PART I

Chapter 3

P.N. BAZAZ and P.N. BAMZAI AS MYTH-MAKERS

Prem Nath Bazaz known for his Royist commitments and pro-Pakistan politics fabricated a myth that "Lalla held discussions with Shah Hamadan when he came to Kashmir with his followers and learned the philosophy of Islam from that great spiritual teacher."

P.N. Bamzai committed himself to the same myth when he recorded that "he (Mir Ali) came in contact with the popular Shaiva teacher Lalleshwari and the great sufi saint Sheikh Noor-ud-din and had long discussions with them on spiritual and philosophic subjects."

Be it said that Lalla's associations with Mir Ali are based on frills of legend and do not have any historical veracity and authenticity. Noor-ud-din's associations with Mir Ali as held by Bamzai are equally fallacious as scholars generally hold that he was born on 10 Zu'l Hijja, 779/9th April,1378 and Mir Ali is said to have died in 1385 A.D. So, Sheikh was 7-year old, a toddler, when such discussions and debates are invented to have been held.

The statements, misleading as they are, raise a more important and pertinent question of the language through which discussions and discourses could have been held between Lalla and Mir Ali. As amply evidenced and buttressed by her verse-sayings, Lalla was initiated into the Shaiva scriptures and Shaiva thought by a well-known scholar of Sanskrit, Siddha Sri Kanth, and was, therefore, versed in Sanskrit, which equipped her with the word - hoard for the expression of her intensely-felt mystical moments even though the medium for them is the local dialect, which Bilhan has named as 'Desh Bhasha'. But, Mir Ali proficient in Persian and Arabic could not have established an intimate and direct rapport with the 'mystical lark', who had no discernible achievements, not even a smattering, in the foreign languages, which had not gained much of circulation and currency at that point of time in Kashmir's history. As Muslim apologists, both Bazaz and Bamzai, could have created waves in history or made a splash had they mentioned that Mir Ali conversed in Kashmiri and was versed in Sanskrit and Lalla had mastery over Persian and Arabic or discourses were conducted with the active aid of interpreters.

Both of them could have learnt from the global history of Islam that wherever it has made its thrust, it was not through debates, discourses and polemics, but as per historians through sword and cruel use of force. Debates and discourses as a media for an interface of ideas and thought processes grant a sanctified right to the adversary to vigorously stick to his position and give it a detailed explication. But, Islam in terms of history is a closed religion and 'has closed itself on itself'' and therefore does not allow dissent and that was how Mansur fell a martyr to his concept 'I am God', a position in collision with Islamic belief and precept. As held by scholars, Islam in its essentials is a proselytising and centralised religion and any place or province it has set its foot, it has unfolded its roll of history not through thought, but through proselytisation through force and coercion.

A proselytising religion spurns thought and hence debates and polemics are distrusted as exercises in futility. That discourses and debates were held between Lalla and Mir Ali Hamadani as invented by them is actually the sheer projection of their Hindu mind which is open to thought and ideas and lends acceptance and credence even to the view-point of an adversary.