Ghosts of Empire

by Kwasi Kwarteng

  In the midst of all this outdoor activity, the country over which the Maharaja presided was one of the most economically deprived areas of British India. Levels of literacy, especially among the Muslim population, were very low. Although ancient Kashmir had been renowned as a seat of Sanskrit learning, the capital city, Srinagar, which had more than 60,000 inhabitants, registered only 140 women as literate in the 1901 census. The entire literate population of the city was only 2 per cent. This figure had risen to 25 per cent in 1941.21 The Maharaja’s fabulous lifestyle was funded by heavy taxation of the Kashmiri people, who were described by the Indian civil servant Sir Albion Banerjee as ‘dumb, driven cattle’.22

  Generally, the peasants and lower classes of Kashmir were Muslim and their superiors Hindu. There was a simple reason for this. Under the Mughals of Kashmir who ruled for four centuries till 1752, the vast majority of the population had converted to Islam, and these Muslim converts had been low-caste Hindus who had been consigned to that status by their ancestral religion. Understandably, the Hindus who had refused to convert were, in most cases, the high-class Hindus, the Brahmins, who enjoyed the most prestige in the old religion and would have had nothing to gain from abandoning Hinduism for Islam.

  In general, the average British imperial civil servant did have a sense of cultural superiority, but often stopped short of commenting overtly on the racial characteristics of the people over whom he presided. There seems to have been an exception in the case of Kashmir. Memoirs continually refer to the ‘excellent physique’ of the Kashmiri men and the ‘exceptional beauty’ of their ‘womenfolk’. A Kashmiri would ‘handle a load on his back for many hours of the day such as would defeat any of his brothers’.23 Although the Kashmiris were strong, the British writers were convinced that they lacked physical courage. ‘A Kashmiri soldier is almost a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing,’ asserted Francis Younghusband, in his otherwise admirable account of Kashmir. Another observer, the missionary Dr Ernest F. Neve, believed that the Kashmiris could ‘bear pain much better than Europeans, but owing to want of self-control they make more fuss’. He agreed with Younghusband in praising the physique, while deprecating the courage and temper, of the Kashmiri man: ‘in spite of great physical strength and powers of endurance, the Kashmiri is highly strung and neurotic and he will often weep on slight provocation’.24 Younghusband also commented on two seemingly well-known facts: ‘Kashmir is very generally renowned for the beauty of its women and the deftness and taste of its shawl-weavers.’25

  The charms of Kashmir’s women were appreciated not only by British men. Dorothy Hargreaves Burton, the wife of Geoffrey Burton, an ICS man, observed in 1914 that the women in Kashmir were ‘decidedly pretty and although Mohammedan do not lead a restricted life’. She was, however, unimpressed by the general character of the Kashmiris and thought that their beauty, both male and female, was merely a veneer: ‘Kashmiris are a very good looking race but their beauty . . . is only skin deep.’ For her, the Kashmiris always appeared anxious to please the sahib (master), but the majority were ‘quite unable to keep promises’. Mrs Burton, in her tour of Kashmir in the summer of 1914, was astute enough to identify the kingdom’s fundamental problem: ‘It is curious that a Mohammedan people should be ruled over by a Hindu prince.’ Yet overall she was deeply moved by the lush vegetation and physical splendour of the Kashmiri landscape; it was ‘an emerald set in pearls’.26

  The anomaly of a Hindu ruler set over a predominantly Muslim population created the inevitable tensions we have come to associate with minority rule. The Hindus dominated the state. The British, who had sold Kashmir to the Dogra dynasty, were mere spectators in the unfolding drama, which cast Hindu against Muslim. Jack Morton, a district policeman who was later stationed in Lahore, recalled that the majority of Kashmiris were ‘lowly Muslim peasants’ while the Kashmiri Brahmins ‘were the crème de la crème in the Hindu caste system, and ruthlessly maintained their dominance in government and the economy’.27 The Kashmiri Brahmins, or Pandits as they were known, dominated the administration of the state, and it was only Hindus who were allowed to possess firearms in the Vale of Kashmir itself; Muslims were rigorously excluded from service in the state’s armed forces.28 Visitors acknowledged the refinement and sophistication of the Brahmins and felt that Hindu dominance was part of the natural order. The Christian missionary Dr Neve accepted that the Brahmins’ ‘intellectual superiority over the rest of the population must be admitted. They are quick of apprehension and have good memories,’ though one of their ‘besetting faults’ was arrogance. By contrast, ‘the Mohammedans’ were ‘grossly illiterate’. The Pandits, as well as being civil servants, could be merchants and shopkeepers but were not allowed to take up handicrafts such as ‘carpentry, masonry, shoemaking and pottery’, since practising these professions would defile their status.29

  Kashmir’s Muslim population began to organize itself politically, the Hindu Maharaja being increasingly regarded as a tyrant. As early as 1924, there had been labour unrest at the state silk factory in Srinagar, where 5,000 people worked, of whom an overwhelming majority were Muslim. When the Viceroy, Lord Reading, visited Srinagar in October 1924 he was presented with a memorandum signed by many prominent members of the Kashmiri Muslim community calling for an increase in the number of Muslims employed in the state service, for improvements in Muslim education and for land reform.30 The Hindu basis of the state was reflected in its laws. Gulab Singh, the founder of the Hindu state of Jammu and Kashmir, had been a devout Hindu who, as his biographer observed, reserved ‘very brutal punishments’ for those accused of ‘cow killing’, who would have their noses and ears cut off.31

  Cow killing even in the 1930s and 1940s was illegal in Kashmir. People who committed this act of sacrilege against the Hindu religion could face a seven-year prison sentence. In addition to the prohibition against killing cows, there was a ‘special tax on the slaughter of goats and sheep’. Muslims sacrificed these animals once a year as part of a religious ritual.32 By 1931, the situation was particularly tense. The Maharaja had earlier in the year celebrated the birth of his son Karan, who turned out to be his only child. The succession in Kashmir had been problematic, as the Maharaja had already married three times, without producing an heir. In each case, the wives had died mysteriously, his first wife with her child still in the womb. The Maharaja himself was an only child. The fourth Maharani, the beautiful Tara Devi, a commoner from Kangra, produced a healthy baby boy, the Yuvraj or heir apparent, whose birth triggered a ‘delirious wave of enthusiasm’ among the Hindu community. The slaughter of animals, including fishing and shooting, was prohibited for three days. There were feasts and free cinema shows; sweets were given to children; there was a procession in Jammu (the predominantly Hindu southern region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir), while Srinagar also witnessed a huge procession. 33 This episode marked the high point of Dogra rule in Kashmir, but it was the events of the summer of that year, 1931, which, in their intensity and suddenness, put the spotlight on the ‘communal’ issue, the historic divisions between the Hindu and Muslim communities, which would dominate Kashmir for decades.

  No one really knows how the disturbance started. It was reported in May that a mosque in Jammu Province had been demolished by Hindus, with the full approval of the Maharaja’s government. Rumours swirled of other outrages. At another place in Jammu, it was alleged, Muslims had been prevented from saying their prayers. It was even whispered that pages of the Holy Koran had been found discarded in a public latrine.34 There was outrage in Srinagar when news of this broke. On 25 June, Abdul Qadeer, a firebrand who had come from the North West Frontier Province, which is now in Pakistan, gave a fiery speech, advocating violence against the Maharaja’s rule; he pointed to the Maharaja’s palace in Srinagar, which was within view of the crowd, and urged the demonstrators to ‘destroy its every brick’. He was arrested, but, as is often the case in such instances, his trial became a showpiece, drawing attention to the defendant�
�s cause. On 6 July, a great assembly of Muslims gathered outside the law court, forcing suspension of the trial. The court proceedings were then moved to the Srinagar Central Jail. The next week, on the 13th, Abdul Qadeer’s trial reopened. There was again a huge crowd, and the police were present in strength; stones were thrown and the police responded with gunfire. By the end of the demonstration, twenty-two demonstrators had been killed. This day is known as Martyrs Day and is still celebrated in Pakistan and Kashmir. To the so-called Kashmiri freedom fighters the day marks the beginning of their struggle against Dogra and then Indian rule. In the immediate aftermath of the trial, the Muslim mob regrouped in the Hindu quarter of Srinagar and proceeded to wreak vengeance on the local shopkeepers. Hindus, as could be expected, retaliated and riots between followers of the two faiths broke out. The principal Muslim grievance was well known. In the bureaucracy, Hindus and Sikhs held 78 per cent of appointments, while Muslims held the rest, a proportion that was the exact reverse of the numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, where, according to the census of 1931, Muslims made up nearly 80 per cent of the state’s population.

  Muslims complained that their share of state scholarships and places in government schools was the lowest of any of the three communities, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. The cow-killing prohibition was also a source of resentment. The British were shaken by the communal violence which erupted in Kashmir in the 1930s. ‘Communalism’ is a quaint term that was widely used in the 1930s to describe the sectarian violence that plagued the Indian subcontinent in the years preceding the independence and partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. On 2 November 1931, the British Resident, Sir Courtney Latimer, warned his superiors that communal rioting in Jammu was likely to break out ‘at any moment’; he also forecast a ‘widespread rebellion in Kashmir’ unless the government of India took immediate steps. His attempts to calm the situation didn’t work, as the next day, 3 November, the Muslims of Jammu started looting Hindu-owned shops. They attacked the police and set fire to public buildings. Hari Singh responded by telegraphing Simla, the summer residence of the Viceroy, with a request for British troops.

  The request was readily granted, but the dispatch of British troops to Kashmir was a significant departure from the traditional policy of the British in India. Since the first decade of the twentieth century, the Raj had followed a consistent policy of non-intervention when it came to the internal affairs of the larger princely states. The policy was prudent, as the British government wanted to rally the princes against the growing forces of Indian nationalism. Giving the princes more power over their states, it was felt, would ensure their loyalty and establish the princely families as a counterpoise to the more radical elements, who wanted the British to leave India for good. The British were caught between two stools. They did not want to alienate the well-to-do Muslim community in the Punjab in general, but neither could they neglect the interests of the princes. Meanwhile, more disturbances took place. A rural revolt spread rapidly throughout southern and western Jammu. There was injury and destruction, shops were looted and dozens of people were killed; over a hundred ‘low-caste Hindus’ were forcibly converted to Islam.35

  By January 1932, the Viceroy in Simla had authorized the dispatch of an additional brigade, about 5,000 troops, to Kashmir. In addition, a commission was set up to investigate ‘the grievances of Muslim and other subjects of His Highness the Maharaja of Kashmir’. The report of the Glancy Commission was broadly favourable to the Muslim community and it provoked the inevitable backlash, as irate Hindus protested that ‘the manner in which the Glancy Commission are injuring the Hindu religion’ showed that the British would do anything to ‘root out Hinduism from the country’.36 The Muslim All-India Kashmir Committee nonetheless complained to the Viceroy about the ‘harsh and discriminating laws’ against Muslims, about the relatively few Muslim lawyers in the state, and about the ‘harsh and inhuman’ treatment of Muslim political prisoners in Kashmir’s jails.37 The British continued to hide behind the figleaf of ‘non-intervention’ which was restated in the Viceroy’s bland reply. The government of India, the Raj, was ‘averse to putting pressure on States to accelerate the process and pace of reforms’.38

  During this period, Sheikh Abdullah emerged as the voice of Muslim opinion. He was a constant thorn in the Maharaja’s side and would be a key figure in Kashmiri politics until his death in 1982. Born in 1905, Abdullah had left Aligarh University with a science degree in 1930 and had settled in Srinagar as a teacher. Once installed in the capital of Kashmir, he threw himself into politics and by the following year was already recognized as a political leader. The events of 1931 defined his career as well as that of the Maharaja. Abdullah, with his scientific, rationalist background, was a committed nationalist even before he was a Muslim. Like many of the leaders of colonial independence struggles, he was attracted by the twin gods of socialism and secularism. In 1931, however, he used the latent power of religious enthusiasm to whip up an agitated crowd.39 It was then that he realized that ‘the Muslim masses appeared to respond to Islamic appeals and Islamic leaders to a far greater degree’ than to secular causes.40 Religion, despite the best attempts of the Indian Congress, under Gandhi and Nehru, was a dominant, and potentially toxic, factor in the affairs of the subcontinent. The harsh fact was that India was in the process of being ‘divided on communal grounds’.41 As early as December 1930, Sir Muhammad Iqbal delivered a speech at the Allahabad Session of the All-India Muslim League, in which he had declared that ‘communalism’ was ‘indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India’. India, he argued, was a ‘continent of human groups belonging to different races and speaking different languages and professing different religions’. This diversity meant that each group had to have its own jurisdiction; ‘European democracy’ would not work in India without recognizing the fact of ‘communal groups’. The ‘Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India’ was, Iqbal believed, ‘perfectly justified’.42

  Religious and ethnic tensions bedevilled British India during the 1930s, and in this febrile atmosphere Kashmir proved to be a focal point for strife. The theme of difference, of Muslim and Hindu incompatibility, was a rallying cry for any Muslims who yearned for their own homeland throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The extreme Muslim view was widely aired in the years immediately preceding the fateful year of independence in 1947. Between Hindu and Muslim, according to extreme Muslim opinion, there was a difference of ‘law and of culture’, because the two faiths represented ‘two distinct and separate civilizations’.43 Even Sheikh Abdullah, who ended up throwing in his lot with India, mainly because of his secular nationalism and personal friendship with Nehru, had difficulty appreciating the strength of religious feeling among the Muslims of Kashmir. In the midst of these powerful forces, the Maharaja, Hari Singh, was lost, and incapable of providing the leadership that the crisis demanded.

  According to his son, the Maharaja ‘was not able to grasp the historical dimensions of the changes that were around the corner’.44 Hari Singh had started his reign attempting to heal the divisions between Hindu and Muslim and, in January 1926, only four months after succeeding his uncle, he had proudly declared that, as a ruler, he had ‘no religion; all religions are mine and my religion is Justice’.45 It was unfortunate that, as his reign unfolded, he came to be more and more identified with the Hindu domination of his state. He was a Hindu monarch, and that was all people could see. The Muslim delegation from Kashmir which had petitioned the Viceroy at the beginning of 1932 had told him that it was ‘natural that the rulers of the state should be anxious to maintain its monopoly in the administration’. Those rulers were Hindu. The Maharaja was at the top of that state. Hari Singh, despite his claims to impartiality, when caught between the two extremes of Hindu chauvinism and Islamic fanaticism, sided with the Hindus. In 1931, he had to issue a staunch denial that he intended to revoke the prohibition on the killing of cows. On 9 July that year,
shortly before the infamous shootings of the 13th, he declared in a proclamation that the ‘malicious rumour now being spread that cow killing is shortly going to be permitted’ had ‘no foundation whatever’. There was ‘no question whatever of making any change in the matter’.46

  While the Maharaja was being identified purely as a Hindu ruler by his Muslim subjects, the communal forces which eventually created Pakistan were becoming more insistent and powerful. The Muslim League, in its annual session at Lahore in 1940, established the principle that ‘geographically contiguous areas’ of the subcontinent ‘in which the Muslims were numerically in a majority should be grouped to form “independent states”’. Seven years later, this demand was reluctantly conceded by both the British and the Indian Congress Party when the state of Pakistan was born.47 On this basis, Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan: no one could deny that it was ‘geographically contiguous’ to other states in Pakistan; no one could claim that it did not have a Muslim majority; and yet none of this made any impression on the somewhat bewildered and frightened Maharaja.