From left, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru, vice president of India's interim government; Earl Mountbatten, viceroy of India; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, president of the Muslim League, discuss Britain's plan for the future of its colony at the historic India Conference in New Delhi, June 2, 1947.

The Kashmir conflict: How did it start?

The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir was sparked by a fateful decision in 1947, and has resulted in decades of violence, including two wars.

Since 1947, India and Pakistan have been locked in conflict over Kashmir, a majority-Muslim region in the northernmost part of India. The mountainous, 86,000-square-mile territory was once a princely state. Now, it is claimed by both India and Pakistan.

The roots of the conflict lie in the countries’ shared colonial past. From the 17th to the 20th century, Britain ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, first indirectly through the British East India Company, then from 1858 directly through the British crown. Over time, Britain’s power over its colony weakened, and a growing nationalist movement threatened the crown’s slipping rule.

Though it feared civil war between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority, Britain faced increasing pressure to grant independence to its colony. After World War II, Parliament decided British rule in India should end by 1948.

Britain had historically had separate electorates for Muslim citizens and reserved some political seats specifically for Muslims; that not only hemmed Muslims into a minority status, but fueled a growing Muslim separatist movement. Mohammad Ali Jinnah , a politician who headed up India’s Muslim League, began demanding a separate nation for India’s Muslim population.

“It is high time that the British Government applied their mind definitely to the division of India and the establishment of Pakistan and Hindustan, which means freedom for both,” Jinnah said in 1945 .

As religious riots broke out across British India, leaving tens of thousands dead , British and Indian leaders began to seriously consider a partition of the subcontinent based on religion. On August 14, 1947, the independent, Muslim-majority nation of Pakistan was formed. The Hindu-majority independent nation of India followed the next day.

Under the hasty terms of partition, more than 550 princely states within colonial India that were not directly governed by Britain could decide to join either new nation or remain independent.

At the time, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had a majority Muslim population, was governed by maharaja Hari Singh, a Hindu. Unlike most of the princely states which aligned themselves with one nation or the other, Singh wanted independence for Kashmir. To avert pressure to join either new nation, the maharaja signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan that allowed citizens of Kashmir to continue trade and travel with the new country. India did not sign a similar standstill agreement with the princely state.

As partition-related violence raged across the two new nations , the government of Pakistan pressured Kashmir to join it. Pro-Pakistani rebels, funded by Pakistan, took over much of western Kashmir, and in September 1947, Pashtun tribesmen streamed over the border from Pakistan into Kashmir. Singh asked for India’s help in staving off the invasion, but India responded that, in order to gain military assistance, Kashmir would have to accede to India, thus becoming part of the new country.

Singh agreed and signed the Instrument of Accession , the document that aligned Kashmir with the Dominion of India, in October 1947. Kashmir was later given special status within the Indian constitution—a status which guaranteed that Kashmir would have independence over everything but communications, foreign affairs, and defense. This special status was revoked by the Indian government in August 2019.

The maharaja's fateful decision to align Kashmir with India ushered in decades of conflict in the contested region, including two wars and a longstanding insurgency.

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Sheikh Abdullah: The Caged Lion of Kashmir

Chitralekha Zutshi (Courtesy photo)

Q: Where did the title come from and what does it convey to you?

Sheikh Abdullah was popularly referred to as Sher-i-Kashmir (Lion of Kashmir) for his role as revolutionary leader of Kashmiris. As a result, he ran afoul of the ruling dispensations and was placed behind bars a number of times throughout his political life. He was also metaphorically caged in that he could not envision a political role for himself beyond Kashmir.  

Q: Why did you choose to write about Abdullah? What about him intrigued you? Why is his story important to the historical record? Why is it important to you?

I have been researching on and writing about the history of Kashmir for nearly 30 years now and Abdullah looms large in its modern history. In addition, his legacy is controversial and contested in the subcontinent, which called for a comprehensive examination of his life. I also wanted to place his political life in the context of regional and global ideological currents such as anti-colonial nationalisms, Islamic universalism, socialism, communism and the Cold War, as well as his engagement with his advisors, well-wishers, critics, and interlocutors.

Q: History through biography is a compelling way to communicate both a person’s life and an era. Is this your first biography? What were the challenges? And at the same time, as a social/political historian, did it provide opportunities to tell the story or an era and region in a new way?

Yes, this is my first biography, and it was indeed a challenge to write it.  Historians think in terms of broad social and political movements and ideologies rather than individual lives. So I had to remind myself that the central character of the book was this one individual, but as I said earlier, he was such a colorful figure who was linked at different moments in his life with significant personalities and ideologies, which allowed me to both discuss his life as well as the larger socio-political contexts in which it played out. Another challenge I faced as Abdullah’s biographer in particular was that he did not leave behind a sizeable body of writing, so I had to cast a wide net and draw on a much larger collection of sources, including oral histories, press reports, government documents, visual materials, and the private papers of a slew of individuals who were associated with him. Finally, I had to adopt a more readable writing style so that the book would reach a broader audience beyond the academic world.

Q: You commented that you needed to work with oral histories. Were they recordings or were you able to interview anyone who knew him? Were there any interviews that stand out in your memory?

I used an array of oral histories, most of which I collected myself. I interviewed his colleagues, friends, critics, family members, and ordinary people who remembered him as a political leader. This took me to many cities and towns, including Delhi, Mumbai, Lahore, Srinagar, Anantnag, and Jammu. I enjoyed most the stories told by ordinary people who attended his rallies and were transformed politically by him, because that gave me a textured understanding of his oratory, charisma, and popular appeal.

Q: For many Americans, their knowledge of Indian political figures and history is probably limited, even though it’s the world’s largest democracy and an increasingly important political and economic force in the world. What would you like the U.S. audience to know and understand more?

Well, I want Americans to think of India beyond the stereotypes of cows, poverty, caste, and religious zealotry. I want them to be able to appreciate the subcontinent’s diversity and complexity, its varied languages and literatures, its cacophonous politics, its tradition of dissent and revolt, among other things. I also want them to recognize that the subcontinent has always been a political and economic force in the world—for instance, historically it was the lynchpin of the Indian Ocean network where a variety of people (Malays, Chinese, Gujaratis, Tamils, Portuguese, to name a few), goods (textiles, spices, horses, porcelain, again to name a few), and ideas (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, nationalism, also to name a few) were traded and exchanged. The other point that is seldom appreciated is the importance of the subcontinent’s regions in defining its past, and the role played by regional leaders, such as Abdullah, in shaping its politics and institutions in profound ways, particularly in the twentieth century.

Q: One of the phenomena we see today is the rise of strong man political leaders – often right-wing leaning. How is Abdullah similar and how is he different?

Abdullah certainly fits the bill of a strongman political leader, especially after he became the Prime Minister of the Jammu & Kashmir state in India in 1947. He decimated his political opponents, silenced the press, and in effect created a one-party state. He also carried out some revolutionary reforms, such as redistributing land to the peasants, but he did so by executive fiat rather than through a process of consultation and dialogue. The consequences of these actions eventually led to his downfall.    

Q: Can you describe Abdullah’s relationship to Jawaharlal Nehru. Were they allies, competitors, or is that too simple a description?

Abdullah and Nehru were good friends and comrades until about 1952, when their relationship began to sour. They met in 1937 and Abdullah, then a fairly unknown regional leader, became deeply influenced by the nationalist ideology of the Indian National Congress (of which Nehru was a leader). He then steered the Kashmiri movement, which had begun as a movement of and for Muslims, towards a more inclusive nationalism. Nehru fervently supported him as the sole leader of Kashmiris throughout the 1940s and even after it became apparent that Abdullah’s administration in Kashmir was repressive and anti-democratic. This was because he saw Abdullah as the vital link between Kashmir and India. Once Abdullah began to speak in terms of Kashmir’s autonomy from India, however, Nehru turned against him, and Abdullah was eventually removed from office in 1953.

Q: In your research was there anything that you learned that surprised you? Maybe you hadn’t expected?

I learned a lot about the complexities of the process of India’s transition to an independent nation-state, and of course the role played by states such as Jammu and Kashmir in shaping that process. I also came to recognize the extent to which Nehru, even as the Prime Minister of India, was constrained in his actions by a larger bureaucracy, the opposition in parliament, and global events.  

Q: Do you think you see Abdullah differently now that you’ve completed the project? Had you gone into the project with any preconceptions about him or his place in history?

I already knew a fair bit about Abdullah before undertaking this project, but while working on it, I came to appreciate the compulsions behind his choices far more, as well as recognize that despite his many limitations, he was the link between India and Pakistan that could never quite be reestablished after his death in 1982.  

Q: You’ve said he could never fulfill each identity — Muslim, nationalist, secular. Could you explain that a bit?

Abdullah was a devout Muslim and at the same time a believer in secular nationalism. For him, the Kashmiri nation could become prosperous and successful only if it encompassed the demands and aspirations of every Kashmiri regardless of religion, sect, or class background. However, especially once British India was partitioned into two antagonistic states (India and Pakistan), it became well-nigh impossible for a Muslim to be accepted as a secular nationalist in India. Abdullah, who had always walked a fine line between these identities, found himself foundering as he tried to convince his Kashmiri Muslim constituents that he was a true Muslim while at the same time trying to convince Indians that he was a secular nationalist, in the end convincing neither group.

Q: Do you think Abdullah’s story has any lessons or cautions applicable today – in the region or in a larger context?

Yes, of course, his story reminds us that the complexities of an individual’s life and political character cannot be reduced to mere labels such as conspiring traitor or revolutionary martyr. India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris built Abdullah up and tore him down depending on the context, expecting him at the same time to resolve the complicated issues surrounding the Kashmir dispute. His story also compels us to remember that the idea of the Indian nation was at one time capacious enough to include multiple religious and regional identities in which it was possible to be both a devout Hindu (such as Gandhi) or devout Muslim (such as Abdullah) and still committed to the idea of plurality and secularism.   

Q: The reception of your book has been enthusiastic in India. It seems to fulfill a strong interest or need as well as the fact that he stirs up very strong feelings. Is that an accurate appraisal? Why do you think he evokes such strong reactions?

Yes, indeed, the book has been widely excerpted, reviewed and is doing well on non-fiction bestseller lists for quite a few weeks now. In part this is because Abdullah is a significant figure whose story has not been told in a comprehensive manner or placed in its larger historical context. As I already mentioned, he has usually been seen in black and white without an examination of the reasons behind some of his political choices. My biography presents him as part of a global moment, shining a light on the ideologies and the people around him—whether his fellow revolutionaries, colleagues, critics, friends, family members, and Kashmiris as a community—that shaped his political life. As a whole, the book illuminates his life from the perspective of the role it played in the making of modern India, both in terms of the idea of India as well as its institutions as an independent country.

Q: How is Abdullah viewed among the younger generations in Kashmir? Is there a generational difference in response to him?

Yes, absolutely. The older generation of Kashmiris remember him as a soldier for their rights, almost a saint who had been sent to deliver them from a life of repression and servitude. The next generation that came of age during the time that he was behind bars and eventually made a deal with India (1975) remember him with far less fondness, blaming him for building up their aspirations for freedom only to sell them down the road in exchange for political power. The current generation of young Kashmiris does not remember him very well, and in so far as they talk about him, it is not in particularly positive terms.   

Q: Ramachandra Guha edits the Indian Lives series, of which yours is the second. Did you work with him directly? What was that like? 

Yes, I did. When Ram discovered that I was working on Abdullah’s biography, he asked me to contribute the manuscript to the Indian Lives series. I enthusiastically agreed because he would be its editor, and as a biographer par excellence, able to provide guidance through the intricacies of writing a life narrative. And he read every single word of the first draft, providing invaluable comments and suggestions that made for a better book. The comments of the anonymous reviewers for the Yale University Press edition were also extremely helpful in shaping the book’s final form. And I finally want to mention my students in the Kashmir seminar that I have taught at W&M for about the time I have been working on the book; our class discussions about the region have contributed immensely to my thought process as I worked through the project.

Q: In one interview you described the process as “a work of serious toil.” It took ten years to research and write – as you mentioned, while you were raising a family and teaching – it must have caused some sacrifices in your time – possible frustrations. What motivated you and kept you going?

I spent five years researching the book and another five years writing, re-writing, editing it. And you’re right that it took serious toil, willpower, and dedication to bring it to print. What kept me going was the encouragement and belief of all those individuals (mentors, colleagues, friends, family, my parents) that I was working on a significant project that needed to be brought to the public eye. Some of them passed while I was working on the book and that spurred me on to complete the project to honor their memory, especially their faith in my ability to produce impartial scholarship on a troubled region. The book is dedicated to the memory of my uncle, an inspiration and fierce supporter of my work. And also to my two sons, who grew up in and around my study while I was writing it, itching to ransack my papers!   

Q: The more than a decade-long process of researching and writing this biography was funded by several endowments at W&M, two sabbaticals and external fellowships. What were they?

The W&M Plumeri Award (2014) and the American Institute of Indian Studies Fellowship (2014-15) funded the first stage of research for the book during my 2014-15 sabbatical, which I spent in India.  Subsequent research trips to India were funded by the Harrison Ruffin Tyler Faculty Research Award Endowment, the James Pinckney Harrison Chair of History research funds, and the Class of 1962 Professorship research funds. I completed the US end of the research at the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland while directing the W&M DC program in fall 2016. I utilized my 2020-21 sabbatical to begin writing the book in earnest and completed it after returning to teaching in the fall of 2021 through the fall of 2023.

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Article contents

Kashmir: from princely state to insurgency.

  • Mridu Rai Mridu Rai Department of History, Presidency University
  • https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.184
  • Published online: 26 April 2018

Paradise lost, on fire, or on a river of hell: purple prose abounds in descriptions of Kashmir today. But in this instance, the hyperbole may be alarmingly close to reality. Since 1989–1990, Kashmir (i.e., the Valley rather than the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir for which the name is often informally used) has been a battleground pitting a popularly backed insurgency—sometimes accompanied by armed militancy—against Indian state dominance undergirded by one of the highest concentrations of armed forces among civilians in the world. The armed forces are about 700,000 strong in the Valley, producing an astonishing average of one soldier for every eleven civilians. A death toll in calamitous numbers (perhaps 70,000 killed and 8,000 “disappeared”, many of whom are presumed dead) countless instances of rape and torture, and the declining health of civil liberties as of individuals in Kashmir have many worried.

Most accounts seeking to explain this state of affairs begin around August 14–15, 1947. On this day were born not only the two nation-states of India and Pakistan but also the rival claims of both to Kashmir. If Kashmir’s troubles were only about the Indo-Pakistani territorial contestation, 1947 would be where to start. However, the “Kashmir Problem” encompasses other contentious aspects that have drawn less attention and whose roots are buried deeper in time. These include a crisis of legitimate governance and the interweaving of religion and politics—all playing out in the midst of contested relations between different loci of central and local power. A narrow focus on the year 1947 alone, moreover, holds Kashmir’s history hostage to Indian and Pakistani official narratives. This is evident in the work of countless political scientists and policy experts. New scholarship has pushed historical examination to go further back by at least a century, if not more, to capture vital transformations in the understandings of sovereignty, territoriality, and the legitimacy to rule that shaped Kashmiris well before 1947. These changes cast long shadows that reach into the present.

  • princely states
  • fundamentalism
  • Kashmiri Pandits

Introduction

Lying in the northern reaches of the Indian subcontinent, the valley of Kashmir is several mountain ranges surrounding an oval bowl that is so small—about ninety miles long—there are points from which some say it can be seen in its entirety. Legend ascribes its origins to the draining of a vast lake by the ancient civilization-bearing sage Kashyap. The valley that formed was named after him.

Throughout its history, Kashmir has been, despite its encircling mountains, plugged into the large domains of ideas, networks of trade, and the polities surrounding it including, besides the Indian subcontinent, what is modern-day Afghanistan, Central Asia, Tibet, and China. Its political history saw a long period of “autochthonous” rule followed by incorporation, at different points in time, into the Mughal, Afghan, and Sikh empires. In 1846 the English East India Company created a new state by bringing together Kashmir, Jammu, Ladakh, Gilgit, and Baltistan and placing them under a single maharaja. Poonch was placed under his suzerainty. There is little in common—ethnically, linguistically, or in terms of religious composition—between most of these areas to justify conjoining them other than the British geopolitical objectives they served.

When the United Nations brokered a ceasefire in January 1949 to end the first war between India and Pakistan begun in October 1947 , India was left in control of two-thirds of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). This included almost the entire Kashmir Valley, most of Jammu, part of Poonch, and most of Ladakh. Pakistan controlled one-third of the former state including a small tranche of Kashmir Valley (Muzaffarad district), western Jammu, the other part of Poonch, Gilgit, and Baltistan.

In common usage the name Kashmir connotes more than the valley, encompassing all the territories just mentioned. This metonymic status has a colonial past. Indeed, even as they enthroned rulers from Jammu as maharajas, it was possession of Kashmir that gave the state its prestige and identity in British eyes. But the politics in all of its parts indubitably weighed on each other, entwined as they became under princely rule and remained thereafter.

This essay’s focus is on the long-term context of the nearly three decades long insurgency—that began in 1989 —against Indian state domination. This compels a concentration on Kashmir, by which is meant here only the valley of Kashmir. It is Kashmiris who are the insurgent subjects of the state, demanding autonomy or separation from India or, in fewer cases, merger with Pakistan. The Indian center’s armed and unarmed responses have been fixated on quelling dissidence exclusively in Kashmir. While its repressive counterinsurgency laws technically apply to the entire state of J&K, it is in the Valley alone that they have been deployed. What follows, therefore, is a brush-strokes history of politics in Indian-controlled Kashmir from 1846 to the present. Reflecting current practice, the names Kashmir and the Valley are used interchangeably here.

Creating the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir

Ranjit Singh, the powerful founder of the Sikh kingdom centered in Lahore, died in 1839 . The passing of the “Lion of the Punjab” triggered factional infighting at the court and within the army. This endangered the frontier with Afghanistan whose stability the company considered vital to ward off any possible Russian advance into their empire. These new circumstances, led to the first Anglo-Sikh war, which began in 1845 . While hostilities ended with Sikh defeat on February 10, 1846 , the company’s victory was pyrrhic and its resources too strained to absorb all of Ranjit Singh’s territories. Rather than acquire the volatile border with Afghanistan and mountainous areas such as Kashmir or Ladakh, which were too costly to defend or control, the British limited themselves to maintaining a young puppet in Lahore and parceling out portions of the Sikh kingdom to an ally who would secure the strategically trickier areas. They chose Gulab Singh, until then the raja of Jammu (anointed by Ranjit Singh in 1822 ) and a powerful subordinate of the Sikh maharaja. He had helped the company by remaining neutral rather than intervening on his Sikh overlord’s side during the war. The Treaty of Amritsar of March 16, 1846 , rewarded Gulab Singh by making him maharaja of the newly formed kingdom now named Jammu and Kashmir.

It also transferred “forever” into Gulab’s “independent possession” and of his male heirs “all the hilly or mountainous country” east of the river Indus and west of the Ravi. 1 What was also altered critically at the same time as Kashmir was handed to the Dogras was the nature of the political world they had functioned in. The British understood the Treaty of Amritsar to transfer the rights, titles, and interests the Sikh government had possessed in the territories concerned into their own hands. These were then handed over, along with territory, “completely and absolutely” to Maharaja Gulab Singh. Before this intervention, however, rights and interests had never been owned absolutely and exclusively, nor considered transferable in the manner the British understood it. Instead, they had been arranged along a hierarchy that recognized superior and inferior rights established and maintained through accommodative and negotiated processes. Power at all levels was held by mutual recognition, this reciprocity protecting the rights of subordinates from being completely subsumed by their overlords. Furthermore, sovereignty in precolonial India had operated in overlapping polities in which rulers and officials of one dominion could exercise various degrees of influence in another. This architecture of power, authority, and sovereignty had ensured fluidity in both the content and the boundaries of kingships.

The Treaty of Amritsar drew the curtains on this world of “nested authority.” As the British moved to strengthen their new ally’s hands, the structure of relations between superior and subordinate levels of the freshly minted polity was taken apart. Within the state, the British vested solely in the person of the maharaja a lesser version of their own sovereignty; the latter was paramount in the wider imperial arena. And concerned to tidy up the clutter left behind from older overlapping sovereignties, the colonial state inaugurated notions novel in India, of a subordinate “native” sovereignty circumscribed by rigidly demarcated territorial frontiers.

Making a Hindu State in Kashmir

Created purely to meet imperial geopolitical requirements, their own sense of moral prestige required the British to ensure this arbitrary feat of state making be seen as lawful. Given the newness of Dogra rule in all its territories except Jammu, this legitimacy was sought by fashioning the Dogras into “traditional” Hindu rulers generically identified as “original” Indian sovereigns.

While their sovereignty may have been territorially circumscribed and relegated to a subordinate level, the Dogra rulers were able to turn aspects of this transformation to their own advantage. From the second maharaja Ranbir Singh’s ( r. 1856–1885 ) perspective, as a recognized ruler of his state, he was given a territory whose frontiers could not err into British domains. At the same time, he was assured of his right to rule, founded on his being a “traditional” Rajput-Hindu ruler, over this territory and its populace. Within these parameters, Ranbir Singh’s efforts were directed toward matching the political dominion allowed him and the religious identity assigned to him within the territories marked for him.

The Dogras mined in rather general ways “older” stores of Hindu symbolism “located” outside the territorial confines of their fiefdom. Besides nurturing Hindu religious practice within their own state, they became patrons of worship at Haridwar and Benares, the great Hindu sacred centers of northern India. The promotion of Sanskrit learning similarly provided access to a prestigious “Hindu” symbol. By the end of the 19th century , the Kashmiri political landscape had not only been reimagined as Hindu but also as having always been Hindu, justifying British backing of the Dogras as an act of legitimate “restoration.”

When Ranbir Singh died in 1885 , the religious boundaries of the Hindu faith united the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir in a state that not only had a Hindu ruler but that also witnessed new degrees of control over a territorialized Hindu religious arena of patronage and worship. But such firm Dogra control also meant that the competitive nature of precolonial patterns of patronage that had ensured a measure of deference to the Muslim religious domain in Kashmir disappeared. And with this went the political erasure of the vast proportion of Muslims in the state. The marginalization of Kashmiri Muslims and their exclusion—barring a small elite—from power-sharing arrangements was possible because they became peripheral to the legitimating devices instated by the Dogras and their British overlords. The British guarantee of Hindu-Dogra sovereignty vis a vis its subjects staved the need for the ruler to seek legitimacy through the older practice of granting patronage to all his diverse subject population.

In conjuring the trappings of a specifically Hindu sovereignty, the Dogras courted at least one segment of Kashmiris: the minority Pandits (forming about 4 percent of the population until 1989 , against the 95 percent Muslim population). Like its predecessors, the Dogra state recruited literate Pandits in large numbers to run their administration in the middle to lower rungs. These appointments, especially in the lucrative revenue department, translated into considerable power for a substantial segment of the Pandit community. A distinct effort was made also to cement this partnership by bringing closer together, within the broader domain of “Hinduism,” the Dogra Vishnu-centered practices and the Pandits’ Shiva- and Shakta-oriented worship. 2

It was not until the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim “riots” in 1931 , that Hindu claims to primacy in Kashmir were challenged. The British-appointed B. J. Glancy Commission was tasked with examining a wide array of economic and political grievances believed to have caused the disturbances. Its report of 1932 included a criticism of the Kashmir state’s partisan functioning in favor of its Hindu subjects to the neglect of Muslims. The work of the state’s archaeological and research department, inter alia , illustrated this. Glancy’s report stated bluntly that upholding Kashmiri Pandit claims to “a large number of buildings . . . at one time temples” but later transformed into Muslim places of worship was “impracticable” and “out of the question.” In light of “mass conversions” to Islam, as had occurred in Kashmir, it was “only natural that a number of sacred buildings devoted to the observances of one particular faith should have converted to the use of another religion.” 3 Strikingly, Glancy had invalidated the principle of “first peoples” on the basis of which the Dogras and Pandits had re-imagined Kashmir as “originally” Hindu. Drawing attention to mass conversions re-inscribed Muslims into their history and region. And, perhaps unconsciously, it also redefined the contemporary territory of Kashmir as Muslim. However, this recognition of at least the equal claims of Muslims was soon drowned out by the assertion of Indian nationalism’s sole claim to every inch of land from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

Kashmir Between India and Pakistan

In mid- August 1947 , the departing British partitioned their Indian empire into the nation-states of India and Pakistan. Less than three months after their creation, both countries trained their guns on each other in their first war to prosecute their competing claims to Kashmir.

Kashmir’s importance to Pakistani national identity is captured by its description of it as the country’s shah rag (jugular vein). It is also the letter “K” in the acronym coined in 1933 that names the country. Had J&K not been a princely state, the British would almost certainly have awarded it to Pakistan on the principles of partition applied to British Indian provinces: not only did the state have a three-quarter majority (77%) of Muslims, the latter formed majorities in all its provinces. Its three mountain-fed rivers—the Indus, Jhelum, and the Chenab—flow through Pakistan to join the Arabian Sea. Its only all-weather roads at the time led to western Punjab and the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan. 4

Pakistan has fought three wars with India over Kashmir (in 1947–1949 , 1965 and 1999 ). The last two of these, along with the India-Pakistan war of 1971 , ended with the restoration (more or less) of the 1949 cease-fire line, rechristened the Line of Control (LoC) in 1972 . Pakistan’s failure to make any territorial gains in Kashmir has not stopped it describing the Kashmir problem as the “unfinished agenda of Partition,” nor has it extinguished the impulse to prise Kashmir from India. Over the years, elements in the establishment have also provided, under the euphemistic rubric of “moral support,” finances, arms, training, and safe haven to Kashmiri fighters. And Pakistan-based terrorist outfits, such as the Lashkar-e Taiyyaba (LeT) and the Jaish-e Muhammad (JM), have supplied manpower to fight ostensibly for Kashmiri freedom. Another armed group—the Hizbul Mujahidin (HM)—though largely Kashmiri in its membership, is headquartered in Pakistan. In the context of political discontent in Indian-administered Kashmir, Pakistan has found ample opportunities for interference that it has exploited ever since 1947 . However, the oft-asserted contention that Pakistan has created the turmoil in Kashmir ab nihilio is unconvincing.

The Indian government’s claim to Kashmir was built on a document signed by Hari Singh ( r. 1925–1949 ), the last maharaja of J&K. It should also be added that if possession of Kashmir was important to Pakistan’s national ideology in religious ways, it was equally vital to fulfilling India’s national self-definition along lines tied just as much to religious identity. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, proclaimed in 1953 : “Kashmir is symbolic as it illustrates that we are a secular State, that Kashmir, with a large majority of Muslims, has nevertheless, of its own free will, wished to be associated with India.” 5 Paradoxically, then, emphasizing the Muslim-ness of Kashmir became instrumental to burnishing India’s secularity. But when this Muslim-ness began to exceed state ascription and was reappropriated as the idiom of resistance among Kashmiris, it had to be declared illegitimate and erased.

The various steps that attended J&K’s accession to India on October 26, 1947 , have been widely debated, some observers suggesting Nehru strong armed the maharaja into declaring for his country. Before signing the instrument of accession, Hari Singh had sought to explore the best terms available from India and Pakistan—since his princedom shared borders with both, he could go either way. He even contemplated independence. His vacillations ended when Pakistan attempted to force the issue by instigating a “tribal invasion” into Kashmir in October. One scholar has recently suggested it was an earlier internal revolt—in summer 1947 —by Muslims in Poonch against the maharaja’s misrule, aimed also at preempting the latter’s anticipated accession to India, that set the wheels moving; this uprising, not only antedated but also enabled the Pakistani-sponsored tribal invasion. 6 Whatever the case, the maharaja needed Nehru’s help to quell these various forces; that succor was conditional on his first officially joining the Indian union.

Kashmir’s accession was clearly understood at the time to be provisional. The day after Hari Singh signed the instrument, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India and its first governor general, made clear to the maharaja that the document would have to be ratified by a “reference to the people” of his state. On November 2, 1947 , Nehru upheld this commitment on behalf of the Indian government through his “pledge . . . not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world . . . [to] hold a referendum under international auspices such as the United Nations” to confirm the wishes of Kashmiris on joining India rather than Pakistan. 7 Upon India’s referring the matter of alleged Pakistani interference in Kashmir to the United Nations in January 1948 , the latter’s security council established the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan under whose authority, subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions, a plebiscite would be organized for all the people of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir to choose a future with India or Pakistan. Independence was only a nominal option. Despite reiterated security council resolutions calling for it between 1948 and 1957 , and repeated Kashmiri demands for it over the last seventy years, the plebiscite remains a paper-promise.

When pressed about the unfulfilled pledge, Indian governments have referred to the legality of the instrument of accession. While Hari Singh’s accession brought Kashmir into India, its terms restricted New Delhi’s jurisdiction over Kashmir to matters of foreign affairs, defense, currency, and communications. This “statutory autonomy” was later inserted into India’s constitution as Article 370. But the autonomy covenanted in Article 370 was unremittingly abraded beginning in 1953 . Today, its main role is that of a red flag that provokes, on the one hand, the anger of Kashmiris who see betrayal in its nullity, and on the other, the ire of Hindu right-wing nationalists who see in it the “appeasement” of Kashmiris, read as Muslims, separatists, and traitors.

Hollowing Out Article 370

Client Kashmiri politicians, prepared to do New Delhi’s bidding, played their part in whittling down Article 370. In this sense, the relationship between politicians in New Delhi and Jammu/Srinagar after 1947 came to imitate that between the Dogra rulers and the British paramount government. Unrepresentative rulers in the region were propped up and legitimated externally by the center so long as they did not question their government overseers in Delhi. This meant, above all, progressively silencing all talk of plebiscites and the provisional nature of the accession.

In 1947 Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, who had sharpened his political skills in the anti-Dogra movement of the 1930s, was reputedly the most respected leader in the Valley (not so much in the other regions). In 1932 he had founded the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, the word “Muslim” having been replaced by “National” in 1939 to emphasize its secular orientation. At its inception there had been an unofficial understanding that the party would stay away from both the Indian National Congress (Congress) and the All India Muslim League (League), which were the two main political parties in British India. By the mid-1940s and especially after the Second World War, as the Raj began preparations for departure such political agnosticism became impracticable. Until 1947 , neither of the two major nationalist parties had any formal presence in princely India, but both were aware that with the lapse of paramountcy, these hitherto quasi-sovereign areas would be up for grabs.

In Kashmir, Abdullah—speaking for his countrymen—found the League’s Pakistan idea insufficiently accommodating of Kashmiri distinctiveness within Muslim commonality. The Congress’s, especially Nehru’s, sympathy and indirect support for the popular movement against the maharaja led by Sheikh Abdullah was manifest. Much has been made of the similarities between Abdullah and Nehru as political personalities. But, as Balraj Puri detected, there was a portentous incongruity between their ideas of nationalism: Nehru and the Congress had long insisted on a monopoly of national legitimacy, while Abdullah spoke for a Kashmiri identity, no matter how constructed, and a political arrangement that would allow it to flourish. “Kashmiri nationalists tended to treat Indian nationalism as their ally while Indian nationalists considered Kashmiris to be their part.” 8

Abdullah, it turned out, was too much of an autonomist for either the League’s or the Congress’s tastes. He had stood with Delhi as the invading tribes from Pakistan were repelled in 1947 ; in Indian eyes this was a definitive Kashmiri rejection of the Pakistan option. However, at no point had Abdullah conceded the maharaja’s accession to be anything but provisional, the final outcome to be decided by a plebiscite. The Delhi Agreement he signed with Nehru in July 1952 ratified Kashmir’s autonomy and restricted the Indian union’s jurisdiction to the same limited terms as those in the instrument of accession.

In 1952 , not only did the plebiscite remain elusive but the pro-Dogra Praja Parishad—a party mostly of ex-state-officials and large landlords dispossessed by Abdullah’s abolition of big estates in 1950 —was agitating in Jammu, supported by Hindu right-wing parties such as the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (the precursor of the Bharatiya Janata Party established in 1980 ); they demanded, among other things, the abrogation of Article 370 and the full integration of J&K with India. Provoked, the Sheikh rearticulated independence as one of the possible options open to the state’s people voting in a plebiscite. Nehru’s government arrested Abdullah in August 1953 (he remained in jails and in exile on and off until 1975 ).

Abdullah’s ouster was achieved with the complicity of his erstwhile associates in the NC. Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, who replaced Abdullah, had been a trusted senior colleague but proved unable to resist the lure of power held out by Delhi in return for his malleability. A pattern was inaugurated and chief ministers were spun dizzyingly through the political revolving door, surviving only for as long as they were useful buttresses for Delhi’s ownership of Kashmir. Bakshi was ousted in 1963 , succeeded by G. M. Sadiq ( 1964–1971 ) who was in turn ejected and replaced by S. M. Qasim ( 1971–1975 ). Democracy became a farce as each incumbent rigged elections, thrived on nepotism, shored his power through goons, and happily distributed among his coterie the greater part of the grants-in-aid Delhi disgorged into the state. These were ostensibly for its peoples’ development, but the center was fully aware that a paltry trickle would reach them. However, maintaining these unrepresentative puppets was imperative for Delhi’s strategy in Kashmir; Article 370 obliged the Indian center, when making laws or taking decisions even on subjects falling under the union’s purview but relating to J&K, to seek the “concurrence of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.” 9 So the mock-democracy was kept up so long as Kashmiri politicians paid tribute in the form of ever-tighter integration with the union.

Fulfilling his side of the bargain, Bakshi’s government obtained his state assembly’s “concurrence” to a presidential order issued in 1954 that extended the Indian government’s right to legislate on all matters on the union list, 10 not just the three subjects to which that prerogative had been restricted since accession. In February 1954 he had announced that Kashmir had “irrevocably acceded to India more than six years ago and today we are fulfilling the formalities of our unbreakable bonds with India.” 11 This officially closed the referendum/plebiscite option; however, most Kashmiris do not accept what is seen as capitulation under Delhi’s duress.

A further series of presidential orders after 1954 have extended the arm of most laws of the Indian republic to the state, and there is virtually no central Indian institution (e.g., administrative agencies, economic enterprises, banks) that does not extend to Kashmir. Ominously, in 1964–1965 , articles of the Indian constitution authorizing the central government to dismiss elected state governments and appropriate the latter’s legislative powers were extended to Kashmir. And the governor would be appointed by Delhi rather than, as previously, by the state’s legislature. These expansions of Delhi’s power were deployed to grievous effect later.

In 1975 , Prime Minister Indira Gandhi freed Sheikh Abdullah. Although Kashmiris welcomed his release jubilantly, Abdullah had given up the ghost. The Delhi Agreement signed with Gandhi that year was a surrender; the Sheikh abjured calls for self-determination and accepted the status quo, the autonomy of his state conspicuously eroded since his first incarceration in 1953 . In return, his party was allowed to contest elections. The unkindest cut was the inclusion in the agreement’s text of a clause guaranteeing J&K would “continue to be governed by Article 370.”

The Final Thwarting of Democracy in Kashmir

Following the NC’s overwhelming victory in 1977 in the widely acknowledged first fair elections held in Kashmir, a chastened, aging, and ailing Sheikh Abdullah was reestablished as chief minister. Abdullah died in 1982 at the end of a reasonably stable tenure in power, unbridled corruption and continued nepotism notwithstanding. He had already made sure his son Farooq Abdullah would succeed him as head of the NC in 1981 . And, in 1983 , in another putatively “reasonably free and fair” elections, Abdullah fils —benefiting from dynastic afterglow and sympathy from voters still lamenting his father’s passing—won with a convincing majority.

Farooq was an ingenu in the byzantine politics of Kashmir who seemed oblivious of the directions in which Indira Gandhi was steering Congress politics. First, following her reelection in 1980 , Indira Gandhi—determined she would never be ousted as ignominiously as in 1977 —pursued a strategy of religious majoritarianism. She cultivated the Hindu vote by not-so-subtly invoking threats to national integrity from religious minorities purportedly ever ready for treason. Sikh autonomists in Punjab and Muslim ones in Kashmir were molded into illustrative specimens. In 1983 , she had campaigned successfully in Hindu-majority Jammu by raising fears of a breakup of India by Kashmiris—overwhelmingly Muslim—who resisted assimilation within the nation and, worse still, were guided by a “foreign hand.” 12

Second, Farooq Abdullah appeared inattentive to Delhi’s history of “coercive centralization” with regard to the states. Exasperating Gandhi, whose three years in the political backwoods had left her even less inclined to tolerate provincial challenges to her authority, Abdullah had not only turned down her proposal for an electoral alliance in J&K in 1983 but also began dallying with a number of other non-Congress chief ministers seeking to reshape center-state relations. In June 1984 Delhi contrived defections from the NC, aiming to form a new government supported by the Congress and headed by Abdullah’s brother-in-law, G. M. Shah. B. K. Nehru, governor of Kashmir and Gandhi’s cousin, refused to participate in such undemocratic skulduggery, prophesying catastrophe. Rather than heed his warning, she replaced him with a yes-man known mononymously as Jagmohan. He obligingly played executioner. Farooq’s dismissal on July 2, 1984 , drew popular protest not because he was beloved but because it epitomized the emptiness of democracy in Kashmir.

G. M. Shah’s hold on popular sentiment remained tenuous. It was easy for Jagmohan, following—by many accounts—stage-managed riots targeting Kashmiri Hindus in early 1986 , to dismiss the chief minister in March and take over government through the central powers extended to Kashmir in 1964–1965 . While lauded for effectuating several stalled development programs as also for “beautification” drives, Jagmohan’s other policies were less beneficial for Kashmiris: in July, he introduced article 249 of the Indian constitution allowing the center to legislate even on subjects reserved for provincial governments. Controversially, he also cut Muslim recruitment in certain government departments by half. 13 Victoria Schofield speaks of “a general onslaught on Muslim culture and identity, both through the educational curriculum and socially.” 14 Jagmohan may have gone too far when he banned the sale of meat in the Muslim-majority state on janmashtami (a festival celebrating the birth of the deity Krishna) in August 1986 . This was either dangerous hubris or perilous historical amnesia that ignored Kashmiri Muslim reaction to similar acts of Dogra high-handedness in privileging Hindu rites over the rights of other religious communities. 15

As under the Dogras, there was widespread condemnation of this interference with Muslim practice. Qazi Nisar Ahmad, the mirwaiz (chief preacher) of South Kashmir, until then little known in other parts of the Valley, challenged the ban by having two sheep slaughtered in the main square of his town of Anantnag. He went on to join other leaders in founding the Muslim United Front (MUF) in September 1986 . The MUF was a collection of Islamic parties, supported for a time by other pro-autonomy parties. It appealed to those alienated by the disintegrating NC as well as the increasing Hinduization of Indian politics, whose most visible face was the governor. Although the MUF eventually succumbed to internal bickering, at the time the combination of about eleven parties posed the first realistic threat to the NC in the valley.

Dependence on Delhi to rule in J&K was hammered home even more forcefully as 1986 drew to a close. Farooq, who had been languishing out of power, was ripe for reconciliation with the Congress. Indira Gandhi had been assassinated on October 31, 1984 , and her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, had won elections in late 1984 by a massive margin. Reversing his mother’s policy, he permitted Farooq to resume the chief ministership in November 1986 but on the condition that he ally himself with Congress in elections slated for March 1987 . This alliance with the party held primarily responsible for Kashmir’s subservience erased whatever remaining respect Farooq and the NC enjoyed among Kashmiris. And as if this unholy pact were not already bad news, the elections that ensued were thoroughly finagled.

Apart from what Sten Widmalm has described as the NC-Congress “cartel,” there were candidates fielded by the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on one extreme and the MUF on the other. What is noteworthy is that even as late as 1987 , most Kashmiris and the MUF, which included the inveterately pro-Pakistan Jamat-e-Islami (JI), still showed faith in the democratic path for political change. The cartel, unsure of victory in a fair fight, weighted down potential rivals, specially the MUF, arresting many of its leaders and workers before the polling and after for vaguely termed “antinational activities.” As Widmalm points out, “ostensibly autonomous state authorities” such as the Election Commission and the High Court were silent despite widespread allegations of election fraud. 16 Although the MUF never expected to come away with a government-forming majority, it was cheated out of at least six of the ten seats it had anticipated winning.

The Insurgency in Kashmir

The scuttling of these elections was a monumental bungle by the Indian center and its allies in Kashmir. The polls had elicited the participation of 75% of the voters in the state, and 80% in the Valley alone. 17 More people had voted than ever before and so more people became disenchanted with democracy than ever before. Abdul Ghani Lone, leader of the People’s Conference, said: “It was this that motivated the young generation to say ‘to hell with the democratic process . . . let’s go for the armed struggle.’ It was the flashpoint.” 18

Indeed some of the most prominent figures of the armed resistance that began soon after had been either candidates or campaign workers of the MUF. Among them Yasin Malik, who became chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), had worked as an election agent for an MUF candidate. That candidate, Mohammed Yusuf Shah, became the commander-in-chief of the HM; he is better known by his alias, Sheikh Salahuddin, after the 12th-century hero of the crusades.

Farooq Abullah’s second term as chief minister was shambolic. Many Kashmiris disillusioned by the elections had crossed the LoC into Pakistan-administered Kashmir for military training and arms. And within a year, the impact was felt in the Valley. The JKLF had hurled their first bombs at the end of July 1988 . Hartals (strikes) and bandhs (shut downs) became routine, gobbling up one-third of the working days in 1989 ; assassinations, bomb blasts, and assaults on government property filled the year’s annals.

Jagmohan held “fanaticism and fundamentalism” responsible for the ills of Kashmir. 19 His bugbear, Farooq Abdullah, also denounced all protestors as “fundamentalist and Pro-Pakistani.” These tags were attached even to those demanding purely economic relief. Thus, police fired at demonstrators—killing several—who were protesting a sharp hike in electricity rates in 1988 . Similarly, the leaders of an agitation opposing the import of fungus-infested flour were incarcerated under anti-terrorist laws. 20

Jagmohan expressed shock at the “lack of concern and seriousness” Farooq Abdullah showed despite every sign of serious trouble. “He is a disco dancer,” sneered even young Kashmiris in downtown Srinagar in 1989 , dismissing the bon vivant Abdullah. 21 Unable to halt the slide into insurgency, Abdullah blustered: bragging that he had “the backing of the Indian government,” he threatened to arrest hundreds of thousands of protestors, to obliterate defiant neighborhoods in Srinagar and to “break the legs of protestors before burying them alive.” 22 Once again, echoes resound of Dogra rule: internal turmoil neutralized by the external backing of a paramount power.

Farooq Abullah’s government had careened beyond control by the end of 1989 . In December, V. P. Singh replaced Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister. He appointed a Kashmiri Muslim, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, as India’s home minister. On December 8, 1989 , the JKLF kidnapped Sayeed’s daughter, Dr. Rubaiya Sayeed, demanding the release of five militants for her return. V. P. Singh’s government set them free within five days; Delhi’s swift capitulation sent morale skyrocketing in Kashmir, and the liberated militants were fêted in Srinagar’s streets. Hopes of an imminent azadi soared; the disappointment in the months to follow was crushing in equal measure.

As strongman or fireman, depending on one’s perspective, Jagmohan was sent to J&K again, arriving in Jammu, the winter capital, on January 19, 1990 , where he was sworn in for his second gubernatorial term. A second swearing in ceremony was eventually held in Srinagar, the summer capital, on January 21st. The Indian government needed to recover ground lost so disastrously in Kashmir, and Jagmohan was expected to add some iron back to Delhi’s fist. On hearing of Jagmohan’s imminent arrival, Farooq Abdullah put in his papers, refusing to work with “a man who hates the guts of Muslims.” 23 There was a new adamancy and repressiveness in India’s stance during Jagmohan’s governorship. Even though its duration of less than five months was short, by the end of it there was near-complete Kashmiri disaffection with India.

Jagmohan’s new term opened with harsh action, setting the tone for the rest of it. On January 21, 1990 , about twenty-thousand Kashmiris, defying a curfew, marched to peacefully protest illegal searches and arrests that had been ordered on the night of January 19. The ensuing gunfire by paramilitary forces killed about two hundred people. As disquieting as the high fatality—including children—were the ruthlessness and religious bias on the part of the security forces: they shot at even those who were already injured and threw those who were barely alive into the stream below, hurling anti-Muslim abuse all the while. 24 Balraj Puri suggests it was with this “incident” that “militancy entered a new phase. It was no longer a fight between the militants and the security forces. It gradually assumed the form of a total insurgency of the entire population.” 25 This carnage—named after the Gawkadal Bridge in Srinagar on which it took place—holds the same place in Kashmiri memory as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre does in Indian minds. Interestingly, the Gawkadal massacre finds no mention in Jagmohan’s otherwise bulky memoirs. Nor, unlike even Jallianwala, was any public enquiry ordered.

The following months witnessed more of the same: so-called counter-insurgency operating in top gear. And then came the Hawal massacre. On May 21, 1990 , unknown gunmen assassinated the highly respected Maulvi Farooq, the mirwaiz of the Jama Masjid in Srinagar and leader of the Awami Action Committee (founded in 1963 ). While most Kashmiris at the time had blamed the Indian government for his murder, today it is widely accepted as the handiwork of pro-Pakistan militants, many adding sotto voce that they were HM. 26 As the procession of thousands of mourners passed through the Hawal quarter of Srinagar, CRPF troops fired without provocation, killing more than sixty people and injuring hundreds. According to eyewitnesses, not even the mirwaiz’s coffined corpse was spared: his body was riddled with bullets. 27

No one has yet been punished for the Hawal killings except perhaps Jagmohan, who was dismissed on May 25, 1990 . Soon after his removal he summarized his views on Kashmir for the magazine Curren t. “Every Muslim in Kashmir is a militant today,” he asserted. He added chillingly that the “bullet is the only solution for Kashmir. Unless the militants are fully wiped out, normalcy can’t return to the valley.” 28 Since he had already declared every Kashmiri Muslim a militant, his proposed “solution” reverberates with hair-raising finality. It is small wonder that Kashmiris still speak of Jagmohan as “ Jagmaar watul ” or “ laash watul ,” evoking a ghoulish collector of corpses. 29

Who Are the Militants?

By 1989 , the Valley had witnessed a proliferation of militant groups, some demanding independence ( azadi ) and others wanting a merger with Pakistan. Several of the parties comprising the MUF had grown militant wings of their own: Al Barq was the armed adjunct of Abdul Ghani Lone’s People’s Conference and Al Fateh of Shabbir Shah’s People’s League, both in favor of independence. Most of the smaller groups have disappeared. Among those still standing, the largest and best equipped is the HM, the armed auxiliary of the JI, in favor of integration with Pakistan. In the mid-1990s a number of “foreign militants”—mostly “jihadis” rendered jobless after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 (including Afghans, Chechens, Somalis, and others)—joined combat in Kashmir. Freewheeling mercenaries, their ideological commitments—if there were any—were nebulous. And then, there are the Pakistan-backed LeT and JM, which are still active in small numbers in the 21st century .

But it was the JKLF—with its goal of an independent J&K encompassing the territories that had formed the old princely state—that had led the charge in 1988 . Besides throwing bombs and organizing kidnappings, the JKLF also conducted a series of targeted killings, especially in 1989 and 1990 . These have continued to fuel fierce debates, questioning the group’s professed allegiance to the ideals of secularism, since several of the victims were Hindus. The JKLF’s defense has been that their targets were picked not for their religion but only for their association with the state apparatuses of Kashmir and India, seen as instruments of Kashmir’s subjugation. But not all its killings can be justified as acts of war.

Within a few years, however, the JKLF suffered severe attrition through “combat deaths and arrests.” It is believed that, besides Indian security forces, it was the HM, backed by the Pakistani army, which was responsible for the destruction of the JKLF’s ranks. The latter’s pro-independence stance did not appeal to the Pakistani establishment. In 1994 Yasin Malik announced that the JKLF was renouncing violence and would struggle only through peaceful “civil disobedience.” So far as is known, they have not broken their word.

A year earlier, in 1993 , some twenty-six parties seeking Kashmiri separation from India had come together as the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (Hurriyat). However, there is little common ground in the members’ political aims beyond the threadbare unity that their demand for self-determination provides. Since its formation, the Hurriyat has split into “hard-line” and “moderate” factions. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, head of the Islamist JI advocating merger with Pakistan, leads the hardliners. The convenor of the latter faction is Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, son and successor of Maulvi Farooq, who, with Yasin Malik, is pro- independence.

Since these groups have routinely boycotted elections, there is no reliable quantitative measure of their influence. However, several admittedly impressionistic surveys have suggested that despite the JKLF’s attenuation, its ideology of independence (eschewing both India and Pakistan), which is based on a secular and democratic polity, remains the most widely supported in Kashmir (and opposed in Jammu and Ladakh). Therefore, all groups have had to accommodate this particular definition of azadi. Whenever the JI was asked how the goal of an independent Kashmir can be reconciled with its well-known advocacy for an Islamic Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, the party has dodged the question. Fudging has become even more necessary since 2008 when thousands of Kashmiris began coming out in spontaneous nonviolent anti-India protests rallying around the slogan of azadi. The JI’s ability to evade resolving its paradoxical stance indicates the complicity of pro-independence leaders in not calling them out. Presumably even the appearance of a united front is considered necessary.

Draco in Kashmir: The Laws of Impunity

Jagmohan’s departure in May 1990 brought little reprieve from Delhi’s strong arm. It is telling that his successors for the next eighteen years were a former officer of the R&AW (India’s external intelligence agency) and two retired generals. Each may have appeared to retreat a few paces from Jagmohan’s brashly confrontational policies in Kashmir, but they were no less determined to pulverize the uprising.

In September 1990 , the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was extended to J&K, in effect bestowing upon soldiers a free pass to kill. Schofield recounts how, soon after its application to the Valley, security forces went “on ‘a binge’” of violent retaliation for a militant ambush. 30 In areas designated “disturbed” according to broad criteria, the act permits the armed forces to shoot to kill, search, and arrest—all without a warrant—ensuring their immunity from prosecution. The armed forces, and civilians who support them, defend the act as necessary for counter-insurgency operations. In the rare cases when members of the armed forces are indicted for violating human rights, they are promptly plucked out of the arena of civilian justice and placed in courts martial. The rates of conviction have been notoriously low; and punishment, when meted out at all, has been so light as to hardly constitute a deterrent.

The AFSPA is not the only law that permits impunity in Kashmir. Predating it is the Public Safety Act (PSA) of 1978 . As applied in J&K the act, according to legal experts, “falls short of the recognized norms of justice.” The state can detain any person without charge or trial for up to one year in the name of keeping public order—or up to two years on “the purported presumption that they may in the future commit acts harmful to the state.” The upper limit on the period of detention is frequently violated. Those arrested under the PSA are denied access to their family, friends, or legal counsel for long periods, making detainees invisible for months and therefore more vulnerable to torture. 31

The many official and unofficial deviations from standards set by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ( 1966 )—to which India is a party—prompted a damning assessment of the Indian state’s actions from the International Commission of Jurists. The report of its mission, sent to the region in 1993 , concluded that “in substance, India has treated the situation of Jammu and Kashmir as a state of emergency” but without declaring it as such “in international terms.” 32 This enables it to evade calls for “accountability and transparency.”

Common sense suggests that an “emergency” lasting three decades is an oxymoron. However, the idea of violence-exuding Kashmir provides emergency-on-a-loop through constantly suppressing which Indian sovereignty forms and reforms itself. In contemporary India, the “state of emergency” has been frequently proclaimed in wars for protecting the territorial integrity of the country, allowing the state to make laws, exceed them, or suspend them to keep its citizens in check. This may explain why the largely non-violent character of massive protests in the Valley since 2008 has been—rather than acknowledged and highlighted—overlooked by the Indian state. Further, Kashmiri agitations have been deprecated as the creation of religious fundamentalists. That the majority of the demonstrators are Muslim has been sufficient to mark them as Islamist demonstrations. That their political slogans are inflected in the religio-cultural idiom of Muslims serves as proof of “jihadism.” That the figure of the violent Kashmiri Muslim citizen/terrorist exists—exemplifying the state of emergency—allows the state to accrue more power and the orderly sovereignty of the republic to emerge stronger than ever.

The Kashmiri Pandit Exodus

Returning to January 19, 1990 , on the night of Jagmohan’s swearing in in Jammu and a day and half before he repeated the ceremony in Srinagar, Kashmiri Pandits began leaving their homeland in Kashmir in large numbers. According to some estimates, out of a population of 140,000 a dramatically high proportion—100,000—were said to have left beginning on that date and in the months after. Others have suggested higher figures for Pandit departures at 250,000. By 2011 , the numbers of those remaining in the Valley had dwindled to about three thousand, give or take a few hundred. An insignificant number have returned.

Explaining the exit of Pandits is an ideological minefield. Some have attributed their departure entirely to the machinations of the Indian government, specifically by Jagmohan. He allegedly encouraged non-Muslims in Kashmir to leave, making arrangements for their exit so as to clear the ground for military action against “terrorists” without the risk of collateral damage to Hindus. Others speak of calls issued from mosques, announcements in newspapers, and of posters and pamphlets distributed by Islamist groups who threatened to kill non-Muslims who would not leave Kashmir.

There can be no single explanation for the departure of so many at different points in time. The different reasons for the departures will remain mired in controversy until there can be a careful sifting through disputed facts and memories at variance—a tall order in a war zone. But that so many Pandits left their homeland so quickly belies arguments that this “exodus” was entirely voluntary. It seems reasonable to suggest that many Pandits left because of a clear sense that they, their families, and their futures were no longer secure in Kashmir.

Much Pandit discourse, however, implies that Kashmiri Muslims were collectively complicit in their “expulsion,” even if only through their silence or inaction. This allusion is fortified by the absence in Pandit narratives of exile of any acknowledgment that Muslims, too, have suffered from decades of unrest. 33 Such partial narration implicates the many Kashmiri Muslims in the actions of a few aggressors. The bridging of these fractured perspectives is made harder by the fact that at least one generation of both Kashmiri Hindus and Muslims has grown up in each other’s absence. The rift is fertile terrain for manipulation.

Making Kashmir Hindu Again?

Indian political parties, especially the BJP and its ideological partner, the “apolitical” Rashtriya Swayamsevaka Sangh, have dredged the suffering of displaced Pandits for political gold. Recycling the rhetoric of bloody vivisection derived from Partition narratives, the Hindu Right has reinforced both the image of the nation as a sacralized geo-body—an embodiment of a mother goddess—and of its parts as “ atoot ang ” (unbreakable part). 34 Kashmiri Pandit “aborigines” driven out of their homeland—the abode of high and ancient Hindu traditions—by Kashmiri Muslim separatists/terrorists provide the perfect pretext for flexing Hindu muscles in the name of a deified Bharat Mata (Mother India).

Already in a convention in Jammu in December 1991 , Panun Kashmir (Our own Kashmir), a radical organization of Pandit refugees, had defined its demands in a “Homeland Resolution.” Its website asserts its aim is to “ Save Kashmiri Pandits to Save Kashmir to Save India ” by “reconquer[ing] that Kashmir which is almost lost” to the “Islamic religious fundamentalists in the valley of Kashmir.” 35

In the Hindu right-wingers’ view, Article 370, howsoever emaciated, is the severing scimitar that must be sheathed. Article 35A of the Indian constitution added through a presidential order in 1954 and issued under Article 370 not only sanctions the state’s legislature to define who permanent residents are but also guarantees special provisions to them. Among them is the reservation of certain entitlements to “permanent residents” (formerly termed “state subjects”), namely the rights to acquire immovable property, to vote in elections, and eligibility for certain government positions in the state

These were (except voting rights), beneficences the Dogra maharaja had granted in the early 20th century following agitations spearheaded by his more privileged Hindu subjects; their concern had been to stem the steady accumulation of wealth (including land) and the cornering of positions in the administration by growing numbers of “outsiders.” To hear many contemporary Indians speak one might imagine this dispensation to be the brainchild of Kashmiri Muslim “separatism.” So the abrogation of these privileges—indeed the exorcism of even the spectral presence of Article 370—is demanded vigorously by sections of Indians who view them as blasphemy against the cult of national integration. In the view of Hindu supremacists, article 35A is a vexing obstacle in the way of the only satisfactory solution of the “Kashmir problem”: inundating the state with (Hindu) Indians—including Pandit returnees—armed with the right to vote and to acquire land. In this view, the clock must be turned back and Kashmir made Hindu again.

The State of the Insurgency

The course of the insurgency has neither run smooth nor remained static. Not only has the pro-freedom leadership changed over time but so has the attitude of ordinary Kashmiris towards militants. Insurrection-fatigue had descended in the mid-1990s, with many Kashmiris feeling ground down by both the “military and the militants.” Several militant outfits had degenerated into engines of extortion. The security apparatus’s strategy of working through “renegades”—armed insurgents who had been turned—to deal with other militants, set loose an unprincipled horde on the civilian population. And many ordinary Kashmiris were terrorized by the “foreign” fighters who had little in common either with them or their political aspirations. In 1995 there had been widespread Kashmiri revulsion at the kidnapping of six Western tourists, five of whom were killed, by a shadowy group called Al Faran. However, the Indian state’s pacification drives, so to speak, had largely defeated the armed insurgency by the early 2000s. In mid- 2017 , police reports suggested there were only about two hundred armed militants active in Kashmir, compared to the several thousands through the 1990s.

However, while armed uprising may have been contained, the rebellion itself was far from over. As mentioned earlier, the most dramatic change came in 2008 . Younger Kashmiris, born around the 1990s, who know life only under militarization and are witnesses to the previous generation’s elimination, exhaustion, despair, or cynicism, began organizing massive non-violent demonstrations against Indian occupation. Agitation in summer 2008 was triggered by the government’s controversial decision to transfer ninety-nine acres of forestland to the semi-government board in charge of the annual Hindu pilgrimage to Amarnath in Kashmir. Ostensibly intended to provide facilities for pilgrims, large numbers of Kashmiri Muslims suspected a move to alter the state’s demographic composition. Widespread resistance erupted—one particular rally drew more than half a million protesters—and remained defiantly non-violent.

And the demonstrations, in that and the following years, were largely spontaneous. This was especially evident in 2010 . That summer the impetus of protest had come from the ground up, catching even the pro-freedom leadership by surprise; Geelani, Malik, and the mirwaiz were left belatedly scrambling to get back in the driver’s seat. Their hold on it is still shaky.

Since 2016 , after a brief lull following the “bloody summer of 2010 ,” Kashmiris have been facing an unchanging status quo and an increased severity in the security forces’ campaigns, encouraged by a hardline BJP government in power in Delhi since May 2014 . Since March 2015 , the BJP also forms, along with the Kashmir-based Peoples Democratic Party, a coalition government in the state of J&K. Yet many young Kashmiris, including uniformed schoolchildren and female college students, have been coming out in multitudes again to protest. Observers describe a mood of intensified defiance among Kashmiris, matching that of grim determination in Delhi, as they, “look[ing] death in the eye,” hurl stones even at fully armed soldiers engaged in gun battles with militants. But, by and large, the new insurgent is resolutely non-violent—except for stone pelting—and instead uses social media platforms and writes works of history and anthropology, novels, and poetry. The new insurgents are artists, journalists, photographers or filmmakers and often protest via rap and hip-hop. 36 This is not to say violent militancy has disappeared from Kashmir but to emphasize that it is not dominant, if it ever was.

Primary Sources

For the pre-1947 period, the British Library (London) holds the important Crown Representative’s Records (R/1/1) and the Crown Representative’s Residency Records (R/2). The library also has a wealth of private papers—grouped in the Mss.Eur. section—of former British administrators, army personnel, and various European travelers who have left their accounts of Kashmir. The National Archives of India (New Delhi) supplies plentiful material in its Foreign Department, Foreign and Political Department, and Home Department records. However, public access to Kashmir-related materials from the period after 1924 is restricted. The Jammu and Kashmir State Archives (repositories in Jammu and Srinagar) have a vast collection of the princely state’s records. Notable among are the Old English, Political Department, and General Department records. The Research and Publication Division of the University of Kashmir (Srinagar) owns a wide range of material in Persian, Urdu, and Kashmiri. These include histories, memoirs, and administrative manuals. Particularly interesting is the twelve-volume collected papers of Mirza Saifuddin, a spy for the East India Company at the Dogra court.

For the post-1947 period, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (New Delhi) houses an extensive collection of the private papers of important political figures and parties that influenced Kashmir’s history. The same library has perhaps the most exhaustive collection of Indian newspapers. More recent newspapers from Kashmir have online editions. There is, in addition, an abundance of novels, memoirs, art collections produced by Kashmiris that provide unique insights into a range of perspectives on the region’s most recent history.

Further Reading

Monographs and articles.

  • Aggarwal, Ravina . Beyond Lines of Control: Performance and Politics on the Disputed Borders of Ladakh, India . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
  • Bose, Sumantra . The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination and a Just Peace . London: SAGE, 1997.
  • Bose, Sumantra . Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
  • Bose, Sumantra . Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
  • Bhan, Mona . Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare? London: Routledge, 2015.
  • Duschinski, Haley . “‘Survival is Now Our Politics’: Kashmiri Hindu Community and the Politics of Homeland,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 12, no.1 (2008): 41–64.
  • Junaid, Mohammad . “Death and Life Under Occupation: Space, Violence, and Memory in Kashmir.” In Everyday Occupations: Experiencing Militarism in South Asia and the Middle East . Edited by Kamala Visweswaran , 158–190. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
  • Kabir, Ananya Jahanara . Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
  • Kak, Sanjay , ed. Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir . New Delhi: Penguin, 2011.
  • Rai, Mridu . Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam Rights and the History of Kashmir . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
  • Robinson, Cabeiri deBurgh . Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
  • Schofield, Victoria . Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War . London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003.
  • Zutshi, Chitralekha . Languages of Belonging: Islam and Political Culture in Kashmir . New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • Zutshi, Chitralekha . Kashmir’s Contested Pasts: Narratives, Sacred Geographies and the Historical Imagination . New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Gigoo, Sidhartha . The Garden of Solitude . New Delhi: Rupa, 2010.
  • Roy, Arundhati . The Ministry of Utmost Happiness . Gurgaon, India: Penguin Random House India, 2017.
  • Rushdie, Salman . Shalimar the Clown . London: Vintage, 2006.
  • Sajad, Malik . Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir . London: Fourth Estate, 2015.
  • Waheed, Mirza . The Collaborator . London: Penguin, 2012.
  • Waheed, Mirza . The Book of Gold Leaves . Gurgaon, India: Penguin, 2014.

1. These came to include the territories of Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Baltistan, and Gilgit.

2. See Mridu Rai , Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

3. B. J. Glancy , Report of the Commission Appointed Under the Orders of His Highness the Maharaja Bahadur . . . to Enquire into Grievances and Complaints (Jammu, India: Ranbir Government Press, 1932), 4.

4. Alice Thorner , “The Kashmir Conflict,” The Middle East Journal 3, no. 1 (1949): 18.

5. S. K. Sharma and S. R. Bakshi , eds., Nehru and Kashmir (Jammu, India: Jay Kay Book House, 1995), 308.

6. Christopher Snedden , The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir (London: C. Hurst, 2012).

7. Jawaharlal Nehru as cited in Sumantra Bose , Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 169.

8. Balraj Puri , “The Era of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah,” Economic and Political Weekly , 18, no. 6 (February 5, 1983): 187.

9. Bose, Contested Lands , 170.

10. The Constitution of India divides powers into union and state lists over which jurisdiction lies with the central and provincial governments respectively. A third list—the concurrent—comprises powers over which both the central and provincial governments can legislate with priority to the center.

11. Bose, Contested Lands , 171.

12. The “foreign hand” was, of course, a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan, deemed the eternal provocateur of all domestic difficulties in India.

13. Sumantra Bose , The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination and a Just Peace (London: SAGE, 1997), 43–44.

14. Victoria Schofield , Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 135–136.

15. Rai, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects , 178–182.

16. Sten Widmalm , “The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir,” Asian Survey 37, no. 11 (1997): 1005–1030.

17. Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict , 137.

18. Widmalm, “The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir,” 1021–1022.

19. Jagmohan , My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1991), 111–125.

20. Inderjit Badhwar , “Valley of Tears,” India Today , May 31, 1989, retrieved from http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kashmir-witnesses-dangerous-rise-of-militancy-as-violence-rocks-valley/1/323526.html

21. Badhwar, “Valley of Tears.”

22. Bose, The Challenge in Kashmir , 47.

23. Farooq Abdullah as cited in Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict , 147.

24. Tapan Bose , Dinesh Mohan , Gautam Navlakha and Sumanta Banerjee , “India’s ‘Kashmir War’,” Economic and Political Weekly 25, no. 13 (1990): 651–652.

25. Puri cited in Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict , 148.

26. “Our Own Killed Lone, Maulvi Farooq, Not India: Bhat,” Outlook , Srinagar, January 3, 2011, retrieved from https://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/our-own-killed-lone-maulvi-farooq-not-india-bhat/707116

27. Arif Shafi Wani , “Hawal Massacre Anniversary,” Greater Kashmir , 20 May 2015. Retrieved from http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/kashmir/hawal-massacre-anniversary-it-was-hell-saw-paramilitary-men-firing-with-machine-guns-on-civilians/186931.html

28. Jagmohan cited in Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict , 154.

29. Sumegha Gulati , “Why Kashmiris are using the hashtag #JagmohanTheMurderer after the Padma award announcement,” Scroll.in , 29 January 2016. Retrieved from https://scroll.in/article/802579/why-kashmiris-are-recalling-jagmohanthemurderer-after-the-padma-award-announcement

30. Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict , 156.

31. Syed Junaid Hashmi , “Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act-1978,” Countercurrents.org , May 1, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.countercurrents.org/hashmi010507.htm

32. Sir William Goodhart , Dr. Dalmo de Abreu Dallari , Ms. Florence Butegwa , and Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn , Human Rights in Kashmir: Report of a Mission (Geneva, Switzerland: International Commission of Jurists, 1995), 42.

33. See Siddhartha Gigoo , The Garden of Solitude (New Delhi: Rupa, 2010); Siddhartha Gigoo and Varad Sharma , eds., A Long Dream of Home: The Persecution, Exodus and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2015); and Rahul Pandita , Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir (Gurgaon, India: Vintage, 2013).

34. See Sumathi Ramaswamy , The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

35. Panun Kashmir website . Emphasis in the original.

36. M. Najeeb Mubarki , “Stone Manifesto,” Outlook , 25 July 2016. Retrieved from https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/stone-manifesto/297544 ; Sanjay Kak , “The Fire Is at My Heart: An Introduction,” in Sanjay Kak , ed., Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011).

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Kashmir: A Historical Timeline

A chronicle of key political events that undergird the movement for self-determination.

--> Mohamad Junaid Summer 2020

history of kashmir essay

  • Intervention

Kashmir emerged as an “international dispute” in 1947, but looking at the Kashmir question exclusively from that prism privileges India-Pakistan state-centric perspectives while erasing Kashmir’s own distinct political history. To begin to understand the Kashmiri aspiration for self-determination, it is important to trace the major events that have shaped Kashmiri political subjectivity. Kashmir’s political history is a complex and volatile interaction between external forces and internal struggles. Keeping this in mind, I present this timeline as a resource for those curious about what drives the Kashmiri movement for self-determination despite the tremendous odds it faces. To be clear, the timeline is not the history of Kashmir, but a chronicle of key political events. In being so, the timeline falls squarely within the long tradition of Kashmiri chronicle writing. I start with the year 1586 because many Kashmiris see the arrival of the Mughals as the first tragic entanglement of Kashmir with South Asia.    

Apart from the brief periods, when it was part of the Buddhist empires of Ashoka (~300 BC) and Kushans (~130 AD), Kashmir had remained more or less independent under a series of regional dynasties, including Hindu-Buddhist Karkotas and Muslim Shah-Miris. The centuries of complex interaction between indigenous peoples of Kashmir and Aryan settlers, and later preachers from South India, Central Asia and Iran, had led to mass conversions to Buddhism, Shaivism, and eventually Islam. In 1586, Mughal Emperor Akbar attempts a conquest of Kashmir, but is thwarted by the last native Kashmiri Muslim ruler, Yusuf Shah Chak. Under the pretext of negotiations, Akbar takes Chak as a prisoner and makes Kashmir a part of his Afghan principality. Never allowed to return to Kashmir, Chak’s grave is in present-day Indian state of Bihar.

As the Mughal empire weakens, Kashmir first falls under the Afghans and then under the Sikhs from Lahore.

In the aftermath of Anglo-Sikh wars in the 1840s, the British East India Company rewards a Dogra chieftain, Gulab, who had betrayed his Sikh overlords during the war, with control over Kashmir. Signed on 9 March 1846 , the Treaty of Amritsar allows Gulab to claim the title of Maharaja of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which now includes the kingdom of Ladakh that had been incorporated into the previous Sikh empire in 1834 . In return, Gulab agrees to serve British interests as a buffer state (primarily against the Tsarist Russia) and send Kashmiri soldiers to join British campaigns as and when called upon. A brief rebellion against the treaty by the Sikh-appointed Muslim governor of Kashmir Imam-ud-Din is suppressed. Despite most of their subjects being Muslim, Dogras turn the state into a Hindu kingdom. Except for the period from 1889 and 1905, when the British curtailed some Dogra powers, the Dogra maharajas enjoyed almost full sovereignty over Kashmir. Dogra rule is marked by oppression, forced labor, and heavy taxation. Several artisans’ revolts have been forcibly put down. In particular, the Kashmiri Muslims, who form the majority of the state’s subjects, are systematically impoverished, disempowered and exploited, while the minority upper-caste Hindus become part of the ruling establishment. 

On July 13, during the trial of Abdul Qadeer, who is accused of inciting Kashmiris to rebel against the Dogras, people assemble in the capital Srinagar. The Dogra troops shoot 22 Kashmiris dead. Widespread protests erupt all over the country against Maharaja Hari Singh, but the revolt is brutally suppressed. Dozens of Kashmiris are shot dead during the next few days in Islamabad (Anantnag) and Kupwara. In the hilly regions of Poonch, a rebellion erupts which will continue for years.

Kashmiri Muslim leaders petition the British and the Dogra rulers for reforms. Several of them launch the All Jammu Kashmir Muslim Conference (MC) with a goal to fight for governmental reform, education, and representation for Kashmiri Muslims in the government. The Maharaja’s subsequent efforts to redress the grievances, including establishing Praja Sabha (“Subjects’ Assembly”) turn out to be empty as Muslim representation remains disproportionately minimal. A group of radical Kashmiri youth led by Sheikh Abdullah emerges as a popular faction within the Muslim Conference.

MC splits over political approach. Sheikh Abdullah names the major faction the Jammu Kashmir National Conference (JKNC or NC), signaling that their goal is a secular independent state and an end to feudalism. NC mobilizes Kashmiri peasantry.

Several small new Kashmiri parties emerge, including the Worker-Peasant Party. Some socialist and communist organizations also begin to grow. NC grows in popularity for its defiance of the Dogras, while Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas revives the old Muslim Conference and builds significant support among the Muslims of the Jammu province.

NC adopts the “New Kashmir Resolution,” proposing radical socio-economic transformation, the end of monarchy and feudalism, turning Kashmir into a democratic republic, and granting full citizenship rights to all the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

With older roots in Islamist social reform, Jamaat Islami holds its first convention in Kashmir. Influenced by its parent body in British India, which opposed the creation of Pakistan, Jamaat Islami in Kashmir takes a stand against both NC’s secular nationalism and MC’s Muslim nationalism.

NC launches “Quit Kashmir” movement and MC starts a campaign of action; both are against the monarchy. Sheikh Abdullah and Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas are arrested. Over the years, Abdullah has grown closer to Indian Congress leaders and is opposed to Jinnah’s Muslim League. Yet, he agrees Kashmir should remain its own entity. The Muslim Conference leans toward Jinnah. 

Between August and October , Kashmir is independent. With Pakistan now a reality, Jamaat Islami activists want Kashmir to join Pakistan if it becomes an Islamic state, yet their parent body in British India has opposed Jinnah. Muslim Conference passes a resolution to join Pakistan. The Socialist Party also wants to join Pakistan. But NC is opposed to the idea. The British withdrawal and the partition of British India into India and Pakistan leads to violence in Bengal, Delhi, Punjab and elsewhere. Kashmiris have been fighting against the monarchy and don’t see their struggle as part of South Asian secular, Hindu, or Muslim nationalisms, but the British ask “Princely Rulers” to accede either to India or to Pakistan based on geographical contiguity and religious demography. According to this Partition logic, Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan, as the state has a close to 77 percent Muslim population. In September and October 1947 , Hindu militias and Dogra troops attack Jammu’s Muslims, killing tens of thousands. In Poonch, along the border with newly-created Pakistan, rebels create an independent state called “Azad (Free) Jammu Kashmir (AJK).” As ethnic cleansing of Jammu Muslims continues, many flee to AJK and to Pakistan. Much of Muslim Conference leadership and members are displaced. According to census reports from the time and later research, upwards of 200,000 Muslims are dead and an equal number become refugees. After what will come to be known as the “Jammu Massacre,” Jammu becomes a Hindu-majority city. Meanwhile, the Dogras lose control of Gilgit Baltistan province in the north. With their leader, Sheikh Abdullah, in prison, NC remains dormant. In September , troops from the neighboring state of Patiala and Hindu nationalist paramilitaries of the RSS arrive to bolster the Dogras. Pakistan blocks supplies into Kashmir. Indian Congress leaders put pressure on the Dogras to accede to India and release Abdullah. The Dogra maharaja wants to remain independent and has signed a Standstill Agreement with Pakistan, but India has refused to sign. As rebellion continues along the borders, on October 22, 1947 , members of Afridi and other Pashtun groups begin to converge along the border and enter Baramulla to aid Kashmiris but falter without any clear leadership. The Maharaja flees the Kashmir valley and asks India for help. Indians demand he sign the Treaty of Accession and give power over Kashmir’s defense, foreign affairs, and communication to India. Abdullah is made Emergency Administrator and he sees Pashtuns as a threat. On October 26, Indian troops arrive in Srinagar and the next day Maharaja signs the treaty. Indian invasion pulls Pakistani troops in too. The first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir breaks out. On November 21 , Nehru says: “I have repeatedly stated that as soon as peace and order have been established; Kashmir should decide about accession by plebiscite or referendum under international auspices such as those of United Nations.”

By the middle of the year, the war has entered a stalemate. India takes the case of Kashmir to the United Nations. Kashmir is officially recognized as a disputed territory. The United Nations Security Council passes a resolution (UNSC Resolution 47) providing for 1. Ceasefire, 2. Withdrawal of Pakistani and Indian troops, and 3. Plebiscite in Kashmir (under international supervision with minimal Indian military presence). UN Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP) is created.

Ceasefire is proclaimed under the UN auspices. India is in control of two-thirds of the historic Kashmir state while Pakistan has control over one-third, including the AJK.

India backtracks on its promise of the plebiscite, even though Nehru would continue to make statements about India’s pledge to Kashmiris until 1959. Indian Constitution comes into effect and Article 1 proclaims the entire state of J&K as a part of the territory of India. Article 370 gives a “special” status to the State of J&K, more or less corresponding to the terms of the Instrument of Accession. Pro-Pakistan Kashmiri leaders are arrested, and many are sent into exile.

Elections are held in the state. The UNSC passes a resolution (UNSC Resolution 91) saying elections will not be a substitute for the plebiscite. Sheikh Abdullah wins the elections, mostly unopposed, and becomes the Prime Minister. Abdullah carries out land reforms and adopts measures such as debt relief. The Jammu Kashmir Constituent Assembly is created to draft the constitution for the state. In India, Hindu nationalists begin agitation over giving special status to Kashmir. They demand “one country, one constitution, one flag.” 

Land reforms, while benefitting impoverished Kashmiri Muslims and under-caste Hindus, lead to resentment among erstwhile members of Dogra royalty and Hindu feudals, who assemble under the aegis of a Hindu nationalist party, Praja Parishad. Abdullah sees them as a threat but is unable to control their influence. He begins to shift positions between endorsing Kashmir’s accession to India and supporting the right of self-determination for Kashmiris. He signs the Delhi Agreement, but does not confirm the accession of Kashmir to India. The Delhi Agreement says: 1. except in three matters listed under Instrument of Accession, sovereignty will reside in Jammu and Kashmir; 2. Kashmiris will be citizens of India, but the elected Kashmir government will decide permanent residency requirements in the state; 3. Kashmir will have its own flag and constitution; 4. Kashmir will have a Prime Minister ( wazir azam ) and President ( sadr-e-riyasat ). Jamaat Islami separates from its parent body in India.

As Hindu nationalist groups coalesce against Abdullah, the Indian government claims he is conspiring with the Chinese, the Arabs, and the Americans to create an independent Kashmir. In August , Abdullah is arrested (he will spend the next decade in prison). One of his aides and the deputy prime minister until then, G.M. Bakshi, is installed as the Prime Minister. Abdullah’s loyalists are removed from the government and the NC.

Bakshi gets the accession formally ratified in 1954. India passes a “Presidential Order” using Article 370 which effectively gives the Indian parliament many more powers than were part of the Instrument of Accession and the Delhi Agreement. This is the start of the “erosion of autonomy,” which will continue in the years to come. All dissent in Kashmir is crushed. 

Afzal Beg, a lieutenant of Abdullah’s, forms the Plebiscite Front, which becomes the principal opposition to the governments led by India-loyalist Bakshi and his successors. 

The J&K Constituent Assembly adopts a new constitution, declaring the state an integral part of the Indian Union. Kashmiri activists, including those from Plebiscite Front, reject the declaration, and continue to insist on the promised self-determination.

The UN passes another resolution (UNSC Resolution 122) affirming that only the “will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations” will determine Kashmir’s final status, and states that the J&K Constituent Assembly’s actions, including administrative or legal changes, are invalid and would not constitute a final disposition of the state. 

India and China fight a war. India loses control over large tracts of land in Ladakh, especially Aksai Chin, that had been part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. 

A holy relic—believed to be a strand of hair from the Prophet’s beard—is found missing from the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar. Popular agitation erupts across Kashmir Valley and continues until the relic is mysteriously recovered in January 1964. Protests expand against extension of Indian powers to Kashmir including Indian president’s power to dismiss Kashmiri governments. 

Second India-Pakistan war breaks out after Pakistan sends infiltrators across the ceasefire line in August. The war ends in a ceasefire on September 23 . The status quo remains. India removes the title of Prime Minister and Sadr e Riyasat from its loyalist Kashmiri officials, instead using the term Chief Minister. 

Small Kashmiri armed revolutionary groups emerge, some in the shadow of the Plebiscite Front. These groups call for complete independence of Jammu and Kashmir. One of these groups is Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Front (JKNLF) created by Maqbool Bhat and others. Another is Al Fatah, which builds a strong underground network. Most are arrested and will spend years in prison.

India and Pakistan fight a war, resulting in the secession of East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. 

India and Pakistan sign the Shimla Agreement, which recognizes the ceasefire line of 1949 as the Line of Control (LoC). The Shimla Agreement includes a clause stating that the final settlement of Kashmir will be decided bilaterally. Kashmiris see themselves as being further sidelined in future negotiations over their own country.

Sheikh Abdullah is allowed to return to Kashmir. Many Kashmiris welcome him. But on Indira Gandhi’s insistence, he disbands the Plebiscite Front. Abdullah agrees to give up the demand for self-determination. 

Abdullah accepts the much diminished position of Chief Minister. In June , Prime Minister Indira Gandhi plunges India into an Emergency. Abdullah supports her and does not oppose when the Emergency is extended to Kashmir ten days later. Abdullah and his aide Beg win by-elections, but Syed Ali Geelani, who is a Jamaat Islami legislator, claims election rigging. Abdullah bans Jamaat Islami and closes down dozens of its schools across Kashmir. Revolutionary armed groups that had risen in the shadow of the Plebiscite Front are in a disarray, even though Abdullah drops long-standing cases against Al Fatah members.

Maqbool Bhat, having spent years in Indian and Pakistani jails (in Pakistan, for being suspected as an Indian spy), is arrested again in Kashmir, where a death warrant has earlier been issued against him for the murder of a bank official at the hands of one of his associates. 

On May 29, 1977 Amanullah Khan, Abdul Khaliq Ansari and few others from the Azad Kashmiri diaspora in Britain form the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in Birmingham. Maqbool Bhat is proclaimed to have joined the new organization. Sheikh Abdullah wins elections in 1977. With the Indian establishment’s backing, the opposition to his NC is decimated. The old Jamaat Islami, having contested the elections since 1971, wins only one seat in the Assembly. 

Iran’s Islamic revolution and the execution of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Z.A. Bhutto, on the orders of General Zia ul Haq, causes widespread ripples across Kashmir. Jamaat Islami members, seen as supporters of General Zia, are attacked by NC cadres as well as by some Islamic preachers in the countryside, especially in Islamabad (Anantnag) where Jamaat Islami’s support among the salaried classes is growing. 

On September 8 , Sheikh Abdullah dies.

Massive election rigging creates dissensions within NC and conflicts begin among Abdullah’s heirs. Indian PM Indira Gandhi, campaigning in Jammu, ignites Hindu passions against Kashmiri Muslims. 

On February 11 , Maqbool Bhat is hanged in Tihar Jail. Indian authorities refuse to return his body to his family. Small groups of Kashmiris cross the LoC to plan armed movement and return to form underground cells. In April , the Indian Army captures the Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir from Pakistan. In June , the Indian military’s assault on the Golden Temple, the spiritual center of Sikhs in Amritsar, leaves hundreds of Sikhs dead. Many Sikh activists cross the Punjab border into Pakistan to get arms training. In July , the Indian governor in Kashmir openly interferes in Kashmiri politics. Farooq, Abdullah’s son and heir, is dismissed as the Chief Minister and his opponent in the NC and brother-in-law, Ghulam Muhammad Shah, is installed in his place. Small new Islamist groups begin to emerge in Kashmir, mostly led by Kashmir University students. In October , Indira Gandhi is shot dead by her bodyguards.

Mujahideen war against the Soviets in Afghanistan is at its peak. India loyalist and Farooq Abdullah’s brother in law, Ghulam Muhammad Shah, is dismissed as Chief Minister, after Farooq gives assurances to Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi that he will crack down on the growing unrest in Kashmir. Farooq forms a coalition government with the Indian National Congress in Kashmir.

A number of opposition parties join to form an alliance against the NC. They are called the Muslim United Front (MUF). There is blatant poll rigging. Young polling agents of MUF, among them Yasin Malik, are arrested and tortured. Farooq Abdullah is allowed to win the elections and becomes Chief Minister. The MUF wins only four seats—despite a clear wave of support for the party—including one by Syed Ali Geelani of the Jamaat Islami and Qazi Nisar, the Mirwaiz (head preacher) of South Kashmir. MUF contestants, like Yusuf Shah, are arrested.

Repression in Kashmir increases. Protestors demanding basic things, like electricity, are shot down. Several groups of young Kashmiri men, including Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani, Javaid Mir, and Yasin Malik (now out of jail), cross the LoC for arms training. Later known as the HAJY group (acronym of the first letters of their names), they join the JKLF. Busy fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, Pakistan however sends them back without promises. Pakistan cuts even minimal support as General Zia dies in a crash and Benazir Bhutto becomes the prime minister, who invites Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi to Pakistan. JKLF declare armed struggle against India, exploding several small bombs in Srinagar. Jamaat Islami opposes armed struggle in its publication Azan and insists on the 1985 amendment to its party constitution that calls for resolution through constitutional means and dialogue.

The judge who had sentenced Maqbool Bhat to death is shot dead. Indian operations to capture JKLF members become intense. Hamid Sheikh has been captured. In November and December , JKLF successfully uses a high-profile kidnapping to negotiate the release of their members, including Sheikh. Vast crowds of Kashmiris come out in support of JKLF and to welcome the rebels. With Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan turns attention to Kashmir, but seems interested in creating its own group, one that could profess a pro-Pakistan ideology. Among several such groups, Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) is founded by a Jamaat Islami activist and schoolteacher known as Master Ahsan Dar. Yusuf Shah, also from Jamaat Islami, joins the HM and uses the nom de guerre Syed Salahuddin.

Indian military forces carry out several massacres across Kashmir in January. Protests intensify, and thousands of Kashmiris publicly resign from pro-India parties. The four MUF legislators resign have resigned as well. On January 17 , India dismisses Farooq Abdullah’s government and imposes central rule. A Hindu nationalist bureaucrat, Jagmohan, is installed as the governor. He claims that “Kashmir is sick, and I am its nursing orderly,” and ominously threatens Kashmiris. Jagmohan swiftly launches widespread military crackdowns on urban neighborhoods. Intense curfews are imposed. Armed groups carry out assassinations of government officials, NC activists, and intelligence agents. While many of these (~200) are Kashmiri Muslim, a significant number (~70) are Kashmiri Hindus, who have held top positions in the government and constitute three percent of the population. Thousands of Hindu families leave Kashmir on January 19 and head to Jammu in the south. (Years later, many Hindus would claim they left because they were afraid for their lives and that militant groups had threatened them, while many Kashmiri Muslims would blame Jagmohan for convincing Hindus to leave, facilitating their journey, and telling them they would be back after the winter when the rebellion was crushed in the Valley. According to Indian government sources, between 1989 and 2004, 219 Kashmiri Hindus were killed by armed militants, and one since then, while about 165,000 Hindus left Kashmir.) On January 21 , an estimated 55-65 unarmed protesters are killed by Indian troops near Gawakadal in Srinagar. Later that day, Jagmohan imposes a long curfew and a military siege leading to widespread misery in the middle of an icy winter. On January 25 , Indian forces kill 21 protestors in Handwara town. On March 1 , Indian soldiers kill around 50 Kashmiri protestors near Tengpora in Srinagar. In early March , an estimated one million Kashmiris take to the streets for several days. Indian soldiers kill dozens. On March 30 , JKLF chief commander Ashfaq Wani is killed during an attack. Considered the main architect of the armed struggle, his death is the first big blow to the movement. Tens of thousands attend his funeral. Hundreds of young Kashmiris cross the LoC and return to join the JKLF. HM also recruits several activists. While the JKLF professes to be “secular” and wants “unification and independence” of Kashmir, the HM professes to be an “Islamic” organization with the goal of Kashmir’s “merger with Pakistan.” On May 21 , an estimated million people attend the funeral march of the slain chief preacher of Kashmir, Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq. An HM activist is blamed for the assassination. Some Kashmiris claim that the HM activist had been released from prison for this purpose. Indian paramilitaries kill 60 mourners and injure 200 near Hawal in Srinagar. Thousands of armed Kashmiris return from AJK training camps and enjoy widespread public support. Indian government replaces Jagmohan with Girish Saxena as the governor. India continues to send troops into the region. There are more than 300,000 active duty Indian soldiers in Kashmir now. By summer, India imposes the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives a free hand to the military.  

As repression continues, armed groups in Kashmir proliferate. JKLF is still the most prominent, but HM, the favorite of Pakistan, has now more trained cadres, better weapons, and has been adopted by Jamaat Islami as its armed wing. The Indian military is unable to crush the rebellion. Thousands of Kashmiris are dying in the war. On February 23 , Indian soldiers enter two villages in north Kashmir, Kunan and Poshpora, and rape dozens of Kashmiri women. Indian government denies the charge. (Later, a Press Council of India committee would declare the women to be lying, but Kashmiri activists would argue the PCI committee hadn’t even met the victims.)

HM starts to gain more recruits in the countryside, especially where Jamaat Islami influence is predominant. HM ranks—now in thousands—are also filled by Afghan war veterans and Pakistanis. JKLF is still influential, but its main commanders are either dead or in prison. Yasin Malik, its second chief commander, has been in prison since 1990. Tensions between JKLF and HM grow as HM seeks dominance. Master Ahsan Dar is expelled from HM by now Pakistan-based Syed Salahuddin because of Dar’s criticism of HM’s attacks on the JKLF. Dar forms a smaller group named Muslim Mujahideen. Half a million Indian forces are deployed in the Kashmir Valley during this period. Prominent Kashmiri human rights activist and trade unionist H. N. Wanchoo is shot dead.

All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) is formed. It is an amalgamation of dozens of Kashmiri political groups. Its express goal is Kashmir’s “right to self-determination” but keeps the question of independence or merger with Pakistan open. As armed movement continues, Indian military repression grows. In response to a JKLF attack in northern Kashmiri town of Sopore in January , Indian paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) massacres more than 100 unarmed civilians and burns down several neighborhoods. In April , a prominent Kashmiri heart surgeon and JKLF sympathizer, Abdul Ahad Guru, is shot dead. (Later a key Indian bureaucrat in Kashmir, Wajahat Habibullah, will blame Indian security agencies to have conspired with an HM activist to kill Guru.) In October , BSF kills 55 Kashmiris who had assembled after Friday prayers in Bijbehara town in South Kashmir. Despite several accords, intergroup rivalry leads to frequent clashes between the JKLF and the HM. Better trained HM cadres kill dozens of JKLF members. 

On February 22 , the Indian Parliament passes a resolution that claims Kashmir to be an “integral part” of India and therefore non-negotiable. More forces are sent to Kashmir to subdue the armed insurgency and to conduct elections. In May , JKLF commander Yasin Malik, on bail from prison, declares a unilateral ceasefire and claims JKLF to be an unarmed political organization that would work for independence of Kashmir. His decision causes a split in the JKLF. One JKLF faction refuses to declare a ceasefire, but its leaders are quickly decimated by Indian forces during a siege in Srinagar. In June , former MUF legislator and head preacher of South Kashmir, Qazi Nisar, is shot dead in Islamabad/Anantnag. Many blame the HM. Pan-Islamic groups like Harkat ul Mujahideen are also now present in parts of Kashmir. With JKLF no longer a competitor, HM targets members of smaller groups. Among these are groups like Muslim Mujahideen and Ikhwan ul Muslimeen, many of whom surrender to the Indian forces. Nisar’s killing has also led to disenchantment with Jamaat, who are seen as HM’s patrons. With support from Indian intelligence agencies, surrendered militants form a new group, Ikhwan ul Muslimoon, or simply “Ikhwan.” Muslim Mujahideen (MM), out of Ahsan Dar’s control, retains its name but now works for Indian forces. Ikhwanis and MM kill dozens of Jamaat Islami members in the countryside, forcing many to run away to Srinagar. An HM vs Ikhwan/MM fight ensues, leading to intense bloodshed. HM loses ground due to persistent Ikhwani/MM assaults.

Foreign armed mujahideen, especially those aligned with Harkat ul Mujahideen (later Harkat ul Ansar) become a formidable force in the Kashmir war. Their goals are unclear, but their presence causes further confusion. They claim to be fighting a jihad, yet some of them seem to be collaborating with the Ikhwan/MM. On July 4 , a faction of Harkat, known as Al Faran, kidnaps five western tourists in South Kashmir and after several months—as revealed later by journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott in their book The Meadow —hands them over to an MM commander, who is believed to have killed them.  

On March 8 , prominent Kashmiri human rights activist and lawyer Jalil Andrabi is abducted by an Indian military officer Avtar Gill. Andrabi’s body is later recovered from a river. In September , India holds elections in Kashmir. NC is contesting. Jamaat is boycotting. Members of Ikhwan/MM form political fronts to contest. There is hardly any participation. NC is declared a winner, and Farooq Abdullah is Chief Minister. 

Under intense pressure from the Ikhwanis, Jamaat Islami declares end to ties with the HM. HM launches systematic attacks on the Ikhwanis and decimates them. HM returns to dominance in the countryside, but Indian military has also regained enormous ground. 

On January 25 , 23 Kashmiri Hindus are killed in a massacre in Wandhama village. India blames Islamist militants. In two other incidents, in Prankot and Champanari in Jammu, several Hindus are killed in April and June. Insurgency spreads to the Muslim districts of Jammu province. In the Kashmir valley, the Indian counterinsurgency war continues. Hundreds of Kashmiris are killed year after year. In May , India and Pakistan conduct nuclear tests.

War between India and Pakistan breaks out in Kargil, a border district on the LoC. India blames Pakistani soldiers for infiltrating into positions on the Indian controlled side of the LoC. Hundreds of soldiers die in the battles. By July , international pressure compels Pakistan to withdraw its forces. Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif accuses General Pervez Musharraf of launching the operation without informing the government.

On March 20 , just before US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, 35 Kashmiri Sikhs are killed by unidentified gunmen in the village of Chattisinghpora in South Kashmir. The government blames Islamic militants, but Kashmiris and prominent Sikh leaders (and later US officials) blame Indian government agencies for orchestrating the attack to seek US sympathy. The perception of the Indian role in the massacre becomes reinforced when a few days after the Chattisinghpora massacre, Indian forces abduct, kill, and mutilate the bodies of five local Kashmiris, claiming they are the foreign Islamist militants responsible for killing the Sikhs. A week after, at Brakpora in Islamabad/Anantnag, Indian forces kill nine protestors demanding an impartial investigation. Despite attempts to fudge the DNA by the NC-led government, subsequent tests of the exhumed corpses prove that the five dead “foreign militants” were actually local civilians. 

In July , Indian and Pakistani leaders meet but fail to arrive at a settlement on the Kashmir issue. However, plans for free trade, demilitarization, and shared autonomy in Kashmir are discussed. However, in September , in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the US, Indian PM Vajpayee requests US President Bush to extend his “War on Terror” to Kashmir as well. The APHC and the JKLF denounce this as opportunistic. The US demands Pakistani support in Afghanistan and declares Pakistan to be a “major non-NATO ally.” Pakistan drastically cuts support to Kashmiri groups. After an armed attack on the Indian Parliament in December, which India blames on Pakistan-backed groups Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) operating in Kashmir, Indian police arrest five Kashmiris, even though all the attackers are dead and are claimed to be from Pakistan. India starts a year-long build-up of military forces on the border, threatening war with Pakistan.

On May 21 , prominent APHC leader, Abdul Ghani Lone, is assassinated by unidentified gunmen. India blames the Pakistani ISI and the hardline factions of the APHC, while many in Kashmir blame Indian agencies. In October , former Indian Home Minister of Kashmiri origin, Mufti Syed, and his newly-created Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), win elections and form a coalition government with the Indian Congress. PDP ran its campaign on the idea of establishing “self-rule” in Kashmir. NC ran on the promise of re-establishing the pre-1953 “autonomy” for Kashmir. The remnants of the Ikhwanis are absorbed into regular Indian and local police forces.

The APHC splits in Kashmir. Syed Ali Geelani blames sections of the APHC for fielding proxy candidates in the local elections despite election boycott calls. In April , India launches a major operation in the Jammu province against Muslim insurgents. Dozens are killed. In May , India and Pakistan declare ceasefire along the LoC, restore diplomatic relations, and later start a “Bus service” between Lahore and Amritsar.

Geelani forms Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, leaving his formal position within Jamaat Islami. In September , Indian PM Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf meet in New York to discuss Kashmir.

India and Pakistan hold peace talks. Musharraf proposes 4-Point Formula for peace. The plan includes: 1. free cross-LoC movement for Kashmiris; 2. self-governance for Kashmirs on both sides of the LoC; 3. phased withdrawal of troops; 4. a joint India-Pakistan mechanism to implement these and create a future path toward the final resolution. Geelani’s faction opposes the 4-Point Plan and come to be known as the “Hardliners.” The APHC group led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq support the plan. Based on their stance, they are known as the “Moderate APHC.” The JKLF-led by Yasin Malik demands inclusion of Kashmiris in the final settlement of Kashmir. 

The JKLF launches the Safar-e-Azadi mass contact program to put pressure on India and Pakistan to include Kashmiris in the talks. Geelani claims. the 4-Point Formula is an attempt to freeze the Kashmir Dispute.

The Indian governor and members of the PDP-Congress government give 100 acres of land in Kashmir to the Amarnath Shrine Board, a non-Kashmiri entity, to build permanent infrastructure for Indian pilgrims. The “land deal” contravenes protection of land guaranteed under Article 370 and Article 35A, which limit ownership of land only to the permanent residents of Kashmir. The land deal also puts an ecologically fragile mountainous region under threat. Many Kashmiris see it as an attempt to change Kashmir’s demography. By June , widespread protests emerge across Kashmir. The protests are led by a Coordination Committee comprised of APHC factions, JKLF, and several civil society groups. Hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris join weekly protests. Indian reprisal is swift. More than 100 protestors are killed over the next few months and thousands are injured. The land deal is cancelled. In Jammu, angry Hindu nationalists impose an economic blockade on Kashmir for weeks, closing the only highway into Kashmir. During a procession headed toward the LOC to open the border to relieve suffering due to the Jammu blockade, Indian forces kill prominent Kashmiri leader and key APHC leader Sheikh Aziz, along with 20 others. The killings lead to an upsurge of young Kashmiris coming into the streets and confronting Indian soldiers with stones. India puts Kashmir under curfew for months. PDP-Congress coalition government falls. Meanwhile in Pakistan, the months-long “Lawyers Protest” has led President Musharraf to resign. The 4-Point Plan loses its prominent backer. Differences among APHC’s “Moderate” and “Hardline” factions remain. In November , the LeT attacks in Mumbai lead to a formal end of peace talks between India and Pakistan. LoC artillery shelling resumes, causing dozens of Kashmiri deaths on both sides.   

In May , the rape and murder of two Kashmiri women in Shopian leads to widespread protests across Kashmir. Independent investigations show Indian forces are involved; doctors establish rape. The Indian government claims the two drowned in a stream and closes the investigation. Widespread protests last months. The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, and Shiekh Abdullah’s grandson, Omar Abdullah, who had previously served as a junior minister in the Hindu nationalist BJP government in Delhi, makes a U-turn from his initial support for the victims and also concludes that the two women had drowned in the shallow stream. A Kashmiri human rights group discovers 2700 unmarked mass graves across three districts of the highly-militarized North Kashmir. The graves contain some 2900 unknown bodies, many believed to be among the 8000 enforced disappearances that have taken place in Kashmir since 1989.  

In April , the Indian military kills three Kashmiri civilians in Machil, Kupwara, and claims them to be “foreign terrorists.” In June , eight-year old Tufail Mattoo is killed in Srinagar when Indian forces hit his head with a teargas shell. His death catalyzes intense new protests that last months. Indian forces impose a curfew and kill more than 100 young Kashmiris during “stone-pelting” protests. Though the protests are led by youth, Geelani emerges as a key leader and his faction issues “protest calendars.” Geelani demands demilitarization, release of political prisoners, and a clear path toward implementing the right to self-determination. India appoints three “interlocutors,” but Kashmiri leaders claim they have no mandate and reject them. By late fall , Geelani calls off the protests. Disappointed, dozens of Kashmiri youth disappear and join armed militant ranks of HM, which is still operating but in a much diminished state. 

The Indian government hangs a Kashmiri man, Afzal Guru, in prison since the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, on February 9 . Several Indian civil society groups had claimed that the evidence of his role in the attacks was thin. Guru had claimed that he was set up by Indian agents in Kashmir. The Indian Supreme Court had infamously declared in its verdict that Guru must be hanged “to satisfy the collective conscience of the Indian society,” provoking shock and criticism across the world. Guru’s body is not returned to his family and is buried next to Maqbool Bhat’s in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

The APHC faction led by Mirwaiz Umar splits as several of its constituents claim the amalgamation to be ineffective. Several of them join Geelani’s faction, known as APHC (G). The NC, which has been in government in coalition with the Congress since 2008, loses elections. 

In March , the PDP forms alliance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP, sending Kashmir into a shock. It is the first time that Hindu nationalists have officially come to power in Kashmir since at least 1947. A Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society report “Structures of Violence” states: “this report is a part of the continuing work to understand and analyze the role of the Indian State in Jammu and Kashmir, an occupied territory internationally recognized as a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, that has resulted in widespread and systematic violence including the disappearance of 8000+ persons, 70,000+ deaths, 6000+ unknown, unmarked and mass graves, and countless cases of torture and sexual violence.” The report also estimates the strength of Indian armed forces in Jammu and Kashmir to be between “656,638 and 750,981” personnel. 

On July 8 , Indian forces kill Burhan Wani, the 22-year old commander of HM who has become widely popular, partly because of his social media use. Kashmir erupts into stone-pelting protests. Indian forces kill dozens and blind hundreds of young Kashmiris. Half a million people assemble in his hometown of Tral to attend his funeral procession. A months-long curfew is imposed. Wani’s death brings the “New-Age Militancy” out of the shadows. South Kashmir becomes the hot-bed of resistance. Media-savvy, charismatic, but without much training, the young New-Age Kashmiri militants become popular. Each Indian siege to kill them is met with entire villages coming out in their defense. Each killing of these young men leads to tens of thousands joining funeral processions.   

The Indian counterinsurgency war, known as “Operation All Out,” intensifies in South Kashmir. Hundreds are killed, mostly young Kashmiri militants and civilians.

In June , the BJP exits the coalition with the PDP and the Indian governor acquires full charge. In November , the governor dissolves the Legislative Assembly. 

In February , a Kashmiri bomber attacks an Indian military convoy in South Kashmir, killing 40 soldiers. India launches air attacks in Pakistan. The next day, Pakistan launches air strikes in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and shoots down an Indian jet, while Indian forces mistakenly shoot down their own helicopter. Pakistan returns a captured Indian air force pilot, but tensions remain high. India bans the JKLF and the Jamaat Islami, arresting their leaders, including Yasin Malik. A massive crackdown is launched against APHC activists across Kashmir. Thousands of Kashmiri political and civil society activists are arrested in raids. In late July , tens of thousands of new Indian forces enter Kashmir. On August 5 , the Indian government “reads down” Article 370 and revokes Article 35A, removing the last remnants of “autonomy” and “special status” guaranteed under the Instrument of Accession and the Delhi Agreement. The removal of 35A paves the way for Indians citizens to settle in Kashmir, a long standing demand of the RSS. The leaders of NC and PDP are put under detention. Kashmir is under complete curfew and all forms of communication are shut down. On October 31 , the Indian government splits the historic State of Jammu and Kashmir into two “Union Territories” under the Jammu Kashmir Reorganization Act passed on August 9. One is the “Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir” which will have a legislative assembly with highly limited powers, and the second is the “Union Territory of Ladakh,” which will have no legislative assembly. The Indian government takes full control over determining land use and residency requirements, while its officials speak about instituting “Israeli-style settler colonies” in Kashmir. An intense crackdown and communication blockade in Kashmir ensure Kashmiris are unable to protest. Pakistan and China protest the Indian move. Diasporic Kashmiris in the West become prominent voices of resistance.   

The Indian government enacts a new “Domicile Law” for the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory, allowing certain classes of Indians to become permanent residents of Kashmir. Indian officials in Kashmir start issuing certificates to Indians that would allow them to get state employment in Kashmir and make them eligible to purchase land. In June , Chinese and Indian forces clash along the border in Ladakh. 20 Indian soldiers die and the Chinese force India to withdraw several kilometers away from what India claims to be its boundary. In July , Geelani leaves his own faction of the APHC, indicating an end to a 70-year-long political career. The Indian government issues new laws to expand military bases and create hundreds of thousands of “new housing units” in the region. 

  • china Domicile Law India jammu and kashmir Jammu Kashmir National Conference kashmir mughals pakistan Sheikh Abdullah south asia

Mohamad Junaid

Mohamad Junaid teaches anthropology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

history of kashmir essay

Anuradha Bhasin: In Kashmir, The Surreal Is Very Real Now

Ather Zia , Nimmi Gowrinathan

The journalist and activist on militancy, formative political moments, and challenging the Indian Supreme Court.

history of kashmir essay

  • Essay , Reportage

A Nation Rendered Numb

Parvaiz Bukhari

Amid multiple lockdowns, Kashmiris confront and contest an escalating campaign to dismantle their sovereignty.

history of kashmir essay

the smallest unit of time in Kashmir is a siege

chronicle of days and nights as prison cells

history of kashmir essay

Surviving the Occupation

Syed Tajamul Imran , Mohd Tahir Ganie

Every death is felt as a shared loss in Kashmir.

history of kashmir essay

The Geopolitics of the Oppressed

Mapping the occupation in Kashmir.

history of kashmir essay

The Stones of Kashmir: Two Poems

Nitasha Kaul

the hearts of the soldiers are stone / stones have begun to grow on the trees too

history of kashmir essay

A War Against Words

For the Kashmiri media, both conformity and defiance come with a very high cost.

history of kashmir essay

Mirza Waheed

She acknowledged the ceasefire with half a smile. He slashed the air with his hands, indicating it was only temporary, momentary.

history of kashmir essay

  • Essay , Photography

My Pictures Should Speak

Masrat Zahra

Photojournalist Masrat Zahra on the daily reverberations of violence in Indian-occupied Kashmir.

history of kashmir essay

a day in a life that inches prayer by prayer

essential reading in Kashmir / are the epitaphs

history of kashmir essay

A Soundtrack to Issue 4

Adi Editors

We asked each contributor to Adi’s Kashmir issue to select a song that resonates with their piece. Listen as you make your way through.

history of kashmir essay

Omens - The Recurring Dream of the Water Mothers

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Omens - Mothers In Our Own Light

history of kashmir essay

Omens - Reimagined Currencies

history of kashmir essay

Omens - Impossible Homes

history of kashmir essay

Omens - Between Worlds

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Contested Histories

history of kashmir essay

Afghan Women: A Polyphony

history of kashmir essay

Unpeopled Terrain

history of kashmir essay

Flash the Coup / Stories from Myanmar

history of kashmir essay

White Deeds

history of kashmir essay

Policy Recommendations: Poets Intervene

Kashmir: silence is not an option.

history of kashmir essay

Terror in South Asia

history of kashmir essay

Freedom of Movement

history of kashmir essay

Domestic Dissonance

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Legacy Of Kashmir, The Forgotten Land Of Beauty And Knowledge — Part I

Subhash Kak

Aug 06, 2016, 10:01 AM | Updated 09:48 AM IST

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  • This is the first essay in a four-part series about the important contributions of Kashmir to Indian culture. It throws light on the early history of the region and the expertise of the Kashmiris in the areas of grammar, music and dance.

This is the first essay in a four-part series about the important contributions of Kashmir to Indian culture. It throws light on the early history of the region and the expertise of grammarians Panini and Patanjali, and Bharata Muni in music and dance.

Kashmir’s geographical location partly explains its cultural history. It may be that its natural beauty and temperate climate are the reasons that Kashmiris have a strong tradition in the arts, literature, painting, drama and dance. Its relative isolation, the security provided by the ring of mountains around it, and its distance from the heartland of Indian culture in the plains of North India might explain the originality of Kashmiri thought. Its climate and the long winters may explain the Kashmiri fascination for philosophical speculation.

Kashmir is at the centre of the Puranic geography. In the Puranic conception, the earth’s continents are arranged in the form of a lotus flower. Mt Meru stands at the center of the world, the pericarp or seed-vessel of the flower, as it were, surrounded by circular ranges of mountains. Around Mt Meru, like the petals of the lotus, are arranged four island-continents ( dvipas ), aligned to the four points of the compass: Uttarakuru to the north, Ketumala to the west, Bhadrashva to the east and Bharata or Jambudvipa to the south. The meeting point of the continents is the Meru mountain, which is the high Himalayan region around Kashmir, Uttarakuru represents Central Asia including Tocharia, Ketumala is Iran and lands beyond, Bhadrashva is China and the Far East. Kashmir’s centrality in this scheme was a recognition that it was a meeting ground for trade and ideas for the four main parts of the Old World. In fact, it became more than a meeting ground; it was the land where an attempt was made to reconcile opposites by deeper analysis and bold conception.

Kashmir’s nearness to rich trade routes brought it considerable wealth and emboldened Kashmiris to take Sanskrit culture out of the country as missionaries. Kashmiris also became interpreters of the Indian civilisation and they authored many fundamental synthesising and expository works. Some of these works are anonymous encyclopaedias; in many other works, the author’s name is known but the details of the life and circumstances in Kashmir are hardly remembered.

Kalhana’s Rajatarangini (River of Kings), written in about 1150 AD, provides a narrative of successive dynasties that ruled Kashmir. Kalhana claimed to have used eleven earlier works as well the Nilamata Purana. Of these earlier books, only the Nilamata Purana survives. The narrative in the Rajatarangini becomes more than mere names with the accession of the Karkota dynasty in the early seventh century.

The political boundaries of Kashmir have, on occasion, extended much beyond the valley and the adjoining regions. According to Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese traveller, the adjacent territories to the west and south down to the plains were also under the direct control of the king of Kashmir. With Durlabhavardhana of the Karkota dynasty, the power of Kashmir extended to parts of Punjab and Afghanistan. It appears that during this period of Kashmiri expansion the ruling elite, if not the general population, of Gilgit, Baltistan, and West Tibet spoke Kashmiri-related languages. Later, as Kashmir’s political power declined, these groups were displaced by Tibetan speaking people.

In the eighth century, Lalitaditya Muktapida (reigned 724-760 AD), conquered most of North India, Central Asia and Tibet. His vision and exertions mark a new phase of Indian empire-building. Kashmir had become an important player in the rivalries amongst the various kingdoms of North India.

The jostling of the Kashmiri State within the circle of the North Indian powers led to an important political innovation. The important Vishnudharmottara Purana, believed to have been written in Kashmir of the Karkota kings, recommends innovations regarding the rajasuya and the ashvamedha sacrifices, of which the latter in its medieval interpretations was responsible for much warfare amongst kings. In the medieval times, the horse was left free to roam for a year and the king’s soldiers tried to establish the rule of their king in all regions visited by the horse, leading to clashes. The Vishnudharmottara Purana replaced these ancient rites by the rajyabhisheka (royal consecration) and surapratishtha (the fixing of the divine abode) rites.

This essay presents an overview of the most important Kashmiri contributions to Indian culture, emphasising some of the lesser known aspects of these contributions. Specifically, we consider the contributions to the arts, sciences, literature and philosophy. Our historical assessment of Kashmiri culture is hampered by the nature of our records. The texts and objects of art do not always indicate their provenance and the connections with Kashmir emerge only from indirect evidence. We are on sure ground when we come to Buddhist sources, the texts of the Kashmir Shaivism, and the names mentioned in the Rajatarangini and other early narratives.

Early Period

During the Vedic period, Kashmir appears to be an important region because it appears that the Mujavant mountain, the region where Soma grew, was located there. It is possible that in the Vedic era a large part of the valley was still under a lake. Kalhana’s history begins with the Mahabharata War, but it is very hazy with regard to the events prior to the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.

The great grammarian Panini lived in northwest Punjab, not too far from Kashmir and the university at Taxila (Takshashila) was also close to the valley. At the time of Hiuen Tsang, Takshashila was a tributary to Kashmir. It is generally accepted that Patanjali, the great author of the Mahabhashya commentary on Panini’s Ashtadhyayi , was a Kashmiri, as were a host of other grammarians like Chandra. According to Bhartrihari and other early scholars, Patanjali also made contributions to Yoga (the yoga-sutras) and to Ayurveda.

It is believed that Patanjali’s mother was named Gorika and he was born in Gonarda. He was educated in Takshashila and he taught in Pataliputra. From the textual references in his works, it can be safely said that he belonged to second century BC. The Charaka Samhita of Ayurveda that has come down to us is due to the editing of Dridhabala from Kashmir, who also added 17 chapters to the sixth section and the whole of the eighth section. Patanjali may have been involved in this editing process. But it is likely that the identity of the Kashmiris as a distinct group had not solidified in the Vedic period and to speak of ethnicity at that time is meaningless.

In any event, Kashmir of these early times was a part of the larger northwest Indian region of which Takshashila was a center of learning. The early levels of buildings in Takshashila have been traced to 800 BC. The first millennium BC was a period of great intellectual activity in this part of India and attitudes that later came to be termed Kashmiri were an important element of this activity. Amongst these attitudes was a characteristic approach to classification in the arts, and the interest in grammar.

Panini’s grammar remains one of the greatest achievements of the human intellect. It described the grammar of the Sanskrit language by a system of 4,000 algebraic rules— a feat that has not been equalled for any other language to this day. It also set the tone for scientific studies in India with their emphasis on algorithmic explanations. Patanjali’s commentary on the Panini grammar was responsible for the exaltation of its reputation. It appears that Panini arose in the same intellectual climate that characterised Kashmir during its Classical period.

Drama And Music: The Natyasastra

An early name seen as belonging to Kashmir is Bharata Muni of the Natyasastra . The indirect reasons for this identification are that the rasa idea of the Natyasastra was discussed by many scholars in Kashmir. Another reason is that the Natyasastra has a total of 36 chapters and it is suggested that this number may have been deliberately chosen to conform to the theory of 36 tattvas which is a part of the later Shaivite system of Kashmir. Many descriptions in this book seem especially true for Kashmir. The bhana , a one-actor play described by Bharata, is still performed in Kashmir by groups called bhand pather ( bhana patra , in Sanskrit).

It should be mentioned here, parenthetically, that a few scholars take Bharata to be a Southerner. It is also interesting that there exist some very close connections between Kashmir and South India, in the cultural tradition, like the worship of Shiva, Pancharatra, Tantra and the arts. Recently, when I pointed this out to Vasundhara Filliozat, the art historian who has worked on Karnataka, she said that the inscriptional evidence indicates a continuing movement of teachers from Kashmir to the South, and that Kashmir is likely to have been the original source of many of the early Shaivite, Tantric and Sthapatya Agamas.

Bharata Muni’s Natyasastra not only presents the language of creative expression, it is the world’s first book on stagecraft. It is so comprehensive that it lists 108 different postures that can be combined to give the various movements of dance. Bharata’s ideas are the key to proper understanding of Indian arts, music and sculpture. They provide an insight into how different Indian arts are expressions of a celebratory attitude to the universe. Manomohan Ghosh, the modern translator of the Natyasastra , believes that it belongs to the fifth century BC. He bases his assessment on the archaic pre-Paninian features of the language and the fact that Bharata mentions the Arthashastra of Brihaspati, and not that of the fourth century BC Kautilya.

The term “natya” is synonymous with drama. According to Bharata, the natya was created by taking elements from each of the four Vedas: recitation ( pathya ) from the Rigveda, song or melody ( gita ) from the Samaveda, acting ( abhinaya ) from the Yajurveda, and sentiments ( rasa ) from the Atharvaveda. By this synthesis, the Natyasastra became the fifth Veda, meant to take the spirit of the Vedic vision to the common man. Elsewhere, Bharata says: “The entire nature of human beings as connected with the experiences of happiness and misery, and joy and sorrow, when presented through the process of histrionics (abhinaya) is called natya.”

Five of the 36 chapters of the Natyasastra are devoted to music. Bharata speaks of the 22 shrutis of the octave, the seven notes and the number of shrutis in each of them. He explains how the veena is to be tuned. He also describes the dhruvapada songs that were part of musical performances.

The concept of rasa , enduring sentiment, lies behind the aesthetics of the Natyasastra . There are eight rasas : heroism, fury, wonder, love, mirth, compassion, disgust and terror. Bharata lists another 33 less permanent sentiments. The artist, through movement, voice, music or any other creative act attempts to evoke them in the listener and the spectator.This evocation helps to plumb the depths of the soul, thereby, facilitating self-knowledge.

The algorithmic approach to knowledge became the model for scientific theories in the Indic world, extending from India to the East and Southeast Asia. The ideas of the Natyasastra were in consonance with this tradition and they provided an overarching comprehensiveness to sculpture, temple architecture, performance, dance and storytelling. But, unlike other technical shastras that were written for the scholar, Bharata’s work influenced millions directly. For these reasons alone, the Natyasastra is one of the most important books ever written.

To appreciate the pervasive influence of the Natyasastra, just consider music. The comprehensiveness of the Natyasastra forged a tradition of tremendous pride and resilience that survived the westward movement of Indian musical imagination, through the agency of itinerant musicians. Several thousand Indian musicians, of which Kashmiri musicians are likely to have been a part, were invited by the fifth century Persian king, Behram Gaur. Turkish armies used Indians as professional musicians.

Bharata stresses the transformative power of creative art. He says, “It teaches duty to those who have no sense of duty, love to those who are eager for its fulfilment, and it chastises those who are ill-bred or unruly, promotes self-restraint in those who are disciplined, gives courage to cowards, energy to heroic persons, enlightens men of poor intellect and gives wisdom to the learned.”

Our life is spent learning one language or another. Words in themselves are not enough, we must learn the languages of relationships, ideas, music, games, business, power and nature. There are some languages that one wishes did not exist, like that of evil. But evil, resulting from the ignorance that makes one act like an animal, is a part of nature and it is best to recognise it so that one knows how to confront it. Creative art show us a way to transcend evil because of its ability to transform. This is why religious fanatics hate art.

This essay has been taken from Kashmir and its People: Studies in the Evolution of Kashmiri Society . M.K. Kaw (ed.), A.P.H., New Delhi, 2004.

To Be Continued.

Subhash Kak is Regents professor of electrical and computer engineering at Oklahoma State University and a vedic scholar.

  • Indian culture
  • Kashmir Valley
  • Kashmir History
  • Natyasastra

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Greater Kashmir

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Exploring the history of Kashmir

The book titled kashmir past and present puts forward the novel idea how a few budding intellectuals pooled their ideas, intelligence and hard work under….

history of kashmir essay

The book titled Kashmir Past and Present puts forward the novel idea how a few budding intellectuals pooled their ideas, intelligence and hard work under the guidance and academic leadership of their senior colleague Professor Mohammad Yusuf Ganai, and became a catalyst for moulding the nature of conducting research in Kashmir’s history. The edited book has 15 chapters by reputed and budding scholars and examines many aspects of Kashmir’s regional history and in the process, diligently explored extensive caches of the diverse early and contemporary sources. The result is this cohesively articulated volume. Through various sections and subsections, these scholars have studied social, economic, political, technological, environmental, literary and folk aspects and very prominent issues pertaining to religious life, literature, popular culture, religion and village life in Kashmir.

The tone of this edited book is grasped by the very introduction which demonstrates its quality by articulating varied theoretical perspectives, and connects the same to the study of the Kashmir region. The timing of this volume is also of great importance. We are living in a time when Kashmir has been badly trampled by political ramifications that are no less than an ongoing war, where individual freedom has been overrun by variety of brutalities. In such circumstances, the expression of this volume is a significant extension of our horizons beyond the questions of personality, of conflict, and of religious division—which loom so large on the region and beyond. Importantly, this book is an eye opener for our region’s intellectual community, policy makers and intelligentsia.

Professor Ganai’s work is subtle in bringing a more convincing relief for the region’s academics, public, and for the sense of region’s culture. In the introduction, he states, “Being linked with the neighbouring regions, it is distinct from them, with at least a segment of its resident’s conscious of belonging to the region and articulating this consciousness.” Avoiding setting the discussion into any particular political mould, Professor Ganai has marshalled an impressive array of examples, with classified evidence and allowed it to speak for itself in all its complexity. According to Professor Ganai, “A rounded study of region required an interdisciplinary approach, taking note of the peculiarities of its historical experience, complexities of life in various sub regions and plurality of the regional culture.” He is content to endorse that when people are powerless legally or peaceably to remove their hurdles in restoring regions identity, they can also try to improve their lot by strengthening their intellectual moorings till other alternatives open up.

The first chapter of the book is titled ‘Regional Manifestation of Kushan Rule in Kashmir’, and is written by Dr. A. R. Lone. The central question that Dr Lone poses regarding the necessity of exploring Kushan history is an important one that needs to be grappled by scholars in future too, i.e.,  “within the corpus of literature available on socio-cultural and political history of the empire, some regions are over emphasized while others (such as Kashmir) are sparsely represented”. It would be useful to know, about the exact contribution of Kushans in facilitating the relationships between various communities, their social, cultural religious and political life. From his essay, it should be deduced that this is immensely stimulating, founded in extensive bedrock of documentary and archaeological sources. Historians concerned with ancient past of India and Kashmir owe a considerable debt to Dr lone for this substantial and scholarly contribution.

Elegantly written and presented in typically modest fashion, is the essay on ‘Natural History of Kashmir: Mughal Tryst with Regions Fauna (1586-1925)’ by Dr. Mehraj-u-din. It deserves to be widely read. Dr. Mehraj-u-din states, “What is more creditable about these royal naturalists (Mughals) is that they do not rely on mere hearsay, but make a clear distinction in their writings between personal observations and what has been reported to them by others” It would be mistake to regard this essay  simply as Mughal History. Dr. Mehraj-u-din has thoroughly examined the subject and his work is more solid than inspired and is bound to be descriptive rather than analytical. This is a novel contribution to the study of natural history.

‘Masnavi Tradition in Kashmir’ by Dr. Sajad Ahmad Darzi, will certainly encourage number of further studies. This concisely written and well produced essay will always be regarded as pioneering and indispensable research into this field of literature. Dr. Darzi explains, “it is erroneous to think that Kashmiri poets totally subscribed to literary tradition that was followed by the collaborative poets of tyrannous rule”. This description is admirable and engaging. Certainly those pursuing research into this aspect will find this essay of considerable value.

‘Beyond the Fine Texture of Silk: The Development of Industry and its Labour’ by Dr. Shiraz Ahmad Dar is a detailed essay. It throws light on the predicament of Kashmir’s silk industry and its linkages with the region’s economy. The study is obviously helpful to economic historians too. It would be unfair and unrealistic to expect the author to have answered every question; inquiries underway will doubtlessly elucidate several of them including the essential aspect of the deplorable conditions of workers. Dr. Dar explains, “The Srinagar silk factory also remained closed for two to three months in a year for which no wages were given to workers”. His distinguished presentation in this essay is evidence of author’s mastery of the subject.

Dr. Abdul Waheed Bhat’s essay on ‘Rice Cultivation in Kashmir’ presents many useful insights. The technical detail is of high density but it does not obstruct the flow of text which is skilfully constructed to combine narrative description interlinked in variety of ways. Dr. Bhat explains, “Rice related agricultural activities are so connected & contemporaneous that one feels handicapped to draw a clear cut line between one activity and the other”. The analysis of all aspects is supported by well designed arguments. Dr Bhat’s enthusiasm for history of technology seems to be considerable. To be fair, this study does represent a serious attempt to explain the pattern of cultivation. It is a brilliantly structured study with rare originality and often interesting, informative and occasionally stimulating analysis. It is a combination of scholarship and imaginative interpretation from wholly a new perspective.

The chapter on ‘Colonialism and Political Restructuring in India: Punjab Crises and the Making of Jammu and Kashmir State’ is written by Dr. Sadaf Sanaullah and Dr. Javed ul Aziz. It provides much needed dossier on the history of evolution of modern Jammu and Kashmir State. Importantly, the scholars have successfully blended a fascinating variety of opinions, and causes, and analyzed them in relation to his basic theme, demonstrating along the way both substantial research and imaginative use of disparate materials.  They explain, “It was also expected that the state of Jammu and Kashmir, along with what remained of Sikh kingdom, would act as a bulwark against the Afghans preventing them to extend their influence beyond Indus.” At a time of increased public interest and apathy of government to address it only through disproportionate coercion, the essay offers invaluable material on the subject and does succeed in varying measure in providing illumination. Both the scholars have intelligent grasp of this period and have build their narrative critically with a new source base.

 ‘Villages in Kashmir History: A Case Study of Audsoo (1846-2018)’ is written by Professor M. Y. Ganai himself. It is a clear and well documented essay on a bewilderingly complex and profound social issue. There is much in the study of history of this village including their plight as represented here to appeal to professional historians. He explains, “It was owing to extreme poverty in villages that the villagers used to have seasonal migrations to the plains of Punjab in search of livelihood”. It is an important exercise in new cultural and social history of Kashmir, rendered for the first time in region’s history by any intellectual. Concise, fresh and lucid, Professor Ganai’s essay adds weight to the aspirations of scholars who have great appetite for new emerging ideas in Kashmir and outside. His brilliant pattern, and the organization of this village study, has implications that go far beyond the history of Kashmir.

The presentation of ‘Agenda of Reform in Muslim Community: Secular and Sacred Education in Kashmir’ by Dr. Younis Rashid and Dr. Javed Ahmad Dar is based on meticulous and difficult research. It is both rich in detail and comprehensive in scope. It provides answers to several highly important questions being debated in Muslim society today. “They attempt to evaluate the present by negotiating with past through their ideological moorings.”  Without strikingly contradicting the opinions of scholars who worked in this field, such as Mohammad Yusuf Abbas, Abdul Fida Felahi, S.A.A Maududi and others, the essay establishes its fundamental importance and is a subtle contribution. The analysis provides much clear view than some of the previous works on the subject.

It is gratifying to know that in Kashmir’s history-writing, the genre of poetry is given its space by Ms. Zameerah in her chapter on ‘Progressive Poetry and Freedom Struggle in Kashmir’. Ms. Zameerah’s contribution is unique because it pertains to an important aspect that has followed a serious neglect in Kashmir’s history writing. Inspite of the introductory nature of this theme, there is much to recommend that this essay is a great scholarly achievement. It demonstrates that Zameerah’s learning is immense and her knowledge of literature on freedom struggle is huge which is commensurate with the herculean efforts she has made to relate both the aspects of poetry and freedom struggle. She explains, “For the better appreciation and re-enactment of past, the symphony of history and poetry must go together. However, the poetic assertions must be corroborated by privileged sources of history”. It makes a significant contribution to history of freedom struggle and is a real asset that will be as a useful supplement to other works in the field.

‘Exploring the Role of Hamdard: A Study of its Agenda and Working (1935-1947)’ by Dr. M. Ibrahim Wani, has extended our general understanding and highlighted the need for research in such areas. Dr Ibrahim has drawn much evidence by monitoring the real contents of this newspaper rather than depending on the bland and less immediate views expressed by writers about the paper. He explains, “The newspaper (Hamdard) not only dealt with the local, national and international politics but was also focussed on issues connected to public welfare, economic emancipation and cultural progress”. This in itself is a substantial contribution and provides a wealth of detail after cautious scrutiny. This interesting study deserves serious attention.

‘History, Memory and Protest: Debating Nationalism in Kashmir’ by Dr. Farukh Faheem is a fascinating essay with wealth of detail. His arguments are convincing. To quote from the chapter, “We want to join India without any kind of mental reservations, but how can we do it as long as we are not convinced about the complete elimination of communalism in India”. What is remarkable in this essay is the way the author has tried to introduce the concept of nationalism in historical context of Kashmir by helping to set the framework within which discussions will take place in future too. He has indeed accomplished a considerable task, despite the limitations of his sources.

The chapter on ‘Mapping Mahjoor’s Desire for New’ by Dr. Aamir Sadiq reassures us to find that significant contribution of the great poet has everlasting fragrance of history. It is a welcome addition to history and literature written with cool lucidity and contains much that will repay the study of attentive scholars. Therefore, this conjunctional factor – disillusionment with the long time dominant mode of mysticism and metaphysics and disillusionment with the decades old hegemony and colonial suppression of Kashmir – saw new literary spaces and movements emerging. Mahjoor was undoubtedly a leading light of this new literary site. Dr. Aamir Sadiq has done extensive research and well utilized the sources for reconstructing his major points. It is a brilliant essay about ideas and a history of people’s lives in early 20th century and how these were laudably influenced by the new social and economic developments. He explains, “It was only under the influence of progressive thought that many leading writers, including Mahjoor switched over from Urdu to Kashmiri for forceful articulation of feelings and expression”. The major strength of this essay is its exhaustive and detailed research as a historian that gives the reader a comprehensive understanding without interrupting flow of his discussion.

Professor Majrooh Rashid’s chapter ‘Changing Colours of Kashmiri Culture’ gives a highly readable account of Kashmiri culture. The author seems to opt for a view that tends to see the Kashmiri culture as a primary force in the regions multi-cultural life. He explains, “Our concept of charity and oblation are almost the same as they have been in our recent and ancient past. The impact of the indigenous ways of thinking, with regard to God and his worship is quite visible in our religious practices. The religious psyche of Kashmiri Hindus and Kashmiri Muslims are in tune with each other”. Effective organization, coherent treatment of sources and elegant formulation of analysis are the attractive qualities of this essay.  The essay has successfully achieved its purpose for generating wider interest of scholars. Professor Rashid, a senior academic, has effectively created an agenda for further research. It is an essay of considerable merit.

The chapter on ‘Historicism and Wisdom in Kashmiri Folk Sayings’ by Mr. Mohsin, emerges to grow in stature both in history of folk culture and history of events. The reading of this essay will be rewarding for all those historians who want to gain knowledge about the critical conditions in which this aspect of Kashmir’s folk culture grew. Mr. Mohsin explains, “it was the spirit of live and let live that made the rural society survive.” By any standard, this is an exciting essay which would claim an appropriate place in historical literature, when pursued further. All the sources are very elaborately examined with authentic detail, and are more faithful to the text in lending credence to the arguments.

The chapter on ‘Marriage Payments among Shia Muslims in Kashmir: Continuity and Change’ is written by Dr. Humaira Showkat. She has good deal to say about this sect of Muslim society, and explains, “Marriage customs among Muslims in general and Shias in particular are directly or indirectly linked with traits of old culture, which has become a part of cultural heritage, an important dimension of social structure and an inseparable aspect of social life.” It makes illuminating connections between the events described and the society in which they take place. Though differing slightly in historical approach, it is certainly a valuable presentation because the entire description is vivid, authoritative and insightful. The description is successful on its own terms and the author has succeeded admirably in meeting the objectives of useful surveys of scholarship in socio- religious history.

It is difficult to assess this volume as a whole and to deal fairly and adequately with a work of this kind in a brief review or to list all authors of fifteen contributions including introduction elaborately. Clearly, the aim of this volume is to provide information and to provoke discussion. They essays presented are balanced in length, presentation and coverage. The structure of the study reveals that the treatment is not symmetrical but some major themes emerge and recur. A couple of papers are little more relevant in substance than methodology. The volume would have been strengthened by an extensive bibliography for usefulness of readers, although this lacuna does not tend to obscure the variety of its merits. However, these points should not be seen to detract from excellent work. Perhaps, the most important question that arises relates to the nature of results achieved. The volume clearly illustrates that research of high quality is being done on topics which happen geographically to fall within the territorial limits of Kashmir. What has emerged from this meeting of minds is that there are many areas in Kashmir’s history that need our attention even if we have to constantly revise and revisit our views.

By and large, this monumental study is rich in sources, deep in detail, and exhaustive in scope. It is a regional history built on layer upon layer of micro and macro study observations of scores of brewing ideas that can take Kashmir’s thirst for new academics forward. It is a sound monograph and a painstaking investigation. The most striking feature of this work is how persistent its historical pattern has been in addressing the issues that take place in serious history writing in particular, and social science research in general.

(R Rattan Lal Hangloo is Former Vice Chancellor, University of Kalyani and University of Allahabad. Before this, he was a Professor (History) at Hyderabad Central University. He is originally from Hangalgund, Kokernag, Kashmir. At present, he is Honorary Chancellor, Nobel International University, Toronto, Canada.)

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The History of the Kashmir Conflict - Essay Example

The History of the Kashmir Conflict

  • Subject: History
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    Kashmir is an ancient geological land with glorious past where the man lived since the pre-historic times and has always been contacts with her neighbors and witnessed influx and efflux of races ...

  18. An Overview of the 'Kashmir Issue'

    The Kashmir issue started in 1947 with the partition of the British Indian Empire. The new-formed India and Pakistan were competing for dominance over the state because of religious issues. This became a major cause of the Indian-Pakistani conflict with proactive actions from both countries to become Kashmir`s dominions.

  19. The Introduction To The Kashmir Conflict History Essay

    Immediate post-independence 1948-1949 period As soon as the states of India and Pakistan were formed in 1947, the controversy over Kashmir arose.

  20. Essay on Kashmir: History and Beauty in 600+ Words

    1. First Indo-Pak War (1947-1948): Fought for Jammu Kashmir shortly after India's independence. 2. Sino-Indian War (1962): A conflict between India and China for the territorial region Aksai Chin. 3. The War of (1965): Fought mainly over Kashmir. 4.

  21. Culture of Kashmir

    Kashmiri woman in traditional Kashmiri attire The culture of Kashmir encompasses the spoken language, written literature, cuisine, architecture, traditions, and history of the Kashmiri people native to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent.

  22. Exploring the history of Kashmir

    Elegantly written and presented in typically modest fashion, is the essay on 'Natural History of Kashmir: Mughal Tryst with Regions Fauna (1586-1925)' by Dr. Mehraj-u-din.

  23. (PDF) An Analysis of the Kashmir Issue: Past, Present ...

    In this paperwork, we at first presented the basic introduction to the Kashmir issue and then tried to shed light on its current scenario, especially after 05th August 2019, by answering a series...

  24. A Murdered Ambassador, a Closed Embassy: The Tragic History of US

    As the U.S. debates the fate of its embassy in Kabul, it's worth remembering the broader context of Afghanistan-U.S. diplomatic relations - including the murder of Ambassador Dubs in 1979.

  25. The History of the Kashmir Conflict

    kashmir conflict Professor name: Module Title: Module no: Submission date: Abstract The present paper aims to discuss the Kashmir problem our country has been undergoing as one of the most chronic and challenging issues at large in its sixty four years long history since1947.... Hence, the reason behind the conflict between both these largest parties of the united India was religious in nature ...