Qazi Shibli
Raziya, 14- years old, sits quietly scribbling in her notebook and looks up at me as I ask her what school feels like. “I sit alone in the class, and during lunch breaks, I try and hide from everyone else. I cry alone and do not know of any other feeling than being cursed and feeling helpless. I keep wondering what my sin is.” She tells me.
A student of a private school in Islamabad (Anantnag) township, Raziya Sheikh lives in a ‘Waatal Mohalla’ in the South Kashmir township. She had to change her school a couple of years after she, at a teachers’ meet along with other students, was asked about her father’s work. “My father is a Watul”. The students of the school where kids from richer families study, post this incident, looked down upon her and many even distanced themselves from her. The list included her best friend Sheeba as well.
Pushed into isolation with no company, Raziya got bullied by kids, who would make fun of her father, would call her ‘watal’ often and tell her, “You cannot sit with us because your father is a watul”. She had a traumatizing time at school as most kids chose to stay away from her. She hesitates to make friends and has only two friends who are from her locality, ‘waatal mohalla’, which is a result of the ghettoization of the stigmatized communities.
The word ‘watul’ may be a bland term in the Kashmiri dialect for the Watal community. In spite of the fact that they are formally known as Sheikhs, for the Kashmiri individuals, it appears they will always remain ‘Watals’ or ‘Watul.’ Restricted to ghettos like Sheikh Mohalla, Watal Mohalla, or Watal Basti, it is easy for anybody to notice the economic disparity as one passes by these areas. With feeble houses, fetid open drains and potholed streets, these ghettos can be found amidst our glamourous, posh localities in Kashmir.
In spite of the fact that most of the Kashmiris dismiss the presence of this issue, in common speech, Kashmiris frequently utilize the terms ‘watal khaslat’ (quality) and ‘watal nasil’ (ancestry) to unload disdain on each other.
Sir Walter Lawrence, who served as the first Settlement Commissioner for Jammu Kashmir in the late 19th century under the rule of Maharaja Pratap Singh, writes of the Watals being the gypsies of Kashmir, in his 1909 book ‘Kashmir and Jammu’. Watals of the time was divided into two classes based on whether or not they abstain from eating carrion. Those who didn’t eat carrion were admitted to the mosque while those who did, were excluded from the mosque. The chief occupation of the Watals remained the manufacture of leather. While the first class of Watals, those who abstained from eating carrion-made boots and sandals, the second class made winnowing trays of leather and straw and did scavenger’s work.
Casteism Rampant at a Large
Casteism in the valley can be traced as early as the mid 12th century as per Kalhana’s ‘Rajtarangani’, where the Kashmiri society was divided into four ‘Varnas’- the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and the Shudras. The occupations associated with these four groups were priests, warriors, merchants or agriculturalists and laborers, respectively. In addition to these four groups were untouchables or the ones who were the outcasts.
Hinduism was the predominant religion in the Kashmir Valley before the venture of Islam. It was in the 14th century A.D. that Islam arrived in Kashmir and although the subjects converted to Islam, they didn’t let go of casteism.
The contemporary Kashmir, where the majority of the population practices Islam, faces its menace of social apathy. Islam, which is a religion based on the principle of empathy and equality forbids discrimination. Whereas, the issue of caste discrimination, an issue that finds very few ears and makes the way in muted conversations in Kashmir, runs contrary to the preachings of Islam.
History shows the emergence of various socio-religious reforms to remove ignorance and social evil from society. The indigenous ‘Rishi’ movement that stressed in Sufism began in the valley of Kashmir after Sufi orders from Central Asia and Persia came to Kashmir in the 14th century.
Sheikh Noor-u-Din or Nund Rishi played a central role within the framework of a cognitive moral and social order. The message of Noor-u-Din Noorani was simple and based on a complete understanding of love and harmony among all sections of society. He was pained to see that division was being made of socio-economic and religion. It is on the social front that Sheikh saved the fast-developing Muslim society from falling prey to caste division.
The Sheikhs or the Watals formed a part of what would have been the outcasts or the untouchables along with other communities like the Hanjhis. And for generations, the Watals have been assigned the role of cobblers, cleaners, or worse, manual scavengers. Manual scavenging still remains the foremost occupation of the Watul Community to the present day. It incorporates cleaning septic tanks, open channels, or pits along with unsanitary restrooms. Given its health hazards, it’s a practice that has been rendered illegal, but the Watals earn their living through it.
Isabel Wilkerson, in her 2020 book ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ writes, “Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”
Caste discrimination has to do with overt situational behavior, of an ethnically charged group or ideal, that furthermore occurs when someone gets a better or harsher treatment than others because of her or his social group association by birth.
There is an unspoken rule of the caste system in Kashmir and we have to engage with this menace to change our social condition.
Denied Marriages and Houses
At the frontline of those battling covid, the Sheikhs across Kashmir urban, keep the urban structure intact, however, they have disappeared from our mainstream narratives and so has the appreciation for the work they do. In most of the townships, they stiffly battled covid 19 and in almost all the townships, they were given no protective gears or face shields.
“People around us still think that we are from a lower caste, and have made a preconceived stereotype about us that we can’t live a good life. If we marry our children, the first thing that we are often asked is if we are Sheikhs or Watals. If we change our locality, the people living around us still look down upon us,” Saleema who lives in the Watul Colony in Srinagar told The Kashmiriyat.
Saleema says that they are not rented houses or allowed to live in normal colonies. “People heckle and look down upon us if we go to live in localities other than our ghettos,” she said, also adding, “We too, want to live in good houses, we deserve to live there, we did not choose to be born here, I wish people understood that.”
Another problem, Saleema says, is the denial of all other castes to marry the men and women from the Waatal community. “I have seen girls in my locality who have crossed the age of marriage because their parents do not find a proper match, all other castes deny marrying our daughters. They prefer late marriage but do not want to marry in our caste,” she said.
She says that young boys are getting brides from the immigrant Rohingya community. “We have at least 4 Rohingya girls in our locality, we also have non-Local (labourer) girls, as there is a denial from all other castes to marry their girls to our caste.”
“We are treated like outcasts as if we have a different God or have been created by the God who is inferior to Allah. Many people hesitate in shaking hands with us. Maybe we do menial jobs, but are we not cleaning the mess they spread?” Shaukeen asks. Shaukeen Ahmed Sheikh is one among thousands of boys who feel disconnected from the larger society. “People treat us dirty. We sweep and clean the surroundings for them and while working they speak to us in a very disrespectful way. People need to change their behavior towards us and treat us like them, they should become very responsible and keep the environment clean.”
Though many elderly women wish the problem be addressed, but for many like Gousia (name changed), there is no wise in hoping what is impossible. After a relation of more than six years, she was turned away by the family of the boy she loved. “I sent my family to his house to finalize our relation, they cast us away after insulting my parents,” Gousia told The Kashmiriyat. She says that many young women are forced to marry outside Kashmir as the caste discrimination is rampant in Kashmir. “Nobody talks about it,” she said.
Suheem, another young boy from Watal mohalla who works as a sweeper told The Kashmiriyat,“We are discriminated everywhere, the only place where we are not discriminated is the Mosque and the Khanqah, ” he says, with a tinge of irritation visible in his eyes.
Social hierarchies lead to discrimination of subordinated groups. Hierarchy and unjust regimes may have various shapes and effects in different cultures but psychologically they share the same underlying mechanisms and they shape our everyday reality.
Othering seems to have found a home in the human psyche such that it seems unlikely that a certain ‘us’ can survive without a bias towards a certain ‘them’.
Now, othering may stem from a wide range of reasons, it may include some naive reasons like personal biases, lack of awareness, some sense of entitlement or it may also result from a well-polished model of knowledge production about certain identities by a few for some vested interests. Religion, race, gender, caste, ethnicity, class, nationality, all of these become the basis for othering. The ‘other’ becomes the subject of discrimination over some assumed sense of superiority of the ‘us’, in order to solidify the concept of us’ own identity.
Having lived through the years of conflict, if anything, it is the Kashmiri identity that has experienced this othering. From underdeveloped natives to terrorists, the Kashmiris have been labeled everything they were not. Thus, the Kashmiris know what being looked at, treated or spoken to for being the other like. Despite being familiar with the dehumanizing effects that othering is capable of causing, we become inconsiderate when it comes to our own people.
It’s necessary that the coming generations are not conditioned with the same prejudices that we live with if humanity has to sustain. Be it the Watals for Kashmiris, or the Dalits for mainland Indians, or the blacks, the Asians and the immigrants for the west, and thousands of such others for various communities, this fear of the other has brought nothing but harm. No race, gender, class, or caste can be inferior or superior to the other. We must learn, unlearn and strive for a better egalitarian society.
Raziya wishes for things to get better for kids like her. That equal opportunities of education and work are available for her people. I see hope in her eyes of a Kashmir that was once dreamt of by Sheikh Noor u Din Noorani, Lal Ded, Mir Syed Ali Hamdani, and many more.
On being asked if she feels like hiding her identity or lying about it to kids at school, Raziya tells me that this thought does not occur to her, and even if it did it wouldn’t help. “I carry my identity with me wherever I go. I shouldn’t have to hide who I am or where I come from My father’s profession is not something that we should be ostracized for. I feel dejected and it saddens me every day but helplessness is all I feel”.