How Kashmir's ‘moral economy’ fuels aid for Iran: Widow's gold and heirloom copperware

During the ongoing Iran conflict, the Kashmir Valley saw a massive grassroots donation drive. Reports indicate that within days, local communities—mainly in the Shia-majority areas of Budgam, Baramulla, and Srinagar districts—collected over ₹17 crore. The movement was deeply rooted in devotion to raw materials; villagers donated livestock, craftsmen and residents contributed heirloom copperware, and young men surrendered vehicles for the cause. One of the most notable instances was the widows’ gold, in which women relinquished precious jewels that had been their only dowries and keepsakes for decades. This contemporary wave of aid has a significant historical background in the Khilafat Movement of the early 1920s. As the streets of Budgam and Srinagar fill with donors, a century ago, something similar took place across the Indian subcontinent. At that time, the focus was on preserving the survival of a faraway Islamic centre—the Ottoman Caliphate—more than one’s own material security. The Turkish relief efforts of the 1920s included figures like Bi Amma, an Indian Muslim activist who transformed the jewellery boxes of Indian Muslim women into a political treasury.

The parallels are striking: both movements used the sacred spaces of the mosque and the Imambara (Shia congregation halls) as centres for raising funds, bypassing formal banking systems in favour of community-led trusts. While the 1920s focused on maintaining a global institution, the current phenomenon highlights a shared social and spiritual heritage. However, while the Khilafat Movement was a centralised effort based on pan-Islamic political resistance against colonial encroachment, the current Iranian relief drive seems more like a decentralised, emotional mobilisation rooted in the specific cultural memory of Iran-e-Sagheer (Little Iran); the Kashmir valley has deep historical, cultural, and spiritual ties to Persia (Iran). Notably, the arrival of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a Sufi scholar from Hamadan in Iran, in the late 14th century was significant. His arrival marked the introduction of Persian crafts, culture, and religious influence in Kashmir, which greatly shaped its social and material life.

To understand why people facing their own economic struggles might give up vital assets for a distant cause, it's helpful to look at the "Moral Economy" as defined by E.P. Thompson. While the "market economy" focuses on profit and self-interest, a moral economy is guided by social norms and reciprocal duties that emphasise group survival and spiritual worth over personal wealth. In this context, giving is not seen as a loss but as an investment in a shared moral framework. When a Kashmiri farmer donates a cow or a family parts with its copperware, they are showing that their value is not measured by their bank account but by their standing within the Ummah and their commitment to a divine call for solidarity.

The aid can also be viewed as a handout or a social gift. However, “The Gift”, as Marcel Mauss argues, is never truly "free." Instead, the gift creates a "total social phenomenon" that weaves together legal, economic, religious, and aesthetic strands of society. By sending aid to Iran, Kashmiris participate in a cycle of "obligatory reciprocity." They are returning a "gift" of civilisational identity: the craft, religion, and literature bestowed upon the valley by Persian scholars centuries ago. This exchange goes beyond the "charity" of the powerful towards the weak; rather, it is a horizontal exchange of "inalienable possessions." Through Maussian eyes, the "Widow’s Gold" is a physical manifestation of a spiritual contract, proving that even for individuals not doing well economically, the capacity to give is the ultimate marker of agency and social power.

Aside from this, the gendered aspect of these donations is equally significant because it uncovers a form of "piety as agency" where women are not passive bystanders in geopolitics. From the Khilafat Movement to the current crisis, the shift of jewellery from the private domestic space to the public political arena marks a radical change in the "spatiality" of women’s power. When Bi Amma urged Indian women to surrender their ornaments for the distant Turkish cause, she was not merely asking for money; she was calling for the liquidation of the only wealth women traditionally controlled. This is because, in the patriarchal structures of the early 20th century, the jewellery box was the household's silent treasury. Its opening was a deliberate political act by the "veiled" population. In this context, women’s gold and the donation of bridal copperware reflect this historical agency. As scholars like Saba Mahmood have argued, Islamic religious performativity is often a site of empowerment. The act of parting with mementoes of deceased husbands or assets meant for daughters' dowries allows Kashmiri women to exercise a "sacred autonomy."

Tracing the lineage from the Khilafat Movement to today shows that the exchange of gold, livestock, and savings contradicts the traditional idea of aid as a one-way flow from the wealthy to the struggling, revealing a horizontal network of mutual understanding and deep empathy.

Mohammed Shoaib Raza is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.