a treasure trove of human history but around the forty 14th century thereabouts yeah things suddenly is changed because of the arrival of Islam you know in a radical way or in a dramatic way so tell us how did Islam come who brought it and what happened then so I'm glad you mentioned in a radical way because the entry of Islam into Kashmir actually predates the 14th century by almost 500 years the first Muslim who arriving to Kashmir was actually an attendant of the Prince of sin when sin was sacked the Prince escaped and gained sanctuary in Kashmir so one of his attendants was a follower of the Islamic faith so Islam was in Kashmir for close to 500 years maybe very peaceful coexisting with the local population in fact there's some slight evidence that the local Kashmir is used to call the Quran as the masala vada it in their effort to incorporate it and there is also some slight evidence that they created something called the - Raksha Arawa so this was all sort of you know accommodating the influx of this and so everything was very peaceful but these Muslims who were there were individuals they were not rulers yeah see there was no king governor made a military-type thing it was just private citizen so I would citizen seeking sanctuary and very willing to enter this new land and fit into it but early 14th century something changed and what changed was that you had once again a resurgence of violent jihad ik Islam wasn't from within or Outsiders the first thing that happened was that within Iran the Mossad fourth dynasty was trying to take control and there was total upheaval there and so many Muslims came to Kashmir to seek sanctuary and there was a very weak King so Dave he was very liberal in fact the historian of the time period writes that they came like bees because they knew the king was a pleasure tree so very interesting poetic language right right and he led the sky Shah mirin he let the sky rinchen are from Ladakhi and he let the Czech people in very liberal God and they came and they settle into the valley and they were given villages they were given grants they were really treated very nicely but the first thing that happened was there was a savage attack of the shmear led by me of a person who stories mentioned the larger and the larger had put together an army of persians Turkic people some target people and they came and it was horrific what they did the historian says that they were like locusts they did not leave a blade of grass they captured when they had to leave the valley because of winter and they took the youth of the society slaves slaves they put holes through their collar bone and then leather strap we'll put it and then these people were made to walk in line I don't want to go beyond that because it is so horrific but the historian records that that was the attack that was launched on the valley and then unfortunately as the story unfolds the people who were given sanctuary internally they turned into fifth columnists they became treacherous to the state that had given them sanctuary common people Muslims come live in peace for a long time they are respectful of the local Hindus Hindus are respectful of them but then when Muslim ruler comes these common friendly people also turn into violent vicious people yes this has happened in many places happened maybe I said my parents had to run from Lahore in the time of partition and we and told tell us stories we're neighbors who were Muslim know very dear friends starve drivers colleagues who had no problem with them once it was announced that Lahore is under Islamic rule it belongs to Pakistan even people who had no problem with Jews suddenly turned yes this is a very strange kind of psychology of Muslims that when they feel that their authority is not in control politically militarily they're one way but when they feel that their their Muslim head or Muslim senior person as authoritative person has come and taken over then all of a sudden they want to take off so this sword is the sword of the invaders one of the invaders sitting in the museum yes and the next one which is a crown is the royal family of Kashmir is crown yes where is it sitting now it's now sitting in the Metropolitan Museum in New York in New York would just shows when a civilization is shattered how far its pieces piece there can be far far flung all over the place yes he said so now now this is the setting for quote irani what you just Cripe that's instead the context where we can introduce Kota Ronnie yes but I just want to make one additional point here which is not well understood and that is how fierce the Kashmiri warriors used to be until them okay Kashmir was not conquered by outside forces even with the latter yes he came he raided but eventually he had to leave and Kashmiri built itself so it's also not known that the biggest war manual in the world was written Kashmir in the 11th century this was a civilization that was not just about scholarly learning that was not just about the good life these were fierce warriors that were respected they were never conquered from outside they felt from with them so how did it happen from within tell us Kota Rani early 14th century in the wind Hindu princess inherits the throne and very troubled circumstances and the first act of treachery that happens is that in China a buddhist who was given sanctuary kills the king kills her father who's the military general of kashmir through subterfuge takes a prisoner takes the kingdom and converts to islam so a buddhist convert to islam is the person who does the scepter future he's an insider because he's originally a buddhist yes he converts to Islam and does all this that's right now do we know a lot about how and why he converted and what was going on and was it some kind of a inducement or what was it do we know enough yeah I think we have a very clear idea that he realized that he had succeeded beyond his wildest imagination it was a set of circumstances suddenly finds himself in the throne but in you that he really did not have any popular support the only people that he could count on were the other immigrants many of them Muslims we know that a prior king of Kashmir a very controversial king of Kashmir by the name of Harsha he had brought Muslim mercenaries who were armed to support his rule and so when China wanted those people to be on this side so that's the early era equivalent of Muslim word bank but yes that's what it is yeah there was a physical barrier so you know you want to be king and you convert you bring these guys you know and make a deal and they are there to fight for you yeah now there's a story that he wanted to become Hindu and he was not accepted I deal with that in the in the in the book there's also a story that his so-called conversion to Islam was a fake conversion only designed to get the support look all those are stories I deal with the book but the net result was he ended up becoming the first Muslim ruler of fish meat problem is he lasted only three years but he had opened the door and that was the beginning of that so now tell us about Kota Ronnie so Kota Ronnie is a extraordinary woman and it's very interesting first that nobody knows about her and let me can I tell you how I stumble yeah jealous jealous my wife Sushma her last name is Tara and I wanted to research the origin of her name where do the thumbs come from what's their history and I stumbled on this person be built on em and this was at the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh when the Afghans were ruling Kashmir they were really horrific ly bad people so many Hindus and Muslims came to be both her who was a prominent as to Kratt and said please do something so he said okay and he and his son went through the mountain pass he left his wife and his daughter with the milkman and they were hiding there so he goes to Ranjit Singh and says please come and rescue us not Ranjit Singh was a wily old Fox he listened to everything he said let me think about it and he waited for a year meanwhile the Afghan governor Azam Khan went wild he knew beatable had gone somewhere and he said find his family find his wife find his daughter-in-law they could find him but eventually it was be both has all relative collection moonshee who committed an act of treachery treachery treachery treachery releases the information the location the governor sends his people they grab the two women the daughter-in-law was shipped as a slave to the helm or Afghanistan and Iran the mother-in-law managed to swallow poison and her last words were there will always be a quota Rani remember me to my husband now I read this and I said I know Kashmir's history very well who's the squatter Adi I research everything there's nothing about karate but why did this woman in 1817 15-year demon her last word find it she invoked this symbol of resistance which year 1750 or so a few centuries after quarters yeah few centuries after quarter odd so I said why doing the time Ranjit Singh who was just go to Rani why would this woman invoke what irani there will always be a quota Rani a symbol of woman resistance that started my journey it took me seven years to collect materials from India from Persia from England from Germany my eyes were open and then I also understood why she had been buried and I'm happy to answer that question okay so why was he buried so she was buried because when you study the transitions that occurred Hindu rule was overthrown you always have the familiar stories oh the king was a lecture the king was corrupt the Lord casts were suffering right the familiar western indologists justifying the invasions justifying the atrocities because it's the fault of the Indian people themselves they deserved it right now this case of Kota Rani presented a very peculiar problem the peculiar problem at present in because look these people had come in they were desperately trying to legitimize their role so you know they had to put out a story there historians have to put out a story but the problem was this Kota Rani was not she was a woman she was not lecherous didn't have a harem and the problem was that the King before her very consistent with Kashmir's history was from the lower caste so that we did not have this so-called caste issue there were different caste what social mobility was free-flowing so what to come up with now there had a similar problem Ladakh when they came and they kill the local king and the married the daughter then they took the argument all that king was a cannibal he used to steal babies and eat them but in Kashmir were people who are intelligent kept records and it was not an obscure located society you couldn't get away with that argument so what to do there was no option but to completely bury so the invader has to either bad mouth and you know kind of demonize the people that they've invaded so to make it to justify what he's doing which is how Islam's invasion is an entry into India is justified by the left today also that they came to liberate people because they were more freedom-loving and India had problems and whatnot so either you could do that or if you cannot do that as in the case of Kota Rani because the evidence is so compellingly against such a theory then you just try to bury her so it just see just why washed out of history yeah but here's the positive aspect of Katara if you are a viewer young viewer let's say anywhere from 15 to 35 and if you're a woman especially one of the things you probably face is a real shortage of flesh-and-blood women role models right I mean seated orbity they're sort of iconic women but you don't think that they may have relevance to the problems you face in life right Kota Ronnie is the kind of girl that any woman at any man would want to learn about she was clearly beautiful she was asked beautiful or certainly more beautiful than Cleopatra she managed an empire that was as big as the one that Queen Elizabeth did she was a warrior hand-to-hand combat she was compassionate she dealt with all of the questions that we face today who to love if you're going to marry somebody of a different religion do you convert or you don't convert how do you protect your children how do you preserve the society which has a tolerant inclusive ethos in the face of an ideology that prescribes violence and force and exclusivity so these burning questions that face us today were the questions that she was facing until her very end she managed her way and navigated her way beautifully and through all of it she did not deviate from Tamra would you say she was how would you compare her with say feminists today who would consider Western people Western women who were sort of like that they would champion them as feminists how would you position her in that discussion unlike the Western model of equality which is what feminism is in America and the West unlike the eastern model of feminism yin-yang you know women and men are two halves of a whole Kashmir had a very different model of feminism I call that fearless symmetry the shiva-shakti model was a model where there was dynamic interplay between shiva and shakhty but if Shiva was latent than Shakti was fully empowered a woman was fully empowered what that meant in real life was this that Kashmir had more sovereign queens that rule the kingdom as rulers than any other place on earth consort Queens an equal power typically they served as the Minister of Finance and it is striking what happened to women after that civilization came to an end now let me talk about quarter-on-quarter rani as a woman was remarkably open-minded remarkably open minded she did what she describes in the novel she says I will do what I desire what I know about and what is within my grasp she had sovereign authority on herself and as icon of feminism she's actually in many ways stronger than their husband Odeon Dave in fact historians have said he was a weak man but I don't think it was a weak man it's just called the honey was so strong she was much smarter than the jihadi is who invaded she killed a chola so tell us about that tell us her life story just quickly the political dynamics that happened during her life why before and after became different with her as the Farkle so there are several high points about her story you know for example Kashmir suffers periodically from floods right most cash Willis don't know that she built the first canal bypass it's called cortical caught after Kota called meaning a canal it exists to this day what Kashmir is do have no clue who was this woman extraordinary brain that hey this Valley gets flooded periodically let us create a bypass graft she was the first one to do that now there are many high points in her life how she faced a famine that hit the valley and how she saved her people she her shining moment though comes when a chola who followed the lachcha as an attacker put an army comes that's the Muslim invaded yeah next one he comes it's just fascinating how the historians describe her husband supposedly abandons her and runs away to Kishtwar total panic in the kingdom because the king has run away the army is in tatters so she sends a message to a child she says look if you come and attack the kingdom like the latter did you'll get nothing people will run away you will get nothing come marry me my husband is run away come marry me and don't go back come and sit here and let's rule the kingdom together so this foolish man tempted by her beauty and tempted that the kingdom would be his and the pleasures of Kashmir would be his agrees to her condition which is why bring your whole army just come with a smaller group of people and will consummate the marriage and then you rule well the moment he comes with a small crew she comes and she goes so then how did she meet her end so how she meets her end is very sad which is that we have a picture of the place where this happened it does happen yeah how how she meets is one of the immigrants who had come in from Swat area Shamir and who had been given extraordinary privileges so much so that he had risen from an immigrant and become a minister in the government he then got the title of commander in chief I mean can you imagine any place in the world providing that kind of support at the end he turned into a traitor and he brought massive amounts of people from Iran a demographic invasion of so-called Sufis the Sturm Sufi which has been repositioned as harbingers of peace Kashmir's history is not at all that yeah okay I in fact I'm going to do an episode on this is the old Sufi business and Sufis have done some of the most atrocious things yeah so they come and he essentially there was civil war he comes through some acts of treachery he defeats Kota takes a prisoner now whether she committed suicide or whether he killed her after one night one can talk about but that was that and Shami turns out to be the iconic traitor to his savior this image is the place where she was meditating now of course it's reconstructed but what was existing at the time was the temple where she was meditating yes and she comes out of this and kills it yeah this is a story it was a sacred teeth of course now it's all being redone but it was an ancient sacred teeth huh and that's where the story she invokes the strategy and the energy goddess Durga be able to go and come into the sack so I think it's very important to understand what happened to Kashmir and I had put here a few points for the consideration of the viewers over the long arc of history a civilization that had an open mind ended up with a completely closed mind and that's the greatest tragedy of Kashmiri so how could this manifest itself Kashmir was the place where the term jeevan mukthi was coined meaning that you could have complete fulfillment in life plus liberation spiritual liberation ultimate be all you can be the strongest pro-life message today we have value systems that extols death that says life wasn't worth living the greatest rewards when you die total anthesis of what Kashmir is this meal went from a progressive civilization to a regressive civilization Kashmir was always about seekers always about looking for the truth and now it went to a state where you had blind belief you're a closed mind innovation in fact is considered as heresy it was a civilization of contemplation of introspection which led to the greatest flowering of creativity it went to a state of compulsion what creativity has come out of a smile in the last 700 years compare that with what he had before today right or wrong wrong there are 20 universities around the world studying Kirsch me what are they studying they are studying everything free 14th century because they see something there for good bad or evil they see something of vital importance there it was a society that believed in the common good and it went to society of predatory behavior caste system was one where your countless examples of social mobility it went to a system where the caste system is the worst in Kashmir you may be hearing stories about caste in India but the subjugation of castes in Kashmir is an untold story worst of all the greatest tragedy of Kashmir is what happened to women George Kashi mother Kashmir was the primal cry of every Kashmiri she was feminine she represented Shakti and how over time women were systematically excluded first from the spiritual places then from the political arena then from control of their bodies that's a case history in itself but worst of all Kashmir was the center where the highest roots were studied it was a magnet civilization where people came from all over Buddha said you want to understand the nature of reality go to Kashmir today there's only falsehood in Kashmir systematic decline over the last seven hundred years and the proof of the pudding is in the cohort groups we can also show some physical evidence the picture you have is the ruins of a very important temple after water Rani yes so tell us about this this temple boast Kashmir one of the great tragedies that you see is the destruction of the temples which everyone who came to Kashmir said in terms of architecture in terms of grandeur it you can find them even in Greece or Rome and starting with Secunda boo chica all the way these temples were destroyed and some of these temples burned for six months or a year when few Indians know that one of the greatest universities of medieval India was shot the Pitt University tequila and other universities were Buddhist universities but Hindu University was Sharda peaked that's where the script was developed by the way Gurmukhi 40% of guru Mukhi is shark Oscar most of our sacred Sanskrit texts are written in Java you want to understand Indian civilization the road to understanding in the civilization is through Kashmir through shava shava Pete today sitting in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in Neelum Valley so what has happened is the civilization that produced countless heroes today is sending its young its youth to becoming anti-heroes so here is this picture of what we call Gulmarg yes so this good mud good being Muslim kind of an interpersonal flower flowers yeah their term was gory mug absolutely so when when a super maysa ideology entered Kashmir it had its mind set to destroy all symbols of what exists before and I talked about the temples let me not talk about and we all know that the texts were all thrown into a dull ache but let me talk about something else fundamental as names of places so goldmark you know many tourists say oh I went to goldmark well you didn't go to Golmud the place was gallery market was Parvati's meadow a beautiful name and it got renamed in the time of use of Chuck one of the immigrants whose clan eventually ruled Kashmir and you know you can just keep going on shaykh acharya being renamed as temple of solomon is this still going on renaming it is going on to this day you'll hear you know Pele bunch of mountains well it's not big bunch o there was no appeal there sir Aurel Stein one of the western indologists very clearly documented it was Devi Panchala so so is modern times in the Farooq Abdullah administration several hundred towns and religions were given Islamic so this should be considered a crime there should be public interest litigation you are wiping out cultural memory you are white applause by renaming today remaining Hindu villages into is Lama Islamization of Hindu villages by renaming them and changing their history there should be laws against it because this is it's the is the emotional and intellectual equivalent of destroying temples destroying architecture the fact that it still goes on and nobody does anything about it is pretty tragic but aren't there kashmir groups scholars who are raising issues on with this look I think we can talk about Kashmir and the abject failure of the Indian states in general but one thing is for sure truth is a casualty of Kashmir and on all fronts on all fronts most recently when a group of Kashmiri Pandits led by an activist Sochi pundit filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court asking that the case of genocide all of the crimes that were committed on Kashmiri Pandits On January 1990 and then thereafter that those cases be examined and because the killers are still walking freely in the valley of Kashmir astoundingly the Supreme Court of India which is planning to reopen the case against the Sikh program in 1984 denied that application on the plea that it would be difficult to collect evidence on those matters so whitewashing the genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits in modern-day India isn't just a place where old records were kept yes and this is a place where all generation generation records were kept and in the following picture Niro goes to look for his records and then Indira Gandhi's remains were buried there were deposited there some of his ashes Kashmir has represented an interesting battle between the nearest ideology which seeks to destroy everything and the indigenous civilization where memory was very important and one of the ways that this memory was manifested was before there was ancestry.com before there was geni calm you had the priests and the temple in the town of mutton was very prominent place where every family had a family priest and whenever there was a major life event you would go there and you would register there you don't register births deaths and they had these historical records that would go way way way back in history and so this photograph that you are seeing is of Prime Minister Nano going there making the entry of his family and what's relevant is that they've destroyed this yeah all of those records are destroyed their priests now without any living have it scattered it's basically the complete look you know it's amazing when the Bunyan Buddha gets destroyed it gets attention from around the world when the treasures of Iraq get destroyed gets attention of the world but the tragedy is that in India you have systemic destruction that is taking place under your nose and these are crimes against humanity under the Indian government an Indian state it's happening systematically day-in day-out and this picture is from your childhood temple you you mentioned so I should put this up this is a temple used to go and pray but what happened to it now this is an early picture but what's the sauce so you know I mean it's a dye my family comes from a town in Srinagar called ran Avari where many hindus live peacefully this is the Shiva temple and everybody would assemble there and one of the great things about this temple was that the pundits got together and created a school for girls because we always believed in educating the women called Vishwa party which now is doing very very well over time even the Muslim girls came there because customer dependence have always had a very open value system well this temple was destroyed it was shattered the more tea was thrown away and then eventually slowly the Talmud trust came and rebuilt the temple you can see what a beautiful place it is but there's nobody there because all the people are either in refugee camps in Jammu or they're scattered around the world but you can see in that little image the beauty the peace of what the civilization once was and this picture is the dilapidated Kashmir today broken-down compared to how things were in your childhood yeah no I think there are two Kashmir's today there is the Kashmir that the majority have funded by the Indian taxpayer and there is the Kashmir for us pundits which is basically our land our property our assets have been stripped away from us it's a tragedy it's a tragedy it's a tragedy of gargantuan proportions it's warning ultimately I remember meeting a very prominent leader of India I don't want to mention his name but let's just say within the top three and he told me he put his hand in his heart he said call sahur Cash many pundits are the litmus test of the idea of India let me just say when I see what has happened to the Kashmiri pundits it is a frightening warning as to the idea of India and we are beginning to see that now in Kerala and Bengal and other places so we have to understand the phenomenon of what happened in Kashmir there's a complete case history this is the first book that actually presents the notion of the long war and I was pleasantly surprised that General Petraeus actually said that the conflict that America is in in Afghanistan and things like that has to be viewed in the notion of an intergenerational war this is the first book that actually has research and spelt it out in the form of a story it's a vital read for anybody who's concerned about India and once the public understands and reads that's the hope that many pundits have that there will be momentum for them to regain their home so let's in closing I want to ask you what is this idea of Kashmir yet that they keep talking about this Hindu Muslim van you know civilizational unity in a very unique Kashmir way they keep talking about that it hasn't materialized so what do you think of that truth what is truth truth is what works - myriad has not worked so that idea tells you it was a fraudulent concept this fraudulent concept was created by Sheikh Abdullah and then the fraudulent hagiography was created going back to two Saints one a Hindu Shah white saying Lala and then another an Islamic saying called non Russia and a false hagiography was created of Kashmir yet that that was there the Kashmiri pundits have never accepted this term the Kashmiri Muslims have used it as essentially to mass and the tragedy is that there are people in India even today who use this as a mask to basically say oh there was intercultural Amity in Kashmir it's a form of Al takea that's right it's okay if that's what it is so so what is so and so you feel that this business of integrated happy Hindu Muslim thing has the 700 year long experiment has failed obviously when you have seven exoduses seven exercises seven times genocide on a community you have to face up to it and so what's the root cause yeah but then you see often we blame it on Pakistan but I would say the problem happened even before long before Pakistan I mean there's no Pakistan before 70 years ago but this happened seven hundred years so you have to say there's a civilization or this is a clash of civilizations this is there conflict of the religious kind you cannot hide it cannot ignore it maybe it's politically incorrect to say it but the problem has existed long before there was Pakistan that is the single biggest argument I have with my own Kashmiri Pandit activists who will always start with 1947 and who will start with Congress BJP and get trapped in their own knickers and I say to them what happened in 1931 when Abdul Qadeer agitation resulted in the massacre of pundits there was no India then what happened and you go back in history and so there's a saying in Kashmir which most fish males don't even know any longer which is you can only see as much forward as you look backward and when we truncate our own history the nailless succeed because then the discourses on their terms this is a very important book to really understand what this conflict is all about and the origins of the conflict the order to the conflict and on a load of optimism how coexistence can happen but on terms that are acceptable to us not terms that are dictated to us so with that I want to close and thank you for for a good educational piece on Indian history history of Kashmir and so on wish you all the best with your book tell me how it has the book we received so thank you first for having me the book has received rave reviews and I'm grateful for that the I think the only thing about the book is because I live in the America I'm not able to push it in India I'm not in the literary circuit but it's been very well wrapped I would say when it comes to writings of Kashmir it's probably the highest ranked book or if you go to Amazon or India and see that the reviews are rave reviews and part of it is I think something to do with the every style and I want to end on that the literary style that has been used in this book this is the first book that has been written in English in the Chandra's the only two other books that have been written so far in our civilization in the Chandra's is Mahabharat and Callen has returned me that's a impossible Russ to create a literary composition and when I wrote it it was really for myself and I thought maybe all of five people will read this book but what is gratifying is that the reader without quite knowing what the inner engineering is or the literary principles are when they have read this book it has resonated and it has purified them and it has empowered them and they come out of their experience saying wow and when Indrani reacted to it a very well-read person that for me was really joyful because that was proof positive that the literary principles that I followed I returned good and with that now I say to all of you we'll be back in a few days with another episode and we'll continue finding good writers only a few of them will select and we are not selecting the ones who are already very famous and marketed and all the hype we want people who need to be discovered and we want stories and pieces of work writings that need to become much more well-known than they are that is our value added so I'm delighted to have hosted you Rakesh and we'll do some more episodes in the future thank you very thank you thank you all for watching and I hope you enjoyed reading a book thank you [Music] you

Channel: Rajiv Malhotra Official

Views: 94,076

Rating: 4.9067755 out of 5

Keywords: the last queen of kashmir, kashmir history in english, kashmir vedic, buddhism development, buddhism history lecture, Kota Rani queen, kota rani kashmir, hindu queen rani, hindu queen, rakesh kaul, Shri Rakesh Kaul, the last queen of kashmir review, the last queen of kashmir interview, the last queen of kashmir book kashmir history, vedic heritage, Shaivism, vedic history, kashmir vedic history, shaivism, shaivism history, ladhak, ladakh

Id: qrBmadZZhtI

Length: 58min 53sec (3533 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 30 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/PARCOE]

why are there no films on her?

[u/mani_tapori]

Wasn't she the one who got her family members killed? TrueIndology once got into a debate about this topic.