The Paradox of Wealth in Kashmir

Kashmir's new rich flaunt wealth, copy Western tastes, and bully old classes in anxious display.

- Wajahat Qazi

Class differences and social hierarchies are a feature of the human condition. But these get articulated in different expressions and idioms in different contexts. Kashmir is no different.

How, the question, do these differences and hierarchies manifest themselves here?

Teasing out an answer to this question calls for some context and a brief historical delineation.

Historically, Kashmir, to state the obvious has not been a 'wealthy' place. It was defined by poverty.

Going back a few decades or even centuries, land was central to the political economy of Kashmir. The Kashmiri ruling elite, mostly an intermediary class of various regimes that ruled Kashmir, were awarded land grants(jagirs) for their services. The rest of the populace was either the labouring classes or involved at various levels in the production and making of crafts.

This pyramid was empty in the middle. There were no middle classes or hardly any to speak of.

Rushing to the 1947, a watershed year for the entire subcontinent, including Kashmir, land reforms(land to tiller) initiated by Sheikh Abdullah created a new dynamic. Along with a degree of emphasis on education, new classes came into being.

These classes were overlaid by the populist politics of Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad and the attendant socioeconomic engineering of Kashmir classes. While his motive was neither aspirational nor neatly meritocratic, but the class dynamic and nature changed.