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| Vanishing Verses: The disappearance of Henze, the Kashmiri Pandit women’s wedding chant | | | Prerna Bhat
Henze (pronounced hen-zay) is the traditional opening chant of a Kashmiri Pandit Wanwun, a ritual folk song performed by women at weddings and other sacred ceremonies. The word itself comes from an old Kashmiri exclamation meaning “O ladies” and originally served simply to summon the women of the household at the start of the ceremony.
Over time, Henze grew into a standalone genre: as noted by Kashmiri scholar P.N. Pushp, it is among the “oldest extant folk genres” of Kashmiri verse. In practice, Henze consists of a couplet sung in a measured rhythm, invoking blessings for the occasion.
It belongs to the wider wanwun tradition chanted hymns based on Vedic formulas which in Kashmiri Pandit culture are “celebrated with pious chants or hymns” sung slowly by the women of the community.
These songs, often recounting the virtues of the bride and groom or calling on deities for a happy outcome, have for centuries linked one generation of Kashmiri Hindus to the next through oral performance.
Wanwun itself is a cornerstone of Kashmiri Pandit ceremonies. Traditionally, large gatherings of women form two parallel lines and take turns singing portions of these chant-couplets, each pause ending with a long drawn “ee’n” before the next woman picks up the verse.
As one analyst observes, wanwun “has been an oral tradition” carrying the shared values of Kashmiris across time. It is especially prominent in marriage rituals but also appears in rites like the sacred thread ceremony or birth celebrations.
After the exodus of Pandits from the Valley in 1990, these songs were brought into exile communities in Jammu and beyond. Decades later, most Kashmiri Pandits live scattered across India and the world.
Even so, community leaders insist that wanwun and Henze remain a vital cultural link. As one workshop organizer in Jammu put it, wanwun “is a very important part” of Kashmiri Pandit heritage that must be “preserved and passed on to our coming generations, who are scattered all over the globe.”
Despite its historic importance, Henze and related Wanwun chants are no longer being learned by most young Pandit women. A 2008 review of wanwun songs grimly warned that the tradition “is now on the verge of death as most of the old ladies who had mastered it are not alive.”
In plainer terms, it noted, the youngsters of today “are no more interested in old traditions and would do well with pop and disco.” That assessment is echoed by community observations: wanwun sessions still occur at weddings, but younger generations mostly socialize to Bollywood and Western tunes instead. One Kashmiri writer compiling Wanwun verses in 2023 bluntly observed that “Kashmiri wanwun is losing its charm and popularity among the younger generation, perhaps… because most of us no longer know how to read Kashmiri.”
Henze is not being passed along in the casual way it once was, it survives mainly in books and recordings rather than as a living family tradition.
Several factors help explain this generational split. For one, language loss and modern education mean many young Pandits are less fluent in Kashmiri than their elders.
Families uprooted to Delhi, Jammu or overseas increasingly speak Hindi or English at home, and Kashmiri is often confined to solemn rituals or to the verses in Wanwun texts.
Research on the community notes that Pandits fear losing “their language” and “regionally specific religious traditions” through assimilation into the broader culture. Secondly, life in exile has transformed weddings themselves.
Many marriages now feature popular Hindi film songs and fast Western dances, leaving little space for the slow, unaccompanied chanting of wanwun.
As one community leader put it, younger Pandits generally lack “orientation and knowledge of rituals,” so the specialized verses of Henze “do not catch the attention” of a generation brought up outside Kashmir
Only a few attempts have been made to revive Henze for new audiences. In recent years, some Kashmiri scholars and artists have recorded Wanwun texts in Roman script or released CDs so that modern Pandit children can follow along.
Cultural associations like Vomedh in Jammu hold workshops teaching wanwun songs to schoolgirls; participants report that “many students” learn the melody and accent once they understand the meaning behind each syllable.
Nevertheless, these activities reach only a small number of participants. As one review of a wanwun anthology concluded, preserving this heritage will require a concerted push to keep such traditions “alive” in family and community contexts. Otherwise, Henze, once the cherished opening hymn of Kashmiri Pandit weddings, risks fading into book bindings and archives, rather than living on from grandmothers to granddaughters.
The writer is student of MA Mass communication, AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi |
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