BOOK REVIEW “KASHMIR CALLING” BY MOHAN KRISHEN DHAR

                                                                                   

BOOK REVIEW

 

“KASHMIR CALLING”

By

Mohan Krishen Dhar

 

Publishers: Sabre & Quill Publishers, New Delhi, India

Year of Publication:  May 2026

(Available on Amazon in India at ……….https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0H2YNF497?s=bazaar)

 

Some books come to us like a visitor from the old city, carrying in the folds of his Pheran not merely facts, dates and arguments, but also the fragrance of dried mint, the murmur of Vitasta, the distant sound of a Wanwun, and the memory of a courtyard where elders once spoke of kings, saints, invaders, poets and gardens with equal ease. Mohan Krishen Dhar’s Kashmir Calling is one such book. It does not pretend to be a tightly argued academic history, nor is it merely a nostalgic exercise written by a man looking back at a lost paradise. It is, instead, a cultural panorama: part history, part civilisational reflection, part travelogue, part literary remembrance, and part repository of folk memory.

The very dedication, to all lovers of Kashmir, its beauty, its songs, and to Somadeva, Lalleshwari and Habba Khatoon, announces the author’s inner geography. Dhar is not interested in Kashmir as a tourist brochure of snow and tulips. His Kashmir is a layered civilisational space: Neolithic settlements, Shaivite metaphysics, Buddhist manuscripts, Central Asian routes, Sanskrit literature, Persianised language, folk songs, Mughal gardens, Dogra rule, political wounds, and oral tales living stubbornly among ordinary people. The book’s strength lies in this large embrace.

The opening essay, tracing Kashmir from the Neolithic age, sets the foundation. Dhar moves from the legend of Satisar and Kashyap Rishi to the archaeological evidence of Burzahom. This is important because Kashmir is too often reduced either to paradise imagery or to contemporary politics. Dhar reminds us that the valley was inhabited, shaped, cultivated and imagined thousands of years before the modern nation-state entered the scene. The movement from myth to excavation is handled with affection. He does not discard legend as superstition, nor does he make archaeology dry. He allows both to stand together, as they often do in the Kashmiri mind.

The chapter on Trika Shaivism is perhaps the intellectual heart of the book. Dhar sees Kashmir Shaivism not as a sectarian possession but as a philosophical gift. He discusses Vasugupta, Somananda, Abhinavagupta, Pratyabhijna, Spanda and Agama traditions with evident reverence. More importantly, he sees Trika as a force that helped create Kashmir’s composite culture. His reading of Lalleshwari and Nund Rishi is deeply Kashmiri in spirit: Shiva is not imprisoned in one community, and inner recognition is greater than external identity. The quoted spirit of Lalla, ‘Do not differentiate between Hindu and Musalman; recognise your own self’, is not used as ornament but as the moral centre of the book.

 Dhar’s treatment of Buddhism adds another layer. He travels imaginatively and physically towards Gilgit-Baltistan, Nanga Parbat and the old corridors of movement between Kashmir, Central Asia, Tibet and China. The chapter is at its best when it shows Kashmir as a receiving and transmitting station of ideas. Buddhism comes, stays, debates, transforms, and is transformed. Dhar makes the valuable point that Kashmir did not merely host Buddhism; it contributed to Buddhist thought, manuscripts, monastic culture and transmission. The ‘Gilgit Manuscripts’ become, in his telling, not dead archival material but lamps discovered in a forgotten chamber.

 His chapter on Central Asian influences broadens the map further. Kashmir, in Dhar’s imagination, is not a closed valley. It breathes through the passes. It touches Tibet, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Ladakh, Gilgit and the great Silk Route memory. Crafts, food, language, religion, trade and political anxieties all move across these corridors. This is one of the book’s most useful reminders: Kashmir’s identity was never made by isolation. Its distinctiveness came from contact, absorption and refinement.

The essay on Nehru’s love affair with Kashmir is written with warmth and conviction. Dhar sees Nehru as a son of the soil in an emotional and ancestral sense. Some readers may find the tone admiring, perhaps even indulgent, but it reveals the author’s generation and sensibility. For Dhar, Nehru is not merely a political actor in the Kashmir dispute; he is a civilisationally attached Kashmiri Pandit, a modern Indian statesman, and a man burdened by history. Whether one agrees with all of Dhar’s conclusions or not, the essay has sincerity.

The chapter on Somadeva’s Katha-Sarit-Sagara is among the most charming sections. Dhar writes of Somadeva not as a remote Sanskrit author but as a Kashmiri genius nourished by Vitasta, climate, ritual, story and memory. Here, the book becomes almost lyrical. The river Vitasta is not just water; it is witness, inspiration and rhythm. Dhar understands that Kashmir’s contribution to literature cannot be measured only through royal chronicles or philosophical treatises. It also lives in stories of transformation, animals, Nagas, swan maidens, thieves, lovers, ascetics and clever women. In this sense, the later short stories included in the book do not feel like an appendix. They complete the author’s idea of Kashmir.

 The sections on Kashmiri and Urdu love lyrics, cultural syncretism, spoken languages and dialects are valuable because they move away from kings and doctrines towards voice. Kashmir has always sung its deepest truths. Habba Khatoon’s pain, Lalla’s Vakhs, Sufi utterance, folk ballads, marriage songs, boatmen’s songs and rural idiom carry history differently from official documents. Dhar knows this. He has the instinct of a collector who fears that modernity may flatten these delicate inheritances. His love for language is visible, though the book would have benefited from more systematic transliteration, translation and source notes in some places.

 The chapter on preserving heritage carries an urgency that feels personal. The author is aware that Kashmir’s temples, gardens, manuscripts, shrines, dialects, crafts, songs and oral tales are vulnerable not merely to neglect but to ideological simplification. Heritage here is not stone alone. It is memory, usage, pronunciation, ritual, seasonal rhythm and inherited courtesy. This is where Dhar’s work becomes a quiet act of resistance. He is saying, in effect: do not reduce Kashmir to violence; do not reduce it to politics; do not reduce it to one community’s grief alone; but also do not erase that grief.

 The photo gallery, as described in the preface, brings another dimension. In such books, photographs are not decorative. They function like windows suddenly opened in a long narrative room. A garden, a shrine, a mountain, a river bend, a ruin — each tells the reader that what is being discussed is not abstraction. Kashmir has a body. It has light. It has texture. It has wounds, visible and invisible.

 The stories at the end — “Saviour of Nishat”, “Bonds”, “Mahadev, the Thief”, “The Crow’s Daughter”, “The White Hen”, “How Parvati Condemned Her Five Attendants to Be Reborn on Earth”, and “Upakosa and Her Four Lovers” — bring the book close to the oral fireside tradition. “Mahadev, the Thief”, especially with its idea of excellence even in a morally dubious craft, carries the flavour of old storytelling where wit, audacity and human weakness mingle. “Saviour of Nishat” connects sacrifice with the beauty of a Mughal garden. These stories restore playfulness after the density of history and philosophy.

The greatest merit of Kashmir Calling is its refusal to let Kashmir be seen through a single window. Dhar gives us Burzahom and Lalla, Ashoka and Abhinavagupta, Nanga Parbat and Nishat, Nehru and Somadeva, Persian script and Sanskrit inheritance, folk tales and geopolitical routes. He writes as one who has read, travelled, remembered and suffered. One may challenge him on details, but one cannot doubt his attachment. This book is best read slowly, not as a textbook but as a conversation with an elderly Kashmiri scholar sitting under a Chinar, pointing now to a ruined temple, now to a forgotten manuscript, now to a song sung by village women, now to a road that once led to Central Asia. His voice may sometimes tremble with pain, sometimes rise in anger, and sometimes soften in wonder. But it remains anchored in love.

Mohan Krishen Dhar has been a distinguished Indian journalist and accomplished writer in both English and Hindi. He served as Bureau Chief and later Diplomatic Editor of The Hindustan Times and also contributed to leading international newspapers, including The New York Times and Le Monde. Widely travelled, he gained broad international experience through visits to many countries across Asia, Europe, Russia and the United States. Born in Kashmir, he was deeply inspired by its natural beauty, rich traditions and cultural heritage. His extensive study of Kashmir’s folklore, literature, festivals and legends resulted in several bestselling Hindi books admired for their lucid prose and vivid style, earning him numerous literary honours.

Dhar writes with the rare authority of a scholar, the sensitivity of a storyteller, and the observational depth of an accomplished journalist. In Kashmir Calling, he weaves history, philosophy, folklore, travel and memory into a richly textured narrative that captures the soul of Kashmir in all its civilisational complexity. His prose moves effortlessly from the lyrical to the erudite, illuminating ancient traditions and living cultures with equal grace. Dhar possesses an exceptional gift for transforming historical and cultural material into vivid, deeply humane storytelling. The result is a work of remarkable intellectual breadth and emotional resonance that lingers long after the final page.

Kashmir Calling is therefore a call not only to Kashmiris but to all who believe that cultures survive through remembrance. It asks us to listen before the songs fade, to read before manuscripts turn brittle, to visit before ruins collapse, and to recognise, in the true Pratyabhijna sense, the Self hidden beneath history’s dust. For lovers of Kashmir, this book is not merely informative; it is an act of remembrance, a recovery of civilisational memory, and a meditation on cultural continuity. Erudite yet deeply humane, it compels the reader to engage with Kashmir not as an abstraction of politics, but as a living reservoir of philosophy, art and historical consciousness. I would strongly and unreservedly recommend this work to scholars, students, and all serious readers seeking to encounter the deeper intellectual and spiritual heritage of Kashmir in its full historical resonance.

 

(Avtar Mota)

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