POLITICS IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR ON THE EVE OF THE TRANSFER OF POWER PART 1

  POLITICS IN KASHMIR TO 1947

w e have already seen that in the provisions for the accession to either India or Pakistan by the Rulers of the Princely States which the British made prior to 15 August 1947 there was no specific requirement that the States' population should be consulted. As the vast majority of the Princely States were autocracies where the Rulers exercised powers which varied from mildly limited by constitutional checks to absolute in a manner which would have seemed excessive even in Europe before the French Revolution, the question of accession was in practice decided by the Rulers and their close advisers without anything remotely resembling a plebiscite. In this respect Jammu and Kashmir was no exception. Maharaja Sir Hari Singh's decision in October 1947 to join India was not referred to his subjects at the time; and subsequently it has never been ratified as such by a free and fair popular vote, though elaborate arguments have been advanced by the Indian side in the Indo-Pakistani Kashmir dispute in an attempt to demonstrate that other political processes within the State both before and since that date are an adequate substitute for a vote of this kind. The assessment of the validity of such claims requires some examination of the nature and origins of political activity in the State of Jammu and Kashmir as it had developed by dctober 1947: of particular importance in this context is the growth up to that moment of organised opposition to the Maharaja's autocracy and the demand for representative institutions by the State's population. Despite the reforms imposed upon the State of Jammu and ILashmir by the British during those years after 1889 when they were in effective control of its affairs, Maharaja Hari Sirlgh in 1925 inherited a regime in which the Muslim majority of the population endured considerable hardships in their daily lives. The system of /)f1ga)., for example, the conscription of the local people for \m-ious public works including service as porters, was deemed pal.tict~larly objectionable by the C;ovei.nment of India even though mnnv n British traveller, unofficial and official, had fot~nd it estren~elv convenient and had not hesitated to esploit it to the full.' In t11eol.v begar had been abolished in 1893, but in practice it persisted, particularly in remoter districts, right up to 1947. In those parts of the State where the Maharaja owned the bulk of the land, in Jammu and the Vale of Kashmir, the revenue demanded of the cultivators was such that they were only able to retain sufficient for the barest margin of subsistence in a good year; and famine was by no means uncommon. The land settlement which Sir Walter Lawrence had devised during the initial years of British control in theory left the cultivator with 70% of the yield of the land. In practice, however, rapacious State officials and landlords, or jagirdars (those to whom the Maharaja had granted the revenue rights over tracts of land in the feudal manner), steadily eroded the peasants' entitlement. The result was a marked increase in rural indebtedness and a proliferation of money lenders, those scourges of rural India. Trade and industry, too, were subjected to extortionate demands from the Maharaja. An ad valorem duty of 85% was levied on the textile industry. All traders, even prostitutes, were taxed at comparable rates. In every aspect of the State's life there was discrimination against the Muslim majority and the application of legislation expressly designed to favour Hindus. Until 1934, for example, the slaughter of cows was a capital offence; and it continued to be forbidden under lesser penalty after that date. The administration of the State was dominated at all levels by the Pandits, Kashmiri Brahmins, who were notoriously corrupt and avaricious. Muslims were in practice severely disadvantaged by the education system which began to develop in the State in the first years of the 20th century. Hindus, alone, were allowed licenses to possess firearms in the Vale of Kashmir; and Muslims from the Vale were carefully excluded from service in the State's Armed Forces where the higher ranks were reserved for Dogra Rajputs. Muslim troops in the Jammu and Kashmir State forces (usually with Dogra officers) were mainly recruited from the Sudhans of Poonch, a military clan which the Maharaja believed could be relied upon to suppress any disorder in the Vale. The State did not hesitate to interfere with many aspects of Muslim religious life including the administration of Islamic shrines. On the surface, at the time of Maharaja Hari Singh's accession Hindu-Muslim relations, particularly in the Vale of Kashmir, seemed amicable enough. The Kashmiri Muslims were generally described by outside observers as docile and subservient. They were certainly impressed by the power of the Maharaja's Government which, particularly in the early days of Gulab Singh's rule of the Vale, had ruthlessly suppressed all vestiges of opposition. Beneath the calm exterior of Kashmiri life, however, there undoubtedly ~ersisted a bitter resentment which by the late 1920s was beginning to take political shape. Even the Kashmiri Pandit community, which had benefited greatly from Dogra administration, was not immune from  a growing disenchantment with the injustices of the Maharaja's administration when it was compared with conditions to be found in territory under direct British control. The Pandit community, containing the best educated people in the State and with extensive contacts outside it in British India, particularly in Lahore in the Punjab and Lucknow in the United Provinces, was affected to some degree by the various intellectual and political reform movements which arose during the course of the latter part of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. The influence of the A9a Samaj, a movement which combined Hindu religious reform with agitation for political progress, was first felt in Jammu in the last years of the 19th century; and in 1903 it inspired the Dogra Sabha, mainly confined to Hindus and essentially conservative, but for all that a pioneering experiment in political activity in the State. By 1915 the ideas associated with the A9a Samaj had also taken root among the Pandits of Srinagar; and from them sprang a number of associations with objectives to a greater or lesser extent political, notably the Yuvak Sabha, which under a Hindu religious guise became a secular voice of the Kashmiri Pandit community directed towards preserving its privileged status in Jammu and Kashmir State. The Yuvak Sabha, like the Dogra Sabha in Jammu, was essentially conservative in its politics though active in such social questions as the improvement of the conditions of women (in particular the remarriage of widows); and it posed no challenge to the authority of the Maharaja. It did, however, provoke a number of Pandits into adopting more radical views; and it provided an example to the Muslim community of the effectiveness of techniques of communal organisation. In 1905 the then religious leader of the Muslims of the Vale, the Mirwaiz of Kashmir Maulvi Rasool Shah (whose base was the Jama Masjid in Srinagar) founded in Srinagar an association (or Anjz~man), the Anjuman-i-Nusrat-ul-Islam, with the object of improving the lot of the Kashmiri Muslims, especially in education, while at the same time ensuring the spread of pure Islamic do~trine.~ It established or arranged for the management of schools (including the Islamia High School, Srinagar), held regular meetings, and conducted its business through a system of councils and committees. In the 1920s it embarked upon an examination of the social reforms necessary to improve the condition of the Muslim community. In 1922 it sent deputations to the State Government to seek redress of Muslim grievances. It was not particularly effective and it certainly ca~lsed the State authorities no great anxiety. It did, however, establish a very important precedent which others could exploit. The Anjuman-i-N~rsrat-~~l-I.rla?n in the 1920s was dominated by the Kashmiri religious leader of the day, the ~Clinclniz-i-K~.~h~,~ir. Maulvi Ahmad Ullah Shah. It was both conservative in political attitudes and  concerned primarily with religious matters. In 1923 it became involved in an acrimonious dispute with the Ahmadiya community in Srinagar. The Ahmadiya movement was founded in about 1879 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who lived at Qadian in the Punjab and who died in 1908. Its doctrines were in Islamic terms extremely unorthodox; and, in that the Ahmadiyas have been deemed to have cast doubt on the uniqueness of the Prophethood of Mohammed, many Muslims, not least in Pakistan, consider the followers of the sect to be either heretical or, indeed, not Muslims at all. The Ahmadiyas were extremely energetic both in spreading their ideas and in commercial activities. They were enterprising in seeking out new areas for their missionary activities which often encountered fierce opposition from the established Muslim leadership. Mirwaiz Ahmad Ullah Shah certainly did not find the Ahmadiyas to his taste. His attitude, it has been argued, was to have the gravest consequences for the future of the Muslim political life of the State of Jammu and ~ashmir.~ An important feature of Ahmadiya teaching was the stress that it placed upon Muslim unity, a theme which was emphasised in 1924 by the head of the Ahmadiyas, Mirza Kamal-ud-Din, during a visit to Kashmir. While Mirwaiz Ahmad Ullah Shah dismissed Mirza Kamalud-Din as an unbeliever, the second most important Muslim divine in Srinagar, the Mirwaiz Hamadani of the Khanqah-i-Mualla (the shrine sacred to the memory of Mir Syed Ali Hamadani, the Saint who had done so much to establish Islam in the Vale of Kashmir in the 14th century) gave the Ahmadiya leader permission to hold a public meeting in the building of which he had charge. Mirwaiz Hamadani was no supporter of the Ahmadiyas; but his courtesy to them on this occasion aroused the anger of his fellow Mirwaiz who never forgave him. Thus began a threefold division in the Kashmiri Muslim ranks, between the Minuaiz-i-Kashmir, the Mirwaiz Hamadani and the Ahmadiyas, which was to have fateful consequences in years to come. Some have argued that here lies the genesis of the Kashmir problem.4 The example set by the Anjuman-i-Nz~srat-211-Islam was followed by other Muslim groups in Kashmir in the second and third decades of the 20th century, with the creation of associations such as the Anjuman-i-Hamdard Islam (founded by Punjabi Muslims in the State), and the Anjuman-i-Tahaffziz-i-Namaz- Wa-Satri-Mastz~rat, with a variety of objectives. In Jammu, too, there was a measure of Muslim organisation with the Anjuman-i-Islamia. None of these bodies rivalled the Anjuman-i-Nzisrat-ul-Islam in importance. The various Anjuman established in the Vale, and to a lesser extent among the Muslims in Jammu, during this period were more local in influence and inspiration than reflections of the major political waves then sweeping through British India. It is interesting in this context that the Khilafat movement, which from late 1919 onwards began to  play such a seminal role in Muslim nationalist agitation in India, aided and abetted not only by Mahatma Gandhi but also two prominent figures of Kashmiri Pandit origin, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and Motilal Nehru (the father of Jawaharlal), had relatively little impact upon the political life of ~ashmir.~ There were mass meetings in Srinagar during the second half of 1920 in the organisation of which ~aulvi Mohammed Yusuf Shah (who, as the Minuaiz-i-Kashmir some eleven years later was to become one of the founders of modern Islamic politics in Kashmir) played an important part. The reaction of the Jammu and Kashmir Government (Durbar), however, was swift; and the movement was effectively banned. The Government was supported by the Minuaiz-i-Kashmir of the day who advised it to arrest the leaders of the agitation on the grounds that they were nonreligious trouble makers. The main significance, which should not, however, be underestimated, of the Khilafat movement in Jammu and Kashmir was, perhaps, the introduction of many of the leading members of the Muslim community to the name of Mahatma Gandhi. The movement, so the record would indicate, made no significant impact upon the local Pandit community despite the role played in it in British India by Tej Bahadur Sapru and Motilal Nehru. In 1924 the Vale experienced a crisis which was to mark another important stage in the evolution of political opposition to the Maharaja's rule. Labour unrest hit the State Silk Factory in Srinagar. This had been established by the Maharaja's Government in 1907; and by 1924 it employed some 5,000 workers, the overwhelming majority of them Muslims, whose average wage (when the Kashmiri Pandit management did not pocket a portion of it for itself) was a mere four and a half annas per day."he Jammu and Kashmir Government reacted with considerable violence; and, though the silk workers gained a minute increase in pay, the strike movement was effectively suppressed.

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