Kashmir’s soul was never forged in the fire of puritanical Islam; it was nurtured in the gentle shade of its Sufi saints. For centuries, the Valley’s Islam remained unmistakably Kashmiri – syncretic, poetic, and deeply intertwined with the land’s pre-Islamic Shaivism and Buddhist echoes. This unique spiritual identity, known as *Rishiyat* (the tradition of the Rishis), produced one of the subcontinent’s most beautiful expressions of faith.
The fountainhead was Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani (1377–1440), reverently called Nund Rishi or Sheikh-ul-Alam. A vegetarian ascetic who lived in caves, he preached in Kashmiri verses (shruks) that blended Advaita-like mysticism with Quranic ethics: “Annis posh tel dile lol re” (“Food will last, but the love of God in the heart will not”). His disciples and later his spiritual successors’ shrines became the real centres of Kashmiri faith: Charar-i-Sharif, Khanqah-i-Moula, Dastgeer Sahib, Makhdoom Sahib, and hundreds of smaller *astanas*.
Here, Muslims and Pandits prayed side by side until 1990. Pandit families kept the lamps burning at Charar-i-Sharif; Muslim boatmen ferried Hindu pilgrims to Kheer Bhawani. The annual Urs celebrations were communal feasts of music, *rouf* songs, and *wanvun*. The Sufi khanqahs preserved Kashmiri language and literature when Persian dominated officialdom.
This syncretic tradition began eroding in the 20th century under multiple assaults: first the dogmatic Ahl-e-Hadith and Deobandi reform movements, then the violent Wahhabi-Salafi influx after 1989 funded by Gulf petrodollars. Militants burned down Charar-i-Sharif in 1995. Sufi shrines were repeatedly attacked as “unIslamic”. Practising Sufis were branded “grave worshippers” and threatened. The exodus of Pandits severed the living link of shared devotion.
Today, the loudspeakers that once carried Hamd and Naat in Kashmiri now often blare Arabic sermons. The new generation barely knows the verses of Nund Rishi, Lal Ded, Habba Khatoon, or Shams Faqir. Where once Sufi music filled the air, many neighbourhoods now consider it haram.
Yet the flame flickers still. In remote villages, elderly men still recite the *shruks* of Sheikh Nooruddin. Some young Kashmiris are quietly rediscovering their Rishi heritage online and through small, brave cultural groups. The shrines, though scarred, still draw thousands during Urs – a silent rebellion against the new puritanism.
If Kashmir is to reclaim its soul, it must return to its Sufi-Rishi roots not as nostalgia, but as a living ideology of tolerance, beauty, and Kashmiri pride. The Valley’s future peace depends not on more bunkers, but on whether it can again sing: “Tschi kita chh myean Rishi?” (“Have you become mine, O Rishi?”).
