Habba Khatun: Kashmir’s Preeminent Cultural Icon

Kashmir’s last independent ruler, Yousaf Shah Chak, fell in love at first sight with her while he was on a hunting trip and heard Habba Khatun singing under a Chinar tree. livehistoryindia.com

Sameer Arshad Khatlani

Habba Khatun’s journey from an ordinary peasant woman to Kashmir’s preeminent cultural icon began with a rebellion in the 16th century. She walked out of an unhappy marriage, divorced her husband, and began wandering, singing songs of mystic love and melancholy from village to village. The power of her voice was so mesmerising that Kashmir’s last independent ruler, Yousaf Shah Chak, fell in love at first sight with her while he was on a hunting trip and heard Habba Khatun singing under a Chinar tree. The commoner Zoon, as she was earlier called, was named Habba Khatun (loved woman) as she became Chak’s queen. But her newfound love was short-lived. Mughal Emperor Akbar soon invaded Kashmir and sent Chak into exile. The Queen plunged into grief again and fell back upon Islamic mysticism, singing and wandering.

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 “…At home I was secluded, unknown, When I left home, my fame spread far and wide, The pious laid all their merit at my feet…’’ wrote Habban Khatun.  She compared herself “to a flower that flourishes in fertile soil and cannot be uprooted’’. It has remained so even five centuries later, as Habba Khatun’s legacy continues to flourish and her poetry remains the most enduring imprint on Kashmir culture and popular imagination. Her folk and devotional songs remain the most played on the local radio stations.

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Habba Khatun followed in the great tradition of another woman mystic poetess, Lal Ded, who had left her oppressive husband and in-laws two centuries earlier, and women rulers before her. Lal Ded is said to have later come under the influence of Kashmir’s patron Sufi saint Mir Saiyyad Ali Hamadani to influence and enrich the Valley’s composite culture as much as Habba Khatun.

Many such women like Arnimal later carried forward their legacy, but the two remain the most remarkable of their kind in Kashmir’s history.

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Their achievements can be better understood in the context of the times they lived in. Habba Khatun divorced her first husband while divorce was an alien concept across most of the subcontinent, and among the dominant faith, it was introduced only four hundred years later courtesy the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955.  Similarly for the self-proclaimed civilizers of world – the Europeans – marriage, in the words of author Antonia Fraser in the 16th century, was still “the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye’’. She continued, “And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman.”

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But even a cursory look at Kashmir’s history makes it clear that Kashmiri women have historically enjoyed better status compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the subcontinent. The purdha system has been all but alien to Kashmir unlike the rest of the region, where social reformers addressed it as one of the evils along with things like child marriages, sati and treatment of widows.

This is an abridged version of an article carried in the Times of India, the author's former employer, on February 4, 2013.

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper with a circulation of 10 million daily. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national-affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. 

Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. 

Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam’.

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