Being in a school in Srinagar in the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, opened windows to India and to the world. But it kept the shutters firmly closed on Kashmir. We were taken through the broad sweep of Indian history from the Indus Valley to independence, the mechanics of the planned economy, the geography of river systems and mountain ranges. And a broad brush of classical Greco-Roman civilisations and Anglo-Saxon traditions. While far better now, the pedagogical approach continues to be the same even today. 

What we were not taught was the history of the place we lived in, the political economy that had shaped its society, the cultural traditions that gave it identity, or the value systems that had allowed it to absorb successive influences without losing its distinctive character. Kashmir did not exist in our textbooks as a subject of information, let alone serious inquiry. It appeared neither as a territorial fact nor as a contemporary political reality. It was as if Kashmir had no usable past or prospective future; it existed in the present only outside the schools. 

Kashmir’s rich intellectual heritage was entirely missing from the curriculum. We were never told that the Katha Sarit Sagara, one of the world’s largest collections of stories, was composed in Kashmir in the 11th century, or that Kalhana’s Rajatarangini is one of the earliest connected historical chronicles written in India. Nor were we introduced to the Trika system of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism, or the role of Kashmiri scholars in carrying Buddhism to Central Asia and China. It was not just a passive recipient of ideas but an exporter of them.

We were never told of the profound contributions of Islam to the Valley: the arrival of Sufi missionaries, scholars, artisans, and craftsmen, who engaged with and enriched local forms of thought and practice. Equally, the moral and philosophical tradition of Lal Ded and Nund Rishi was never presented as part of our own........

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