Uzair Mir

Kashmiris, having lived under political conflict and its attendant socioeconomic corollaries, for almost a century now, often recall a time they call akh waqhta, ‘what once was.’ This past time, narrated as one of peace and communality, serves as an index of what Kashmir was like, before conflict set in endemic disharmony and corruption. For Kashmiris, Sufi figures emblemize this past, as they brought communities together, through the spiritual gatherings and collective counseling sessions they conducted and the fraternal networks they established with their disciples and mentors across Kashmir. Their writings critiqued social hierarchy, individualism, and the callousness of office-bearers, while avowing communality. Over decades of conflict and socioeconomic changes, the Sufi tradition has diminished, threatening old models of ideal life (religious and otherwise) and community they represented. Younger generations of their apprentices among pirs, who are spiritual therapists, however, today sustain their legacy and the notions of time, place, and community they represented. Working with pirs, this project explores how they are preserving through their lives, fraternal associations, and work a sense of Kashmiris’ place identity, modes of place attachment, and spiritual heritage under a persistent threat of erasure. Through this query, the project hopes to underscore the ways local religious-spiritual traditions and healing practices serve as embodied forms of memorialization of past history and its cultural-social ideals.