Talk:Kashmiris in Punjab

Some kind of dispute

Copying below the content added by Researchingaccreditedfacts to the LEAD. It seems to involve some kind of dispute, but it is not clear to me what.

The Kashmiris of Punjab comprise occupational caste groups with purported claims of origin myths to the Vale of Kashmir. More correctly, were definitions of "ethnicity", "caste", "clan", "fictive lineage groups" "language communities" and "ascriptive territorial identities" matter, self-affirming Kashmiris in Punjab are properly speaking "ethnic Punjabis" with ancestral claims (origin myths) to the Valley of Kashmir. Claims of origin myths connecting Caste Kashmiris in Punjab to an enclosed ethnic sphere in the Valley of Kashmir, aside from being ahistorical, are essentially anecdotal by way of people claiming that heritage. These claims are not based in documentary evidence, and the documentary evidence of migrations out of Kashmir State demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of people identified as Kashmiris outside the Vale of Kashmir came from the wider areas of Jammu & Kashmir State. (Note - to Kautilya3, and other Wikipedia editors, How do I add citations; I would like to add all the citations here so these pages are not removed; what I am saying here is accepted in circles of scholarship, the people who are writing these posts are not grounding their claims in documentary evidence, they rely on anecdotes that seem to have a political hue, of separating people into imaginary enclaves to police the ensuing identities. What I am saying would be accepted my migration historians, ethnologists, cultural anthropologists and even migration geneticists; Caste Kashmiris in Punjab are more closely related to the Punjabis of their locality than those claiming an ethnic Kashmiri identity in the Vale of Kashmir. ).

When one one relies on ethnic definitions, according to mainstream scholarship in areas of ethnicity, the concept of ethnicity, an analytical concept, cannot be used for occupational caste groupings in the Punjab who do not speak Kashur, or partake in the cultural traditions associated with this ethnic Kashmiri identity.

To understand how group identities work, one must understand the analytical definitions.

The ethnic ascription of an exclusive Kashmiri group identity cannot be applied to Punjabi Caste Kashmiris, because the Kashmiri identity, historically speaking, has never been an ethnic one, when one observes documented historical migrations out of a multiethnic region, and not anecdotal claims of origin myths of people projecting back to this imagined history centuries later.

Colonial administrators, ethnogrophers and census takers observed in their writings that the overwhelming majority of people returned as "Kashmiris" in the Punjab were not from the Valley of Kashmir, an ethnic sphere of some 2000 square miles, but the wider Princely State of Kashmir, a much larger territory of some 85000 square miles.

Those migrating from the Valley of Kashmir settled in Lahore, Amritsor and surrounding areas, were they formed weaver colonies ("Darzis", an occupational caste), but this does not mean that they were entirely ethnic Kashur (Kashmiri) speakers either.

According to Walter Lawrence in his Valley of Kashmir, some 40 percent of the residents of Kashmir Subah (Province) were Pahari speakers, cultural realities that have obtained in Kashmir for centuries. Muslim Kashmiri refugees settling West Punjab and Hazara overwhelmingly originated from Uri, Karna, Chibhal or Duggar, and were returned as native Pahari speakers. These linguistic facts were reflected in the colonial censuses and numerous books explaining the historical circumstances of migrations out of Kashmir State.

The Punjab became home to a very large Caste Kashmiri community, identified on the basis of a territorial ascription, and not an ethnic identity. Today, these past events are being wrongly conflated with notions of an exclusive ethnic identity that didn't exist in history. Commonalities of culture and language transcending the borders of Kashmir State and the British Punjab Province made migrations out of Kashmir more bearable.

Decades later, Occupational Caste Kashmiris adopted valley-centric surnames to connect themselves to primordial Kashmiri backgrounds to escape widespread social stigma in the Punjab reserved for landless occupational castes. Lots of these surnames were not the exclusive inheritance of ethnic Kashmiris (Butt, Dar, Khawajah, Mir, etc), but have been used by an array of different ethnic groups throughout India.

Disjointed identity narratives of contemporary times influenced by the reification of Kashmir, an arena of enormous contestation, (note, "Pakistan's jugular vein" and "India's integral part"), impact 17 million native hereditary state subjects ("Kashmir Mulkis"), distorting the actual history of migrations from Jammu and Kashmir State. The term Kashmir became a territorial shorthand for the entire State, and it was applied on enormously disparate groups.

Professional historians, including Ayesha Jalal, have explained the mistaken nuances behind the Kashmiri identity label, that has wrongly conflated notions of "Zat" (caste) with "Qaum" (nation), leading to all manner of ahistorical recountings of this history. "Kashmir Mulkis" (inhabitants of Kashmir Country) in Punjab Province became victims of colonially flawed categorizations that denied them basic rights reserved for Punjab's landed communities. They were not allowed to procure Army Jobs, or own land, because of widespread prejudice reserved for occupational castes, and not ethnic groups, or landed communities.

Ethnic Kashmiri Muslims, where one deploys the term "ethnicity" analytically (actual lived experiences based on language, culture, cuisine), were not the only "ethnic" group fleeing from the Kashmir Valley, seeking refuge in the the Punjab Province and Plains during Dogra and Sikh misrule. Lots of diverse communities left Kashmir State, because of persecution; ethnicity alone did not define these historically documented events.

References

Researchingaccreditedfacts, can you please highlight succinctly up to 3 issues you see with the present lead? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:59, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Imagine that the moderator doesn't know the difference between a social unity of identification (occupational caste) and notions around ethnicity, and he thinks I'm disputing something!? The post on Kashmiris in Punjab is factually inaccurate, woefully inaccurate, when you employ the term ethnicity - do u understand what an ethnic group is? Ethnicity is not based on ideas of ancestry to a particular group, or origin myths linked to far away places, mainstream scholarship on ethnicity is about investigating actual lived experiences as connected with ethnic identities. The English are not Germans because they came from Saxony, whilst speaking English - a fact of ethnicity (the English language) The post is engaged in espousing mythology around ideas of a primordial Kashmiri identity, dubbed ethnic group. lololol You can't make this stuff up! This is not knowledge, this is ignorance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Researchingaccreditedfacts (talk • contribs) 11:18, 7 October 2020 (UTC)