JAMMU AND KASHMIR AND THE INDIAN PRINCELY STATES

 

PRINCELY STATES 1846 TO 1947

In 1947 the State of Jammu and Kashmir was one of those Indian Princely States, at least 562 (some authorities list 565 or, even, 584) in all, which constituted about a third of the extent of the British Indian Empire. In practice the Indian Princely States had been divided into three main categories. First; there were about a hundred and forty major States (including Jammu and Kashmir) which enjoyed in principle full legislative and jurisdictional powers (were "fully empowered"). Second: there were about the same number of States where the British exercised a measure of control specified in some formal engagement (and which varied from State to State) over internal administration. Finally: there were some three hundred minor States which were really just landed estates possessing extremely limited governmental rights. Some of this last category occupied no more than a few hundred acres. Many States, from all categories, possessed enclaves of territory surrounded either by other States or British India. Be they major, middling or minor, concentrated or scattered, however, all the Indian Princely States were in constitutional theory quite separate from British India proper (the eleven Provinces and various Tribal Areas) in that their allegiance was directly to the British Crown, though relations between the States and the Crown were for reasons of practical convenience usually conducted by way of a political adviser or supervisor of some kind through the Viceroy in his capacity as representative (in formal language, the Crown Representative) of the King-Emperor: the Viceroy was also Governor-General, that is to say the head of government, as well being, as Viceroy, the surrogate for the ceremonial Head of State of the whole Indian Empire. The Rulers of the States, the Princes, were part of the Indian Empire by virtue of having acknowledged the Paramountcy of the British Crown. Their States were not technically territories which had been annexed by the British Government in the name of the Crown (though, of course, there may well have been coercion by the British in the process by which Paramountcy had originally been accepted or imposed).  With the passing of the British Indian Empire so also would Paramountcy lapse; and the States (particularly those which were "fully empowered") would thereby become to all intents and purposes independent. On the eve of the British departure this situation was made abundantly clear to the leading Princes by the British Cabinet Mission to India on 12 May 1946.' It was also at that time indicated that the Princes would have the option, which, indeed, it was strongly recommended that they exercise, of joining whatever regime might succeed the British Raj, which by the beginning of 1947 (with the evident inevitability of Partition) meant either India or Pakistan. Nothing was said about the need for the Rulers to consult the wishes of their subjects before making up their minds. The mechanism for joining (accession) had already been worked out in some detail in the 1935 Government of India Act which provided for the integration of the States into an Indian Dominion by means of a federal structure; and the arrangements made in 1947 owe much to the 1935 precedent. The Ruler of a State, at least one in the first ("fully empowered") category, could, if he wished to join, sign an Instrument of Accession in which he transferred to the appropriate Dominion what were deemed the three major powers, those over Defence, External Affairs and Communications. For the second category of States another form of Instrument of Accession had to be devised to make it clear that such States had not acquired by the very process of the British departure powers which they had not hitherto exercised. The third category presented no real problems: it could just be absorbed. In the 1947 provisions it was possible for a State, which was either deliberating accession or acceding with certain issues unresolved, to sign with one or both of the Dominions what was termed a Standstill Agreement: this would permit the continuation of various essential services even if their constitutional basis was now uncertain. Also devised in 1947 was a scheme for the agreed union of two or more States prior to accession to create more viable administrative entities. In practice all States within the Indian catchment area were either integrated into existing Provinces or merged to form a larger State (for example PEPSU, the Patiala and East Punjab States Union) with the exception of Mysore, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir which the Indian Union accepted more or less in their original territorial form; and of these only Mysore joined the Union without conflict. while the geographical shape in Indian theory of Jammu and Kashmir has not to this day corresponded with the realities of the situation. The whole system of Princely States was one of the most pecllliar features of the British Indian Empire as it had eroljred during the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. Within the apparatus of British imperial adnlinistratioll there existed a genuine. if at times sluggish, desire for the creation of represents-  tive institutions with self government as an ultimate goal. At the same time, in the Princely States arbitrarily autocratic polities were perpetuated, even protected, which were totally at odds with this spirit. The fact is that in the years immediately preceding the great crisis of 1857, which is enshrined in British history as the Indian Mutiny, the policy of the English East India Company had indeed been to move towards the incorporation of Princely States into territory under direct British rule. The events of 1857, however, were interpreted by the British as evidence both that it was dangerous to meddle too much in the affairs of the Princes, and that while some Princes had rebelled, others had not: their loyalty had contributed greatly to the survival of the Indian Empire. This role as buffer to British rule did not, of course, endear the concept of Princely States to Indian nationalists be they Muslim or non-Muslim. With independence, though many Rulers probably failed to appreciate the fact at the time, they were doomed in both India and Pakistan. In practice, in 1947 the majority of Princely States fell naturally enough into one or other of the two catchment areas of the new sovereignties; and nearly all of those within the Indian sphere had acceded to India before 15 August 1947, the moment of the Transfer of Power to the new Dominions from the British. Indeed, only three Princely States with, so to say, Indian potential, held out by that date, Junagadh in Kathiawar in Western India (a small State with an 80% Hindu population whose Muslim Ruler wished to join Pakistan), Hyderabad in the Deccan (where a Muslim Ruler with a Hindu majority population wished to remain independent of both India and Pakistan), and Jammu and Kashmir in the North-West. In the end Junagadh was pulled into India when New Delhi imposed a plebiscite (the validity of which has never been accepted by Pakistan), Hyderabad was occupied by Indian force of arms, and Jammu and Kashmir with its Muslim majority and Hindu Maharaja (where the theoretical possibility of accession to Pakistan was very real) became the victim of dispute military, political and diplomatic which still continues to this day. The emphasis upon accession which was so evident on the Indian side in the run up to Partition was not, in fact, shared by the leaders of Pakistan. There were ten major Princely States clearly in the West Pakistani catchment area (Jammu and Kashmir apart), Bahawalpur, Khairpur, Kalat, Las Bela, Kharan, Makran, Dir, Swat, Amb and Chitral. None had acceded to Pakistan by 15 August 1947, though all were within the Pakistani fold by March 1948.~ Jammu and Kashmir and Hyderabad were giants among the Princely States of British India, each over 80,000 square miles in area (and, thus, comparable in size to the United Kingdom) and each with relatively large populations, Jammu and Kashmir with some 4,000,000 and Hyderahad with no less that 14,000,000.~ The only other State with this kind of area was Kalat (in what was to be~~me Pakistan) with some 70,000 square miles; and the only other States with this order of population were Mysore (with over 6,500,000) and Travancore (with some 5,000,000), both of which were to join India. The State of Jammu and Kashmir differed in one important respect from other Princely States: it was rather better situated geographically to exercise a more than purely hypothetical choice as to its future. It had a border with Tibet, with the Chinese Province of Sinkiang, and (it could be argued) with Afghanistan (and it came very close indeed to the Soviet Union, only separated from it by the narrow Wakhan tract of Afghan territory and a small section of Sinkiang in the Taghdumbash Pamir), giving it, in theory at least, an outlet to the world outside the confines of the old British Indian Empire, a fact which added greatly to the attractions of the idea of independence after 15 August 1947. As far as the two new Dominions were concerned, the Hindu Ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Sir Hari Singh, could, despite more than three quarters of his subjects being Muslim, with some degree of realism according to the provisions of the British statement of 12 May 1946 consider accession to either India or Pakistan. The geographical and economic links between Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan, however, were rather better than those with India, particularly if in the actual process of Partition the Gurdaspur District of the Punjab, with a Muslim majority, were awarded to Pakistan. A Pakistani Gurdaspur would mean that direct Indian land access to the State (which was by no means ideal even across the Gurdaspur District) would have to be through the Kangra District of the Punjab over the extremely difficult terrain provided by the foothills of the Himalayas either directly into Jammu or by way of the Pathankot tehsil (sub-district) of Gurdaspur (where there was a small Hindu majority) if that tehsil alone went to India; and all this would involve new roads which would take some considerable time to con~truct.~ Air links were not a serious consideration at this moment, though they would soon become vital. In practice, therefore, as opposed to theory, the fate of the various tehsils of the Gurdaspur District was to become inextricably bound up with the fate of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The State of Jammu and Kashmir was the creation in the first half of the 19th century of a Dogra (hill Rajputs who were to be found both in Jammu and the neighbouring Kangra District) chieftain, Gulab Singh, who had won the favour of Ranjit Singh, the builder of the great Sikh Empire in the Punjab with its capital at Lahore. In 1820 Ranjit Singh confirmed Gulab Singh as Raja of the State of Jammu; and from this base Gulab Singh rapidlv proceeded to build 11p a small empire of his own, first in the 1HYC)s conquering L>ndakh (from some kind of tributary relationship with I'ibet and lr.itll a population which was Tibetan both ethnically and in its form of Buddhism) and then in 1840 acquiring Baltistan (sometimes referred to by 19th century travellers as "Little Tibet"). In 1841 Gulab Singh undertook a disastrous campaign into Tibet proper (then part of the sphere of influence of the Manchu Dynasty in China) which halted his advance to the east. At about the same time that Gulab Singh received Jammu from Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler granted to Dhyan Singh, Gulab SinghYs younger brother, as a Jagzr (or fief) the small district of Poonch (a narrow tract on the eastern side of the River Jhelum and squeezed in between that river and the Pir Panjal Range beyond which lay the Vale of Kashmir). Poonch thus became a State in its own right quite distinct from Gulab Singh's Jammu. Its Muslim inhabitants did not take easily to Dogra rule; and the 1830s saw a series of singularly bloody rebellions which tested severely the military abilities of the Dogra ~ajas.~ In 1846, as a result of his neutrality during the first Anglo-Sikh War, Gulab Singh was granted by the British dominion over the Vale of Kashmir. This had been conquered by the Sikhs from its Afghan rulers in 18 19. In 1846 the Sikhs had been obliged to cede Kashmir to the English East India Company; but the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge, reluctant to expand British direct rule into what was then an extremely exposed position, immediately transferred it (by the Treaty of Amritsar of 16 March 1846) to the Ruler of Jammu by what amounted to a deed of sale for the sum of Rs. 75,00,000 (about &500,000)."t took Gulab Singh, and then only with British military assistance, some two years to establish himself in his new possession where his presence was not welcomed by the local population. Some of his opponents he caused to be flayed alive, one of his favourite punishments: contemporary British observers did not find Gulab Singh a kindly soul, though many were surprised to find him to be a convivial companion when relaxing from the affairs of state. People who write about the history of Kashmir generally have in mind the Vale of Kashmir only and forget the other regions which today go to make up the bulk of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. This emphasis on the Vale of Kashmir is natural enough, despite the fact that it constituted but a little more than 10% of the total area generally understood by the term the State of Jammu and Kashmir. In 1947 over half the population of the State were be found in Kashmir Province, the Vale of Kashmir; and it is from here that the main wealth of the State (or, after 1947, that part of it in Indian hands) was derived. The Vale of Kashmir was an important centre of tourism, a refuge from the heat of the Indian plains. Until the latter part of' the nineteenth century it was the home of the Kashmir shawl industry, the weaving of fine fabrics based on pashm, wool from the undercoat of sheep from highlands of Western Tibet. In the 1870s. however, the shawl industry was severely affected by famine which caused the weavers to disperse; but in more recent times its place has to a considerable extent been taken by carpet manufacture and silk weaving. The Vale of Kashmir was also the most important centre of agriculture in the State, with rice and fruit cultivation. Finally, the Vale of Kashmir played a vital role in another of the State's major industries, timber. Before 1947 the bulk of the exports of the State of Jammu and Kashmir passed from the Vale of Kashmir down the Jhelum Valley into that part of the Punjab which was in 1947 to be awarded to Pakistan. Most of the phases of early Buddhist and Hindu civilisation in northern India appear to have had their impact upon the Vale of Kashmir. In the ninth century A.D. the region seems to have been a major centre in the world of Hindu culture. In the twelfth century Kashmir produced the chronicles of the historian Kalhana, a work entitled the Rajatarangzni ("River of Kings") which is one of the very small number of writings of a true historical nature which have survived from pre-Islamic ~ndia.' The fourteenth century saw the establishment of Islamic power in the Vale of Kashmir (by one Shah Mir who seized power in 1339 and reigned as Sultan Shamsuddin). Under the Shah Miri Dynasty numerous Muslim preachers visited Kashmir, notably the Persian Mir Syed Ali Hamadani (also known as Shah-i-Hamadan), who consolidated the dominance of Islam among the people of the Vale of Kashmir. In 1586 the Moghul Emperor Akbar added Kashmir to his dominions; and it thereupon became a favourite summer resort for successive Moghul rulers. In 1752, with the collapse of Moghul power, the Vale of Kashmir came under the control of the Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Durrani. It was removed from the grasp of the Afghans by the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh in 1819. In the years that followed the Dogra acquisition of the Vale of Kashmir and the creation of the new State of Jammu and Kashmir, Gulab Singh and his successors expanded their influence to the northwest into what the British in the latter part of the 19th century often referred to as Dardistan, including Gilgit, Hunza, Nagar and other tracts adjacent to Chinese Sinkiang and Afghanistan to create what are today known in the language of the Indo-Pakistani dispute as the Northern Areas. The history of this process, and its consequences for the policy of the British Government of India, will be examined in detail in Chapters 3 and 4. The State of Jammu and Kashmir thus assembled was, therefore, of considerable complexity. It was, nioreoves, in the contest of the broad sweep of Indian historv a totallv new polity quite without precedent. The original heartland, Jammu, was predominantl~ Hindu and Sikh in population and dominated br the Dogras who  claimed Rajput ancestry, though with its outlying districts it had by 1947 a small Muslim majority, the latter mainly concentrated in Mirpur (now largely free of Indian control in Azad Kashmir) and Riasi Districts. In 1941 the total population of Jammu Province was 1,561,580. Kashmir itself, the Vale of Kashmir with its capital at Srinagar, was overwhelmingly Muslim though it contained a small but extremely influential Hindu minority in the shape of the Kashmiri Brahmins, the Pandits, from which group came the families of Jawaharlal Nehru and a number of other leading figures in the history of the Indian independence movement (Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, for instance).' The Vale of Kashmir had 1,728,600 inhabitants in 1941 of whom 1,615,500 (over 90%) were Muslims. The Muslim population of the Vale of Kashmir, with no tradition of links with Jammu, had a highly developed culture of their own which included not only a form of Islam with features peculiar to the region but also a distinctive language, Kashmiri, generally considered to belong to that Dardic linguistic family which according to the Encyclopedia Britannica is "Aryan" but "neither Iranian nor Indo-Aryan", and is unique to the mountains of this north-western corner of the subcontinent. The majority of the Kashmiri Muslims considered themselves to be Sunni, though there was an Ahmadiya community there (which many did not consider to be Muslim at all)' as well a small number of Shias, perhaps 5% of the total, whose relations with their Sunni brethren, while generally harmonious, could from time to time lead to violence as in the case of the exceptionally severe ShiaSunni riots in Srinagar of 1872. The sparse population of Ladakh was almost entirely Tibetan Buddhist. Baltistan, with its capital at Skardu, was occupied by Muslims who were ethnically related to Tibet but in religion belonged to the Twelver Shia branch of Islam. Baltistan and Ladakh (which were usually treated as closely related administrative units) in 1941 had a total population of some 200,000 (with only 40,000 in Ladakh). The people of Hunza, Nagar, Gilgit, Chilas, Astor, Yasin and Ishkuman and the rest of Dardistan numbered a scant 100,000 in all in 1941.1° They were also overwhelmingly Muslim in population, the majority being members of the Twelver Shia branch of Islam though most of the people of Hunza were Ismailis, followers of that Islamic sect headed by the Aga Khan. Like the inhabitants of the Vale of Kashmir, they too spoke languages of the Dardic family; but in most respects their cultural links with the Vale of Kashmir were negligible. The State of Jammu and Kashmir is extremely mountainous. The northern regions of the State are traversed by those great ranges which provide a link between the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush on the west and the Himalayas on the east. In the Karakoram in Baltistan is to he found K2 (Mt. Godwin Austen), over 28,000 feet high, the second most lofty peak in the world; and there are numerous other  peaks within the State of more than 25,000 foot altitude. Ladakh includes a corner of the Tibetan high plateau which extends eastward for thousands of miles into what is today Chinese territory." Across the south-eastern corner of the State runs the Pir Panjal range, rugged enough even if dwarfed by the Himalayas or the ~arakoram to both of which it serves as a line of foothills: it also separates the Vale of Kashmir from both Jammu and Poonch. Cutting right across the State of Jammu and Kashmir in a great arc from east to west flows the Indus River on its way from its sources in Western Tibet to its mouth in Sind in Pakistan. One of the major tributaries of the Indus, the Jhelum, has its source in the State and for some of its length provides the basis for life in the Vale of Kashmir. Another Indus tributary, the Chenab, passes through the extreme southern corner of the State on its way from its Indian source in Lahul to the plains of the Pakistani Punjab. Thus three out of the five rivers of the Punjab (a word which simply means "five rivers") either rise in or traverse the State of Jammu and Kashmir (and a fourth, the Ravi, for a short stretch marks the boundary between Jammu and the Punjab in the Gurdaspur District); and the agriculture of the Punjab and Sind to a great extent depends upon the melting snow in its mo~ntains.'~ The valleys of the major Kashmiri rivers, now so vital to the economy of Pakistan, also provided until very recently the main lines of communication between the State and the outside world. The road to Srinagar started at Rawalpindi and followed the course of the Jhelum into the Vale of Kashmir. The valley of the upper Indus gave access to the hill States of the Gilgit region. The line of the beds of the rivers which created links between the western part of the Punjab and Kashmir also made communications between the eastern part of the Punjab and Kashmir extremely difficult. The only road within the State of Jammu and Kashmir, for example, which linked Jammu (the winter capital of the State) with Srinagar (the summer capital) involved the crossing of the Pir Panjal range by means of the Banihal Pass, over 9,000 feet high and snowboi-nd in winter.13 The easiest route between Jammu and Srinagar lay through the West (Pakistani) Punjab by way of Sialkot and Rawalpindi. At the moment of Partition in 1947 there existed but one road from India to Jammu, by way of Pathankot; and this was then of the poorest quality and much of it unsurfaced. The only railway in the State in 1947 was a short branch line (opened in 1890) linking Sialkot in the Punjab with Jammu City. It was to be severed by the process of Partition in the Punjab which put Sialkot on the Pakistani side. This brief survey of the population, economy and geography of Kashmir contains within it the fundamental grounds for the Pakistani claim to Kashmir. These merit summary, not least because they are quite independent of what may or may not have happened at the time of the Transfer of Power in India in 1947 when the actual conflict between the two successors to the British Raj began over the right to control the destiny of the State which the Dogra Maharajas had created. First: the State of Jammu and Kashmir was a region with an overwhelming Muslim majority contiguous to the Muslim majority region of the Punjab which became part of Pakistan. Second: the economy of the State Jammu and Kashmir was bound up with what was to become Pakistan. Its best communication with the outside world lay through Pakistan, and this was the route taken by the bulk of its exports. Third: the waters of the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, all of which flowed through Jammu and Kashmir territory, were essential for the prosperity of the agricultural life of Pakistan. From a strictly rational point of view, based on a study of the culture and the economy of the region, there can be little doubt that a scheme for the partition of the Indian subcontinent such as was devised in 1947 should have awarded the greater part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan. That such an award was not made was essentially the product of a series of historical accidents arising from the nature of the Princely States and the British attitudes towards them. As Sir Owen Dixon indicated in his remarkable report to the Security Council of the United Nations in September 1950, the basic cause of the Kashmir problem "presumably formed part of the history of the sub-continent". It was this process of history which resulted, so Lord Birdwood once remarked, in the delimitation of a line on the map of Central Asia which on political considerations enclosed a completely artificial area, a geographical monstrosity which then assumed the name of the land of the Jhelum Valley, Kashmir.I4 Thus was converted a group of otherwise unrelated tracts in the extreme north-west of the subcontinent into a Princely State; and the outcome was to merge the partition of British India and partition of Paramountcy into a single problem which the British were not prepared to resolve and for which the two successor States to the Indian Empire have yet to find a solution. In the late 19th century the British nearly took a step which would have prevented the Kashmir problem from ever arising. The autocratic and arbitrary rule of the Dogras in the State of Jammu and Kashmir was a source of considerable anxiety for the Government of India, in part for major strategic considerations which we will examine further in Chapters 3 and 4, and in part because of that element of humanitarian concern which was a feature of the ~ritish Indian Empire all too frequently overlooked by its critics. British observers were much disturbed by the great ~ashmir famine of 1877-78 when excessive rain destroyed the crops in the Vale of Kashmir. Many thousands died of starvation; and for several months refugees from the disaster were refused permission by the Maharaja's frontier guards to leave the State for the comparative plenty of the Punjab. When, in 1878, groups of Kashmiris at last found ways to escape the Vale of Kashmir and make their way to British India, they included many shawl weavers who never returned: their loss caused irreparable damage to the already declining Kashmiri shawl industry. While the Maharaja purchased emergency supplies of grain from British India, little of it reached those in need because of the corruption of his officials: much of it, indeed, was resold in the Punjab. No wonder that Lord Kimberley, Secretary of State for India, was able to write these words in 1884: as to the urgent need for reforms in the administration of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, there is, unfortunately, no room for doubt. It may, indeed, be a question whether, having regard to the circumstances under which the sovereignty of the country was entrusted to the present Hindoo ruling family, the intervention of the British Government on behalf of the Mahommedan population has not already been too long delayed. '' In the event, the British did not go so far as to annex the State; but they carried out some major constitutional changes. In 1846, following the Treaty of Amritsar which had brought the State of Jammu and Kashmir into being, the British had decided not to station a Resident there: relations between the Maharaja and the Government of India had been conducted by a British Officer on Special Duty in Kashmir who was more an ambassador of the GovernorGeneral or Viceroy than an agent for the exercise of his governing powers. As a result of the new policy, however, in 1885 the Officer on Special Duty became the British Resident in Kashmir, "with the same position and duties as Political Residents in other Native States in subordinate alliance with the British ~overnment".'~ In 1889 the decision was taken to "exclude the Maharaja . . . [Pratap Singh] . . . from all interference with public affairs" in the State, which would now be entrusted to a Council of State consisting of the Maharaja's brothers and certain selected Native officials in the British service. This Council will have full powers, subject to the condition that they will take no important step without consulting the Resident, and that they will act upon the Resident's advice whenever it may be offered. ' ' Thus the British Resident, at this time Colonel R. Parry Nisbet, was now the final arbiter in the State's affairs on behalf of the Government of India. In 1905 some of the Maharaja's powers were returned to him by the Viceroy. Lord Curzon; and the process of restoration was \.irtually completed in 1922, though the Council of State remained in being. though with greatly reduced authority, at the time of the death of Maharaja Pratap Singh in 1925. Thus the last of the Maharajas, Hari Singh, inherited in that year a State which was still an autocracy, albeit somewhat less absolute than the regime which Gulab Singh had founded. Had British annexation taken place in the 1880s, of course, as several British statesmen had rather favoured at the time, there would never have been a Kashmir dispute: the whole State (with the possible exception of parts of Jammu and Ladakh) would have gone to Pakistan under the terms of Partition in 1947. Just over a decade before the British left India for good, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir made one final addition to his dominions. Poonch, which, we have already seen, had been granted by the Sikhs to Gulab Singh's brother Dhyan Singh, had existed either as what virtually amounted to a State in its own right or as territory associated with the Punjab, until 1935-36 when, as a result of a successful lawsuit in British Indian courts, Maharaja Hari Singh at last managed to bring it entirely under his own direct control. This was the conclusion of a long history of ill feeling between the two branches of the Dogra Dynasty which had been exacerbated in 1925 by the deathbed efforts of Maharaja Pratap Singh to adopt a member of the Poonch ruling family as his heir in the place of his nephew Hari Singh (he had no son of his own, and he had not been at all amused by reports of Hari Singh's various youthful escapades in India and in England). Pratap Singh was frustrated by the British. While Poonch formally became an integral part of Jammu and Kashmir in 1935-36, its Muslim inhabitants (some 380,000 out of a total of 420,000) resented the change and never reconciled themselves to being subjects of that State, an attitude which was to be of great significance in 1947. Traditionally, the people of Poonch had very little indeed to do with their neighbours in the Vale of Kashmir across the Pir Panjal Range, and even less with Jammu: their links had always been across the Jhelum, particularly in the Hazara District of the North-West Frontier ~rovince."