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Trailblazer: From the Mountains of Kashmir to the Summit of Global Business and Beyond
328Overview
Farooq Kathwari’s extraordinary life began in politically divided Kashmir, where his family was separated by government decree. He had to leave home as a refugee, helped his mother survive shock therapy, joined student activists in street demonstrations, and faced down a gun-wielding security officer—all by the age of seventeen. Forced to become self-reliant, Kathwari journeyed to the United States, talked his way into a bookkeeping job, and earned a degree from NYU graduate school. He launched his first entrepreneurial venture selling Kashmiri crafts out of his Brooklyn apartment. When Kathwari’s best customer, the iconic furniture maker Ethan Allen, needed fresh leadership, he was asked to become its president. He transformed the company and become one of America’s most successful—and admired—CEOs. Meanwhile, spurred by the tragic loss of his teenaged son in war, Kathwari dedicated himself to the cause of peace in Kashmir and around the world. He hosted meetings with diplomats, shuttled messages between heads of state, and worked with global leaders on issues from human rights to refugee resettlement. Brimming with drama, insight, and unexpected humor, Trailblazer recounts a unique life story, offering readers not just an engrossing journey but also the wisdom of an exceptional leader. From Trailblazer—
"When the American journalist told me he hoped to report the truth about the Kashmir uprising, I decided to help. “The government people won’t let you see what is really happening,” I said. “Why not let me take you around?”
It was foolish of me to make such an offer. I knew I was risking retribution by the security forces. But I was a headstrong, independent young man. I wanted the truth to get out, and I would do what I could to help that happen."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626346451 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Greenleaf Book Group Press |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2019 |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Sales rank: | 650,460 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Farooq Kathwari is the Chairman, President, and Principal Executive Officer of Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. He has been President of the Company since 1985 and Chairman and Principal Executive Officer since 1988. He received his B.A. degree from Kashmir University in English Literature and Political Science and an M.B.A. in International Marketing from New York University. He is also the recipient of three honorary doctorate degrees. Mr. Kathwari serves in numerous capacities at several nonprofit organizations, including as an advisory member of the New York Stock Exchange; a director and former chairman of the National Retail Federation; Director Emeritus and former chairman and president of the American Home Furnishings Alliance; a member of the Board of Overseers of the International Rescue Committee; Chairman Emeritus of Refugees International; and he served as a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from 2010 to 2014. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a member of the International Advisory Council of the United States Institute of Peace; a member of the advisory board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; a director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University; and serves on the board of the Western Connecticut State University Foundation. Among his recognitions, Mr. Kathwari has been inducted into the American Furniture Hall of Fame. He has been recognized as an Outstanding American by Choice by the U.S. government. He has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal; the National Human Relations Award from the American Jewish Committee; the National Retail Federation Gold Medal; the International First Freedom Award from the Council for America’s First Freedom; Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award; the Anti-Defamation League’s Humanitarian Award; City of Hope’s International Home Furnishings Industry Spirit of Life Award; and the Entrepreneurial Excellence Award from the National Association of Asian MBAs. He has also been recognized by Worth magazine as one of the 50 Best CEOs in the United States.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A BOYHOOD IN KASHMIR
I GREW UP IN the Himalayan region known as Jammu and Kashmir. It is a beautiful area known for its snowcapped mountains; its lofty lakes and streams filled with rushing, clear, cold water; its lush waterfront gardens; its fragrant fields of rice and saffron; and its dense pine forests.
But it is also a troubled region that for seventy years has been divided by politics, ethnicity, and religion. Those divisions shaped my early life and the life of my entire family.
In 1949, when I was not yet five years old, my father traveled to Pakistan on what we all thought would be a brief business trip. But political conflicts between nations intervened. The two-week journey turned into an enforced separation that would keep my father away from his home for seventeen years. It was just the first of several painful disruptions we would experience over the years to come. I'm sure this helps explain why, in the decades since then, I've devoted much of my time and energy to seeking a solution to the conflict that still brings suffering to the people of the region.
I was born in Srinagar, an ancient city in the heart of the Kashmir Valley that for centuries served as the capital of Kashmir. The city is famous for the nine bridges that span the Jhelum River and for the lovely lakes to which British tourists traveled to enjoy holidays in grand houseboats. I was the fourth of six children in a prosperous merchant family — in fact, there were well-known merchants on both my father's side and my mother's side.
It was my father's grandfather, Gulam Mohiuddin, who started the business on that side of our family. He passed the business on to his son, my grandfather, Gulam Ahmed, whom I came to know well — although, as I'll explain, our relationship was not always easy.
My grandfather was a merchant who sold various products from central Asia, China, and India, including artifacts ranging from jewelry to rugs to works of traditional craftsmanship made by artisans from Tibet, Tashkent, and elsewhere. He and his father established an arts emporium in Srinagar under the name of Gulam Mohiuddin & Son. The maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, used to consult with my grandfather before making any major arts purchases. The family emporium was patronized by well-to-do people from all over the world, especially from England and Scotland. At that time, Kashmir's extraordinary natural beauty, including its snowcapped mountains and its rushing, trout-filled streams, made it a great hub of tourism. Kashmir has also historically been a hub of design and commerce through its links to the famous Silk Road, which connected Europe through Turkey to the Middle East, South Asia, and ultimately China, Korea, and Japan.
The family business took my grandfather and his father to many places in the region. In addition to their arts emporium in Srinagar, they had a shop in Calcutta, India, where they sold Kashmiri crafts, rugs, and art objects mainly to British customers. Their business in precious stones brought them frequently to the district of Kishtwar, a remote, sparsely populated area that became famous in the 1880s as the source of Kashmiri blue sapphires, some of the most highly prized gemstones in the world. Because Kishtwar is also called Kathwar, my family was sometimes called Kathwaris, although they were also known by the regional family name of Mattoo. I have adopted the name Kathwari, and it has now become the name by which my whole family is known.
My grandfather and great-grandfather were also interested in architecture and design. They commissioned and built a number of beautiful houses in Kashmir. The first one, in downtown Srinagar, was a traditional Kashmiri house with a courtyard in the middle. That's the house where I was born. Then they built three more houses in the suburbs — an English Tudor house, a Victorian-style house, and a Dutch colonial house. These houses reflected the influences on my grandfather during his frequent travels to Europe.
Meanwhile, my grandfather on my mother's side was Abdul Majid Bastel, a well-respected merchant of pashmina wool, with business connections in Tibet and central Asia, where most of this world-famous, high-quality wool came from goats raised at high altitudes. My mother's father was also a well-respected intellectual and a lover of the arts. Like my other grandfather, he built several homes in and around Srinagar, where he often hosted gatherings of writers and poets.
My mother, Maryam, was just a child when she suffered two terrible losses. First, her mother died. Then her father suffered a heart attack and died right before her eyes. An orphan at age twelve, my mother was raised by a couple of uncles. The shock of her two childhood losses had an impact on her that has lasted to this day. (Thankfully, she has been blessed with a long life. As I write, she is a resident of the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, New York.)
She married my father, Gulam Mohamed, at the age of sixteen — not unusually young for that time and place.
Before I say more about my family life, I need to turn to the politics of our homeland of Kashmir. To understand the divisions that trouble the region, a little history is necessary.
* * *
THE CENTRAL PART of the region of Jammu and Kashmir is the Kashmir Valley, where the ethnic Kashmiri-speaking people have lived for centuries. The region has a distinctive linguistic, musical, and cultural heritage, and it enjoyed periods of political independence until October 6, 1586. On that date, the armies of Akbar, the Mughal emperor of India, conquered the valley after having twice been driven back by the defending Kashmiris. Even so, Akbar's armies would not have been able to defeat the Kashmiris if not for the treachery of King Yusuf Shah Chak's brother. Legend has it that this brother aided Akbar in the belief that he himself would be installed on the throne of Kashmir. But after taking control of Kashmir, Akbar instead exiled the traitorous brother into eastern India, saying, "If you betray your brother and your own people, how can I trust you?" The king's brother later died in exile.
Akbar himself made a strategic error that would have fatal consequences for Mughal rule: He granted permission to the British government to set up the East India Company in India. By the late 1700s, the British had largely taken control of the Indian subcontinent, using a policy of divide and conquer to capitalize on conflicts among the local dynasties. In some parts of the region, the British installed their own governors. In others, they ruled indirectly through their influence over local leaders. Under this system, the region from Afghanistan to India was largely divided into provinces called subas.
Over time, the power of the Mughal rulers declined. In response, the British allowed other groups to take control of portions of the subcontinent. In 1753, with British support, the Afghan general Abdul Khan Isk Aquasi took control of Afghanistan and Kashmir. Kashmir became known as the Kashmir suba. The region remained under the control of the Afghan empire until 1819, when armies from a Sikh regime based in Lahore seized Kashmir — again with British support.
In the mid-nineteenth century, much of the region became embroiled in the military, diplomatic, and economic rivalry between Russia and Britain, which battled for control of Afghanistan and neighboring portions of central and southern Asia in what is often referred to as "the Great Game." As one move in this international chess match, the British in 1847 seized control of the Punjab and other areas bordering Afghanistan. Their plan for the region included a treaty with Gulab Singh, Raja of Jammu and a member of the Hindu ethnolinguistic group known as the Dogras.
This Treaty of Amritsar — considered infamous by the people of Kashmir — in effect sold to Gulab Singh, for a price of 7.5 million rupees, all the lands and peoples in a vast region of diverse languages, ethnicities, and religions. This region constituted the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and Gulab Singh was its first maharajah — the first in a series of Hindu rulers over the majority-Muslim region. Giving power over Kashmir to this relative outsider was another aspect of the British Empire's divide-and-conquer strategy, which ensured that no united challenge to British power would arise.
In practice, the British exercised quasi-feudal dominance over Kashmir, pressing the Dogra rulers to adopt policies favorable to them. And while there were limits on what the British could do, they moved in Kashmiri society almost as colonial overlords would. For example, although there were strict laws forbidding any non-Kashmiri from owning land in the state, the British evaded the rules simply by building those lavish houseboats I mentioned earlier — beautiful floating mansions that now serve as hotels.
With help from the British Raj (rule by the British crown), Gulab Singh and his successors extended their control over a number of neighboring regions, including the sparsely populated eastern area; the so-called Northern Areas (once called "tribal areas") lying between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China; and the Tibetan-influenced area to the east known as Ladakh. By the twentieth century, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was vast, heterogeneous, and hard to govern. In this respect, it resembled some of the countries of today's Middle East and Africa, which also were created with arbitrary borders and stark internal divisions — the result of decisions made by colonial powers more concerned with their own rivalries than with the social, ethnic, and linguistic realities on the ground.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Kashmiri Muslims suffered greatly under the rule of the Hindu Dogras. The Muslims were largely free to practice their faith, but political activities were forbidden; even small gatherings to discuss political topics were often punished severely. Over time, some Kashmiris of various faiths emigrated to other parts of Asia, mostly to what is now Pakistan and northern India, and many of these emigrant families gained prominence in their new homes. For instance, one of the great poets of South Asia, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, came from a Muslim Kashmiri family that settled in what is now Pakistan. Similarly, Pandit Nehru, the first prime minister of India, was from a Hindu Kashmiri family that settled in northern India.
But in their homeland, Kashmiri Muslims continued to suffer. In the 1930s, my grandfather Gulam Ahmed and a group of associates formed a group called the Kashmir Reading Room, which met in my grandfather's house in downtown Srinagar. Its supposed purpose was to discuss literary issues, but, in reality, it formed the nucleus of what became the Quit Kashmir Movement, with the goal to end the Dogra rule over Kashmir. (Many years later, the Kashmir Reading Room inspired me to establish the Kashmir Study Group, dedicated to finding a peaceful solution to the ongoing political problems of Kashmir and Jammu.)
During the 1930s and the early 1940s, the Quit Kashmir movement worked to build support for Kashmiri self-rule, much as the Quit India movement led by Mohandas K. Gandhi was doing in India. The movement was a nonviolent one, but the government response was not always peaceful. In 1931, a demonstration was held at the Pathar Masjid in Srinagar. This was a mosque built in the seventeenth century by the famous Mughal empress Noor Jehan. The protesters were fired upon by soldiers under orders from the Dogra rulers. Making matters worse, the Dogras refused to allow a decent burial for the bodies of the slain. As a result, the courtyard of Pathar Masjid became known as the Martyrs' Graveyard. It is the site of an annual ceremony, held every July 13, which is known as Martyrs' Day.
This, then, was the political and social situation when I was born — but soon, everything would change dramatically.
* * *
IN 1947, IN THE AFTERMATH of World War II, and facing ever-growing pressure from the independence movement led by Mohandas K. Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and other luminaries, Britain decided to relinquish its power over the Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately, it carried out its departure in haste, without adequate planning. Political leaders, especially those from the minority Muslim community, demanded partition of the subcontinent into separate countries — India for the Hindus and Pakistan (in two sections, West Pakistan and East Pakistan) for the Muslims. The partition led to the displacement of millions of people, a vast refugee crisis, and fighting that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
In Kashmir, the Dogra ruler agreed to hand over power to India temporarily. However, the situation was unstable, with a population deeply divided by religion — their loyalties split between the two emerging nations of India and Pakistan, both of which claimed the right to rule Kashmir and Jammu. The so-called First Kashmir War of 1947–48 was the result. After intervention by the United Nations, a cease-fire was declared, with about 60 percent of the state — including the Kashmir Valley, a highly desirable part of the region — being controlled by India, while the remaining 40 percent was controlled by Pakistan. It was also agreed that a plebiscite (a national referendum) would be held to allow the people of the entire state to decide between joining India or Pakistan. Independence was not proposed as an option.
Flash forward seventy years. No plebiscite has ever been held. The reason is simple: As we now understand, neither India nor Pakistan is likely to want to abide by the result if the vote were to go against them. Instead, the Kashmir and Jammu region remains split into areas — one administered by India, one by Pakistan — along the same dividing line that was established decades ago by the UN cease-fire. This division is now known as the Line of Control. The former state of Jammu and Kashmir still has no clear national identity. Pakistan refers to its people as "natives of the Jammu Kashmir region," while the Indians consider them Indians.
As you can see, the politics of being Kashmiri are very complicated. Although Jammu and Kashmir is sometimes spoken of as a "country," it is not a country but rather a collection of areas inhabited by peoples of different ethnicities, religions, and languages. Rather than enjoying a stable, unified government, it has been ruled for decades by a series of provisional regimes, its peace periodically disturbed by fighting among religious, ethnic, and political groups seeking permanent dominance. Most unique is the Kashmiri-speaking region itself, which enjoyed intermittent periods of independence and more recently has been the center of the ongoing conflict.
Living under these circumstances, it's hard for any thoughtful, concerned person not to get involved in politics. Generations of Kashmiris — and many from outside the region — have found themselves caught up in the search for a fair and peaceful long-term solution to "the Kashmir problem."
My father was no exception. He earned his undergraduate degree in law from Punjab University in Lahore — then in India, now in Pakistan — and his advanced degrees in law from Aligarh Muslim University in the Indian province of Uttar Pradesh. He did not practice law but worked with his father in the family business and also got involved in politics. He participated in the Kashmir Reading Room group founded by my grandfather and his associates, which was focused on ousting the Dogra rulers from Kashmir. This group eventually gave rise to a political organization called the Muslim Conference, which was affiliated with the Muslim League of India. In the 1940s, under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah, a new organization called the National Conference was established, which included both Hindu and Muslim members.
Since my father was living in the portion of Kashmir that was administered by the Indian government — which also claimed the right to rule all of Kashmir — my father's advocacy of a plebiscite that would allow Kashmiris to decide their own political future made him suspect in the government's eyes. Making matters worse, not only were our family Muslims, but they also had direct political ties to Pakistan. For example, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and the nation's first governor-general, was friends with my grandfather and used to visit him in Kashmir. As a student, my father was assigned to accompany Jinnah and his sister when they made excursions to visit various parts of Kashmir. These activities were not illegal, but they meant that our family was kept under scrutiny by the Indian authorities in Kashmir.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Trail Blazer"
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Copyright © 2019 Farooq Kathwari.
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Table of Contents
Prologue: Ten Leadership Principles xi
1 A Boyhood in Kashmir 1
2 Uprising in the Kashmir Valley 31
3 Journey to America 49
4 New Land, New Life 65
5 The Making of a Merchant 83
6 Spreading My Entrepreneurial Wings 109
7 Taking Charge 137
8 Money Matters 159
9 Heartbreak 183
10 Peace Is the Mission 203
11 Defending Our Independence 237
12 Leading in a Global World 255
Acknowledgments 269
Appendix A Kashmir and Its Region-A Historical Overview 271
Appendix B Members of the Kashmir Study Group 277
Appendix C Kashmir-A Way Forward (2005) 281
Index 285
About the Author 297
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