The Myth of Peer Waer

Kashmir calls itself the land of saints. A single exchange in a university office forced me to confront the caste, class and ego that thrive beneath that claim.

- Mohammad Ilyas Bhat

I was in a university office in Kashmir that day, expecting nothing more than an ordinary interaction.

The room felt like any other office. Files were stacked high on the desk. Tea cups sat there, long forgotten and cold.

Then a senior scientist leaned back in his chair, looked straight at the registrar across the table, and asked a question that changed the mood in an instant: “What was your father’s routine job?”

The question sounded polite, but the intent felt sharp.

I sensed what was happening. This was social measurement, a coded way of asking about class, rank, lineage and worth.

The scientist held a position technically junior to the registrar, and the question tried to reclaim hierarchy through ancestry.

The registrar answered in a calm voice: “My father was a labourer. He worked the whole week for twenty rupees. Out of those twenty, he spent half on his family and half he used to give to your father.”

The scientist froze, and the room fell silent.

The registrar continued, “Because your father was the caretaker of a dargah, a shrine.”

That reply cut through the air. A labourer earning twenty rupees a week fed his family and supported another man. The beneficiary of that support happened to be the father of the person now trying to assert superiority.

The exchange lasted seconds, but its meaning has followed me ever since.

We love to call Kashmir Peer Waer, the land of saints. We describe it as a valley of spirituality, a cradle of Sufi culture, a soil blessed with shrines and devotion.

OUR LANGUAGE ALSO REVEALS PREJUDICE WITH BRUTAL CLARITY. SWEEPERS ENDURE SLURS SUCH AS “WATUL.”

“Sheikh” sometimes becomes a taunt rather than a title of respect. Labourers hear themselves described as if birth fixes their place forever. A person who cleans filth performs essential work that keeps society healthy. The stain lies in the mind that insults him.