It may not be far-fetched to describe historical Kashmir as the “land of poets.” 

The nature of poetry in Kashmir is suffused with mysticism, existentialism, a yearning for the visaal (union) with the Divine, and a mournful elegy over firaaq (the pain of separation) from the beloved.

This descriptive typology of the nature of poetry in Kashmir may be a tad reductive. But in the main, barring the romantic poetry interlude of Rasool Mir Sahib, the politics-inflected poems of Mehjoor, and the eclectic genre of Rehman Rahi, in the modern periods this may be said to constitute the gravamen of our poetic genius.

But the travesty (or even tragedy) is that Kashmir may not produce poetic greats anymore. 

We may actually have to rest on the proverbial laurels of the past. Even worse, Kashmir may have lost its indelible historical link with poetry.

Consider the evidence. Apart from Rehman Rahi, in the recent past Kashmir has not produced a poet of reckoning or worth. 

Rahi, if memory serves me right, filled an interregnum after Mehjoor’s death. 

But, sadly, that’s that. Why have we lost our connection and link with poetry?

The answer is, by necessity, anecdotal. 

While the loss of our poetic eminence is almost an empirical fact, the reasons are not easy to locate and tease out. 

One prong of the answer may be economic, the other sociological, followed by more prosaic ones. Re economics, there is a paradox in operation. 

A cursory examination of the “class background” of our poetic greats reveals that most, if not all, were from very poor socio-economic backgrounds.

This reality jars with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and, tangentially, with neuroscience and some psychological theories. 

Cumulatively, these postulate that higher-order thinking happens when basic human needs are satisfied (poverty becomes an intervening variable here). 

Now, from the late Soche Kraal Sahib, late Nyame Sahib, late Ahad Zargar Sahib, Mahmud Gaemi Sahib, late Rasool Mir Sahib, and so on, to name just a few luminaries, all of them did not cut their teeth in wealth, so to speak. 

From a material, socio-economic perspective, they were working-class people. But, in terms of their poetic genius, their work speaks eloquently. 

Does this mean that poverty and immiserating conditions of life are the springboards for great works of art, like poetry? 

And, contrarily, does the capitalist wealth effect denude a given society of its art and poetry?

Historically, if the West is used as a comparator here, it appears that the best and greatest works of art emerge in not-so-great times. 

The material advancement of the West has not produced a Shakespeare, Dickens, Yeats, Virgil, or Walt Whitman. 

But then, if the “bleak houses” of the world (underdeveloped regions of the contemporary world) are employed as a yardstick, we do not see an outpouring of great literature and poetry. 

Given that our referent is Kashmir, what explains the pre-dominance of poetry and poetic genius in and during a certain period? And what explains its absence now?

What, the question is, is the explanatory variable for this?

Sociologically, it may be that the incentive structure in Kashmir is a warped one: we prefer absolute certainty in worldly matters over the uncertain, the hesitant, and the tentative. 

We are too smug and conceited in our worldview and outlook. 

In terms of economics, while Kashmir is not a capitalist nirvana, no one dies of hunger here. Almost everyone has a roof over his or her head. 

But it is in combination, the incentive structure and a desire to get ahead in life (which is a legitimate aspiration), overlaid by our mediated exposure to the world at large (through communications technology), that an answer may lie. 

In the interstices of these, we have created a self and a self-image, plus a self-concept, where instinct crowds out the sine qua non of poetry: a refined sensibility and sensitivity. 

While our older folk’s struggles were for a comfortable middle-class existence (again a legitimate endeavour), our younger folks’ sense of self and self-concept is defined by technology-induced and fed consumerism and gratification.

In the attendant “attention economy,” a selfie with a pout, a tweet, or a line on social media appears to be more important than reflection and thought. 

These dynamics create a self where sense, sensibility, and sensitivity are occluded in both real life, real time, and in the mists of cyberspace. 

Lost, then, is what was the essence of Kashmir: the art of thinking and the craft of poetry. 

Can this noxious trend be reversed? Can it be reclaimed? 

Given the “habitus” – defined by the stimuli our young are exposed to: technological, media, communication, the incentive structure emphasized by society and fed by consumerism, and so on – the answer is bleak. 

But, as the old adage goes, the world rests on hope.