Hamlet in Kashmir: Revisiting Haider

 In examining the cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" through the lens of Vishal Bhardwaj's "Haider," it becomes imperative to understand the nuanced contextualization of the narrative within the socio-political landscape of Kashmir. Bhardwaj's reimagination of the classic tragedy locates the essence of Shakespearean conflict within the tumultuous environment of 1990s Kashmir, thereby infusing the timeless themes of betrayal, revenge, and the quest for truth with a contemporary and deeply localized resonance. The methodology of this analysis is rooted in a comparative literary approach, juxtaposing the thematic and narrative structures of "Hamlet" with "Haider," while also incorporating a socio-political critique that draws on historical and cultural scholarship regarding Kashmir's conflict (Kaul, 2014; Dhar, 2016).

The transformation of Hamlet's character into Haider (Shahid Kapoor) and the setting of Denmark into Kashmir are not merely aesthetic or narrative choices but are imbued with significant political commentary. This transposition allows for a critique of state power, militarization, and the personal as political, as seen through Haider's quest for justice and truth amidst the backdrop of a conflict-ridden Kashmir. The motif of "to be or not to be," emblematic of Hamlet’s existential dilemma, is adeptly recontextualized in Haider’s soliloquy, which interrogates issues of identity, allegiance, and the moral ambiguities of revenge in a war-torn region (Bhat, 2018).

Critics such as Bose (2015) have highlighted the film’s engagement with the themes of surveillance, disappearance, and the Kashmiri Half Widows, drawing parallels to the real-life human rights concerns documented by organizations like Human Rights Watch. The portrayal of Ophelia (Arshia, played by Shraddha Kapoor) in "Haider" further exemplifies the gendered dimensions of conflict, as her narrative arc encompasses the trauma and loss experienced by women in Kashmir, a perspective often marginalized in mainstream discussions of the region's unrest.

Scholars like Roy (2017) argue that "Haider" challenges the traditional binaries of hero and villain through its complex characterization, thereby encouraging viewers to reflect on the nature of justice and vengeance in the context of an ongoing conflict. The film's use of local cultural motifs, such as the Bismil song that draws on traditional Kashmiri folklore and Sufi poetry, serves to ground the narrative in the specificities of Kashmiri culture and history, thus enriching the Shakespearean source material (Khan, 2019).

In conclusion, "Haider" stands as a seminal work that exemplifies the intersection of literature, cinema, and politics. This analysis, through its scholarly approach, underscores the film's contribution to the discourse on Shakespearean adaptations, postcolonial identity, and the representation of conflict in art. The academic examination of "Haider" as "Hamlet in Kashmir" reveals the layers of meaning embedded within Bhardwaj's adaptation and highlights the enduring relevance of Shakespeare's work in articulating the human condition across diverse cultural and historical contexts.

Aasie tcha tchetch! ( Is it only our distress!)

I was an unwelcome entry, who would soon turn to be a questioning and thus irritating inmate for the whole time to come in a Higher Secondary that looked a prototype of our recently opened or, to be crude, upgraded secondary schools. “Unwelcome”, because my entry would mean an immediate end of duties of the Lecturer that had a waging tail attached to its title: Contractual. “It” is a crudely inappropriate pronoun for a Human being! Isn`t it? But does that really matter. That is actually how we treat them; as machines who have been sent for a fixed time to serve us and then finally to be thrown out. And we do the duty in a pretty honest manner, we make them work as much as we can, we don`t recognize their work even if that is better than most of the permanent staff, we don’t allow them any respite because we overburden them with not only work but remarkable disrespect and discomfort. But, what can we do? We can’t do anything. To be a permanent employ in any Govt office is to be an unfettered king who not only enjoy respect and money, but also an unacknowledged right to exploit and show disregard for all others who have the Unfortunate tail. This venomous attitude has passed on to the young students also. They too think that the only teachers “worthy” of their respect and attention are the permanent ones, and they look upon the contractuals with eyes full of honest disregard.

So, out one goes as I entered! Soon, I started my work. I was thrown into the mouth of an overfed room with some eighty unruly students. I wish I could have the magical wand so that I could have stretched the dimensions of the room to make it a bit comfortable for them. The jute mats that received their shining black and white uniforms were well designed with dust, mud and all kinds of dirt. This was in close proximity with the designs on the once upon white washed walls. I saw handmade charcoal paintings that resembled the contempory postmodern art; designs ranging from names of students (ancient and modern) to the some weird (in)human figures staring at me from all sides, in-between were the  sparkling phrases like  Zakhmi Aabid, Tanha Sameer, Bewafa Basheer .I took out the attendance register and started shouting their names. It was then that I learned that my class has more than one hundred and eighty students. I was puzzled and agitated that had all of them come, where would have we stuffed them. May be our head of the institute knows? But later when I asked him, he nodded his head in an unpredictable and uninterpretable manner that, I think, meant we could or we could not, or both. Perhaps it was sign of helplessness on his part as well. I wondered how an institution can admit students without having even basic infrastructure. Inspired by the archetypal image of Abrahim Linchon who studied under the street lamp posts, used borrowed books and became the pride of American history, our politicians perhaps had this proud example in mind while upgrading these schools without providing them the basic facilities. But how many of these proud men have our history produced! Perhaps we should ask a state historian to cite few proud names.

To return to the class room, I looked for the unborn duster and finally used a handkerchief to restore the black dignity of the raged and aged black/grey board. As I started a formal introduction, the cows that were tied outside my class room (on the side that is a private property) coupled and started mooing, perhaps she was more eager to introduce herself, this made the whole class room uncomfortable till one energetic student got out of the window and somehow put an end to the music, and the school bell joined to end my hour.  Before I left the class room, one of the eager students got up and asked, “Sir, tsche kyahaw choe naau”? I was not wonderstruck at the informality of language for I had already witnessed my colleagues calling students in much derogatory and ethically offensive language. If we can’t respect our students, how can we expect them to respect us!  

For the next hour I engrossed myself into a book in the lonely corner of the school laboratory. Should I call it a laboratory? Perhaps I should because it had some age old science equipments decorated in mess. Does it matter that it changes roles every hour? I was excited to know that it is used as staff resting room during vacant hours, dining hall during the break time, cooking place, and sometimes as class room when the number of students is low, particularly for the specially privileged science students who don’t really care about the attendance, and take admission just to make sure that they can appear in the final examination as regular students. They are regular at other places: the coaching centres ironically run by the same teachers who teach in the school. How do we justify that, I wonder! Perhaps these privileged students might be getting better laboratory facilities to carry out their experiments there, or do they get good marks in the term tests , or threats of being failed or being fined if they don`t join the academic prostitution centres run my our academic guardian in the name of coaching centres. Or maybe these teachers are divinely inspired in knowledge of their expertise and experience these divine fits during private hours only that makes them able to deliver gold in the private centres and brass in the school. Oh God, why don’t you inspire them while they are on duty?

Afterwards, I talked to my colleagues, and asked them all sorts of unsettling question on issues ranging from lack of basic infrastructure in the school to the lack of student attendance in the classes. I was startled at the swift answer, “you have come from the IIT Karagpur, and it will take you awhile to settle here and be absorbed into this system and this work culture, let’s not waste time, and quickly decide on what special dishes we are going to have for the tomorrow`s lunch here; one of the class IV employs cooks really good, why should we bother about all this? Aase tcha tchech!”  I was bewildered by the strange attitude of my new found colleagues to the horrible problems confronting our school.  I thought I would request the Education Director to relocate me to a new place, but did against it when three of my friends called in the evening, I learned that it is the same all over. May be soon I will learn the tricks of the trade. Aasei tcha tchech!

Derrida, Lacan and ZG Mohammad: An Intellectual found!

Contrary to the traditional “keep it simple” rule, a good number of modern writers are accused of hinging their writings on obscurity and ambiguity making great demands on a reader to understand them. I remember my first encounter, with two great French intellectuals of the twentieth century, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan, when I was pursuing my Masters in English Literature. I would wake up weeping at 3am with nightmares about trying to understand them. Both have a writing style that is obscure, to say the least, apparently bordering on gibberish, at worst. As the angry critics have already announced, when you pick up Derrida and Lacan for the first time you will find a text which is dense, convoluted, elliptical and seemingly impenetrable, even by the most demanding standards of the current critical academy. Their impassable writing style is partly ascribed to their content: Derrida attempted a deconstruction of the whole of Western philosophy, and Lacan dealt with the human Unconscious. When the subject is grand, the style itself becomes dense and intense. My trouble with reading the great French men did not last long. I am now, more or less, comfortable with their peculiar writing style- a consummation that I devoutly wished for in my Masters. But Lacan and Derrida are not alone in creating this wilful obscurity, there are others also, in fact more impenetrable and incomprehensible than them. I am proud that my land, Kashmir, has produced one such genius of a writer, ZG Mohammad: a famous Greater Kashmir columnist whose iconoclastic writing style should go down in the history of English writing as the greatest manifestation of profound obscurity and sincere incongruity.

A legitimate measure of the influence of a thinker or writer on a discipline is the extent to which s/he transforms its customs, protocols and practices in a manner that makes it difficult to conceive how things were done before s/he appeared on the scene. Such transformations and changes are usually incorporated into the discipline and presupposed by those who come later. This explains why we often have a thankless relationship with the most influential thinkers. By definition then, great intellectuals are often those who change the way we do things in a peculiarly thankless way. But we should not maintain a thankless relation with our intellectual thinker, ZG Mohammad. He may not know it, as greatness is never apparent to itself, but we know that he has made a remarkable contribution to the writing style of English by introduction of a new form of writing. This is amply demonstrated by his recent Punchline in the daily Greater Kashmir, August 10, 2009.

I read the essay (should I call it an essay?) over a hundred times as every new reading provided a new dimension of “joy” that was soon to become hysterical . Unable to decipher the style, I asked my friends to read it, teachers were also invoked for help and inspiration, but, ultimately, only to add more confusion and obscurity. Then, finally, his own writing provided a key to the mystery.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with his political outlook the writings and noting of Ambassador Yusuf Buch are a part of Kashmir’s political literature that have could be seen as good as Edward Said’s works on Palestine. His works on Kashmir need to be compiled, researched and preserved. (GK, 10 August,2009)

Whether one cares about the writings and “noting” of Buch, one must take sufficient care to preserve the writing of ZG Mohammad. In his vain search for the Edward Said of Kashmir, he has made a remarkably great contribution to the writing style that can only be pronounced as “miraculous.” His style is continuous like the flow of the river Lidder. Inversely inspired by Raja Rao, Mohammad`s style is interminable. He has neither punctuation nor the treacherous prepositions to bother him. Episode follows episode, and when his thoughts stop, his sentence stops. His Paragraphs try to explore an idea, or tell a tale, but fail as the most heterogeneous events are yoked together by violence, ultimately, availing nothing, affecting nothing.

His peculiar style of writing incorporates explanations which are irrelevant. Titles of books and articles are not italicised, underlined or kept in inverted commas. He has mastered the art of writing multi-clause sentences without any provisions for a pause. Comma is rarely used- economic recession has affected its usage also, or does it carry the dreadful H1N1 virus? I have no answers. Mohammad enjoys the liberty of conferring greatness on Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian doctor of medicine, author and academic, without reading any of her writings. “Face of Kashmir” to him is “Kashmiri Face”, “Kashmiri Diasporas”, like many other terms is a novel coinage by him. He honours no difference between “on” and “in”: he seems to interchange them on impulse. He makes pronouns dance to the beats of this writings; they live off the false hopes of their nouns’ arrival. A quotation mark opens and remains open for its entire life. In his democratic writing style, clauses are not separated. It does not honour main and subordinate clauses.

The writer`s search for an intellectual voice for the problem of Kashmir may not be a viable one, but we have got our intellectual: the Kashmiri equivalent to Lacanian style of writing. Except that in the case of Lacan or Derrida, their translators have made sure to have got the grammar right. I am not being perverse. But the only density I could spot in his writing was that of grammatical bankruptcy. What’s more? I wonder what was the editorial team doing? Derrida and Lacan were actually trying to explore pertinent and profound issues which they did offer clues about. When one reads them in depth, one does identify the layers within which their content posits itself. Not the case with Mr Mohamed. I wonder why.