Rivalry and Revolution in South and East Asia by Partha S. Ghosh

Author:Partha S. Ghosh [Ghosh, Partha S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138352919
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Sale of the territory

The land of Kashmir, otherwise extremely rich in scenic beauty and natural resources, has presented a sorrowful story of grief and pathos since the 19th century. After an uneasy Sikh rule, the territory equal to the size of the United Kingdom, was sold to a Hindu Dogra chieftain for a paltry sum of 7.5m rupees. The sale was conducted subsequent to the British conquest of the Punjab through the Amritsar Treaty of 1846 signed between the British East India Company and the Maharajah - himself a man of dubious character and shadowy background. The ludicrous sale of such a vast area with a predominant Muslim majority was justified by the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, in his correspondence with Queen Victoria, as a means of recouping the losses in the Sikh Wars.2 Since 1846, the predominantly Muslim region has languished in abject poverty and destitution and rarely witnessed sustained periods of peace. Despite an overwhelmingly Muslim population, the State under the Dogra rule of a century, never had a single Muslim prime minister.

Because of the speed of events just before independence, the future of princely states did not receive sufficient attention by the government and the main Indian political parties. For a long time, the princes had successfully quarantined themselves against any “outside” influence through an autocratic grip on their subjects.3 In 1947, while surrendering its paramountcy over the princely states in the sub-continent, the British Government in India advised their rulers to accede to one of the two new successor states. Their decision was to be based on the obvious geographic, cultural, economic and demographic considerations. Certainly Kashmir, as a predominantly Muslim territory, contiguous to Pakistan (“K” stands for Kashmir in Pakistan) was supposed to join that country but its ruler, Maharajah Hari Singh dithered, triggering a number of revolts across the State. His own sense of insecurity caused by regional revolts was made use of by the ambitious new leadership in Delhi who drew up an Instrument of Accession facilitating the advent of Indian troops into the State apparently to defend him against the tribal invaders from the Frontier province of Pakistan. The Instrument carried the commitment of a “reference to the people” - making the whole arrangement provisional.4 The Maharajah whose ancestor had acquired Kashmir in the mid-19th century as a personal fief “was arm-twisted into acceding to India”.5 The Indian official view on the accession has been a constant rebuttal of Kashmiri and Pakistani stances. It simply takes the accession as final and legal: “Kashmir’s accession to India took place under circumstances over which the Government of India had no control . . . Kashmir’s status as an integral part of India should not, therefore, be questioned”.6

Pakistanis have looked at the Kashmir dispute as a well-orchestrated effort to strangle their country at its inception. The discretionary changes on the Boundary Award, stoppage of water supply and assets and intransigence on the future of princely states like Kashmir and Hyderabad in the wake of the world’s largest migration, left lasting scars on the Pakistani mind.

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