In the time of Kalhana, when the chronicles of Kashmir were first inscribed with a sense of historical pride, the Kashmiri language found itself in a state of neglect and disrepute. Kalhana, the celebrated author of Rajatarangini, wrote in Sanskrit and looked down upon Kashmiri as a vulgar dialect of the subaltern and the lowborn.
The refined elite of his time spoke and wrote in Sanskrit, while Kashmiri was left to the peasants, artisans, and common folk, the tongue of those who toiled in the shadows of history. This distinction between “language” and “dialect” was, however, a matter not of linguistic merit but of social hierarchy. A dialect becomes a language not by divine decree but by the power of its literature, by the soul and intellect it gathers through its poets, philosophers, and thinkers.
It was only in the medieval period that Kashmiri began to acquire literary vitality and spiritual resonance. The mystic poets, Lal Ded and Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani, infused it with moral and metaphysical thought, transforming it from a mere dialect into a vehicle of spiritual awakening. Through the vaakh and shrukh, they elevated Kashmiri into a language of conscience and transcendence, turning the vernacular into a mirror of the soul.
Habba Khatoon enriched it with her love songs and loal baet, and further promoted it through her melodies and lyrical expression. Later, Ernimal added to its emotional depth with her songs of longing and devotion. In these voices, Kashmiri found its first music of human experience as an articulation of both the pain and beauty of existence.
The modern period, however, brought a new phase in this linguistic evolution. With poets like Ghulam Ahmad Mehjoor, Abdul Ahad Azad, Dina Nath Nadim, and others, Kashmiri poetry entered the domain of modern consciousness. The struggle for political freedom and cultural selfhood intertwined with the lyrical and the moral, giving rise to a poetry that was both local and universal.
Mehjoor’s call to awaken, Azad’s progressive zeal, and Nadim’s modernist aesthetic gave Kashmiri a new stature — that of a full-fledged literary language capable of carrying the weight of a people’s history, emotion, and philosophy.
Among those who sustained this tradition into our own time stands the luminous figure of Marghoob Banihali. To speak of Marghoob Sahib is to speak of a life lived with integrity, courage, and luminous thought; a conscience that refused compromise, a pen that never bowed to power, and a heart that beat for the dignity of his people.
As a human being, Marghoob Sahib’s moral courage shone brightest in moments of personal challenge. Before I was enrolled as a PhD scholar at the Centre of Central Asian Studies, there were attempts to deny my registration on grounds of academic rivalry. It was Marghoob Sahib, along with Prof Maqbool, Prof Wahid, and Prof Abdul Majid Matto, who recognised merit and stood for justice, ensuring that my scholarship was not sacrificed to personal prejudice. Standing for truth when opposition was strong revealed the nobility of his character.
Marghoob Sahib embodied an intellectual integrity rare in any age. He never indulged in backbiting, never allowed rivalry to erode dignity. Whenever we met in connection with academic or literary matters, he carried an air of calm courtesy and moral self-possession. He upheld respect as an ethical discipline, not a social formality.
As a scholar, Marghoob engaged deeply with the moral and metaphysical heritage of Kashmir. His research on Sheikh-ul-Alam and other Sufi traditions built bridges between faith and reason, past and present, the human and the divine. His writings on the Kashmiri language and mysticism reflected both critical insight and emotional depth, demonstrating a rare blend of intellectual rigour and spiritual empathy.
As a poet, he explored the inner landscape of Kashmir’s conscience. His Partavistān (“The Land of Reflections”), a luminous allegory of the moral journey from darkness to light, represents one of the finest achievements of modern Kashmiri poetry. Like Iqbal in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, who viewed Jannat and Jahannam not as physical destinations like Pahalgam, Gulmarg, or the Sahara Desert, but as states of the spirit, Marghoob too did not attach physical geography to Partavistān. The journey he maps is moral and luminous, not material or local. It is the pilgrimage of the soul through the corridors of self-realisation and ethical struggle.
Even in lament, Marghoob never abandoned hope. His verses mourned the decline of values, the erosion of conscience, and the corruption of power, yet they remained suffused with light. As he wrote, “There is radiance in every path, but stones have sealed the way to the light.” His poetry sought not escape but elevation, transforming pain into moral insight.
His verses about the mother, when sung, touch the deepest recesses of emotion; they make it difficult even for the listener to control tears. Such was the human tenderness of his art, rooted in lived experience, refined through reflection, and illuminated by love.
As an author, Marghoob’s oeuvre spans more than forty works in Kashmiri, Urdu, and Persian - poetry, prose, essays, and criticism alike. Through them, he nurtured Kashmiri language as both a moral and aesthetic enterprise. He spoke of conscience when the world fell silent and illuminated darkness with the quiet radiance of truth.
As a critic, his reflections were marked by depth and humility. He questioned to awaken, he examined to clarify. Literature, for him, was moral inquiry, the mirror of a people’s spiritual condition.
As a translator, he bridged centuries of wisdom. His rendering of Baba Naseeb-ud-Din Ghazi’s Noor Namah stands as testimony to his devotion to Kashmiri culture and his belief that poetry and scholarship together preserve the sanctity of civilization.
And as a Kashmiri, he embodied the moral pulse of our collective being. In 2015, when conscience demanded courage, Marghoob Sahib returned his Sahitya Akademi Award, declaring that a writer’s duty is to truth, not ceremony. That act defined him, not as a dissenter, but as a guardian of moral responsibility.
The lineage of Kashmiri literature, of which Marghoob was a shining link, also includes other luminous figures - Ahad Zargar’s spiritual lyricism, Firaq’s contemplative modernism, Prof Mohi-ud-Din Hajani’s critical thought, Akhtar Mohi-ud-Din’s realism, Ali Mohammad Lone’s narrative depth, Autar Krishan Rahbar’s cultural humanism, and Pran Kishore’s creative versatility. Along with Mirza Arif Beg, Rahman Rahi, Firaq and Ghulam Rasool Santosh, they formed a constellation of voices that lifted Kashmiri from the margins of dialect to the firmament of language, rescuing it from anonymity and gifting it identity.
Marghoob passed away from this world on April 27, 2021, yet his presence endures in our language, in our thought, and in the moral clarity of his vision. He reminded us that language is not merely a tool of communication; it is the repository of a people’s conscience. As he wrote, “I spoke to the path, and the stones began to speak.”
Today, his voice still speaks to our hearts, our history, and our humanity. As I receive the award bearing his noble name, I do so not as a tribute to my own work but as an act of remembrance for a man who transformed language into light and scholarship into service. To remember Marghoob Banihali is to renew our faith in the moral purpose of literature, that it must preserve truth, defend beauty, and illuminate darkness with conscience.
Let us then honour him not merely as a poet of light, but as the moral voice of Kashmir; a voice that still refuses to fade, even when the world grows dark.
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