Lalitaditya- The Great Emperor of Kashmir

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

A specific provision in the Constitution of India had granted the special status to Kashmir, which was recently abrogated. The state is now divided into two Union Territories, thus making it finally an integral part of India. What will be the future of the people of bifurcated Kashmir depends on the times and the future course of the events. Still, the issue will remain in the political domain as a matter of controversy, which I hope would be resolved in favour of the Kashmiri people. Sadly, one can not emphatically say that there is a great deal of emotional exchange between Kashmir and the rest of the country. The chief reason for this is that historians, both past and present, have failed to connect the history of Kashmir to that of India in an effective manner. What was needed was to merely put their connection forward clearly and make it a part of the composite written history of the country.

The use of the word 'merely' in the above statement may sound as over simplification, for as a historian, you need courage to swim against the tide and think as well as write differently. You need to be bold enough to take on the opponents of the idea. Sanjay Sonawani is one such courageous, bold historian. His book on Kashmiri Emperor Lalitaditya is precisely the document that attempts to bridge the two histories, hence it is important.

Having said that, I must say you need an equally courageous publisher to publish such a pathbreaking book. Sanjay Nahar deserves compliments to show this ideological, and of course, financial courage. In that sense, this book by Sanjay Sonawani is lucky.

Crowded with mixed feelings, I am presenting this historical book Emperor of Kashmir, Lalitaditya the Great. As a researcher, I feel proud that this is the very first book ever written on this extraordinary emperor from the 8th century. But I am sadly surprised that this part of the history was never brought to light in its entirety earlier by anyone. It is true that barring Kalhana's Rajatarangini, the available information about Lalitaditya is sketchy and far too scattered. Where it is not quite clear, it became imperative to delve deeper into other contemporary sources and join the bits and pieces to make it meaningful. The task before me was cut out: I had to comb the contemporary histories and accounts of the kings and kingdoms from Turkey, Afghanistan, Arabia, Tibet, China and, of course, India. It was a task that was daunting but not impossible; however, not done so far. Lalitaditya remained confined to some sporadic articles or at best a small chapter in some book on Kashmir. His life and times were never compiled and put forth to the readers in any meaningful way. This may have been due to a general disinterest in the history or a mental slackness. But the result was that Lalitaditya remained largely unknown to the masses because his glorious history was never served to them. I am not a fatalist but I often surmise if I was destined to undertake this task. Hence, the mixed feelings.

But why go that far. Being a student of history, I had never heard of Lalitaditya myself! The credit of introducing me to the hero of this book goes to my friend Sanjay Nahar, who is the Founder of NGO Sarhad. He is a man on a mission. He has endless nationalistic ideas and makes relentless efforts to bring them into reality. He prompted me to write this book. After he introduced me to Lalitaditya, for a long time, I did little else than search information on the great king. I scanned, scoured and ran after hundreds of books. From among them, I zeroed in on about a hundred, which I thought would be useful for me. It is another story that I had to struggle hard to decide between many contradictory pieces of information and claims in these books. So much so that I ended up reorganising, synchronising the timeline of many events in Lalitaditya's life as well as those in the life of his contemporary king Yashovarman, as recorded in various books.

By far the only writer in medieval India with an eye for historiography was Pandit Kalhana. He preserved Lalitaditya's life in his Rajatarangini, albeit with some anachronism. It did not help as Kalhana's writing is decorative, besides being in verse and replete with myths and legends. Sanjay Nahar kept me enthused whenever I gave in to mental fatigue in working my way through the maze described above. I owe the completion of this book entirely to him.