Kashmir or Kashmir is a disputed geographical region located northwest of India, northeast of Pakistan, and southwest of China in Central Asia. Historically, Kashmir was defined as the plain south of the western Himalayas. As the map shows, it was occupied by the People's Republic of China, Pakistan, and India.
In the mid-19th century, the word "Kashmir" referred to the valley between the Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Mountains. Today, the word refers to a broader region that includes the Indian territories of Jammun and Kashmir (comprising Jammun, the Kashmir Valley, and Ladakh), the Pakistani territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract. Although Jammun is part of the disputed Kashmir, it is geographically not part of the Kashmir Valley or the Ladakh region. The Jammun region is inhabited by the Dogra people, who historically, culturally, linguistically, and geographically belong to the Punjabi and Pahari regions, formerly part of the Punjab Highlands, now Himachal Pradesh. In the first half of the first millennium AD, Kashmir became an important center of the Kambogas and later of Buddhism. In the 19th century, Kashmiri Shaivism emerged. In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, beginning what later became known as the Kashmir Sultanate or the Swati period. Over the next five decades, Kashmir was ruled by Muslim kings from the Mir Shah line, including the Mughals, who ruled from 1586 to 1751, and later by the Afghan Dwani Empire, which controlled Kashmir from 1751 to 1820. In that year, the Sikhs, led by Ranjit Singh, conquered Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the first war between them and the British, and before purchasing the region from the British under the terms of the Treaty of Amritsar, Gulab Singh, the ruler of Jammun, became the new ruler of Kashmir. He and his heirs continued to rule under British patronage until 1947, when Kashmir became the subject of disputes between British India, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China.
Etymology
In Arabic, its name is Kishmir and Kashmir. Its Sanskrit spelling is कश्मीर (káśmīra). Like many ancient geographical names, its original meaning or origin is unknown. The word "Kashmir" was also pronounced "Kashmiri" in English. Over the centuries, several Puranas associated the word "Kashmīra" with the name of a legendary sage named Kashyapa. Therefore, it has been suggested that "Kashmira" is derived from "Kashyapa-mīra," meaning "Sea of Kashyapa" (and the Kashmir Valley, which was once a lake, according to some), or perhaps from "Kashyapa-mīru," meaning "Mount Kashyapa."
Area
Its area is 242,000 square kilometers, and its population was estimated at 15 million in 2000. The Muslim population is estimated at 90%, Hinduism at 8%, and Buddhists at 1%.
Location
Kashmir is located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, between Central Asia and South Asia, between latitudes 8, 32, and 58, and longitudes 26, 37, and 30, and 80. It shares borders with four countries: Tibet to the northeast and east for a distance of 450 miles; India to the southeast for a distance of 350 miles; Pakistan to the south and southwest for a distance of 700 miles; and Afghanistan to the north, with a narrow strip separating it from Turkmenistan for a distance of 160 miles.
Ancient History of Kashmir
Hinduism and Buddhism in Kashmir
During the ancient and medieval periods, Kashmir was an important center for the development of Hindu-Buddhist syncretism, blending Madhyamaka and Yogacara with Shaivism and Advaita. The Mauryan Buddhist emperor Ashoka is often credited with founding the ancient capital of Kashmir, Shrinagari, now in ruins on the outskirts of modern Srinagar. Kashmir has long been a stronghold of Buddhism. As a Buddhist seat of learning, the Sarvastivada school strongly influenced Kashmir. Buddhist monks from East and Central Asia are recorded as having visited the kingdom. In the late 4th century, the famous Kucha monk Kumārajīva, born to an Indian noble family, studied Agama (Buddhism) and Madhyagama in Kashmir under Bandhudata. He later became a prolific translator who helped transmit Buddhism to China. His mother, Jiva, is believed to have retired to Kashmir. Vimalaka, a Sarvastivadan Buddhist monk, traveled from Kashmir to Kucha, where he taught Kumarajiva in Buddhist texts. The Karkota Empire (625–885 CE) was a powerful Hindu empire originating in the Kashmir region. It was founded by Durlapvardhana during the lifetime of Harsha. The dynasty marked the rise of Kashmir as a power in South Asia. Avantivarman ascended the throne of Kashmir in 855 CE, establishing the Utpala dynasty and ending the Karkota dynasty.
According to tradition, Adi Shankara visited the pre-existing Sarvajnapitha (Sharda Peeth) in Kashmir in the late 8th or early 9th century. The Madhavya Shankaravejayam mentions that this temple had four doors for scholars from the four cardinal directions. The southern door of Sarvajna Peeth was opened by Adi Shankara. According to tradition, Adi Shankara opened the southern door by defeating in argument all the scholars there in all the various scholastic disciplines such as Mimamsa, Vedanta, and other branches of Hindu philosophy; and ascended to the throne of supreme wisdom of that temple. Abhinavagupta (950–1020) was one of India's greatest philosophers, mystics, and aestheticians. He was also considered an important musician, poet, playwright, exegete, theologian, and logician, a multifaceted figure who exerted powerful influences on Indian culture. Born in the Kashmir Valley into a family of scholars and mystics, he studied all the schools of philosophy and art of his time under the guidance of as many as fifteen (or more) teachers and gurus. In his long life, he completed over 35 works, the largest and most famous of which is the Trantraluka, an encyclopedic treatise on all the philosophical and practical aspects of Trikala and Kula (Hinduism) (today known as Kashmir Shaivism). Another of his most important contributions to the field of aesthetic philosophy was his famous Abhinav Bharati commentary on the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni.
In the 10th century, Mokshupaya Omuksuppa, a philosophical text on salvation for the non-ascetic (moksha effort: "means release"), was written on Pradyumna Hill in Srinagar. It takes the form of a public sermon, claims to be humanly composed, and contains approximately 30,000 shlokas (making it longer than the Ramayana). The main part of the text is a dialogue between Vashistha and Rama, interspersed with numerous short stories and anecdotes to illustrate the content. This text was later expanded and consolidated (from the 11th to the 14th centuries CE), giving rise to the Yoga Vashistha.
Queen Kota Rani was a medieval Hindu ruler of Kashmir, ruling until 1339. She was a prominent ruler who is often credited with saving the city of Srinagar from recurring floods by constructing a canal called the Koti Kol. This canal receives water from the Jhelum River at the city's entry point and merges with the Jhelum River outside the city limits.
The Period of Muslim Rule
The beginning of Islam's entry into the Indian subcontinent occurred in the first century AD, when Islam entered Khairullah, currently known as Kerala, via Serendib. It also entered Sindh during the Umayyad era under the leadership of the conquering commander Muhammad ibn Qasim al-Thaqafi in 90 AH. Islam then penetrated India through Muslim preachers, conquerors, traders, and travelers. India was completely conquered during the reign of Sultan Mahmud ibn Subuktigin al-Ghaznawi, who died in 422 AH.
It is reported that he seized Kashmir and Gujarat. Ibn Kathir states that he invaded India in 396 AH. Ibn al-Athir states in his book, Al-Kamil, that he reached Kashmir as an invader in 407 AH, and that upon reaching it, its people converted to Islam at his command.
The Period of Sikh Rule
In 1819, the Kashmir Valley passed from the control of the Durrani Empire in Afghanistan to the occupying Sikh armies under the command of Ranjit Singh in Punjab, thus ending four centuries of Islamic rule under the Mughals and the Afghan regime. Having suffered under the Afghans, the Kashmiris initially welcomed the new Sikh rulers. However, the Sikh rulers proved to be difficult taskmasters, and Sikh rule was generally considered oppressive, perhaps protected by Kashmir's distance from the Sikh empire's capital, Lahore. The Sikhs enacted a number of anti-Muslim laws, including death sentences for cow slaughter, the closure of the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, and a ban on the public Muslim call to prayer. Kashmir now also began to attract European visitors, many of whom reported on the abject poverty of the Muslim peasantry and the exorbitant taxation under Sikh rule. The high taxes, according to some contemporary accounts, deforested vast swathes of the countryside, allowing only one-sixteenth of the arable land to be cultivated. Many Kashmiri peasants migrated to the plains of the Punjab. However, after the famine of 1832, the Sikhs reduced the land tax to half the land's produce and also began offering interest-free loans to farmers; Kashmir became the second-largest source of revenue for the Sikh Empire. During this time, Kashmir shawls became known worldwide, attracting many buyers, especially in the West.
The Jammun state, which was on the rise after the collapse of the Mughal Empire, came under Sikh control in 1770. Furthermore, in 1808, it was completely conquered by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Gulab Singh, then a young man in the Jammun household, joined the Sikh forces and, distinguishing himself in campaigns, gradually rose in power and influence. In 1822, he was granted the title of Raja of Jammun. Along with his commander, Zorawar Singh Khalria, he conquered and defeated Rajouri (1821), Kishtwar (1821), the Suru Valley and Kargil (1835), Ladakh (1834–1840), and Baltistan (1840), thus encompassing the Kashmir Valley. He became a wealthy and influential nobleman in the Sikh court.
The Emirate Period
In 1845, the First Anglo-Sikh War broke out. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of India:
Gulab Singh decided to remain aloof until the Battle of Subraon (1846), when he emerged as a useful intermediary and trusted advisor to Sir Henry Lawrence. Two treaties were concluded. The first gave the Lahore State (i.e., western Punjab) to the British, as compensation for one crore rupees, the hill states between the Beas and Indus rivers. The second gave Gulab Singh 75,000 rupees of all the hilly or mountainous lands east of the Indus River and west of the Ravi River, i.e., the Kashmir Valley.
The Princely State of Kashmir and Jammun (as it was first called), formed by treaty and sale, between 1820 and 1858, brought together disparate territories, religions, and ethnicities: to the east, Ladakh was ethnically and culturally Tibetan, and its inhabitants practiced Buddhism; To the south, the population of Jammu and Kashmir was a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. In the densely populated central Kashmir Valley, the population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim; however, there was also a small but influential Hindu minority, the Kashmiri Brahmins or Pandits. To the northeast, the sparsely populated Baltistan was ethnically related to Ladakh but practiced Shia Islam. To the north, the sparsely populated Gilgit Agency was a diverse region, mostly Shia. To the west, Panch was Muslim, but of a different ethnicity from the Kashmir Valley. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which Kashmir sided with the British, and the subsequent assumption of direct rule by Great Britain, the princely state of Kashmir came under the control of the British Crown.
In the 1941 British census of India, Kashmir recorded a 77% Muslim majority, a 20% Hindu population, and a small number of Buddhists and Sikhs comprising the remaining 3%. In the same year, Prem Nath Bazaz, a Kashmiri Pandit journalist, wrote: "The poverty of the Muslim masses is appalling. Most of them are landless laborers, working as slaves for Hindu absentee landlords. The Muslim masses bear almost the brunt of official corruption." Under Hindu rule, Muslims faced heavy taxes, discrimination in the legal system, and were forced to work without pay. Conditions in the princely state caused a massive migration from the Kashmir Valley to the Punjab in British India. For nearly a century until the census, a small Hindu elite ruled over a large and impoverished Muslim peasantry. Driven into servility by chronic indebtedness to landlords and moneylenders, and by a lack of education or awareness of rights, the Muslim peasantry had no political representation until the 1930s.
1947 and 1948
Hari Singh, the grandson of Ranbir Singh, who ascended the throne of Kashmir in 1925, was the reigning king in 1947, following the end of British rule over the subcontinent and the subsequent partition of the British Indian Empire into the newly independent Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. According to Burton Stein's history of India,
Kashmir was neither as large nor as old an independent state as Hyderabad. It was created in an unusual way by the British after the first Sikh defeat in 1846, as a reward for a former official who had sided with the British. The Himalayan kingdom was connected to India through a region in Punjab, but 77 percent of its population was Muslim and it shared a border with Pakistan. Hence, the Maharaja was expected to accede to Pakistan when British rule ended on August 14-15. When he hesitated to do so, Pakistan launched a guerrilla attack aimed at intimidating its ruler into submission. Instead, the Maharajah appealed to Mountbatten for help, and the Governor-General agreed on the condition that the ruler accede to India. Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and expelled the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small part of the state. The United Nations was then invited to mediate the dispute. The UN mission insisted that the Kashmiris' opinion must be ascertained, while India insisted that no plebiscite could be held until the entire state was cleared of irregulars.
In the final days of 1948, a ceasefire was agreed upon under UN auspices. However, since the plebiscite demanded by the UN never took place, relations between India and Pakistan soured, eventually leading to two more wars over Kashmir, in 1965 and 1999.
Current Status and Political Divisions
India controls approximately half of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, while Pakistan controls a third of the region, divided into two provinces: Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Previously, parts of the same state—Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh—were administered by India as federal territories since August 5, 2019, following the abolition of limited autonomy and the split of the state.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica:
Although Kashmir had a clear Muslim majority before the 1947 partition and its economic, cultural, and geographical contiguity with the Muslim-majority Punjab region (in Pakistan) could be convincingly demonstrated, political developments during and after partition led to the partition of the region. Pakistan was left with territory that, despite its predominantly Muslim character, was sparsely populated, relatively inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim community in the Kashmir Valley, estimated to represent more than half of the entire region's population, is located in Indian-administered territory, with its former access blocked by the Jhelum Valley route.
The eastern part of the former princely state of Kashmir is also embroiled in a border dispute that began in the late 19th century and continued into the 21st century. Although several border agreements were signed between Great Britain, Afghanistan, and Russia on Kashmir's northern border, China never accepted these agreements, and China's official position did not change after the 1949 Communist Revolution that established the People's Republic of China. By the mid-1950s, the Chinese army had entered northeastern Ladakh.
By 1956-1957, they completed a military road through the Aksai Chin region to provide better connectivity between Xinjiang and western Tibet. India's late discovery of this route led to border clashes between the two countries, culminating in the Sino-Indian War of October 1962.
The region is divided between three countries in a territorial dispute: Pakistan controls the northwest (Northern Areas and Kashmir), India controls the central and southern portion (Jammun and Kashmir) and Ladakh, and the People's Republic of China controls the northeast (Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Route). India controls most of the Siachen Glacier area, including the passes of the Saltoro Ridge, while Pakistan controls the lower area southwest of the Saltoro Ridge. India controls 101,338 square kilometers (39,127 sq mi) of the disputed territory, Pakistan controls 85,846 square kilometers (33,145 sq mi), and the People's Republic of China controls 37,555 square kilometers (14,500 sq mi).
Jammun and Azad Kashmir lie south and west of the Pir Panjal mountain range and are under Indian and Pakistani control, respectively. These are densely populated areas. Gilgit-Baltistan, formerly known as the Northern Areas, is a northernmost region bordered by the Karakoram Mountains, the western Himalayas, the Pamir Mountains, and the Hindu Kush Range. With its administrative center in Gilgit City, the Northern Areas covers an area of 72,971 square kilometers (28,174 sq mi) and has an estimated population of nearly 1 million (10 lakhs).
Ladakh lies between the Kunlun Range in the north and the Greater Himalayas in the south. The region's capitals are Leh and Kargil. It is administered by India and was part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir until 2019. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the region and is inhabited primarily by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan origin. Aksai Chin is a high-altitude salt desert reaching elevations of up to 5,000 meters (16,000 feet). As a geographical part of the Tibetan Plateau, Aksai Chin is also referred to as the Soda Plain. The region is virtually uninhabited and has no permanent settlements.
Although these areas are administered by the claimants, neither India nor Pakistan has formally recognized the accession of the other's claimed territories. India claims these areas, including the area Pakistan "ceded" to China in the Trans-Karakoram region in 1963, as part of its territory, while Pakistan claims the entire region except for the Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Trail. The two countries have fought several declared wars over the region. The 1947 Indo-Pakistani War established the approximate borders of today, with Pakistan occupying approximately one-third of Kashmir and India occupying half, with a UN-established demarcation line. The 1965 Indo-Pakistani War resulted in a stalemate and a UN-negotiated ceasefire.
Historical Overview
Ancient Indian Kashmir is referred to in the Bible as Kashmir, meaning the dry lands. It is known that ancient Indian lands were referred to by Greek and Chinese scholars. Later, it became a center of Hinduism and Buddhism. Islam entered Kashmir in the first century AH (1800-1900 CE) during the reign of Muhammad ibn Qasim al-Thaqafi, who entered Sindh and advanced to Kashmir. Jalaluddin Akbar annexed it to the Mughal Empire in 1587, and the British entered it in 1839.
In 1949, the United Nations decided to hold a free and impartial referendum to determine the fate of Kashmir. However, the UN resolution required the return of parts of Kashmir they had occupied so that a referendum could take place, and thus the referendum never took place. Kashmir is a flashpoint because it is divided between three countries. India, Pakistan, and China each claim the entire region. Each side relies on a set of historical and demographic facts to support its claims to rule and fully annex the region. Meanwhile, a growing segment of the population is demanding complete independence from all three countries.
Britain invaded the Indian subcontinent in 1819 AD and was met with violent resistance from Muslims. The war continued as a battle between Britain and various Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist forces. Britain was unable to establish stability and control over the region until (27) years of intense warfare with the Muslims, i.e., in 1846 AD. After that, Britain was able to extend its control over the region and divide it into three parts: one part ruled directly, encompassing 55% of the subcontinent, and this part had a large Muslim population; the other part ruled through state governors, both Hindu and Muslim, who were appointed to govern (565) autonomous states; and the third part, Kashmir, which it leased to a Hindu feudal lord for a period of one hundred years, pursuant to a lease signed in the Amritsar Agreement, which became known as the Amritsar Treaty. The agreement was from 1846 to 1946.
