Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov bind 19th century Russia and contemporary Kashmir

Does a commonality undergird 19^th century Russia and contemporary Kashmir? Surely. How and why? Before offering an exegesis, a wee digression is warranted. As the conceptual and practical underpinnings of the great German theorist Carl Schmitt – real sovereignty as the ability to bring about a ‘state of exception’ become normative and as a contrapuntal to liberalism across the world and the ‘friend-enemy’ distinction more salient - the inimitable Russian great Fyodor Dostoyevsky becomes all the more relevant. 

`A genius of geniuses, a literary giant against whose writings western classical literature is a dead letter, Dostoyevsky, poignantly and with poignant alacrity illustrated the ‘Russian condition’ and perhaps thereby the human condition in and during his time. Contra western liberalism’s certainties (despite hypocritically disavowing the same) about human nature and history and ‘answers’ to these, the fundamental motif and theme that runs through Dostoyevsky’s timeless classics is the ‘unfinalizability’ of human beings (emblematized by and in his characters).

What eloquently shines through Dostoyevsky’s characters is, ‘their refusal to be entirely defined by an external source, social constructs, ideologies or in a modern rendition,’ Foucauldian systems of knowledge’ – or anything that puts and presupposes limitations on the human soul’. This, in Dostoyevsky’s schema makes a human human.

Also putting into perspective, the contradictions at the heart of the 19^th century Russian psyche, the jostling and jockeying between faith, reason, rationality doubt and skepticism, shattering the certitudes of an essentially agrarian society, encountering the gale of western ‘enlightenment’ ideas, Dostoyevsky’s works have a searing resonance in contemporary Kashmir. Of particular relevance to contemporary Kashmir is the great Russian’s monumental novel, ‘Brothers Karamazov’.

Organized mostly around the Karamazov family brothers – these are suggested to emblematize the contradictions at the heart of 19^TH century psyche. One of the brothers’ Dmitri emblematizes ‘raw and wild passion and emotion, and his ultimate journey toward spiritual redemption’. Ivan is reflective of Intellect, reason, existential dread and the psychical burden of a world where moral anarchy and relativism rule the roost’. Alyosha, the younger brother is an embodiment,’ spiritual and ethical harmony, love and a burning desire to heal the broken’. And the character of Karamazov brother Smerdyakov is reflective of ‘nihilism, cynicism and moral emptiness’.

In the nature of each of his characters, Dostoyevsky, in the novel, to repeat, teases out the contradictions of 19^th century Russia with the encounter with the processes of modernity and modernization. The central question posed by the Russian great in his novel is puzzlement over ‘how a benevolent God can allow human and innocent suffering in a world of free will?’ Answering the question he poses, Dostoyevksy posits that,’ while choice is pregnant with the possibility of suffering, but the redeeming feature is humans are free to choose between good and evil, belief and the converse’.

How, the question is, all this related to Kashmir?

A predominantly religio-agrarian society, superimposed by the political economy of Pashmina shawl production and trade and allied handicrafts, Kashmir has been in the throes of change since decades. The nature of this change has, in the main, been political. But now, contemporary Kashmir, against the backdrop of structural trends like globalization, the Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) revolution, and macro political trends of the past few years (of which abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 has been the pivotal one) is in the midst of dizzying change.

In sum, Kashmir is in the throes of multiple transitions - political, economic and cultural - occurring simultaneously, where cross cutting themes, ideas, ideologies jostle and jockey with and against each other. In the matrices of these far reaching and turbulent changes, each character in Brothers Karamazov could well be a Kashmiri grappling with doubt, skepticism, faith, certainty and uncertainties. The question is: how will these dizzying changes pan out? What will be their impact? What will be their consequences?

We do not know.

These multiple transitions and changes are happening against a structural macro-backdrop where the entire world is in disarray, and on the cusp of the ‘unknown unknown’- politically, geo-politically, culturally, economically and above all techno-scientifically. In this whirlpool of change, Artificial Intelligence (AI), seems to upend and subvert all known paradigms. Is the world, for example, going to be AI centric or people centric with humans as mere appendages?

All these changes and attendant uncertainties will, of course with a lag affect Kashmir too. Naturally, there will be consequences: the global will impact the local and vice versa. This will be rendered poignant against the backdrop of a world and a region where there is both deterritorialization and re-territorialization happening simultaneously. Added up, these are not ordinary changes and transitions – but very complex and complicated ones.

Will and can Kashmir cope up? How will it? What, to repeat, will be the long-term consequences - ideationally, materially, culturally, politically and economically?

Again, we do not know.

But - what can be said with certitude is that this peculiar condition that Kashmir, like other similar regions of the world finds itself in corresponds to almost picture perfection to 19^th century Russia - ably and inimitably described by Dostoyevsky. To pose both a trite and profound question- can we look into Brothers Karamazov for indicative answers? If so - what can we find?

In Book 2 Chapter 6 of the same novel, in a dialogic encounter between Ivan Fyodorovich and Zossima in the monastery, Zossima suggests to the Ivan – whose tormented self is unable to resolve the dilemma of virtue God and morality tells him, ‘The martyr likes sometimes to divert himself with his despair, as it were driven to it by despair itself. Meanwhile [..] you divert yourself with magazine articles, and discussions in society, though you don't believe your own arguments, and with an aching heart mock at them inwardly […] you clamor for an answer’. But it is the younger Alyosha – the one predisposed to faith and lobe who suggests of his brother Ivan.’ His (Ivan’s) mind is a prisoner of his soul. There is great and unresolved thought in him. He is one who does not need millions – all they need is to get a thought straight’.

This assertion - pithy, profound and accurate at the same time - was the Russian condition in the 19^th century. It may well be the human and global condition now. But, for sure, it is the Kashmiri condition as we speak!