{"id":107631,"date":"2018-03-19T12:01:35","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T12:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=107631"},"modified":"2018-03-17T15:09:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T15:09:57","slug":"march-16-the-blackest-day-in-kashmir-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/03\/march-16-the-blackest-day-in-kashmir-history\/","title":{"rendered":"March 16, the Blackest Day in Kashmir History"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 16th<\/sup> of March is the blackest day for all Kashmiris. On this day in 1846, an inhuman sale of Kashmir and Kashmiris was made with a person (Gulab Singh) whom Lord Hardinge called \u2018the greatest rascal of Asia\u2019 by a nation (Britain) to which Napoleon called \u2018the country of shopkeepers\u2019. Ironically, this sordid sale of the transaction was erroneously termed as \u2018The treaty of Amritsar\u2019. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As soon as this \u2018fateful 16th<\/sup> day of March\u2019 passed, the Dogra Raja along with what Robert Thorp calls \u2018his fanatic ministers and rapacious officials\u2019 ushered in a reign of terror in the valley. Taxes were levied exorbitantly and almost everything other than air and water (to quote Walter Lawrence) was taxed. It was no surprise for the ruler to give Kashmiri Muslims, who happened to be around 93% of the population according to Lawrence, the treatment of the \u201cOther\u201d.<\/p>\n

It may be because the Dogra Raja considered Kashmir a purchased property,unlike the Jammu region which Raja Gulab Singh had acquired as a jagir from Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab in 1820. Subsequently, for a century, the life of Kashmiris wereironically under the dual imperialism of British and Dogras that of derivation, pain and suffering. The European travel accounts of this period call it \u2018horrible\u2019.<\/p>\n

Irony dies a thousand deaths as this infamous transaction (in which the whole Kashmir was sold in 75 lakh nanak shahi rupees) was given the color of a \u2018treaty\u2019 by the people who are known to the world for their liberalism, democratic values, fair play and sense of justice; who had abolished tyrannical and despotic monarchies in their own homeland and established in their place a democratic political system, making Great Britain the mother of parliamentary democracy. It was the same nation that gloated over its democratic credentials and \u2018white man\u2019s burden\u2019 but handed over Kashmir to a tyrannical, despotic chieftain in lieu of some cash.<\/p>\n

The non-native Dogras worked overtime to inflict pain upon Muslims and make\u00a0 them feel so. So long as Kashmiris remained under thedomination of Dogras, they had never been better than slaves. The\u00a0\u00a0Dogra fiefdom often invoked the\u00a0 \u2018treaty\u2019\u00a0to establish their legitimacy and\u00a0assert\u00a0their control over \u2018everything\u2019 written\u00a0in the deal. \u2018Everything\u2019 includes\u00a0dejure<\/em>\u00a0&\u00a0defacto<\/em>\u00a0ownership of self-esteem,\u00a0happiness, life, liberty and identity of its inhabitants.\u00a0\u00a0Through this shoddy sell-out, they had a plan to take revenge from every\u00a0Kashmiri\u00a0Muslim-dead, living and yet to born.\u00a0\u00a0The 16th<\/sup> March treaty is historically significant because itpushed Muslims of the state to the limits of marginality\u00a0to\u00a0ensure that they\u00a0are not\u00a0resuscitated as an independent entity. It permanently changed the socio-psychological, demographic and economic profile of the state.\u00a0It spelt an unsurprising turnaround of economic and political fortunes for the Dogras and their co-religionist Pandits, shifting of demographic statistics to their favour in Jammu region and dehumanized Muslims in the most painful manner.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The faithful successors of the Dogras are pleased to make it impossible for Muslims to escape fromthe imposed marginality of highest order unleashed by the treaty.\u00a0On a daily basis, the\u00a0psychological\u00a0wounds\u00a0left open\u00a0aren\u2019t allowed to heal; they\u2019re scratched, scars\u00a0are\u00a0made permanent and sensibilities trampled. Be it the shrill reminder of 1947 Jammu massacre (read genocide) by Dogra forces or the BJP state legislator\u00a0Chowdhary Lal Singh\u2019s public support to the rapist of 8-year old poor nomad girl Asifa, or the mood to declare\u00a0Hari Singh\u2019s birthday a state holiday- March\u00a016th \u00a0behaves like an\u00a0intimidating djinn that\u00a0fails\u00a0exorcism.\u00a0\u00a0A whole generation of Kashmiri Muslims would prefer to ignore the bitter past graciously and begin to rework together.<\/p>\n

In Europe, historically the battlefield of death & destruction, nationalities buried their difference and evolved aconsensus on embracing ethnic & religious diversities within the territorial boundaries. In our case, the attempts to build consensus among\u00a0two parts of the samestate divided more by history than geography-\u00a0Hindus in Jammu and Muslims in Kashmir-\u00a0are frustrated by religious fanatics,\u00a0Islamophobes, racial supremacists and deep state in India\u00a0who\u00a0live on this harvest of\u00a0hatred and division. Thissinister way they make the treaty\u00a0a living experience. They\u00a0abort our\u00a0attempts to undo some bitter history and fail us to evolve a national consensus that\u00a0does not have\u00a0roots in Indian\u00a0tradition.<\/p>\n

Ordinary\u00a0Kashmiris have become alien to themselves and this self-estrangement leaves them bewildered about\u00a0their\u00a0identity and future.\u00a0\u00a0As Kashmir is mourning 172nd year of its slavery on\u00a016 March\u00a0this year, the unresolved question still\u00a0pleads for attention- had Kashmir not been sold in 1846,\u00a0\u00a0would it have been resold in 1947?<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

The author is a Doctoral Fellow at Centre of Advanced Study in History at Aligarh Muslim University. He can be reached at <\/em>sahibkhawaja@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 countercurrents.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 16th of March is the blackest day for all Kashmiris. On this day in 1846, an inhuman sale of Kashmir and Kashmiris was made with a person (Gulab Singh) whom Lord Hardinge called \u2018the greatest rascal of Asia\u2019 by a nation (Britain) to which Napoleon called \u2018the country of shopkeepers\u2019. Ironically, this sordid sale of the transaction was erroneously termed as \u2018The treaty of Amritsar\u2019. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":107632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}