A Political History of Kashmir: The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan for over six decades.
By Manini Manushi Gangal
Kashmir, formally partitioned in 1947, is the centre of a tumultuous military landscape and fraught political tensions; it is one of the most militarised zones in the world. Until the mid-1800s ‘Kashmir’ only referred to the Kashmir Valley between the Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range. Now, Kashmir includes the Indian-administered ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ and ‘Ladakh’, as well as the Pakistan-administered ‘Azad Kashmir’ and ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’, and the Chinese-administered ‘Aksai Chin’ and ‘Trans-Karakoram Tract’ territories. Kashmir’s fractured state epitomises its stolen autonomy, traced in large part to the involvement of the UN and British colonial agenda. This article mainly discusses the regions administered by India and Pakistan, as these two nuclear-armed neighbours claim rights to the whole territory.
Map of Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir is separated from the Pakistan-administered regions by the ‘Ceasefire Line’ or ‘Line of Control’, which was drawn as an emergency provision by the UN to avoid a war between India and Pakistan over the territory in 1947, and was not intended to be a permanent border marking. However, the UN’s support for Kashmiri agency was later revoked, suspending the indigenous people’s self-determination.
One of the major pillars of international law is the concept of sovereignty – the authority of a state over its own territory and the right to political independence, free from external influence. Therefore, it is somewhat inconceivable that the UN’s temporary bifurcation be made permanent without the involvement of the Kashmiri people. This is, however, exactly how events unfolded. In 1971 the UN revoked their support for a referendum on the fate of Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan adopted a bilateral approach which failed and led to three wars, countless military standoffs, and numerous ceasefire violations within the territory.
Academics such as Hussain endeavour to highlight the impact this has had on the area’s land, resources, and civilians; Kashmir has been forced into a state of constant tumult and militarisation.
Kashmir has historically been coveted territory for myriad rulers and empires, and therefore has also engaged in thriving trade throughout its history; Kashmir was the second-largest revenue earner for the Sikh Empire and become renowned globally for the production of Kashmiri shawls, made of fine pashmina or shahtoosh wool. Today, ‘cashmere’ products are sought after for their softness and warmth, as well as their quality and prestige. Jammu was conquered by the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1808; Gulab Singh, who started as a young face in the Sikh court but rose to power as the Raja of Jammu, conquered further territories and surrounded the Kashmir Valley. In 1846 the Treaty of Amritsar was agreed between Maharaja Gulab Singh and the British military officer Sir Henry Lawrence, whereby West Punjab was surrendered to the British, and Gulab Singh acquired the territory comprising the Vale of Kashmir. Hence, countless communities, ethnicities, and languages were absorbed under one rule.
The eastern people generally practiced Buddhism, the south was comprised of a mixture of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, central Kashmir was largely Sunni Muslim but had a small and influential Hindu minority, the north mostly comprised of Shia Muslim communities, and the west was almost entirely Muslim, however they were ethnically different to the communities in the Kashmir valley. In 1941, a Kashmiri Pandit described the devastating poverty and destitution suffered by the Muslim population under Hindu rule, which imposed heavy taxation and legal discrimination, forcing Muslim communities into peasantry.
The tension within Kashmir has certainly been largely driven by Indian and Pakistani power-grabs, however Kashmiri internal affairs have also been turbulent due to the myriad communities’ endeavours to gain power and influence. Commentators such as Evans, Maini, and Rao observe that internal state politics, effective representation, and economic development has been stagnant since the Dogra Raj period (1846-1947), leading to a monopolisation of state affairs by the Kashmir Valley, placing Srinagar (the largest city in Jammu and Kashmir) on an elevated platform. Hussain observes that Jammu and Kashmir is simultaneously the most contested and militarised territory in the area, and the most dominant within intellectual and political landscapes. She attributes this to Jammu and Kashmir’s past internal autonomy, under Dogra rather than British rule. Hence, when the British departed in 1947, Kashmir’s future was shrouded in uncertainty.
The ‘simple’ solution, that Pakistan would claim the Muslim-majority regions and that India would acquire the Hindu-majority regions, did not apply to autonomous Jammu and Kashmir and therefore it retained special independent status, under the Indian Independence Act 1947. The British instructed Jammu and Kashmir to accede to either India or Pakistan, hoping to impose continued British influence over India and Pakistan. This encouraged the destabilisation of the region even further, and Hussain laments that the continuing British desire for colonial influence over the newly separated neighbours dismantled the political aspirations of the indigenous people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Since it had been assumed that Kashmir would accede to Pakistan during the Partition in 1947, due to its large Muslim population and shared border, Pakistan launched a guerrilla attack when Maharaja Hari Singh resisted. Instead of relenting, he appealed to Lord Mountbatten, who agreed to support Kashmir on one condition: that the Maharaja accede to India. Consequently, Indian soldiers drove the Pakistani forces from most of the state. The UN then demanded a referendum be held to respect the desire of the Kashmiri people, whereas India claimed that this was not possible until all Pakistani forces had been completely removed from the territory. This leads us to the current state of Kashmir’s political and military tensions: the ceasefire violated, the referendum disregarded, and Kashmir divided.
India currently controls about half of the former princely state of ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ and Pakistan controls a third. The Indian-administered territories special status, which retained their right to their own constitution, flag, and legislative autonomy, was also revoked under the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) nationalist agenda in August 2019.
Kashmir’s people grapple daily with the bulldozing of their communal identities, and the continuous loss of their independence and self-determination.
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Edited by Elizabeth Abbott