Ancient Hindu Technology stuns world: Thousand year old Shiva Statue in solid bronze

Source: News Bharati    
     Amsterdam, January 16: It was a complete surprise for the conservators and curators of Amsterdam’s Rijks Museum as they witnessed that the Shiva Nataraj statue was in solid bronze and also the aureole and the demon under Shiva’s feet are also solid.

This Dancing Shiva statue was X-rayed using high-energy digital radiation, along with the lorry transporting it, in the most powerful X-ray tunnel for containers of the Rotterdam customs authority, normally used to scan sea containers for suspicious contents. It is said to be the first research of its kind on a museological masterpiece.

At 153 cm x 114.5 cm, the Rijksmuseum’s Shiva is the largest known bronze statue from the Chola Dynasty (9th to 12th century) kept in a museological collection outside of India. Given its weight (300 kg), the statue has always been suspected of not being hollow, as has been common practice in Europe since the Greek Antiquity.

As part of an earlier investigation, an X-ray was taken of the statue in a Rijksmuseum gallery in 1999 while visitors were evacuated as a precaution against radiation. Unfortunately, the equipment used at the time (280 KeV) was not powerful enough to determine anything definitively. The Rotterdam X-ray tunnel of the Rotterdam customs authority offered a solution.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed has applauded Rijksmuseum for its interest in Hindu artifacts. Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, in a statement in Nevada (USA), urged the major museums of world to acquire more Hindu sculpture and art; dedicate permanent space to Hindu artifacts; and organize more exhibitions of Hindu art, sculptures, and architecture to make aware the present and future generations about their richness.

Rajan Zed argued that because of their richness and other factors, Hindu artifacts were becoming favorite of museums in America and the West. Many prestigious museums already owned Hindu sculptures and other artifacts and many were planning to acquire.

The Rijksmuseum renovation project has provided conservators and curators the opportunity to carry out in-depth research on special pieces from the Rijksmuseum collection, including this masterpiece from the Asian Art Collection. The statue was created ca. 1100 in South India. Each temple had its own set of bronze statues which were carried through the city during major temple festivals. This gives the statues their name: utsavamurti, which is Sanskrit for ‘festival images’. Chola bronzes were considered masterpieces of Indian bronze casting.

The sculpture can be seen as evidence that India has a glorious heritage of science and technology which is superior but unknown for the current World. Essentially Western world and Westernized Indians internalized colonial stereotypes that India was less rational and scientific than the West, India was world negating in its outlook, frozen in time and unable to advance without help from foreign invaders, India's civilization was mainly imported via invaders, except for its problems such as caste that were its own 'essences' and Indian society was socially backward hence dependent upon Westernization to reform its current problems. Recent revelation indicates that Hindu civilization was a master of all skilled crafts and also the craft of life.

Anna Ślączka, curator of South Asian Art, comments, ‘We had expected that the statue itself would prove to be solid, but it was a complete surprise to discover that the aureole and the demon under Shiva’s feet are also solid.’

The 12th-century Shiva Nataraja is on loan from the Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst (Association of Friends of Asian Art).

The appointment of the curator of South Asian Art, Anna Ślączka, was sponsored by Staal aan Zee, Tata Steel B.V., a named fund of the Rijksmuseum.

Source: http://en.newsbharati.com//Encyc/2012/1/16/Ancient-Hindu-Technology-stun...

The Poplar and the Chinar : Kashmir in a Historical Outline

The Poplar and the Chinar:

Kashmir in a Historical Outline

by Subhash Kak

Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803-5901
Published in International Journal of Indian Studies, vol 3, 1993, pp. 33-61.
Subhash C. Kak

The paper presents the recent militancy in Kashmir in a historical context. The policies of the Government of India that have contributed to the alienation of the different religious communities of the State are analyzed. The militancy is seen as an attempt by the fundamentalists to wean the Kashmiri Muslims away from their heritage of Rishi Islam that includes elements of Shaivism. Keywords : Kashmir, Indian politics, quotas, Islamic militancy, terrorism.
 

The Poplar and the Chinar: Kashmir in a Historical Outline

by Subhash Kak

Insurgency and Terror

The middle of 1989 saw the beginning of a campaign of terror against the Kashmiri minorities by Muslim fundamentalists and an insurgency against the Indian government. Within a year hundreds of selective and random murders forced nearly all the Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs, who comprise less than 10 percent of the population of the Vale, to leave their homes for refuge in the Jammu province and in Delhi.

The Jammu and Kashmir State is a union of different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. There are groups in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir who have sought independence or a union with Pakistan. The terror then represents a plan to eliminate minorities that may not wish to break Kashmir's ties with India.

There are several Muslim groups at work now with their own agendas. Not all of them espouse violence and neither are all focused on political aims. It would be wrong, therefore, to call the events in Kashmir as a struggle for freedom. As in a play of shadows across a silk curtain, understanding the recent events of Kashmir requires a broad knowledge of the plot and considerable imagination. The main actors in this drama are the governments of India and Pakistan and the various Muslim factions in the valley of Kashmir. The roles of the Indian and the Pakistani governments are relatively clear. The Indian government claims the territory of the State under the control of Pakistan, but Nehru and his successor governments have let it be known that it would be willing to accept the actual line of control as the international border. Pakistan covets the Vale of Kashmir since it has a Muslim majority, and Pakistan was shaped out of India in 1947 from the Muslim majority regions. The Muslim leadership of the Kashmir valley has in the past four decades insisted on a certain isolation from the rest of the Indian Union. This policy has been made a shibboleth by many Indian national, left-wing parties for a belief in secularism.

India and Pakistan have fought four wars for the control of the valley. In the first war, during 1947-8, the fighting was confined to the State. The second war in 1965 became a general conflict. The third war in 1971 began over the revolt in the eastern wing of Pakistan but eventually engulfed Kashmir. The most recent war has been fought by proxy through agents by Pakistan in Kashmir. It started in 1989 and is still continuing.

No systematic studies of Kashmiri Islam have been carried out. But its situation is very similar to that of Indonesian Islam, and one might use the analysis of Clifford Geertz (1960) and successors (Hefner 1985, Kipp and Rodgers 1987) to understand its dynamics. We then have the classification of orthodox , traditional , and karkun (urban, State employees) to parallel the labels of santri, abangan, priyayi for Javanese Islam. The interesting aspect of this classification is the fact that the karkun (or the priyayi in Java) has an ethos outside the main religious framework. In Java the priyayi are Muslims who hold on secretly to the Hindu-Buddhist values, whereas in Kashmir the karkun have generally been the Hindus of the valley. In other words, if the orthodox are the sayyids and the mullahs , the traditional the peasants and the craftsmen, then the karkun are the administrators, or the secular gentry. This classification is naturally a great simplification, but it provides important insights.

Recent Kashmiri history can be examined in terms of the dynamics between these three groups. So long as Kashmir was isolated, the three groups lived in a certain harmony amongst themselves. But from time to time forces from within and outside have threatened this equilibrium. The prosperity of the past four decades and modernization have spread the karkun and secular ideals within the Islamic community. The orthodox group has felt challenged by this phenomenon. This has stoked the fires within Kashmiri Islam of the long-standing struggle between the champions of the orthodox variety of doctrinaire Islam and the vast majority of adherents who subscribe to a popular religion that is heavily based on the native pre-Islamic traditions. The groups spearheading the current movement in Kashmir seek to steer the population away from its Hindu roots.

This struggle for the heart and soul of the Kashmiri Muslim against the insidious and growing karkun culture explains the fury and intensity of the militants. The orthodox have sought a revolution that has shown no mercy. So if the insurgency has been against the Indian government and the Kashmiri Hindus, it has also been directed against the dominant religious tradition of the Kashmiri Muslims themselves.

The State of Jammu and Kashmir and the Enchanted Vale

Before the partition of the State at the end of the 1947-9 war between India and Pakistan, it consisted of the Vale of Kashmir, the province of Jammu, the districts of Ladakh and Baltistan, and the Gilgit agency. The inhabitants of the Gilgit region and the Kashmir valley speak languages that are classed as belonging to the Dardic family of the Indo-Aryan language family; in Jammu Dogri, of the Indo-Aryan family, predominates; and in Ladakh and Baltistan the language is a variant of Tibetan. From the point of view of religion also the State presents a mosaic. Gilgit, Kashmir, and Baltistan are predominantly Muslim; Jammu is likewise Hindu, and Ladakh is Buddhist. A little over half of the population of the State is concentrated in the Vale of Kashmir which accounts for only 10 percent of the area, and Ladakh, Gilgit, and Baltistan are very sparsely populated. The State has some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world. The Vale itself is about 84 miles long with a breadth of 20 to 25 miles and a mean altitude of 5,600 feet above sea level (Drew 1875, Younghusband 1909). It is famed for its beauty of lakes and mountain streams, chinars and poplars, irises and roses. The Vale is also famed for a great tradition of scholarship, music and arts, shawls and carpets (Singh 1983). Of the different regions of the State, we know the history of the Vale the best. This is due to the 12th century Ra jatarangini of the historian Kalhana. Buddhism was introduced into the Vale by the missionaries of the emperor Ashoka (269-232 B.C.). The Kushan emperor Kanishka (c. 100 A.D.) convened a Buddhist council in Kashmir which led to the foundation of Mahayana Buddhism. Kashmiri missionaries played a leading role in the spread of Buddhism into Central Asia and China.

The Karkota dynasty of the seventh and eighth centuries provides us with the first authentic accounts of the government in the Vale. Lalitaditya (724-61) was the outstanding king of this dynasty. Lalitaditya built the famed Sun temple of Martand. In the 9th century Avantivarman built a grand capital south of Srinagar whose ruins can still be seen. These centuries also saw a flowering of Sanskrit learning and philosophy in Kashmir.

The rise of the Turko-Mongols under Chingiz Khan and his successors brought considerable turmoil to Central Asia after the 12th century. This disorder spilled into the Vale. Powerful feudal lords vied for power and many adventurers from outside invaded.

The end of the Hindu rule was part of a fascinating drama of intrigue and treachery. In 1320 Rinchana, a Tibetan prince, usurped the throne and sought to be converted to Hinduism. Upon the refusal of the Brahmins to do so he embraced Islam. After his death in 1323, his Hindu queen Kota Rani ruled until 1338 although the nominal king was her new husband Udayana, who was the younger brother of Suhadeva, the king before Rinchana. On Udayana's death Kota Rani ruled by herself for a few months until the power was seized by Shah Mir, a native of Swat, who now established the first Muslim dynasty in the Vale.

Islam spread quickly in Kashmir. It appears that there were periods of persecution of Hindus and their forcible conversion that interspersed longer periods of living in harmony. The first such episode of forcible conversion was during the reign of Sikandar (1389-1413) when, according to tradition, the persecution was so severe that the Hindus either left the valley or converted to Islam until only eleven Hindu families remained. But Sikandar's son Zain-ul-Abidin (1420-1470), popularly known as Badshah or Great King, was an enlightened ruler whose policy of religious tolerance persuaded many Hindus to return to the Vale. But after Zain-ul-Abidin the pressure on Hindus to convert to Islam continued. According to a tradition 24,000 Brahmin families were forced to convert during the stay in the valley of Mir Shams-ud-din Iraqi, who arrived in 1492 to proselytize on behalf of the Sufi order of Naqshabandis (Sender 1988).

The Vale was made a part of the Mughal empire by Akbar in 1587. It soon became a favourite summer resort for the Mughal rulers who built many gardens here. The Mughal administration was fair and it brought much prosperity. But as the Mughal empire weakened the governors assumed more power and some of them reintroduced religious repression. In 1752, with the collapse of the Mughal power, Kashmir came into the control of the Afghans. This rule was perhaps the most tyrannical in the history of the land. The Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, wrested Kashmir from the Afghans in 1819. In 1846, following the defeat of the Sikhs by the British, Gulab Singh, the Dogra ruler of Jammu purchased the Vale from the British.

The Dogras appear to have maintained large degree of autonomy during the period of Muslim rule in India. The Sikh kingdom of Lahore recognized Jammu to be a protected state. In 1834, Gulab Singh conquered the independent state of Ladakh. Baltistan, to the west of Ladakh, was defeated in 1840. In 1841 he attempted to expand into Western Tibet but this campaign ended in disaster. The Gilgit region was also inherited by the Dogras from the earlier Sikh kingdom. Thus by the mid-nineteenth century the state of Jammu and Kashmir had assumed its pre-partition form with the Dogra king as its ruler.
In the 1845 war between the British and the Sikhs, Gulab Singh, although a feudatory of the Sikhs, had not taken sides. The British recognized him as the independent ruler of Jammu, Poonch, Ladakh, and Baltistan in a treaty signed in 1846. But when Gulab Singh purchased the Vale of Kashmir, he accepted British paramountcy which meant the British right to control his foreign relations.

The movement for independence in British India spilled over to Kashmir as well. In the 1920's there were demands for redress of grievances. There was further unrest in the 1930's which prompted the Maharaja to take stern measures. However, the disturbances continued and eventually the Maharaja accepted the establishment of a legislative assembly. Sheikh Abdullah emerged as the most prominent leader of this movement that led to this major reform.
The Maharaja appeared to hold out for independence in August 1947 when India was partitioned. But in late October of that year Pakistani tribesmen, led by military officers in civilian clothes, tried to take the Vale by force. But instead of quickly seizing Srinagar, as they were in position to do, they stopped to plunder, murder, and rape. The Maharaja's hand was now forced and he acceded to the Indian Union and asked for help to expel the invaders. Sheikh Abdullah, who had been released from prison, endorsed this decision. Soldiers of the Indian Army were now flown into Srinagar and this turned the tide of the invasion. Pakistani regulars were now sent in and the war raged throughout 1948. Finally, under the supervision of the United Nations a cease fire was declared on 1 January 1949. Pakistan occupied 33000 square miles of the 86,500 square miles of Jammu and Kashmir State. India held the Vale of Kashmir and most of Jammu province and Ladakh, whereas Pakistan controlled parts of Jammu and Kashmir provinces, Baltistan, and the Gilgit region.

Shaivistic and Bhakti Roots of Kashmiri Religion

To understand the religious divide in the Vale it is necessary to go back to the Shaivite roots of the popular religion. It is important to note that this tradition fits squarely within the greater Indian tradition. The Rigveda presents a monistic view of the universe where an understanding of the nature of consciousness holds the key to the understanding of the world. This is further emphasized in the Upanishads, the six philosophical schools, Buddhist and Jain philosophy, the Shaivite and the Tantric systems. Of course this emphasis varies. And sometimes seemingly different terms represent the same central idea. For example the s unyata (void) of Madhyamika Buddhism and the brahman (universe) of the Upanishads are forms of the monistic absolutes. Two opposite metaphors thus represent the same central idea. Likewise the dualism of Sa m khya and of the Jains is correctly seen as projection of a monistic system of universal consciousness that manifests itself in the categories of the physical world and sentience. A grand exposition of the system, that explains how different perspective fit in the framework, is contained in the Bhagavad Gi ta . Even the Iranian religion of Zarathushtra may be seen as reformulation of the earlier Vedic tradition (Boyce 1975) in the same sense that Vaishnavism is. Kashmir Shaivism, reached its culmination in the philosophy of Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja (tenth to eleventh century AD) (Chatterji 1914, Dyczkowski 1987, Gnoli 1968, Kaw 1969, Pandey 1963, Jaideva Singh 1977, 1979, & 1989). Their trika (three-fold) school argued that reality is represented by three categories: transcendental ( para ), material ( apara ), and a combination of these two ( para para ) (Lakshman Jee 1988). This three-fold division is sometimes represented in terms of the principles s iva, s akti, an u or pati, pa s a, pas u . S iva represents the principle behind consciousness, s akti its energy, and an u the material world. At the level of living beings pas u is the individual who acts according to his conditioning, almost like an animal, pa s a are the bonds that tie him to his behaviour, and pati or pas upati (Lord of the Flock) is s iva personified whose knowledge liberates the pas u and makes it possible for him to reach his potential. The mind is viewed as a hierarchical (krama) collection of agents ( kula ) that perceives its true self spontaneously ( pratyabhijna ) with a creative power that may be viewed as being pulsating (spanda) . This last attribute recalls the spenta of the Zarathushtrian religion, where this word represents the power of creation of Ahura Mazda . Thus Kashmir Shaivism appears to have attempted a reconciliation of the Iranian religion with its Vedic parent.

The Pratyabhijn a (recognition) system is named after the book Stanzas on the Recognition of Ishvara or Shiva which was written by Utpala (c 900-950). It appears Utpala was developing the ideas introduced by his teacher Somananda who had written the earlier Vision of Shiva . In Shaivism in general, Shiva is the name for the absolute or transcendental consciousness. Ordinary consciousness is bound by cognitive categories related to conditioned behavior. By exploring the true springwells of ordinary consciousness one comes to recognize its universal (Shiva). This brings the further recognition that one is not a slave (pasu) of creation but its master (pati) . In other words, an intuition of the true nature of one's consciousness provides a perspective that is liberating.
For the spanda system the usual starting point is the Aphorisms of Shiva due to Vasugupta (c 800). His disciple Kallata is generally credited with the Stanzas on Pulsation . According to this school the universal consciousness pulsates of vibrates and this ebb and flow can be experienced by the person who has recognized his true self.

Abhinavagupta wrote a profound commentary on Utpala's Stanzas on Recognition. Shaivite philosophy may be said to have reached its full flowering with his philosophy. Abhinava also wrote more than sixty other works on tantra, poetics, dramaturgy, and philosophy. His disciple Kshemaraja also wrote influential works that dealt with the doctrines of both the schools of Recognition and Pulsation. Abhinava emphasized the fact that all human creativity reveals aspects of the seed consciousness. This explains his own interest in drama, poetry, and aesthetics.

According to the ancient doctrine of Sa m khya physical reality may be represented in terms of twenty-five categories. These categories relate to an everyday classification of reality where prakrti may be likened to matter, and purusa to mind. Kashmir Shaivism adds eleven new categories to this list. These categories characterize different aspects of consciousness.

Any focus of consciousness must first be circumscribed by coordinates of time and space. Next, it is essential to select a process (out of the many defined) for attention. The aspect of consciousness that makes one have a feeling of inclusiveness with this process followed later by a sense of alienation is called maya . Thus maya permits one, by a process of identification and detachment, to obtain limited knowledge and to be creative.

How does consciousness ebb and flow between an identity of self an an identity with the processes of the universe? According to Shaivism, a higher category permits comprehension of oneness and separation with equal clarity. Another allows a visualization of the ideal universe. This permits one to move beyond mere comprehension into a will to act. The final two categories deal with pure consciousness by itself and the potential energy that leads to continuing transformation. Pure awareness is not to be understood as similar to everyday awareness of humans but rather as the underlying schema that the laws of nature express.

Shaiva psychology is optimistic, scientific, secular, and liberating. At the personal level it emphasizes reaching for the springwell of creativity ( sakti ) and the schema underlying this creativity ( siva ). The journey leading to this knowledge may be begun in a variety of ways: through sciences, the arts, and creative social activities. But this exploration of the outside world is to be taken as a means of uncovering the architecture of the inner world. Shaiva psychology also reveals that the notion of bhakti, which has played a central role in the shaping of the Indian mind during the past millennium, may be given a focus related to a quest for knowledge.

The intellectual theories of Kashmir Shaivism were given popular expression by the great mystic Lalleshvari or Lalla (1335-1376). Her sayings, vakya , form the basis of much of the Kashmiri world-view that emerged later. But from Lalla onwards the emphasis did shift to the devotional aspects of Kashmir Shaivism (Temple 1924, Odin 1994). The notion of recognition of one's true self was exalted to the central role in the popular religion including Kashmiri popular Islam that views her va kyas and the sayings of her disciple Sheikh Nur-ud-din (1377-1438), Nanda Rishi , as sources of spiritual wisdom. Two of Lalla's va kya that have been adapted from Bamzai (1962) are given below:

1)

I saw myself in all things

I saw God shining in everything.

You have heard, stop! see Shiva

The house is his, who am I Lalla.

2)

Shiva pervades the world

Hindu and Muslim are the same.

If you are wise know yourself

Then you will know God.

 

"Lalla is as much a part of Kashmiri language, literature, and culture as Shakespeare is of English" is the assessment of Kachru (1981). Says her own pupil Nanda Rishi:

That Lalla of Padma npor-she drank

Her fill of divine nectar;

She was indeed an avata r of ours.

O God, grant me the self-same boon!

(Kaul 1973)

Nur-ud-din was followed by a large number of Rishis from both the Hindu and the Muslim communities. The Islamic Rishis provided the leadership to the popular religion of the Kashmiri Muslims.By the end of the nineteenth century the Kashmiri Hindus were about seven percent of the population of the Vale. Within the community itself a two-fold division had taken place by this time. Those who specialized in the secular sphere, studied Persian and undertook administrative employment, became known as the karkuns ; others who did priestly duties requiring knowledge of Sanskrit were termed bhasha bhatta (Sender 1988, Madan 1989). In recent years this sub-division is disappearing and karkun values have become the dominant ethos of the community.

 

Islam in Kashmir

 

The core of Islam rests on the Koran and narratives about the Prophet's life contained in the Hadith. In the next layer is the sharia ---Islamic law. The ulama , who are the theologians who are occupied with the interpretation of the Koran and the Hadith, are the heart and soul of Muslim orthodoxy. The multiple interpretations of the Koran and the Hadith finally formalized into four orthodox schools by 10th century A.D. when the gates of itjihad (individual interpretation of the Koran and the Hadith) closed shut. No further extensions of the Law are now permitted. The body of orthodox Islam is called Sunnite Islam after the Arabic sunna , custom.The challenge to the orthodox Islamic law by the pre-Islamic pantheistic traditions of Arabia and Iran crystallized within the Islamic framework through the mystical tradition of Sufism. The Sufi teachers from Central Asia and Iran had a hand in converting Kashmiris. The Rishi tradition of Kashmir went hand in hand with the Sufi tradition.
Islam in the Indian sub-continent has incorporated many impulses that hearken back to the original Hindu roots of the inhabitants (Mujeeb 1967, Ahmad 1969). In the Vale of Kashmir the practice of Islam centres around worship at the many shrines scattered across the region. At many of these shrines relics of Pirs and Rishis are worshipped.
In the beginning Islam represented the separate identity of the immigrant from Dardistan, Central Asia, or Iran. As it gained converts the difference in the Hindu and Islamic religious identities in the countryside was perhaps not marked. In the late 14th century many Sayyid refugees arrived from the West and they started agitating for enforcement of the Koranic law. But the popular religion took its inspiration from the Sufis and the Rishis that followed Nur-ud-din.
Some of Nanda Rishi's sayings are given below:

 

1)

The dog is barking in the compound

O brothers, give ear and listen:

As one sowed, so did he reap;

You, Nanda, sow, sow, sow.

2)

Your face washed, you call believers to prayer

How can I know, O Rishi, what are your feelings, what are your prostrations for

You have lived a life without seeing (God)

Tell me to whom you offer prayers.

If you listen to truth, you will master the five (senses).

If you make union with Shiva

Then only, O Rishi Mali, will prayer avail you.

[Adapted from Bamzai 1962]

Many Rishis followed Nanda Rishi and they helped define the uniqueness of Kashmiri Islam. Not all Rishis used Sanskritic concepts to describe their experience. With time Persian concepts and stylistic devices were increasingly used. Eventually the Sufis of Kashmir were also permeated greatly by the Rishi ideals. Writing in 1542 Mirza Haider says in his Tarikh-i-Rashidi : "The Sufis have legitimized so many heresies they know nothing of what is lawful... They are forever interpreting dreams, displaying miracles and obtaining from the unseen information regarding either the future or the past. Nowhere else is such a band of heretics to be found... (they) consider the Holy Law ( shariat ) second in importance to the True Way ( tariqat , tradition) and that, in consequence, the people of the Way have nothing to do with the Holy Law." (quoted in Sufi 1947-8, pages 19-20)
Writing about a hundred years ago, Lawrence ascribed the delightful tolerance between Hinduism and Islam to "chiefly the fact that the Kashmiri Musalmans never really gave up the Hindu religion." He added: "I do not base my ideas as to the laxness of Kashmiris in religious duties merely on my own observations. Holy men of Arabia have spoken to me with contempt of the feeble flame of Islam which burns in Kashmir and the local mullas talk with indignation of the apathy of the people." (Lawrence 1895)
The amity between the Muslims and the Hindus has continued until this recent crisis. The vast majority of the Muslims continue to follow the religion of the Islamic Rishis. 
According to the Kashmiri Muslim historian G.M.D. Sufi:
A number of the practices of the Kashmiri Musalman are (un-)Islamic... The Buddhist worship of relics has insidiously crept into India's Islam. It is nowhere so prominent as in Kashmir. Hazratbal is an outstanding example. On the occasion of the exhibition of the Prophet's hair ... crowds of Kashmiris are seen weeping and wailing like the Jews before the Wailing Wall... The Pirs have almost created a priesthood and hereditary sacred caste. Necromancy and a belief in omens and magic has gained ground in spite of the (Koranic prohibition against them)... Pure monotheism and the moral fervour of a society based on social equality has in practice nowhere receded more into the background. The ringing of a bell precedes the call to prayer in several mosques in the Valley today... The Kashmiri Muslim has transferred reverence from Hindu stones to Muslim relics. (Sufi 1947-8, p. 688)
Many of the shrines of popular Islam are the ancient Hindu-Buddhist shrines, the Jami' Masjid of Srinagar being an important example (Sufi 1947-8, p. 512). According to M.A. Stein this is perhaps true even of the most popular Islamic shrine at Hazratbal (Stein 1979).

 

Kashmiri Culture and Literature

 

To understand the Kashmiri mind it is best to consider its poets. For the popular culture, which is permeated with the mystical tradition, one must again begin with Lalla. Lalla describes her own spiritual awakening thus:
 

 

1)

I, Lalla, filled with love

Searched day and night

In my own house I found the wise one

Whom I beheld at the moment

Which was the most auspicious of my life.

 

2)

Slowly I stopped my breath

The lamp lit and I realized my true identity

In the dark recesses of my soul

I held fast to the inner light

And emitted it outwards.

[ Lalla translated by Odin 1994]

 

The major poets who followed Lalla include Habba Khatun (c 16th century), Rupa Bhavani (1621-1721), Arnimal (d. 1800), Mahmud Gami (1765-1855), Rasul Mir (d. 1870), Parmanand (1791-1864), Ghulam Ahmad Mahjur (1885-1952), Abdul Ahad Azad (1903-1948) and Zinda Kaul (1884-1965). Habba Khatun is credited with originating the lol style of poetry where the predominant mood is that of longing and romantic love. Arnimal also wrote in the lol style. Rupa Bhavani, Mahmud Gami, Rasul Mir, Parmanand continued in the mystical tradition of Lalla and Nanda Rishi. Mysticism and romantic love are the two main strands in the tapestry of the Kashmiri psyche. Often the two strands get intertwined since romantic love can be a metaphor for a spiritual emotion.

 

1)

Which rival of mine has lured you away from me?

Why are you cross with me?

Forget the anger and the sulkiness,

You are my only love,

Why are you cross with me? [ Habba Khatun translated by Kachru (1981)]

 

2)

Oh, spinning-wheel!

Do not grain

For I shall apply fragrant oil to your straw rings.

And, you, Hyacinth!

Raise your head from under the earth for Narcissus is waiting with cups of wine,

The jasmine will fade and will not bloom again.

Do not groan

Oh, my spinning-wheel! [ Arnimal translated by Kachru (1981)]

 

3)

Seeking to know man

I asked the bubble:

How live you on water?

I asked of the butcher about love

Said he: Steel your heart with love

This kababs taste better when overdone .

How live you on water?

The breath of the lover blew a bubble

Another breath and it joined water again.

Who died? what's alive is the riddle.

How live you on water? [ Mahmud Gami ]

 

Mahjur, Azad, and Zinda Kaul and their successors have tried to forge a new sensibility in some of their poems but the mystical and the lol continue to be the dominant ethos.

Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference

 

Sheikh Abdullah (1905-1982), the towering Kashmiri politician of the past half century, was a powerful advocate of the Kashmiri Muslims. His political career was launched when he galvanized his people to agitate for reforms in 1931 during the rule of Hari Singh (Kaul 1985). Next year a political party, Muslim Conference, was formed with Abdullah as its first president. Under pressure from the British the Maharaja set up a Commission to study constitutional reforms in the State. The recommendations of this Commission led to the establishment of a legislative assembly of seventy five members, thirty three of whom would be elected on a communal basis, and an extremely limited franchise. When first convened in 1934, 19 of the 21 seats allotted to the Muslims were won by the Muslim Conference.Sheikh Abdullah was much influenced by the leaders of the Indian National Congress, in particular Jawaharlal Nehru, whom he first met in 1937. He had already worked closely with the Kashmiri socialist Prem Nath Bazaz. Having by now recognized that popular Islam represented his natural constituency he decided to enlarge the scope of his political party. He stated his goal of forming a wide-based political movement in a speech in 1938:
We must end communalism by ceasing to think in terms of Muslims and non-Muslims when discussing our political problems... We must open our doors to all such Hindus and Sikhs, who like ourselves believe in the freedom of their country from the shackles of an irresponsible rule. (Bamzai 1962, p. 664)
Sheikh Abdullah clearly repudiated the sectarian policies of M.A. Jinnah and the Muslim League. In 1939 the name of Muslim Conference was changed to National Conference to emphasize its secular character. The orthodox Muslims did not forgive Abdullah for this and they remained forever opposed to him.
Sheikh Abdullah walked a tightrope to satisfy the many different groups. His speeches in mosques used religious imagery to appeal to the orthodox Muslims and disarm the influence of their leaders who challenged him. But his real hard-core support lay amongst the Kashmiris who professed the popular variety of the Islamic religion. His closeness to the leaders of the Congress Party and his emphasis on secularism led to the revival of the Muslim Conference by Ghulam Abbas. This revival also reflected the divide between the Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri Muslims of the State. Ghulam Abbas came from the Jammu province where the language is closely related to Punjabi. Muslims of Jammu saw a convergence of their interests with those of the Muslims of Punjab. On the other hand, Sheikh Abdullah was endeavouring to define a special position for the Kashmiri Muslims.
Muslim League represented the aspirations of the orthodox Islamic minority of the mullahs, the Islamic intellectuals, and the descendents of the immigrants from Central Asia and Iran. These groups felt that unless their apartness was given a legal basis they might not be able to preserve their heritage as a minority in a democratic India with its Hindu majority (Embree 1989, Gilmartin 1988, Jalal 1990, Kak 1991, Shaikh 1989). Since Kashmiri Islam is so radically different from orthodox Islam, the philosophy of Muslim League could never have mass appeal in Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah worked hard in the interests of the Kashmiri Islamic community in the emerging political frameworks of Pakistan and India. He appears to have calculated that Pakistan would eventually either imply orthodox Islam or Punjabi cultural domination.

 

Partition and the War of 1947-8

 

At the time of the partition of India in 1947, only the Muslim Conference, which was based mainly in Jammu, was in favour of the State's accession to Pakistan. On the other hand Hindu Sabha in Jammu and the Maharaja were hoping that the State could become independent. There were other groups in Jammu who wanted accession to India, whereas Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference also appeared to be working for independence but given a choice between accession to Pakistan or India they felt that they could preserve autonomy for Kashmir within the secular Indian Union. The attack by the Pakistani tribesmen forced the hand of the Maharaja. As the tribesmen reached the outskirts of Srinagar, the Maharaja sought the aid of the Indian army. He was advised that this could not be done unless the State acceded to the Indian Union. Sheikh Abdullah accompanied the Maharaja's Minister to Delhi to communicate to the Indian government acceptance by the Maharaja of all Indian conditions. On 26 October 1947 the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession.Indian troops were flown in to protect Srinagar on October 27. Soon the tribesmen and the Pakistani soldiers were in retreat. By November 14 most of the Vale was in the control of the Indian army. By winter the fighting had reached a stalemate and on 31 December 1947 Nehru referred the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations.
In 1948 the war continued at other fronts. Pakistan tried to cut off Ladakh from Kashmir but it was unable to do so. In the autumn of 1948 the Indian army captured Poonch in the Jammu province. The Indian army now threatened to cut the Pakistan controlled area in two by reaching the international border beyond Poonch. Pakistan now wished to enlarge the conflict by attacking Jammu so that the State would be cut off from India. There was great pressure on both countries to stop fighting and cease-fire took effect on 1 January 1949.

 

The New Constitution and Quotas

 

In March 1948 Sheikh Abdullah was appointed the prime minister of an interim government of the State. A Constituent Assembly was convened in October 1951. The members of this Assembly were elected and Sheikh Abdullah's National Conference won all its seats. In 1952 Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah signed an agreement in Delhi which specified that the State of Jammu and Kashmir, while part of the Indian Union, yet enjoyed certain unique rights and privileges within the Union. Thus citizens of the State had rights related to land ownership within the State which were denied to Indians from outside the State. This fact was recognized in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which was entitled " Temporary provisions with respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir" (Lamb 1966, Puri 1981).
Curiously the restriction of land ownership to the hereditary State subjects goes back to Hari Singh in 1927. This order also reserved government posts to such residents. Hari Singh had become the Maharaja two years earlier and he was trying to assert the autonomy of the State from the British paramountcy. But he was also bowing to the interests of the Hindus from Kashmir and Jammu who did not wish to have any competition for the various administrative positions from people out of the State. At that time the Kashmiri Hindus, with less than 2 per cent population of the State, constituted 80 percent of all those who had received higher education. This policy of reservation of jobs and restriction of land ownership was opposed by the Muslims of the State and outside. (Puri 1981)
Sheikh Abdullah was now trying to implement a programme that had been outlined by the National Conference in 1944 in a manifesto entitled New Kashmir . This amounted to a one-party government dedicated to social reform in the style of the Soviet Union. Sweeping land reforms were implemented in 1953. But there was also a suppression of dissent and increasing bureaucratization with its attendent corruption. Sheikh Abdullah's goal still appeared to be autonomy for the Kashmiris, but he was unwilling to allow real democracy to the other regions of Jammu and Ladakh. Growing tensions in the State led to his dismissal and detention in August 1953. He was succeeded as prime minister of the State by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed who remained in power for 10 years.
The Constituent Assembly decided upon a constitution which came into operation in January 1957. But this constitution formalized inequities in the political structure that had seeds in it for trouble down the road. The constituencies were delimited in a fashion that perpetuated control by the Kashmiris of the Vale (Jagmohan 1991). The typical constituency in the Vale had a population of 50,000 whereas it was 85,000 in the Jammu region. For elections to the Lok Sabha, Kashmir sent one representative for each one million people, while Jammu was allocated one representative for each 1.4 million people. Furthermore, the constituencies were so delimited that the Kashmiri Hindus, in spite of their population of about 7% in the Vale, could not get a single member elected on their own.
The fundamental rights of the Indian Constitution were made applicable to the State in 1954; these forbade recruitment to government jobs on communal and regional considerations. The government of the State circumvented the law by declaring all the residents of the State but the less than 3 percent Kashmiri Hindus to be backward. Quotas were now fixed for recruitment based on ethnic origin and religion both for recruitment and promotion (Puri 1983).
These policies split up the people of the State in three main worlds: one Kashmiri Muslim, the other Hindu from Jammu, and the third was that of the Kashmiri Pandit who was now discriminated against. A system of quotas in schools, colleges, and jobs was instituted. These quotas did not apply only at the entrance levels of the government departments but also for promotion to higher ranks. This system was so perverted that the candidates from the Muslim community were not chosen according to their merit either. The bureaucratic system that emerged in Kashmir must have been one of the most corrupt in India and the whole world.
It must be realized that the Muslims in Kashmir are not a monolithic community. Caste in India is a phenomenon that transcends religion (Leach 1960). Muslims in Kashmir, as Muslims elsewhere in India and Pakistan, are socially divided into castes that have traditionally worked in different occupations. Furthermore, the converts from the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, as well as the descendents of the Turks, Afghans, and the Iranians have generally maintained their identities and their status. Since performance and skills were not determinants for hiring, the urban Muslim elites, who were from a few select groups, were able to carve out a lions share of government openings. The nature of the quota system makes it out as an entitlement, so there was a great deal of resentment in the weaker Muslim classes about this matter.
In the corrupt bureaucratic world of the two Kashmirs, many of the small minority of the Hindus, who were traditionally professionals, played the game according to the new rules. Others simply left the State. And when the Central government expanded its bureaucracy in the early seventies the Hindus joined in large numbers. Having been systematically excluded from the State government jobs, the Hindus used whatever access to power they had to obtain these jobs. No wonder, therefore, that the Central government offices were perceived as being Hindu as against the Muslim State government offices.
The division between the Hindus and the Muslims of Kashmir was made worse by the Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which gives a special status to the Jammu and Kashmir State. According to this Article, apart from defence, foreign affairs, and communications the laws enacted by the Indian parliament apply to the State only with the concurrence of the State government. It is important to remember that this Article was supposed to be of a transitional nature. But it came in handy to the karkun elite who justified it by the rhetoric of socialism and kashmiriyat (Kashmiriness). This law preserved the dominance of the Muslim elite classes in Kashmir and they fought hard to preserve it. Politicians of the ruling party made embrace of this Article to be axiomatic for a belief in secularism. Anyone who questioned the wisdom of retention of Article 370 was dubbed a communalist, an obscurantist, and worse.
The psychology related to Article 370 made the Muslims feel that their State was not quite a part of India. But this sense of fostered apartness was the basis of the political alliances made throughout India by the Congress Party to maintain political power. The government controlled media harped on the themes of social justice and the remedy of quotas and set-asides. Although this approach was useful for the short-term political ends of the Congress Party and the National Conference, it increased social discord and it kept out capital needed for economic development in the State.
The forces unleashed by these policies led to a progressively greater alienation of the Muslims in the State. Fundamentalists seized upon this disaffection and they targeted the Kashmiri Hindus as being representatives of the unjust order. They argued that Indian polity had sunk into great divisions based on caste or regional origin and that the Indian system is not blind to caste, ethnic background, or religion. The fundamentalist in Kashmir said that if India is really not a secular state, as evidenced by all the quotas and reservations based on different criteria, the why should they not seek an Islamic, independent nation, or accession to Pakistan.

 

The Accord of 1974 and After

 

After spending almost 14 years since 1953 in jail, Sheikh Abdullah was finally set free in 1968. The defeat of Pakistan in the 1971 War and the consequent independence of Bangladesh seemed to ring the death knell of the two-nation theory on which India had been partitioned. This weakened the pro-Pakistan forces in the Valley considerably. Meanwhile in 1972 India and Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement which effectively superseded the U.N. role in Kashmir. Pakistan agreed to the Indian demand that both countries will not resort to force or threaten to use force in Kashmir and settle the issue bilaterally. In other words, foreign interference, mediation or arbitration was to be precluded. The 1949 cease-fire line in Jammu and Kashmir was redrawn into a new Line of Control which meant that the U.N. observers posted along the previous line became redundant.
In March 1972, Sheikh Abdullah reiterated the finality of the State's accession to India. In November 1974 he signed an accord with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi which basically signaled his acceptance of the existing political realities. When he resumed power as Chief Minister in February 1975 he was welcomed tumultuously back in the State. He now revived the National Conference Party and won a massive mandate in the elections held in 1977.
Sheikh Abdullah now faced challenges from the leaders of Jammu and Ladakh who pressed for autonomy for their regions. Furthermore he was harried by the party of orthodox Islam as represented by Jamait-e-Islami. The growing strength of the Jamait was no doubt due to the growing fundamentalism in Islamic societies around the world after the Iranian revolution. Sheikh Abdullah fought the Jamait for not respecting the traditions of Kashmiri Islam.
Sheikh Abdullah died in 1982. He was succeeded as Chief Minister by his son Farooq, who called Assembly elections in 1983 and won a majority. In July 1984 Indira Gandhi dismissed Farooq's government for mis-administration and installed G.M. Shah as the Chief Minister of a minority government. Shah, who was Farooq's brother-in-law and a rival for the leadership of the National Conference on Sheikh Abdullah's death, was widely believed to represent the pro-Pakistan group in the party. The administration became even more corrupt during his tenure. Now followed an episode of Central rule to be succeeded by a return of Farooq.
The new administration of Farooq Abdullah was as inept as the first one. The intrigues of the Congress Party increased the distance between the ruling clique and the people. Meanwhile, the pro-Pakistani elements subverted most government institutions. Then between July and December 1989 the Farooq Abdullah government released seventy hardcore terrorists. Soon civil administration literally collapsed.

 

Pakistani Direction of the Insurgency

 

With the Soviet Union taking sides in the Afghanistan civil war that began in December 1979, Pakistan became strategically very important to the U.S. President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan decided to aid the anti-communist Afghans who were fighting the Soviet troops. In 1981 Pakistan received a six year aid package from the United States worth several billion dollars. In addition the U.S. opened a pipeline through which sophisticated weaponry flowed to the Afghan mujahiddin operating from their headquarters in Peshawar. More arms and ammunition came from China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The field losses as well as a deteriorating home economy eventually forced the Soviet Union to sign an agreement in April 1988 to withdraw from Afghanistan by mid-February 1989.
This great success emboldened Zia now to try force to pry Kashmir out of Indian control. The arms and equipment that had flowed to the Afghan mujahiddin had been channeled by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI was now asked to plan and coordinate an insurgency in Kashmir. This was to complement the training of the Sikh militants which had been managed by the ISI for several years.
Although Zia died in a plane crash in August 1988, his successors pressed on with management of the insurgency under the control of the ISI. This involved running training camps for the militants, supply of arms and intelligence. This operation was launched with full intensity as the weak administration of Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh took office in Delhi in late 1989. Kidnappings, bombings, and assassinations and a literal abdication of governance by the Farooq Abdullah ministry soon virtually achieved the administrative and psychological severance of the valley from India.
Central rule was imposed on the State in January 1990. But with the money provided by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the arms flowing in from the ISI warehouses the terror unleashed on the minority communities of the Vale continued. Very soon the Hindus and the Sikhs had to flee to Jammu and Delhi for the safety of refugee camps. The terrorist groups were now hoping for a quick conclusion to their campaign. Banks, post offices, schools, colleges, cinema halls were all forced to be shut down. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto talked of a thousand year war to liberate Kashmir.

 

Refugees from the Vale

 

The terror has forced about 250,000 Kashmiris to seek refuge out of the Vale. The Indian government is waiting for the law and order situation to return to what it was in before the mass exodus began in late 1989. A carrot and stick policy has been used to control the insurgency. But the government does not appear to have done any rethinking of its basic Kashmir policy.
In refugee camps the living conditions are very poor. And now the exiles seek jobs wherever they can find them, howsoever far from their homes that they have been compelled to abandon. Can that unique tradition and culture that the Kashmiris have preserved and reinvented with each generation be saved once they are scattered in permanent exile out of the valley?
The government of India has tried to play down the refugee problem since it smacks of religious strife. Many Muslims have also been killed, and others have had to flee the valley. Recently the government of India has raised this question of continuing murder of innocent civilians by terrorists with sanctuaries in Pakistan in international forums. The U.S. government has placed Pakistan on watch as one of the countries that sponsor terrorism.
The crisis in Kashmir should not be viewed as arising just from the alleged rigging of the last elections, the mis-administration of the Farooq Abdullah years, and the Islamic fundamentalism that is sweeping the world. This is the analysis that has been embraced by the officials of the government of India. While this analysis has a ring of truth to it, it is misleading. Events of the eighties have undoubtedly contributed to the disaffection in the valley, but the seeds of separation were laid by much older policies that are still in force.
The question of the alienation of the Kashmiri Muslims has not been properly analyzed. Part of this alienation has a linguistic basis. Although the Kashmiri language is different from the other north Indian languages, all educated Kashmiris are bilingual. The second language of choice for the Kashmiri Muslims is Persianized Urdu. This sets them apart from the residents of Jammu or Kashmiri Hindus who have generally adopted Sanskritized Hindi as the second language. Another contributing factor is Islamic fundamentalism. But this alienation has been made worse by the increasing bureaucratization of Indian life which causes untold frustrations. A long-term solution to the Kashmir problem would require more decentralization that proceeds down to the city and the village level. But this restructuring must also sweep aside anachronistic statutes such as Article 370 as well as other laws that discriminate based on religion and caste.
Conditions for economic development and local business initiatives will have to be improved. This will require clipping the wings of the corrupt bureaucracy and elimination of the system of quotas and licenses. Affirmative action should be based solely on economic considerations. That is the only way traditionally disadvantaged Muslim groups will be able to benefit from new development.
The bureaucratic style of administration that has evolved in India is based on a reactive approach to problems. Many of the frustrations that the citizen, be he Hindu or Muslim, feels are due to excessive centralization. In the style of government that has been followed in Delhi and in Srinagar, people have considered all problems in political terms alone; this is natural given that the government runs the schools, the banks, the colleges, and considerable part of business and industry.

 

A Democratic Kashmir

 

The international situation which emboldened Pakistan to exploit the disaffection in Kashmir to organize an insurgency has passed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the strategic importance of Pakistan to the West is much reduced. Pakistan's own internal problems will require increasing attention from its leaders. It is, therefore, possible to look beyond the current situation and visualize a return to near normalcy in the Vale where most of the refugees will be able to return to their homes.
In the current geopolitical situation India cannot let go of the Kashmir valley because of its strategic importance. Culturally there are no reasons that the Kashmiris should feel more bound to Pakistan than India, when India has about as many Muslims as Pakistan and India's multicultural and secular society promises more freedom. But Kashmir's relationship to India will become strong only if real democracy comes into the Vale. This will require that schools, colleges, banks, and industry be increasingly privatized. Such a privatization will weave a thousand different links between organizations in Kashmir and the rest of India. But this also means that Kashmir should get rid of restrictive laws of land ownership and citizenship which have discouraged outside investment. A modern State should treat all its citizens equally, irrespective of caste, religion, and ethnic origin. The Jammu and Kashmir government, with the tacit approval of the Centre, has not done this in the past. The policies of quotas have served to divide the citizenry based on ethnic and religious basis. Economic links forged between Kashmiris and Indians outside the Vale would eventually determine the nature of their union.

 

Notes

 

According to the 1971 census the Kashmir valley had a non-Muslim population of 6 percent. However, about 250,000 refugees, which is more than 7 percent of the Vale's current estimated population, have registered with government agencies. According to Facts Speak , Panun Kashmir, Jammu the number of migrants was 242,758 in 53,750 families at the end of November 1990. India Today , January 15, 1991 speaks of more than 55,000 migrant families. It appears, therefore, that the 1971 census might have undercounted the population of the minorities in the Vale.
The Legal Documents of Kashmir

References Cited

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Drew, Frederic. 1875. The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories . London: Edward Stanford. Reprinted 1976, Graz, Austria.
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Fox, Richard G. 1985. Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making . Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Heesterman, J.C. 1985. The Inner Conflict of Tradition . Chicago: Chicago University Press.
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Jagmohan. 1991. My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir . New Delhi: Allied.
Jalal, Ayesha. 1990. The State of Martial Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kachru, B.B. 1981. Kashmiri Literature. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Kak, S.C. 1990. Religion and Politics in East Punjab. Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. 15, 435-456.
Kak, S.C. 1991. The Politics of Quotas in South Asia. Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. 16, 401-421.
Kaul, R.N. 1985. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah . New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
Kaw, R.K. 1967. The Doctrine of Recognition . Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand Institute.
Kipp, R.S. and Rodgers, S. 1987. (Editors) Indonesian Religions in Transitions . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Lakshman Jee, Swami. 1988. Kashmir Shaivism . Albany: State University of New York Press.
Lamb, A. 1966. The Kashmir Problem . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Leach, E.R. 1960. Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-West Pakistan . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Puri, Balraj. 1983. Simmering Volcano: Study of Jammu's Relations with Kashmir. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
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 http://www.kashmir-information.com/Poplar.html

Kashmir : Storm Centre of the World - The Making of Jammu & Kashmir State

CHAPTER II

THE MAKING OF JAMMU & KASHMIR STATE

Acquisition of Kashmir valley by Gulab Singh in 1846 and its incorporation in his vast Dogra Kingdom marked the beginning of a new and, from the point of view of the present study, a crucial phase in the long and chequered history of the land of Kashyap. The developments which have put Kashmir on the map of the world as a storm centre are directly linked with the international developments connected with the steady expansion of the British, the Russian and the Chinese empires in the 19th century. With the annexation of Lahore kingdom by the British which made the British Indian empire contiguous to Afghanistan and push of Czarist Russia toward Hindu-Kush mountain. Jammu and Kashmir state became the meeting ground of the three empires the British, the Russian and the Chinese. The global interests of the British then demanded that they should have a direct grip over J & K state. This impelled them to put pressure on its Dogra rulers to make them amenable to their game plan.
It is, therefore, important to have a close look on the kingdom that Gulab Singh built, its geographical position, demographic complexion and the place of vale of Kashmir in it.

An objective assesment of Gulab Singh who carved out for himself and his successors a virtually independent kingdom of over 84,000 sq. miles stretching from the pIains of Punjab to the Pamirs, Sinkiang and Tibet at a time when other Indian kingdoms, some of which had a hoary past, were falling flat like houses of cards before the fast moving British stream roller, is also relevant.
Born in 1792, Gulab Singh was a scion of the ruling family of Jammu which was one of the 22 petty Rajput states in which the sub-mountainous "Kandi" area to the north of the Punjab was then divided. He left his home at the age of seventeen in search of a soldierly fortune. He intended to go to Kabul and join the army of Shah Shuja, but his companions refused to go beyond the Indus. Then, he decided to join the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh who was at that time making his mark in the Punjab. He joined the army of Ranjit Singh in 1809, the year in which the latter signed the famous treaty of Amritsar with the British which gave him a free hand to expand his kingdom to the West of the Sutlej.

Gulab Singh soon distinguished himself as an intrepid soldier with a high sense of duty and devotion to Ranjit Singh. He made his mark in many a campaign which Ranjit Singh undertook to conquer Kangra, Multan and Hazara. He also introduced his two younger brothers, Dhian Singh and Suchet Singh, in the court of Ranjit Singh. Both of them later played a very important role in the making and moulding of the kingdom of Lahore.

Ranjit Singh rewarded Gulab Singh by appointing him Raja of his ancestral principality of Jammu and put the "Tilak" on his forehead with his own hand in 1822. Thus, after thirteen years of absence from Jammu, he returned to it as its ruler under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Having thus secured a foothold in his ancestral home, he assiduously tried to extend his influence in the surrounding areas while serving Ranjit Singh whenever and wherever required. His interests at the court of the Lahore kingdom where well looked after by his younger brother, Raja Dhian Singh, who rose to be its Prime Minister.
As Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh raised an army of his own which included such notable soldiers as Wazir Zorawar Singh. He conquered the Principalities of Bhimber, Rajouri, Bhadarwah and Kishtwar which extended the limits of his state to Rawalpindi in the west and border of Laddakh in the north-east. The valley of Kashmir which had been annexed by Ranjit Singh earlier was, however, ruled by a separate governor as a province of the Lahore kingdom and Gulab Singh had nothing to do with it.

In 1834, Gulab Singh Decided to extend his sway to Laddakh and Baltistan. He entrusted this job to Wazir Zorawar Singh who successfully led six expeditions into Laddakh between 1834 and 1841. Since Kashmir valley was not under Gulab Singh at that time, the route followed by Zorawar Singh was through Kishtwar, Padar and Zanskar. It was more difficult but much shorter than the route passing thrcugh Kashmir valley via Yojila pass.

After having conquered and added the kingdoms of Baltistan and Laddakh to the territories of Gulab Singh, Zorawar Singh decided to go forward and conquer Tibet. It was a most adventurous move. He left Leh with an army of about 5000 Dogras and Laddakhis in May 1841 with a pledge not to return to Leh till he had conquered Lhasa. After overcoming the Tibetan resistance at Rudok and Tashigong, he reached Minsar near lake Mansarover and the holy Kailash mountains. From there he advanced to Taklakot which was just about 15 miles from the borders of Nepal and Kumaon and built a fort there. Here he met two emissaries, one from the Maharaja of Nepal and the other from the British Governor of U.P., then called North-West Province. The British were not happy over Zorawar Singh's advance because they dreaded a direct link up of Lahore kingdom with the kingdom of Nepal. They had in fact been putting pressure on Lahore Darbar to press Gulab Singh to recall Zorawar Singh and vacate the Tibetan territory already occupied by him. Zorawar Singh was, however, blissfully ignorant of these moves. But an intense cold weather and the long distance from his base at Leh forced him to stop further advance and encamp at Taklakot for the winter.

In the meantime, the Lhasa authorities sent large reinforcements to meet him. On learning the approach of this new army from Lhasa, Zorawar Singh, intrepid and dashing as he was, decided to take the offensive against the advancing army instead of waiting for it to attack him. It was not a very correct decision. His supply position had become extremely bad and his Dogra soldiers had been reduced to sore straits by the intense cold. Many of them were frost-bitten and incapable of moving about. As a result the battle of Toyu, which was fought on the 11th and 12th December, 1841 at a height of about sixteen thousand feet above sea level proved disastrous for Zorawar Singh who died fighting. Dogra army like Napolean's army in Russia, was destroyed more by cold then by the Tibetans.

The death of Zorawar Singh was a grave blow to Gulab Singh's prestige in Laddakh where people rose in rebellion aided and abetted by the advancing Tibetan army. A new army was then sent from Jammu under the command of Dewan Hari Chand which suppressed the rebellion and threw back the Tibetan army after inflicting a crushing defeat on it which convincingly avenged the defeat of Toyu. Thereupon the Tibetan Government approached for peace. A peace treaty was signed on the 2nd of Asuj, 1389 Vikrami (September, 1842) by Diwan Hari Chand and Wazir Ratnu on behalf of Gulab Singh and Kalon Surkhan and Depon Pishy on behalf of Dalai Lama. By this treaty, the traditional boundary between Laddakh and Tibet 'as recognized by both sides since olden times,' was accepted as boundary between Jammu and Tibet. The village and area around Minsar near Mansarover lake which was held by the Rajas of Laddakh since 1583 was, however, retained by the Jammu government. The revenue from Minsar which lies hundreds of miles inside Tibet was being received by the Jammu and Kashmir Government regularly till 1948. This treaty of 1842 settled the boundary between Laddakh and Tibet in unequivocal terms leaving no cause for any kind of border dispute in this region.

While Zorawar Singh was making history in Laddakh and Tibet, the kingdom that Maharaja Ranjit Singh had built had fallen on evil days. Ranjit Singh died in 1839. His death was signal for the worst kind of anarchy and mutual killings in the history of the Punjab. The Sikh nobles who had been jealous of the ascendancy of the Dogra brothers in the Lahore Kingdom, now began to conspire against them with the help of Sher Singh who succeeded to the gaddi of Ranjit Singh after the death of Kharag Singh and his son Naunihal Singh in rapid succession. The situation was made much more difficult by the presence of British troops in Peshawar in terms of the Tripartite Treaty of 1838 by which Ranjit Singh had agreed to help the British to put Shah Shuja on the throne of Afghanistan. Gulab Singh was then at Peshawar to assist the British on behalf of the Lahore Durbar. The Muslim battalions of the Punjab army had refused to fight against the Muslim Afghans and had mutinied. The party in power at the Lahore court was, if not actually hostile, at least indifferent to the fate of the British troops still stranded in Afghanistan. Gulab Singh well understood the situation and proved very helpful to the British in terms of the Tripartite Treaty in getting them out of a difficult situation. The British felt gratified and at one stage actually proposed that he might be given possession of Peshawar and the valley of Jalalabad in return for Laddakh for the timely help rendered by him. But he refused the offer both on moral as well as practical grounds. Laddakh had been conquered by him through his own army and was contiguous to Jammu while Peshawar and Jalalabad would be too far removed from his ancestral base at Jammu. But the assistance he rendered created a high respect in the minds of the British for him and his Dogra army.

Things moved rapidly in Lahore after 1841. Both Dhian Singh, the ablest leader and Prime Minister of the Lahore Kingdom, and Suchet Singh were brutally murdered. Maharaja Sher Singh too was murdered and the infant Dalip Singh was put on the throne with a council of regency dominated by his mother Ranichand Kaur. Gulab Singh escaped because he kept away from Lahore most of the time. These murders of his brothers naturally left him cold toward the affairs of the Punjab and he began to concentrate on building his own power in Jammu. He took no part in the first Anglo-Sikh war which began in 1845. The Lahore Darbar wanted him to come down to Lahore and lead its armies. Had he agreed, it would have made a world of difference for both sides. His advice to the Council of Regency at Lahore to avoid war with the British was not heeded.

After the defeat of the Sikh army at Subraon in February 1846, peace negotiations were opened. Raja Gulab Singh was given full powers to negotiate on behalf of the Lahore Darbar. The British Government were well aware of the resourcefulness of Gulab Singh who was reported to have advised the Lahore Darbar to avoid pitched battles with the British and instead cross the Sutlej and attack Delhi with the help of some picked cavalry regiments. The British were, therefore, very anxious to secure his friendship. He was offered a bait that he would be recognized as an independent ruler of Jammu & Kashmir if he withdrew his support from the Lahore Darbar and made a separate deal with the British. Gulab Singh replied that he could not negotiate with the British about his own possessions while he was acting as an envoy for Dalip Singh, the king of Lahore. He continued the negotiations on behalf of the Lahore Darbar which culminated in the Treaty of Lahore signed on 9 March, 1846.
According to this Treaty of Lahore it was agreed to by the Lahore Darbar to cede the territory between the Beas and the Sutlej to the British and Pay 15 lakh pounds (Rs. One Crore Nanak Shahi) as war indemnity. Lal Singh, the then Prime Minister of the Lahore kingdom, had no love lost for Gulab Singh. He offered to the British the hill territories of the Lahore Kingdom including Jammu & Kashmir in lieu of the indemnity. His idea was "to deprive Gulab Singh of his territory and give the British the option either of holding Kashmir which would have been impossible at that time because of the long distance and intervening independent State of Punjab or to accept a reduced indemnity."2 This offer, however, suited Gulab Singh. The original offer of making him an independent ruler of Jammu & Kashmir was revised. But now it was conditioned by his taking the responsibility of paying the indemnity which had been made a charge on this territory by the cleverness of Lal Singh.
Gulab Singh agreed to pay the money to the British and they recognized him as an independent sovereign.

Accordingly, a stipulation was made in the Treaty of Lahore by which Maharaja Dalip Singh of Lahore agreed to 'recognize the independent sovereignty of Raja Gulab Singh in such territories and districts in the hills as may be made over to the said Raja Gulab Singh by a separate agreement between him and the British Government.'

Seven days later, on the sixteenth of March, 1846, the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Maharaja Gulab Singh and the British according to which Gulab Singh was recognized as an independent ruler of all the territories already in his possession together with the valley of Kashmir which until then formed a separate province of the Lahore Kingdom.

According to the Treaty of Amritsar, the British transferred for safe independent possession to Maharaja Gulab Singh and his heirs all the hilly and mountainous portions with its dependencies situated to the east of the river Indus and West of the river Ravi including Chamba and excluding Lahaul - being part of the territories ceded to the British Government by the Lahore Kingdom. In consideration for this Maharaja Gulab Singh was to pay to the British Rs. 75 Lakhs in cash.
There was stipulation in this Treaty about the British keeping a Resident or an army in Jammu & Kashmir. The Maharaja however, recognized the Supremacy of the British Government in token of which he was to present annually to the British Government one horse, 12 hill goats and 3 pairs of Kashmiri Shawls.

The amount to be paid was reduced to Rs. 75 lakhs from one crore because the British decided to retain in their own hands the territory between the Beas and the Ravi which includes the Kangra district of the Punjab because of the strategic value of Nurpur and Kangra forts. The territories of which Gulab Singh was thus recognized as an almost independent ruler also included the area between the Jhelum and the Indus in which Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, are situated. Since this area was too far removed from Jammu, he approached the British to exchange it for certain plain area near Jammu. Thus the Jhelum instead of the Indus became the western border of this kingdom.

Kashmir valley was then controlled by Shaikh Imamuddin as Governor appointed by the Lahore Darbar. He was secretly instructed by Lal Singh not to hand over the possession of the valley to Gulab Singh. As a result he put up stiff resistance to the vanguard of Gulab Singh's army when it reached Kashmir to occupy the valley in terms of the Treaty of Amritsar. Wazir Lakhpat, one of his ablest generals, lost his life in this campaign. It was only after the British had put pressure on Lahore Darbar and a new army was despatched to Kashmir that Gulab Singh could occupy the valley. Thus he obtained possession of Kashmir valley through the Treaty of Amritsar, made effective by force of arms.

After he occupied Kashmir, Col. Nathu Shah who controlled Gilgit on behalf of the Lahore Darbar transferred his allegiance to Gulab Singh who thus becarne master of Gilgit as well. Thus by 1850, Gulab Singh had become both de facto and de jure master of the whole of Jammu & Kashmir state including Jammu, Kashmir valley, Laddakh, Baltistan and Gilgit. The States of Hunza, Nagar and Ishkuman adjoining Sinkiang were added to the State by his son Ranbir Singh some years later. Some time later the ruler of Chitral also accepted suzerainty of Jammu & Kashmir. Chitral remained a feudotary of the Dogra Kingdom until 1947.

It is clear from the above account that Jammu & Kashmir State as at present constituted is the creation of Gulab Singh who welded together such diverse and far-flung areas as Jammu bordering on the Punjab, Laddakh bordering on Tibet and Gilgit bordering on Sinkiang, Afghanistan and USSR across the Pamirs.

It is wrong to describe the British grant of dejure recognition to him as master of Jammu & Kashmir as a sale deed. He was already in possession of most of this territory and would have fought for it if the British had tried to dispossess him. Actually the British had earlier offered him this territory even without payment of any money. He was forced to pay this money simply because of his own loyalty to the Lahore Darbar and the chicanery of Lal Singh.

Some writers have been very critical of Gulab Singh for not taking part in first Anglo-Sikh war of 1846 and for making a separate treaty with the British after the Treaty of Lahore under which the Lahore Darbar ceded the territories that were already in Gulab Singh's possession and Kashmir valley to the British in lieu of the war indemnity which it was not in a position to pay. This criticism is unjustified.

Gulab Singh cannot be blamed for keeping away from Lahore after the brutal murders of his brothers and nephew. He too might have met the same fate had he been in Lahore when Khalsa army went on the rampage. However, he was opposed to pitched battles with the British and had suggested attack on Delhi. His advice was not heeded. In the circumstances he could not be faulted for remaining aloof.
Jammu was his ancestral home. Other territories including Laddakh and Baltistan had been conquered by him with his own resources without any help from Lahore Darbar. As Governor of Peshawar and Commandant of Sikh forces in the first Anglo-Afghan war he had made his own assessment of the British. Developments in Lahore after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839 had convinced him that foreboding of Ranjit Singh that all territory will come under British away - "sab lal ho jayega" was coming true. Being a realist he decided to salvage as much of the Lahore kingdom as possible for himself. He was in a strong position. The British were not in a position to take on his Dogra armies at that time. They therefore, adopted a realistic course of accepting the de-facto position and get the indemnity money they needed so badly in the bargain. Gulab Singh got his de-facto position recognized by the wily British not by their grace but by pressure of the realities on the ground. Had he not been able to safeguard his possessions and get dejure recognition for them, Jammu, Kashmir, Laddakh, and Gilgit would have gone the way of Punjab and would have become ipso-facto parts of Pakistan in 1947.

It is, therefore, necessary that an objective assessment of Gulab Singh's achievements be made in the light of ground realities at that time. He was not only a great soldier but also a statesman. It is true that he was primarily concerned with his possessions and his interests. But what he achieved had far reaching impact on the interests of Hindustan as a whole. His foresight and constructive statesmanship, therefore, deserve praise and not condemnation.

It is unfortunate that such writers have failed to give not only Gulab Singh what was his due but have also failed to give due praise to his general, Wazir Zorawar Singh, whose military campaigns in Laddakh and Tibet can be compared with the campaigns of Hannibal and Napolean.
Zorawar Singh was one of the greatest military captains of the world. His prowess, quality of leadership and the strategy he adopted in his trans-Himalayan campaigns must be studied by the military leaders of free India with pride.

The events of circumstances leading to the creation of Jammu and Kashmir State as detailed above naturally made it a heterogeneous conglomeration of diverse and distinct areas devoid of any basic unity, geographical, social or cultural, except obedience to a common crown. Geographically it presented a delightful panorama of alluvial plains to the south of Jammu, obtained in return for the territory lying between the Jhelum and the Indus, melting into hills, hills melting into snowy mountains and mountains into high arid and wind swept plateaus of Laddakh and Baltistan with the vale of Kashmir as an emerald set in the centre inviting the wistful glances of all Asian neighbors.

A Conglomeration of Six Distinct Regions

Broadly speaking geography divides this State into the basin and catchment areas of three major rivers - the Chenab, the Jhelum and the Indus. The entire area from the Plains of Punjab to Panchal range of the Himalayas is drained by the Chenab. The valley of Kashmir and western districts of Mazaffarabad, Poonch and Mirpur form the basin of the Jhelum. The Indus drains the waters of Laddakh, Baltistan and Gilgit before turning south and cutting through the Himalayas to reach the Punjab plains.

From the linguistic and cultural point of view, this vast and varied state of 84471 sq. miles, bigger than many of the modern European States, whose only unity lay in a uniform and unified administrative system, could be divided into six distinct regions with distinct identities. A clear understanding of the historical and cultural background of these different peoples and regions and a proper appreciation of their economic, social and cultural moorings and political aspirations is essential for proper understanding and appraisal of the Kashmir problem.

Jammu

The first and the foremost part or region is "Dugar" better known as Jammu, the homeland of the founder of the State, as also of the Dogra people. It is directly contiguous to East Punjab and Himachal Pradesh in India and includes the entire districts of Jammu, Kathua, Udhampur including Bhadarwah and Kishtwar and the eastern parts of the erstwhile districts of Riasi and Mirpur of the administrative province of Jammu. It stretches from the Ravi in the east to roughly the cease- fire line in the west and from Suchetgarh in the south to the Banihal pass in the Pir Panchal range in the north. Its total area is about 12,000 sq. miles.

The inhabitants of this region are Dogras. Thousands of Kashmiris have also settled in the Ramban and Kishtwar areas. The Gujars, who speak a Pahari dialect, inhabit the western part of Riasi District. The total population of this region is about 30 Lakhs of which over 20 Lakh are Hindus. The spoken language of this region is Dogra which includes a number of Pahari dialects and is written in the Devnagari script.

The whole of this region is mountainous except for a narrow belt bordering on the Punjab. A few beautiful valleys like that of Bhadarwah, which is known as "miniature Kashmir," lie in its interior. The Chenab flows right through this region draining its waters and carrying its valuable timber wealth to Akhnur near Jammu before it enters the Punjab state of Pakistan. The chief occupations of its people are agriculture and soldiering. Thousands of hardy Dogras from this region serve in the Indian army. Maize and rice are the main agricultural crops. Lower Himalayan ranges traversing this region are covered with rich fir and deodar forests. Lumbering, therefore, is an important industry. Forest produce, lime, resin, honey, 'Rnardana' and medical herbs besides timber form the chief exports of this area. It is also the richest part of the state in respect of mineral wealth. Extensive deposits of coal, mica, iron and aluminium are known to exist in it.

Bhadarwah, which is now linked up with Chamba in the Himachal Pradesh and with Batote on the Jammu- Srinagar highway by motorable roads, is perhaps the most beautiful part of this region. Its fruits are superior even to those of Kashmir Valley and the natural scenery is no less charming. Kishtwar, which lies just to the north of Bhadarwah, is famous like Kashmir for its saffron fields. It forms a direct link between Dugar and Laddakh which lies to its north.

Politically, this area had remained divided into a number of small principalities ruled over by Hindu Rajas owing occasional and doubtful aIlegiance to the powerful empires rising in the plains till their unification into one compact whole by Raja Gulab Singh. Jammu is the chief town of this region and the winter capital of the whole state.

Socially, culturally, and economically the people of this region are indissolubly linked with the Dogras of East Punjab. In fact, the Dogra belt spread over Gurdaspur, and Hoshiarpur districts of East Punjab, Kangra, Chamba and Mandi districts of Himachal Pradesh, and the Dugar zone of the Jammu and Kashmir State forms a compact homeland of the Dogras. Naturally, therefore, the people of this region aspire to remain connected with India, irrespective of what happens to other parts of the State.
From the Indian point of view this is the most important part of Jammu and Kashmir State. It forms the only direct and feasible link between India and the rest of the State. The Pathankot-Jammu road and the Jammu- Banihal road that connect the rest of India with the Kashmir Valley pass entirely through this region. The choice of its inhabitants on the question of accession is beyond doubt. Its mineral and power resources are immense.

Laddakh

To the north-east of Dugar lies the extensive plateau of Laddakh. It is directly contiguous to Himachal Pradesh. It was being ruled over a local Buddhist Raja, Tradup Namgyal, when it was conquered by Wazir Zorawar Singh between 1834 and 1840 for his master Maharaja Gulab Singh. He entered Laddakh through Kishtwar in Dugar and not through Kashmir. Its total area is about 32,000 square miles and total population is about two lakhs, majority of which are Buddhists.

This is a very backward area. The inhabitants eke out a bare existence by rearing yaks and cultivating 'Girm," a kind of barley, in the few high and dry valleys of the Indus. Their chief pre-occupation is their religion. They give their best in men and material to the numerous monasteries that act as an oasis in a veritable desert. The wealth, art and learning of the people is Concentrated in these monasteries. Some of them Contain rich collections of ancient Buddhist literature in Sanskrit or its translations in Tibetan. The population is kept down by social customs like polyandry and dedication of girls and boys to the monasteries and is being further reduced by slow conversion to Islam through inter-marriages with Balti and Kashmiri Muslims. The offspring of these mixed marriages are known as "Arghuns." They form the trading community.

Leh, the chief town of this region, situated on the Indus at a height of more than 11,000 feet above sea level is one of the highest habitats in the world. It used to be the seat of the Raja of Laddakh before the Dogra conquest. After the conquest and formation of Laddakh district, it became the summer headquarters of the District Officer appointed by the State Government. It is now connected with Srinagar by a well-kept highway. It crosses the high mountains dividing Laddakh from Kashmir through the Yojila pass. Leh used to be, till a few decades back, a great mart for Central Asian trade. Caravans laden with silks, rugs and tea used to pour into Leh frorn distant Tashkand, Kashghar and Yarkand. These goods were exchanged here for sugar, cloth and other general merchandise from India. But since the absorption of these Central Asian states into empires of Russia and China, this trade has virtually stopped. But the strategic importance of Leh as a connecting link with Central Asia rernains.

A part of Ladakh was over-run by the Pakistanis in 1947- 48, when, after capturing Askardu and Kargil, they began their advance on Leh. Several hundred innocent Buddhists were murdered and many monasteries were looted, despoiled and desecrated by the invaders. But the epoch - making landings of the I.A.F. Dakotas carrying the sinews of war on the improvised airfield of Leh at more than 11,000 feet above sea level and the brilliant winter offensive of the Indian army leading to the capture of the Yojila Puss and Kargil saved Leh and the rest of Laddakh from going the way of Gilgit and Baltistan.

Baltistan

The third distinct region of the State is Baltistan inhabited by the Balti people. It lies to the north of Kashmir and west of Laddakh. For administrative purposes, it was grouped with Laddakh to form the district of that name. Its total area is about 14,000 square miles and total population about 1,30,000 according to the 1941 census. Almost all of them are Muslims by religion.

Baltistan was conquered by Wazir Zorawar Singh along with Laddakh between 1834 und 1840. Before that it was being ruled over by petty Muslim Rajas of Laddakhi descent. The chief town of this region is Askardu which used to be the winter headquarters of the Laddakh district. Situated on the Indus like Leh, it has a fort of great natural strength.

Baltistan was overrun by Pakistani troops and Gilgit Scouts during the winter of 1947-48. The State garrison in the Askardu fort held on gallantly for some months. But no effective help could be sent to them from Kashmir because the Yojila pass had passed into the control of Pakistan and aid by air was made difficult by the enemy occupation of all possible airstrips.

The winter offensive of the Indian Army in 1948 succeeded in the recapture of the Yogila Pass and the town of Kargil beyond it, which commands the road to Leh and Askardu. Thus a part of Baltistan came back into Indian hands but its major portion including the town of Askardu still lies on the Pakistan side of the cease- fire line.

Balistan is not of much economic or strategic importance. It is sandwiched between Laddakh and Gilgit. But it has provided Pakistan with a convenient route for advance toward Yojila Pass and Leh from its base in Gilgit. Its main produce are barley and fruits especially apricots. Some of the valleys of tributaries of the Indus in this zone are quite fertile. The people of this part of the State are very backward and till the time of Pak invasion of 1947, were quite indifferent to political developments in Kashmir and Jammu. But now they have been infected by Pakistani propaganda. Pakistan is known to have linked Askardu with Gilgit by a motorable road and has also built a big air base there. It is now the base of supply for Pak troops on the Siachin Glacier.

Gilgit

The fourth distinct region of the State is Gilgit. It includes the Gilgit district and feudatory states of Hunza, Nagar, Chillas, Punial, Ishkuman, Kuh and Ghizar. The total area of this region is about 16,000 square miles and the total population in 1941 was about 1,16,000. Almost all of them are shia Muslims. Most of them are followers of the Agha Khan. They belong to the Dardic race and are closely connected with the Chitralis in race, culture and language. Shina and Chitrali are the two languages spoken by them.

This region was conquered with great difficulty by Maharaja Gulab Singh and his son Maharaja Ranbir Singh between 1846 and 1860. Thousands of Dogra soldiers lost their lives in the campaign that led to the conquest of this inhospitable but strategically very important region. It is here that the three Empires, British, Chinese and Russian met. The independent Kingdom of Afghanistan also touches its boundaries.

The strategic importance of this region increased very much after the advent of air force and the expansion of the USSR and Communist China towards the Central Asian regions adjoining Gilgit and Baltistan. This region contains the fertile valley of the Gilgit river, a tributary of the Indus. The name of the entire region is derived from the name of this river.

Gilgit is divided from Kashmir by the same Himalayan range which divides Kashmir from Laddakh and Baltistan. But the direct and the shortest link between Gilgit and Kashmir is provided by another Pass, the Burzila. It is more than 13,000 feet about sea level and, therefore, remains closed for many months in the year. The access to Gilgit from Pakistan via Peshawar is comparatively easy.

The whole of Gilgit including the Burzila Pass now lies on the Pakistan side of the cease fire line. The state garrison as also the military governor appointed by the State were over-powered by Pakistani troops with the aid of the local militia, the Gilgit Scouts, during the winter of 1947. Gilgit has since been developed as a major military base by Pakistan.

From the economic point of view Gilgit is not rich though it has vast potentialities. Its climate is bracing and temperate. Temperate fruits like apple, apricot, and almonds grow in abundance. "Zira", (or cumin), a valuable spice, however, is the most valuable produce of this area and is exported in large quantities. The people are healthy and fair-colored. Polo is their national game in which they excel. They had come under Hindu and Buddhist cultural influence quite early. Gilgit probably formed a part of the Khotan Province in Ashoka's empire. A recent find of Buddhist and Sanskrit books near Gilgit confirms this view. A class of people among them is held in high esteem. They are expected not to eat beef and to remain clean. They were perhaps the Gilgiti Brahmins before their conversion to Islam.

Till 1947, these people were very much devoted to the Maharaja and his Government. They protested against the lease of Gilgit to the British. But after the partition, they, especially the Rajas of Munza and Nagar, were incited by the Pakistanis and the British Political Agent to press the Maharaja for accession to Pakistan. They later became collaborators of the Pakistanis and revolted against the Maharaja's government.

Punjabi Speaking Belt

The Punjabi speaking districts of Mirpur, Poonch and Mazaffarabad lying along the river Jhelum which forms the western boundary of the State, constitute the fifth district region of the State. Mirpur formed a part of the Jammu province, Muzaffarabad of Kashmir and Poonch was a big "Jagir" ruled over by a descendant of Raja Dhian Singh, younger brother of Gulab Singh, who rose to be the Prime Minister of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The total area of this belt is about 6,000 square miles and total population about 11 lakh. Nearly a lakh of them were Hindus. They have been either killed or squeezed out by the local Muslims with the help of Pakistani invaders. The chief towns of this area are Mirpur, Poonch, which is still in Indian hands, and Muzaffarabad on the confluence of the Jhelum and the Krishna Ganga. This last town is now the headquarters of the so-called "Azad Kashmir" government. Mirpur and Poonch were conquered by Gulab Singh for Maharaja Ranjit Singh from the loca Muslim Rajas. Muzaffarabad was acquired by him after he had occupied Kashmir by defeating its Muslim Sultan in a bloody battle.

Parts of this region are quite fertile. But the real importance of this region lies in its warlike manpower. Poonch area alone gave about sixty thousand recruits to the Indian army during the Second World War. The Sudhans, the Jarals and the Chibs who inhabit this area are Rajput converts to Islam. This area has an additional importance for Pakistan because the river Jhelum which carries the rich timber wealth of Kashmir and Karen forests flows through it. The headworks of the Upper Jhelum Canal at Mangla are situated near Mirpur in this zone. This region also links the West Punjab and the North-Western Frontier Province with the valley of Kashmir.

The people of this region are bound in bonds of common religion with those of Hazara, Rawalpindi and Jhelum districts of West Punjab. They actively sided with the Pakistani raiders when the latter invaded the State from that side. At present most of this region, except the towns of Poonch and Mendhar, lies on the Pakistan side of the cease-fire line which runs just three miles from the town of Poonch.

Kashmir Valley

In the centre of the State, surrounded by the diverse regions and peoples mentioned above and cut off from them by high Himalayan walls, lies the beautiful valley of Kashmir, the 'Nandan Vana' of India.
These geographical, and linguistic regions of the State provide the geo-political background of the Kashmir problem. The attitude of the people inhabiting these distinct regions toward the partition of India and the developments that have taken place since then, have their roots in hundred years of Dogra rule over this vast and heterogenous state. A peep into these hundred years is therefore necessary for proper understanding of the genesis of Kashmir problem.

FOOTNOTE
2. Making of Kashmir State by K. M. Panikkar: pg. 98.