When children no longer know the saints who built their world, what happens to the land they inherit?
By Khursheed Dar
There was a time, not long ago, when stories in Kashmir were not told through glowing rectangles, but through trembling lips beside warm hearths. Grandmothers would speak of saints with a mist in their eyes, their voices soaked in reverence. Fathers pointed to distant hilltop shrines and whispered, “There lies the one who prayed for rain when our springs dried.” Mothers lit lamps at dusk, their silent prayers melting into the tales of barefoot wanderers who once gifted the valley its soul.
But today, the air in those homes is still.
A silence has settled—thick, piercing, and loud.
In drawing rooms where once the poetry of Hazrat Alamdar-e-Kashmir, Lalla Ded, and Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani flowed like spring water, the hum of machines now reigns supreme. The glow of phone screens has replaced the glow of earthen lamps. Children, swaddled in Wi-Fi, are nourished not on roots but on reels. Their parents—busy, tired, distracted—have forgotten to tell them. Forgotten to name those whose footsteps once made the land sacred.
The Names Slipping Away
Ask a schoolchild today who Lalla Ded was, and watch the blank stare bloom. Mention Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani—Nund Reshi, the Reshi Sahib—and a pause long enough to echo will follow. Speak of Hazrat Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom (RA), the saint who watched over Srinagar from the heights of Koh-e-Maran, and the child might recognise the shrine but not the man.
Hazrat Zain-ud-din Wali (RA), disciple of Nund Reshi, drifts like an unfamiliar wind in their minds. Hazrat Baba Payam-ud-din Reshi (RA), who fed strangers regardless of caste, creed, or colour, is just a name etched into a fading plaque.
Even Hazrat Syed Ali Hamdani (RA), Shah-e-Hamdan—the man who brought Islam to Kashmir alongside art, culture, and craftsmanship—now survives more in history books than in living memory.
It is not the children’s fault.
The erosion begins at home—where tongues first curl into speech. It begins in the laps that now rock children to sleep with lullabies borrowed from the West instead of the vakhs of Lalla Ded or the shruks of the saints. It begins in evenings when fathers scroll through newsfeeds and mothers stir silence into their curries. No one remembers the duty of remembrance. No one mentions the names that once kept this land tethered to its soul.
From Reverence to Remoteness
What has happened is not just forgetfulness. It is betrayal.
A generation that once prayed with tears now photographs shrines from afar, their devotion reduced to a quick upload. Parents have become mute historians of a culture that bleeds quietly behind their backs. In conversations, progress, foreign jobs, and the future take centre stage—but a future without memory is just exile in disguise.
There was a time when mothers wrapped dried almonds in cloth and sent them with their children to offer at shrines. Those journeys were not just rituals; they were lessons in humility, service, and gratitude. Now, the same mothers rush between malls, weddings, clinics, and offices—rarely pausing to tell their children, “This is who we were. This is who we are.”
The fathers, too, have shifted. The men whose grandfathers once fasted in love of saints now fast only for health or to manage blood sugar. The real hunger—the hunger of the soul—is ignored, leaving children to grow up in a spiritual drought.
Why Memory Matters
The danger is deeper than nostalgia. It is not merely about losing stories; it is about losing the ethical spine and moral compass those stories once provided.
Saints like Nund Reshi taught compassion for all beings, speaking against greed and injustice. Lalla Ded’s verses were not only mystical but radical, urging self-realisation over blind ritual. Shah-e-Hamdan’s arrival brought not just religion but skills, crafts, and livelihoods that became the backbone of Kashmir’s economy.
These were not abstract figures from a distant past—they were the architects of a moral and cultural identity. To forget them is to sever the root that holds the valley upright.
Dr. Feroz Ahmad, a historian at the University of Kashmir, explains:
“When a society stops telling its own stories, it risks becoming a tenant in its own land. The saints are not just religious icons—they are the foundation stones of Kashmir’s ethics, art, and resilience.”
The Digital Chasm
The shift has been accelerated by technology. Storytelling, once oral and intimate, has been replaced by algorithmic feeds. Children now scroll through a globalised stream of information where their own heritage rarely appears. In a world where attention is the most precious currency, centuries-old wisdom is struggling to compete with 30-second videos.
But technology is not the enemy—it is the neglect in using it to preserve and pass on heritage. As sociologist Dr. Shazia Mir puts it:
“We’ve allowed the tools meant for connection to become tools of distraction. Imagine if the same devices streaming entertainment could stream the stories of our saints into every home.”
When the Land Remembers but the People Don’t
The tragedy is bitter: the land remembers even if the people do not. The shrines still stand. The meadows where saints walked still bloom. The springs they blessed still flow. But the chain of remembrance has weakened.
Graves call out in silence. Names fade in the air. And an inheritance richer than gold risks vanishing in a single generation.
This is not the first time Kashmir has faced cultural amnesia—conflicts, displacement, and political upheavals have interrupted oral traditions before. But what is different now is the voluntary nature of the forgetting. This is not a loss imposed from outside; it is abandonment from within.
A Call to Remember
Yet, it is not too late. The silence can be broken—if families reclaim the role of storytellers.
Imagine evenings where fathers once again tell of the man who wept for a dying tree, or of the woman who found God in the mirror of her breath. Where mothers trace the names of saints in flour on the kitchen floor as children listen with wide eyes.
It does not take grand gestures—just the will to speak. To replace one scroll through a phone with one story from the past. To visit a shrine not only for a photograph but to explain who rests there, and why they matter.
As elder Ghulam Rasool of downtown Srinagar says, leaning on his walking stick:
“If we let the saints fade, we will become strangers in our own home. To remember them is not just faith—it is survival.”
Let the Soul of Kashmir Breathe Again
There is still time to return to the hearth, to the circle of listening. To keep the saints alive not only in stone but in speech. The heritage of Kashmir was never meant to be locked in museums or limited to plaques—it was meant to live in the everyday, in prayers, in ethics, in the way people treated each other.
If memory dies, the soul dies with it.
The saints gifted Kashmir its moral compass, its poetry, its resilience. They held the valley together when swords were drawn and storms arrived. To forget them is to unmoor the ship in a storm.
The question is no longer whether we have the stories—it is whether we still have the voice to tell them.
Let fathers tell stories again.
Let mothers pass on the vakhs and shruks.
Let children ask, “Who was he?” and let us answer—not with sighs, but with fire in our voices.
Before it is too late.
Before silence wins.
Before the soul of Kashmir forgets to breathe.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of this Magazine. The author can be reached at [email protected]
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