Srinagar: Union home minister Amit Shah’s attempt to link the name ‘Kashmir’ with Hindu Vedic sage Kashyapa has revived the debate about the Bhartiya Janta Party’s (BJP) alleged policy of imposing Hindutva on the country’s only Muslim-majority region.
“We all know that Kashmir has been an abode of Kashyapa. It is possible that Kashmir was named after him,” Shah claimed at a book launch function in the national capital on Thursday (January 2).
A Delhi-based TV network went a step ahead to claim that the Modi government could rename Kashmir after the Vedic sage. This set off a series of fact-checks about the government’s alleged remarks by some media outlets, which pacified the simmering public outrage in the valley to some extent.
Shah said that the Modi government would “restore … whatever was lost” while showering praises on the book, Jammu Kashmir & Ladakh Through the Ages: A Visual Narrative of Continuities and Linkages – a collaborative work of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and the National Book Trust.
A statement by the Press Information Bureau said that the book was in the making “for years”. Quoting Shah, the statement said that the book “eloquently captured … the relationship between Kashmir, Ladakh, Shaivism and Buddhism”.
The book, Shah said, has “broken the myths about Kashmir… and …. presented history with truth and evidence”.
Geology versus myths
Kashmir’s 3,000-year historical record is documented in Rajtarangini, a 12th century chronicle of the Indian sub-continent by Kalhana, that has lately come under the scrutiny of historians.
Professor Noor A. Baba, a political scientist based in Srinagar, observed that Shah’s reference to Kashyapa aligns with Kalhana’s mythologically oriented account of Kashmir’s origins which went largely uncontested during medieval times.
Recent archaeological and geological findings offer a more objective understanding of Kashmir’s evolution as a habitable landmass.
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Geologist and assistant professor in Structural Geology, Physical and Geological Sciences at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Afroz Ahmed Shah, wrote that Kashmir was part of a land that remained submerged in the Tethys Sea.
“The valley was carved during the tectonic collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates. This monumental encounter birthed the Himalayas and forged Kashmir’s distinct topographical features, marked by folded mountain ranges, river networks, and fault systems,” he noted.
While the book released by Shah was not immediately available for review, geologists have recorded that Kashmir has rock formations of all ages with evidence of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, dating back 260 million years, which is one of the oldest of its types.
Sir Aurel Stein, a Hungarian–British archaeologist and geographer wrote in Memoir on Maps Illustrating the Ancient Geography of Kashmir that the word ‘Kashmir’ has been used as “the sole designation of the country throughout its known history.”
“It has uniformly been applied both by the inhabitants and by foreigners…..We can trace back its continued use through an unbroken chain of documents for more than 23 centuries, while the name itself is undoubtedly far more ancient,” Stein noted.
The earliest Chinese reference to Kashmir as Ku-shih-mi dates back to 541 AD.
Inshah Malik, a Kashmiri academic and associate professor of gender and politics at New Vision University in Georgia, said that the name ‘Kashmir’ has been explicitly mentioned in the Mahabharata, dated from around 400 BC to 400 AD.
However, she argued that the Greek historian Herodotus has described ‘Kaspapyros’ in his work that predated Mahabharata.
In Book 3 of Histories (Section 94), Herodotus wrote: ”The Indians are said to be the most populous of all nations, and the land of India is bounded by the river Indus, which flows from the mountains. To the north of them are the Kaspapyros, who are described as living near the river’s source.”
“The Kaspapyros are potentially the people of Kashmir,” Malik said.
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Origin of ‘Kashmir’
While the exact origin of the word ‘Kashmir’ could be a matter of debate, historians and scholars agreed that the word was composed of two parts. ‘Kasp’ or ‘Kaspa’, a reference to a group or region related to water or fertile lands. In Persian and some Slavic languages, ‘Mir’ means ‘to consolidate power’ or ‘form control’ or ‘peace’.
Malik observed that the genesis of the word ‘Kashmir’ was “more well preserved”with the traditions of old Persians that have influenced the valley as a part of Central Asia and Kalhana’s chronicle described Kashmir similarly.
“Even the meaning of Sanskrit was preserved through surviving records in Persian. Modern day Persians can still read the script of Old Persian from 5,000 years ago which is not the case with Sanskrit and its scripts.”
Malik said that the root of ‘Kashmir’ could be connected to ancient Iranian and Indo-Aryan linguistic elements where ‘Kas’ or ‘Kash’ means water, lake, or fertile land, similar to Kashmir or Kashgar which are fertile, water-rich regions.
Kashmiri historian, G.M.D Sufi, wrote in his seminal book Kashir: Being a History of Kashmir that the old mythological name of Kashmir was ‘Satisaras’ which was replaced by ’Kasmīra’, which “may be taken to mean ‘land’ from which water (Ka) has been drained of by wind (Samīra)”.
“According to another interpretation, Kashmir is a Prakrit compound with its components: has, meaning a channel and mīr, meaning a mountain. Kas-mīr could thus mean a rock trough. In its configuration, Kashmir is a deep trough (84×20 to 25 miles) with rocky walls. This is one theory,” Sufi noted.
Sufi, the first registrar of Delhi University, pointed out that there was another theory which linked the name of ‘Kashmir’ to a race of men called Kash, a Semitic tribe who dominated the world “from Kashghar to Kashmir”. But the theory has no historical value, yet.
Practising ‘settler colonialism’
After Article 370 was read down, many in the valley have accused the BJP of pursuing an anti-Muslim policy for consolidating its Hindutva votebank across the country.
Shah’s remarks have revived fears that after the 2019 move, the saffron party was attempting to rewrite history by projecting J&K’s syncretic past through the prism of the Hindutva.
Baba noted that this narrative aligns with the ideological stance of the current regime in Delhi. “This is expected,” he remarked, adding that history writing in India has often shifted with changes in political regimes.
Since the BJP assumed power in 2014, there has been an effort to present historical interpretations aligned with its ideological framework. He argued that Shah’s reference, following the reading down of Article 370, reflects an attempt to assert Kashmir’s connection to the broader Indic civilisation from ancient times.
“This view contrasts with the perspective of many historians, who emphasise Kashmir’s historical role as a cross-cultural nexus linking Central Asia, China, India and Persian civilisations. Even religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam developed unique local characteristics in Kashmir,” he said.
Srinagar-based political historian Ashiq Hussain said that Shah’s remarks on the Buddhist and Hindu past of Kashmir “should not be anybody’s problem, “In fact we should be proud of our past when Kashmir was a centre of Buddhist, Shaivite and Islamic scholarship. Kashmir’s Shaivite and Buddhist past are part of its history.”
Hussain said that the problem lay in the present and the future. “Currently, people of the erstwhile state of J&K are apprehensive about their future. The future holds a prospect of settlement of non-locals in J&K with the help of new domicile law. That is a problem because it will create a Palestine like situation here. I expect that the New Delhi administration does not wish to create such a situation here.”
Malik said that Shah’s remark was an alleged Hindutva project to find “identitarian use for Kashmir in the larger polity of India”, “The mistake is to look at Sanskrit meaning only in terms of Nilamata Purana and not focus on the larger etymological use of Sanskrit. If Kashmir comes from Kashyapa, where does Kashi come from?”
