|
In 1846, under the terms of the Treaty of Amritsar, the British sold the beautiful
valley of Kashmir to the Hindu Dogra ruler, Gulab Singh. It was not a sale in the
traditional sense of the word since Britain was not physically occupying the land it
sold, but rather a confirmation of an existing state of affairs where by Gulab Singh
had been administering the valley on behalf of the Sikhs. Now, as Maharajah of
Jammu and Kashmir in his own right, he could include Kashmir as the ‘jewel’
among his other territorial possessions, which included Jammu, Ladakh, Baltistan
and numerous hill states, through which flowed the river Indus and its tributaries to
the east. Thus, people of different linguistic, religious and cultural traditions were
all brought under the jurisdiction of one ruler. The inclusion of the predominantly
Muslim, and more densely populated, valley meant that Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists
were in the minority. When, a century later, the sub-continent was partitioned at
independence in 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh, Gulab Singh’s great-grandson, could
not decide whether to join the new dominion of Pakistan or India. For over two
months, his state remained ‘independent’. In October, after large numbers of
tribesmen from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier invaded the state, he agreed to join
India. His decision was immediately contested by Pakistan on the basis of the state’s
majority Muslim population. War between India and Pakistan was halted in 1949 by
a ceasefire supervised by the recently founded United Nations. |
