Introduction

India is a great country. We have had for centuries a great history, the
whole of the East reflects our culture, we must present what India taught
right from the Mohenjo-Darro and Harappa times. These are the precious
words of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. Geographically and climatically Kashmir
is the child of the mighty Himalayas receiving in abundance the paternal
grace in the form of captivating scenic beauty, lush green pastures and
lofty glistening snow covered mountain peaks which capture the
changing hues of the brilliant sun, in a hundred thousand ways, the ever-
gurgling rivers and rivulets and the great lakes of mythological fame.
Kashmir is supposed to be the originating centre of human culture, and it
is popularly known as the “Paradise on Earth”. As it is known to
everyone that Kashmir a cultural entity and a synthesis of various
religious hues which imbibed influences mainly from Islamic and Hindu
traditions has fascinated the outsiders from ancient times. Their
fascination for Kashmir has in its turn helped them to instigate in making
the brilliant and exhaustive studies in the field of Kashmir studies and
brought to light the distinctive and salient characteristics of Kashmir’s
cultural legacy and literary theory.

Kashmir is one of the most celebrated lands of the World. Nature

itself, when creating the great oval valley and its encircling walls of high
mountains, seems to have ensured to this territory a distant geographical
character. Jammu and Kashmir have a very rich literary history as it has
contributed a lot to the field of literature and produced eminent Scholars,
Saints, Historians and Poets.

When we look to Kashmiri Literature we need to consider very

nearly a thousand years of inventiveness for the most part during changes,

1
with just little times of solidness the recorded and political changes were
earth shattering, adjusting the religious, phonetic, social and political
scene of the place and along these lines could have given a rich ore for
writers to work upon and hurl Jewels of perception. However, our
Kashmiri poets, as admirers of the lyrical Music with spiritualist or
sentimental introductions and accordingly ingested in a private or
individual distress might not have specifically remarked upon or
scrutinized the governmental issues of the circumstances they lived in, in
particular about the sexual orientation predisposition, yet at the same time
in their verses we do discover an impression of the overwhelming state of
mind and temper of their specific times against which they
inconspicuously challenged while featuring the situation of the
underestimated in the general public of the time, through the decision of
word and picture, they point a charging finger at the persecution at work
at all levels.

Today, the World is discussing struggle extending from huge

issues amongst countries and belief systems to each day group, sex, class
and rank threats. Be that as it may, we should likewise recollect that
writing regardless of how established in a conjured-up universe it might
be, appears to blossom with it, as it investigates the full scope of human
feelings previously exhibiting an elective world view and proposing
manners by which congruity between clashing premiums and powers can
be reestablished. One of the routes is through understanding the
circumstance in-life of the ‘other’, placing oneself in that circumstance to
procure a perspective in which compassion as opposed to threatening vibe
wins. The Nobel Prize winning Turkish Novelist, Orhan Pamuk says
some place that an essayist must have the ability to end up the
representative of the individuals who can’t represent themselves, whose

2
outrage is never heard and whose words are smothered. Our Kashmiri
women actualities are continually endeavouring to do as such.

Writing, takes a gander at mankind with a scrutinizing look and in

addition a certifiable look disliking and endorsing in the meantime,
reaffirming generalizations and in addition breaking them. Even though
essayists are surrounded by the circumstances they live in-the very topics
they pick must place them in that setting - yet there is a prophetic quality
in crafted by incredible authors, a specific agelessness and all-
inclusiveness. Also, this is the thing that makes a standard. By and large,
it is male scholars who set up it and define an esteem framework to judge
artistic work. Kashmir has been the place where there is spiritualists,
rationalists and researchers of high notoriety. A large portion of its old
writing was composed in Sanskrit or Sharda content. Writing in Kashmiri
is a relatively late marvel which covers the last six hundred years. Amid
this period, a few huge works have enhanced Kashmiri dialect and
writing. Shri T. N. Kaul’s determinations from these works in English
interpretation will be valuable for admirers of writing in India and abroad.

Translation of literary works is a mind-boggling exercise while it is

conceivable to make an interpretation of composition to a higher level of
fulfilment, it is more difficult to translate poetry, as the interpreter from
time to time has a similar ordeal and imaginative ability which the writer
is a spiritualist, the interpreter’s activity turns out to be much more
troublesome, as he or she should raise their level of involvement to have
the capacity to do equity to the undertaking. The greater part of Kashmiri
poetry is composed by spiritualists and has unobtrusive feelings of more
profound significance.

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 The segment on poetry constitutes nearly two-thirds of this volume
and mirrors the pre-eminent place of poetry in Kashmiri Literature. We
have the Vakh of the considerable spiritualist Lalleshwari (fourteenth
century A.D.), the primary known poetess of Kashmir. Her Vakh
descended the centuries through time-tried customs in a culture where her
theory had an importance and message for the general population. It is
right finished the previous century that her Vakh have been assembled
and made accessible in print to readers. The poetry of lol which took its
roots in Lalleshwari’s time was further enriched by Nund Reshi, who was
her contemporary, and Queen Habba Khatoon, in whose time lol poetry
reached its zenith. Let us remember that Laleshwari and Habba
Khatoon’s verses have a profound message for the general population of
Kashmir in these awful circumstances.

But the interesting thing about Kashmiri Literature is that it’s first
great literature was a woman, Lal Ded and she set a standard that the best
is still trying to match. Under the invasion of globalization today the
dividers of the narrow grooves in which humanity in the development of
progress set itself, seem to be giving way. Not only is it due to the
internet, the separating of exchange boundaries and the free development
of experts through landmasses and nations, however interpretation of
acclaimed abstract writings has torn down the so far shut doors of
dialects. Therefore, societies are crawling into each other, so far
restrictive spaces flawlessly and the purported managers of seals can do
minimal about it. Ideas of racial predominance that both colonization and
Brahminism influence utilization of with a specific end goal to propagate
a severe framework, are being blown to the breezes. However, in the
meantime the rising tide of an exclusivist, fundamentalist religious
conviction and practice is undermining to suffocate every one of the

4
additions that originated from obstructions separating. One of the most
profound foundations of contention lies in being fixated on one’s own
self-enthusiasm without attempting to connect with others with empathy.
The greatest gift which women poets have given us in their profound
comprehension of the human circumstance, their honest affirmation of the
way they thought about a severe framework and how they settled their
internal and outside clashes. My purpose in this research project is to
show that the way world writers are expressing or reacting to the
injustices today are the ways that Lal Ded used intensely before seven
hundred years; which keep on flowing and are further crafted by
contemporary writers like Bimla Raina and even Naseem Shafai in a
living convention three essential pillars of society on whom its prosperity
depends are its womens, laborers and religious instructors. I shall quote a
couple of Lal Ded ‘Vakhs’ to demonstrate how her verse drives us to
modify our method for taking a gander at these and their jobs. By
bringing their work the middle of everyone’s attention through her
decision of word and similitude, she invests the underestimated with
pride, never stops to cross examine states of mind, bumps us to address
and even dismiss set up practices and traditions. In her part of office and
promotion, I think that long before the word became fashionable, Lal Ded
really took a subaltern perspective of history! In the process she takes us
to the foundations of all contention: imbalance and mistreatment, absence
of regard for each other’s convictions and narrow-minded idea. Let me
begin with a notable and oft cited Vakh: -

Shiv chhuy thali thali roh zaan,

Moh zaan Heund ta Musalmaan,
Truk ay chhukh ta paan prav zaan,
Soy chhay sahebas suti zainezaan.

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 Shiva is everywhere-known Him as the sun.
Know not the hindu different to the Muslim.
Know yourself, if wise, as a ray of that sun.
That alone is the way to know the Saheb
(Khawaja 2011: 198).

Apart from the conspicuous thought of separating religious

hindrances by conjuring the picture of the sun sparkling upon everybody
without qualification, see how flawlessly Lal Ded hangs the Islamist
valance of ‘Saheb’ to the obvious Saivite reference to Siva. The verse
institutes, in its own syncretic expression, the religious, spiritualist and
semantic amalgamation it advocates.

While confirming patriarchal norms in her notorious grit and

persistence, regardless of whether the authority is employed by a man or
women (for her situation the mother-in-law), in later life she walked out
of the framework that implemented them. What’s more, we discover her
re-composing philosophical thoughts into a residential maxim, a normal
for proto-women’s liberation in current basic hypothesis. In this setting
we discover her regularly alluding to home and the different exercises
inside it, which have incredible imperative in a womens life utilizing
them as local analogies. This is her method for recognizing women and
their role. Home in the accompanying Vakh is utilized as an image of
security from the buffets of the world: -

Aami pana sodras naavchhas lamaan

Kati bozi day myoun meti diyi taar
Aamen taken poni chum shaman,
Zu chum bramaan gara gathsaha.
With thread untwisted my boat I tow through the sea,

6
 Would the Lord heed and ferry me across?
Water seeps through my bowls of unbaked clay,
Oh, how my heart longs to go back home! (Khawaja 2011:
199).

After Lal Ded, the most customary drive of affection and melody,
profound established in people writing, again originated from a woman,
after two centuries, in the beguiling individual of a poetess-Queen Habba
Khatoon. She and her successor, Arnimal, were the forerunners of the
sentimental development in Kashmiri poetry. Their songs, remarkable for
melody and immediacy, communicated the profound longing for of the
heart and the spirit an invigorating take-off from the traditional style of
their antecedents.

In the works of Habba Khatoon and Arnimal we discover subtleties

of a women’s sensibilities which only a woman can introduce, portraying
the numerous shades of anguish which just she has experienced. There is
extraordinary feeling, portraying the agony of being a woman, regardless
of whether as a tormented daughter-in-law or an abandoned wife. There is
likewise solid challenge at why their men don’t comprehend their
necessities. Truth be told, this is an intermittent topic in the poems of
Habba Khatoon. The fault for disregard is unequivocally the man’s the
woman is sitting tight for desires to be satisfied, however that never
happens. In any case, we should recollect that Habba Khatoon’s voice in
a significant number of her poems isn’t a simple uninvolved
accommodation to destiny or a Reve thing in victimhood however a
declaration of pride in her own qualities and a touch of pity for what the
man is missing!

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 The historical backdrop of Kashmir when looked from the Feminist
crystal is a period of strict man centric syndication where woman has
been oppressed and her privilege of flexibility checked. From Lal Ded to
show day woman poetess we see poetry of feelings of disdain, inquiries
and claims against male centric gauges of culture which they should
follow by. Her poetry other than being mysterious is an awful adventure
where in embarrassment, she endured in a man centric societal set up,
highlights transcendently. Similarly, the poetry of Habba Khatoon which
she had left after her everlasting take-off is no distinction with regards to
interactive cry of conquered depth caught under male built constructions
of culture. Habba, it is stated, never built up an adoration for Yousuf Shah
Chak who separated from bolstering just his arousing delights on Habba’s
excellence and sweet voice was involved with interminable political
vulnerabilities his kingdom was full of. She experiences a trail of life in a
man centric culture which has gagged her space to acknowledge dreams
of life completely. She feels her wants, desires and aspirations are
trampled upon under the restrictions which intentionally or unknowingly
are to be followed by in a world directing lessons of male controlled
society.

Kashmiri poets have acclaimed the Kashmiri women through their

poetry over the ages. As Trilokinath Raina kept in touch with, “no doubt
every girl of the dirt would now be able to gloat of more than one poem
formed on her”. Any Kashmiri can check them on fingertips absorbed the
rich stories encompassing the lives of the meandering ladies who made
verse out of their agonies and resuscitated from each time a lyric dropped
from their throats.

Kashmiri perceive and recall Lal Ded’s Vakhs through voices

rather at that point words on paper. Her interpreter Ranjit Hoskote

8
composes that “She is a nonattendance in the Kashmir of today”.
Hoskote’s deciphered Vakh (poem 123) sums up Lalla’s viewpoint
through this doubt:

Hermit or householder: same difference,

If you’ve dissolved your desires in the river of time,
You will see that the lord is everywhere and is perfect,
As you know, so shall you be (Hoskote 2011: 125).

She turned into a devotee of the Saiva Siddha Srikanta, who drove
her towards a profound way. Her Vakhs driven by the Kashmir Shavism
and, with time, Yogacara Buddhism, subsumed in her own encounters
and her inevitable experiences with Sufism, accomplished what no other
renouncer or spiritualist writer of that period or after has possessed the
capacity to achieve. The poems went about as an extension between
methods of insight at various closures of the range. The possible
polarization among her devotees inside the Hindu and Muslim people
group after the 1990’s uprising does only annihilation Lalla’s lessons.
Hoskote comments that she speaks to “a Kashmiri Identity” if not “the
Kashmiri Identity” portrayed as an instrument of preparation and union
(as Benedict Anderson put it). Maybe she meanders looking for the
Kashmir that could reverberate with the genuine reason for her rationality
today go down crosswise over ages, her Vakhs remain the confirmation
that nobody could assert or possess her in her words:

Yavu tuur tsali tim ambar hyataa

Bwchhi yavu tsali tii aahaar an
Tsitaa swaparu vyatsaaras pyataa
Tsitaa deehas vaan kyah van.
Wear only to keep out the chill
Eat but, thy hunger alone to still
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 Turn thy mind to loftly thought
Make the body do, what it ought (Bhat 2015: 102).

With the foundational of the sixteenth century, the period of

mysticism was steadily supplanted by the longing of the darling. It could
possibly be named the period of human love. It denoted a move from the
Vakh to Vuchun, short musical lyrics of 6-10 lines. While Kashmir was
gotten between “Two Sunsets” denoting the finish of two administrations
the Shahmiri Dynasty in 1554 and the Tsak Dynasty in 1587, and combat
with two dialects Persian and Sanskrit as the dialect of the world class,
Habba Khatoon named the Queen of Song by Raina, gave another rent to
Kashmiri thought.

A few legends guarantee that Habba Khatoon was a tolerably

instructed and talented vocalist found by the last Tsak King, Yousuf
Shah, while she was bringing water from a stream bank. In any case, the
certainties as expressed by Trilokinath Raina are that she was a proficient
and prepared vocalist who sang in Tsak’s court. Habba Khatoon took
after the conventional style of the Vuchun, and afterward made a flight
which inhaled new life into the shape. The power of feelings reflected in
her verses was as general as it was close to home. She didn’t just sing the
difficulty of detachment from the admirer of their unfaithfulness, she was
likewise all the while recounting the audience’s story back to them.

Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon made the hypothetical thoughts of the
very much characterized teach of Kashmiri Literature, the study isn’t just
sensible yet moreover prompting conceivable outcomes of understanding
the creative resources of women, when all is said in done, and that of the
two writers, specifically, their appearance of self-affirmation and
inevitably, their rebel against the man centric culture and its moral and

10
social philosophies that denied opportunity to women people can be
broke down in the light of the writings accessible in the Kashmiri
Languages. The two prominent Kashmiri women Poets are
indistinguishable essentially to have picked the lyrical mode for dividing
out the myth of Womanhood through their idyllic abundance.

The two writers are practically identical regarding affinities and

divergences in offering articulation to womanhood through lyrical mode.
This study will, hence analyse the women’s activist thematic in progress
of Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon as structures of resistance to the focal
concerns and structures of the way of life and sub-societies out of which
they are composed and which they speak to and build up that women’s
liberation can’t be named as simply a late Twentieth Century
Phenomenon yet as a minor shadow of crafted by these women writers.
The attention will be on how Lyricism turns into an effective apparatus
towards self-acknowledgment and thus a solid medium to accomplish
opportunity the verse of Habba Khatoon is along these lines to be viewed
as a piece of a long convention of sentimental lyricism that by and large
accepted spiritualist noteworthiness through serious articulation of
adoration. In the meantime, her verse can be best comprehended as a
piece of the broad scope of oriental stylish that achieved brilliant statures
in the songs saturated with smooth articulations of energetic love.

Women’s activist feedback is a result of the western radicalism and

women’s activist idea specifically. Hypothetical establishment of
women’s activist feedback is said to be laid by Simone de Beauvoir’s
book titled, The Second Sex. This was trailed by Kate Millet’s Sexual
governmental issues, who brought up Sex (in light of organic contrast)
and gender (the consequence of culture-moulding) as the combine of
parts repeating in Feminist hypothesis.

11
 Even though reviews in women’s issues, their social and social part
and issues of women’s opportunity are not new, woman’s rights risen as a
noteworthy scholarly and political development in the twentieth century.
The term, regardless of multiplying heft of concentrates in the field, is yet
an uncertain term. The essential reason for this equivocalness is that there
are various sorts of woman’s rights. There is no assertion about what
sexism comprises in, and what precisely should be done about it; they
differ about what it intends to a woman or a man and what social and
political ramifications sex has or ought to have. Be that as it may,
propelled by the journey for social equity, women’s activist request gives
an extensive variety of points of view on social, communal, financial and
political wonders. The term Feminism has been variously deciphered by
different individuals. There are a few writers who utilize the term
feminism to allude to a truly particular political development in the US
and Europe. Then again, some different writers utilize it to allude to the
conviction that there are shameful acts against women, notwithstanding,
these treacheries have not been distinguished and recorded.

The period has an antiquity in English connected with women’s

activism from the late fourteenth century to the present. It is beneficial
that we recognize women’s activist thoughts or convictions from
women’s activist political developments. There have been eras in history
when there was no critical political activism around women’s oppression,
numerous writers and savvy people were worried about equity for
women. As ahead of schedule as in the seasons of early Greek scholars,
woman was a hot subject for face off regarding. The greatest prompt
known women’s activist, for instance, was Plato who composed that
women ought to be prepared to administer. Aristotle, despite his
mastermind and sensible way to deal with life, keenly restricted giving

12
equivalent vigorous to women. He stated, the female is a female by
righteousness of a specific absence of characteristics, we should see the
female nature as affected with a characteristic defectiveness. By the mid
of the nineteenth century the term Feminism was applied to refer to the
characteristics of females. The main global women’s congregation that
the term was utilized as a part of English. It was a similarity the French
expression feministe. Prior to this occasion the term women’s liberation
in English is pull in the assembly for woman enduring in Europe and the
US amid the late nineteenth and mid twentieth century, yet it was not in
favour of women. It is typically alluded to as the main wave of woman’s
rights. The second upsurge of women’s deliverance started in the late
1960’s and mid 1970’s in the wake of being side-lined amid the two
World wars. Women’s activists of the second wave broadened the
importance of woman’s rights past the battle for political rights, they set
out to battle for more noteworthy fairness in discovering chances to work,
better conditions at work environment, in securing and granting training,
and most fundamentally, regard and pride at home with the course of
time, new advancements occurred in different parts of woman’s rights
and they brought about a third wave. Third wave women’s activists
absorbed on the distinctions among women because of race, ethnicity,
class, nationality, religion and accentuate way of life as a site of gender
struggle. The principal issue normal to all the three influxes of woman’s
rights is to oppose male control and gender discrimination.

Despite the changed insinuations of feminism, my purpose would

be to identify feminism in terms of a set of opinions or convictions rather
than contribution in any political movement. There have been numerous
women’s activists over the world whose work was not comprehended or
acknowledged during their time. In distinguishing a centre arrangement

13
of women’s activist convictions, one may propose that we should centre
around the political thoughts because the term was evidently instituted to
underscore responsibility regarding women’s equivalent rights. We need
to tolerate it in our mind that sense of duty regarding and support for
women’s rights has not been limited to the Women’s Liberation
Movement in the west. The blame with this declaration is that it outlines
woman’s rights inside an extensively liberal way to deal with political
and monetary life. Truly accomplishing square with rights for ladies is a
vital condition for women’s liberation to succeed, however this world not
be adequate. Women’s mistreatment under male control does not mean
denying woman of political and lawful rights. Women’s oppressions
because of male control is established in the very structure of our public
and culture, and penetrates our reason and examination. Here it is
relevant to state that occasionally women’s liberation has increased such
political implications as common freedom battle. Feminism, as freedom
battle, must exist separated from and as a piece of the bigger battle to kill
control in every one of its structures. We should comprehend that man
centric mastery imparts an ideological establishment to bigotry and
different types of gathering mistreatment, and that there is no expectation
that it can be destroyed while these frameworks stay in place. This
information ought to reliably advise the bearing of women’s activist
hypothesis and practice.

As a freedom battle, woman’s rights are certainly a wonder to

present day times, however taken as a protection against mistreatment,
women’s liberation existed notwithstanding when there was no
understanding of male persecution; woman had capitulated to the
centuries old male centric idea that woman are delivered by Nature as a
dainty for man, that ladies are the earth and the man is the sky. Abuse on

14
woman was not racial or political, but rather principally sexist in nature
and what made it more hurtful was that women had acknowledged the
sexist mistreatment as their predetermination. This crude idea is grounded
in the widespread reality of the eroticization of male predominance and
female accommodation. Lately persecution isn’t found as far as sexism
alone, it is being translated in an assortment of ways. There are upwards
of five sorts of abuse other than sexism: misuse, minimization, weakness,
social colonialism, and systematic violence. Women’s passive consent in
every one of these types of mistreatment is a consequence of her
persistent hardship of the privilege to express.

Habba Khatoon, the most famous Kashmiri poetess has been a

subject of various innovative Stories, Ballads, Plays, Movies and TV
serials. In this group of writing, Habba Khatoon has been a subject of an
un-scholarly and theoretical open deliberation as though she were a
character of society myth. She is unparalleled in speaking to normal
woman’s torment, wants, desires, wistfulness, and sentimental intensity in
verse. Her poetry, best when sung in the revered people tunes, has force
of estimations, splendid symbolism and elate resonant beat. The melodies
are swaying to the point that the audience scarcely motivates time to find
the fundamental magnificence of experience and subject.

Despite her prevalence and greatness, she has remained relatively

disregarded by Kashmiri students of history, accounts, abstract pundits,
and academicians. Her name figured on the pages of history two hundred
years after death. Abdul Wahab Shaiq (1765) out of the blue said her
name (Habibah) in his history in Persian poetry: he, however did not give
any insights about her life and work. Later students of history rehashed
Shaiq’s announcement that she was a lover of Sultan Yousuf Shah Chak

15
who ruled Kashmir for an extremely short traverse of time in the
sixteenth century.

Being a fundamental piece of people memory, different singers of

different circumstances have made a few insertions in her prevalent
lyrics. Jagannath Wali composed a play, entitled Zoon in 1951 on the life
of Habba Khatoon in which the dramatist, other than changing the
occasions to his benefit, created a couple of new melodies and attributed
them to Habba Khatoon. Amin Kamil in his book entitled Kulyaati
Habba Khatoon, completed an exemplary activity by gathering all verses
and stories credited to Habba Khatoon. Ghulam Rasool Bhat’s book,
Habba Khatoon: Tarikh Ke Aine Main, as well, is a decent work however
it likewise rehashes the undefined, conflicting, and confounding insights
about her life. An extremely well-known TV film Habba Khatoon, by
Bashir Badgami has opened the myth and afterward Shafi Shauq’s
content for 13-scene TV serial Habba Khatoon was yet another credible
story that influenced her life to resemble a character of fiction.

Habba Khatoon’s poetry is, thusly, a continuation and deviation

from the exceptional idyllic convention that existed in her dialect for no
less than three hundred years previously her. The historical backdrop of
the recorded writing in Kashmiri isn’t short of what one thousand years of
age. Regardless of being denied of state support, the writing acquiring in
the dialect demonstrates an astounding decent variety both in artistic
structures and subjects. Parallel to the conventions of oral writing in the
normal discourse of the people, there has been a persistent custom of
world class writing delivered by individual inventive writers. As right on
time as in the eighth-ninth century, the spiritualist sages, known as Reshis
and Chums, created aphoristic maxims in academic figure of speech. The
surviving expressions, known as Chumsampradaay, however very

16
insufficient, propose that custom of spiritual poetry in the dialect went
before these spiritualist poetries. Another point of interest in medieval
Kashmiri writing is Mahaanayaprakaasha of Shati Kantha of the twelfth
century. It was notwithstanding, in the fourteenth century that the genuine
history of Kashmiri writing started when artist of unprecedented
innovative skillful, Lal Ded established a solid framework of Kashmiri
poetry. Her poetry in the form of Vakh nevertheless seems to be the
culmination rather than beginning of a poetic tradition. Lamentably,
hopelessly lost. In the Vakhs of Lal Ded, we locate the focal topic of the
journey of Love for attaintment of God featured. Although the spirit’s
desires are significantly profound in nature, the similitude is
enthusiastically human, and curiously through female voice. It was not
one of a kind of Lala’s Vakhs alone, all mystic poetry of the world
envisions the Ultimate Truth as a Male Principle and the wanting soul as
the Female Principle. Since Lala was herself a woman poet, her use of
feminine gender has added power to her demeanour.

While Lal Ded utilized figurative medium for the declaration of her
internal light that she increased through profound reflection, her more
youthful contemporary and disciple Nund Reshi, otherwise called Sheik-
ul-Alam, the dialect of the majority to expound on the universe of men
and women and to manage them in the hardest of times in Kashmir
history through otherworldly improvement and confidence in God’s
mercy. He, like his profound Guru Lal Ded, wrote in the quatrain shape
as it was anything but difficult to recall. After the fourteenth – fifteenth
century Kashmiri writing went through a long stretch of sterility as the
valley was gotten up to speed by unending animosities. But an
assemblage of suggestive spiritualist folksongs, (songs created by
anonymous poets), very great as far as quality and amount, there is

17
nothing traceable from this period. A senior contemporary of Habba
Khatoon, Habib-ul-Lah Nawshehri Hubbi (1550 A.D-1617 A.D.) is only
one poet whose lyrics are protected as he was a regarded holy person. His
poetry, however very meagre, is tuned in to the melodious strain of the
time.

In this manner, the convention of people melodies, then again, and

the spiritualist tunes, on the other, melded Habba Khatoon’s graceful
sensibility. Acting naturally an untutored woman of the wide open, she
decided on the previous strain that thrived in the dialect as the Vuchun, an
intensely rhymed song with variegated versification designs, repeating
holds back and alliterative style. Habba Khatoon acquired this sort of oral
melodious convention that was a piece of the real social existence of the
time instead of a type of otherworldly examination. Her poetry is
submerged in the oral culture of the time and resembles an indivisible
piece of it.

The scholarly convention in English, however not more established

than that in Kashmiri, are more diverse in terms of theme and subject
matter. Strangely, the genuine history of English Literature likewise
started from the fourteenth century with the verse of Chaucer as it started
with the verse of Lal Ded in Kashmiri. In the two dialects poetry had a
long history before fourteenth century. The fundamental contrast amongst
English and Kashmiri artistic conventions, by the by, is that while
English writing is established in the physical universe of strife, delights,
and distresses of the general population occupied with genuine life
circumstances, Kashmiri writing of the past all in all stayed pulled back
from the physical world and communicated the strife of the spirit. The
English individuals, living in a nation with a long coastline, were from
the earliest starting point in contact with different countries and had an

18
inclination for experience and overcoming different countries. Its writing,
consistent with its kin is, subsequently, dynamic and variegated in nature.
Kashmiri individuals, then again, living in the Himalayan Valley, nearly
protected from whatever remains of the World by outlandish mountains,
were slanted to stay pulled back, thoughtful and supernatural.

It ends up basic to approach crafted by these journalists verifiably

for an investigation of the complexities of gender relation. It turns out to
be similarly testing to consider regardless of whether and to what degree
the changing interpretative practices both in ordinary developmental
example and a progressive one assumed a part towards the movement of
woman from the sentimental maid (tormented and tortured from inside) to
an iron woman by shaking up, and at times separating, philosophical,
epistemological and political sureness’s. Women’s activist feedback does
not remain a solitary undertaking but rather an arrangement of related
ideas and practices in that it arranges issues of social contrasts and of
association with different types of feedback, for example, Marxism and
new historicism.

For the present purpose Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon’s poetry has
been seen and assessed in connection to the scholarly conventions that
have assumed most fundamental part in forming their individual ability
and yield. No verse, however inventive it might be, can get away from the
impact of beautiful sensibility that exists in the dialect of the writer.

Chapter II tittled “Literary Reputation of Lal Ded and Habba

Khatoon” traces the development of Kashmir literary tradition and the
contribution of Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon as literary Pioneers of the
Vale.

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 Chapter III captioned “Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon, and Reflexive
Feminity” analyses the Poetry of these poetesses to reveal their
Feministic Stance.

Chapter IV entitled “Vakhs: An Iconoclast of Her Times” is

thorough study of Lalla’s poetic Oeuvre to fathom out her contribution on
shaping the Kashmir Suffi religious poetry on different lines.

Chapter V captioned “Vuchun: A passionate Female Voice”

analyses strategic devices employed by the Kashmiri’s most prominent
poetic voice Habba Khatoon in making her voice to be heard.

Chapter VI entitled as “Conclusion” gives the conclusion of this

research where I have done the minute study of some of the major
Kashmiri poetess besides big stalwarts like Lal Ded and Habaa Khatoon.
Further I have left a good scope and opened the ways of further research
for incoming researchers in this field.

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References

1. Bhat, Niyati. “Where is Your Woman Poet, Kashmir? A search and

six discoveries”. Https://scroll.in/article/810310.
2. Bhat, R. L. Lal and Her Vakh: An Encyclopaedic Collection.
Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2015. Print
3. Dhar, K. N. Glimpses of Kashmiri Culture. Srinagar: Shri
Parmananda Research Institute(Regd), 1982. Print
4. Hoskote, Ranjit. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. New Delhi:
Penguin Books, 2011. Print
5. Kaul, T. N. Gems of Kashmiri Literature. New Delhi: Jagdish
Malhotra Sanchar Publishing House, 1996. Print
6. Khursheed, Tabish. “Woman Poet in Kashmir”.
Http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/op-ed/240830.
7. Khwaja, G. M. Approaches to Kashmir Studies. Srinagar: Gulshan
Books, 2011. Print

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