Kashmir - WikiHQ

thumb|268x268px|Political map of the Kashmir region, showing the [[Pir Panjal Range and the Kashmir Valley or Vale of Kashmir]]

Kashmir ( or ) is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. The term has since also come to encompass a larger area that formerly comprised the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, and includes the Indian-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.

thumb|The [[Lidder Valley|Lidder river Valley near Pahalgam]]

thumb|[[Nanga Parbat in Diamer, the ninth-highest mountain on Earth, is the western anchor of the Himalayas]]

In 1819, the Sikh Empire, under Ranjit Singh, annexed the Kashmir valley. of the British Crown, lasted until the Partition of India in 1947, when the former princely state of the British Indian Empire became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: China, India, and Pakistan. A popular local etymology of Kashmir is that it is land desiccated from water.

An alternative etymology derives the name from the name of the Vedic sage Kashyapa who is believed to have settled people in this land. Accordingly, Kashmir would be derived from either kashyapa-mir (Kashyapa's Lake) or kashyapa-meru (Kashyapa's Mountain). The earliest text which directly mentions the name Kashmir is in Ashtadhyayi written by the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini during the 5th century BC. Pāṇini called the people of Kashmir Kashmirikas. Some other early references to Kashmir can also be found in Mahabharata in Sabha Parva and in puranas like Matsya Purana, Vayu Purana, Padma Purana and Vishnu Purana and Vishnudharmottara Purana.

Huientsang, the Buddhist scholar and Chinese traveller, called Kashmir kia-shi-milo, while some other Chinese accounts referred to Kashmir as ki-pin (or Chipin or Jipin) and ache-pin.

Terminology

The Government of India and Indian sources refer to the territory under Pakistan control as "Pakistan-occupied Kashmir" ("POK"). The Government of Pakistan and Pakistani sources refer to the portion of Kashmir administered by India as "Indian-occupied Kashmir" ("IOK") or "Indian-held Kashmir" (IHK); The terms "Pakistan-administered Kashmir" and "India-administered Kashmir" are often used by neutral sources for the parts of the Kashmir region controlled by each country.

History

180px|thumb|6th century Kashmir sculpture of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi.

In the first half of the first millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism. During the 7th–14th centuries, the region was ruled by a series of Hindu dynasties, and Kashmir Shaivism arose. In 1320, Rinchan Shah became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Kashmir Sultanate. The region was part of the Mughal Empire from 1586 to 1751, and thereafter, until 1820, of the Afghan Durrani Empire. thus ending four centuries of Muslim rule under the Mughals and the Afghan regime. As the Kashmiris had suffered under the Afghans, they initially welcomed the new Sikh rulers. However, the Sikh governors turned out to be hard taskmasters, and Sikh rule was generally considered oppressive, protected perhaps by the remoteness of Kashmir from the capital of the Sikh Empire in Lahore. The Sikhs enacted a number of anti-Muslim laws, High taxes, according to some contemporary accounts, had depopulated large tracts of the countryside, allowing only one-sixteenth of the cultivable land to be cultivated. However, after a famine in 1832, the Sikhs reduced the land tax to half the produce of the land and also began to offer interest-free loans to farmers; to the east, Ladakh was ethnically and culturally Tibetan and its inhabitants practised Buddhism; to the south, Jammu had a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. In the heavily populated central Kashmir valley, the population was overwhelmingly Muslim—mostly Sunni; however, there was also a small but influential Hindu minority, the brahmin Kashmiri Pandits. To the northeast, sparsely populated Baltistan had a population ethnically related to that of Ladakh, but which practised Shia Islam. To the north, also sparsely populated, the Gilgit Agency was an area of diverse, mostly Shia groups, and, to the west, the Punch was populated mostly by Muslims of a different ethnicity than that of the Kashmir valley. That same year, Prem Nath Bazaz, a Kashmiri Pandit journalist, wrote: "The poverty of the Muslim masses is appalling. ... Most are landless laborers, working as serfs for absentee [Hindu] landlords ... Almost the whole brunt of official corruption is borne by the Muslim masses." Under Hindu rule, Muslims faced hefty taxation and discrimination in the legal system and were forced into labour without any wages. Conditions in the princely state caused a significant migration of people from the Kashmir Valley to the Punjab of British India. For almost a century, until the census, a small Hindu elite had ruled over a vast and impoverished Muslim peasantry. Driven into docility by chronic indebtedness to landlords and moneylenders, having no education besides, nor awareness of rights, for assistance, and the governor-general agreed on the condition that the ruler accede to India. Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state. The United Nations was then invited to mediate the quarrel. The UN mission insisted that the opinion of Kashmiris must be ascertained, while India insisted that no referendum could occur until all of the state had been cleared of irregulars.</blockquote>

In the last days of 1948, a ceasefire was agreed under UN auspices. However, since the plebiscite demanded by the UN was never conducted, relations between India and Pakistan soured,

According to Encyclopædia Britannica:

<blockquote>Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir before the 1947 partition, and its economic, cultural, and geographic contiguity with the Muslim-majority area of the Punjab (in Pakistan) could be convincingly demonstrated, the political developments during and after the partition resulted in a division of the region. Pakistan was left with territory that, although basically Muslim in character, was sparsely populated, relatively inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim group, situated in the Valley of Kashmir and estimated to number more than half the population of the entire region, lay in India-administered territory, with its former outlets via the Jhelum valley route blocked.

<blockquote>By 1956–57, they had completed a military road through the Aksai Chin area to provide better communication between Xinjiang and western Tibet. India's belated discovery of this road led to border clashes between the two countries that culminated in the Sino-Indian War of October 1962. Capital towns of the region are Leh and Kargil. It is under Indian administration and was part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir until 2019. It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in the area and is mainly inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent. It is bordered to the north and east by China (Xinjiang and Tibet), to the northwest by Afghanistan (Wakhan Corridor), to the west by Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab) and to the south by India (Himachal Pradesh and Punjab).

The topography of Kashmir is mostly mountainous. It is traversed mainly by the Western Himalayas. The Himalayas terminate in the western boundary of Kashmir at Nanga Parbat. Kashmir is traversed by three rivers, namely the Indus, the Jhelum, and the Chenab. These river basins divide the region into three valleys separated by high mountain ranges. The Indus valley forms the north and north-eastern portion of the region, which includes bare and desolate areas of Baltistan and Ladakh. The upper portion of the Jhelum valley forms the proper Vale of Kashmir, surrounded by high mountain ranges. The Chenab valley forms the southern portion of the Kashmir region, with its denuded hills towards the south. It includes almost all of the Jammu region. High altitude lakes are frequent at high elevations. Lower down in the Vale of Kashmir, there are many freshwater lakes and large areas of swamplands, which include Wular Lake, Dal Lake, and Hokersar near Srinagar.

left|thumb|300px|Simplified [[UN map of Kashmir and its surrounding area and rivers]]

To the north and northeast, beyond the Great Himalayas, the region is traversed by the Karakoram mountains. To the northwest lies the Hindu Kush mountain range. The upper Indus River separates the Himalayas from the Karakoram. The Karakoram is the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside the polar regions. The Siachen Glacier at and the Biafo Glacier at rank as the world's second and third longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Karakoram is home to four eight-thousander mountain peaks, with K2, the second-highest peak in the world at .

The Indus River system forms the drainage basin of the Kashmir region. The river enters the region in Ladakh at its southeastern corner from the Tibetan Plateau, and flows northwest to run a course through the entire Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan. Almost all the rivers originating in this region are part of the Indus River system. After reaching the end of the Great Himalayan range, the Indus turns a corner and flows southwest into the Punjab plains. The Jhelum and Chenab rivers also follow a course roughly parallel to this, and join the Indus River in southern Punjab plains in Pakistan.

The geographical features of the Kashmir region differ considerably from one part to another. The lowest part of the region consists of the plains of Jammu at the southwestern corner, which continue into the plains of Punjab at an elevation of below 1000 feet. Mountains begin at 2000 feet, then raise to 3000–4000 feet in the "Outer Hills", a rugged country with ridges and long narrow valleys. Next within the tract lie the Middle Mountains, which are 8000–10,000 feet in height with ramifying valleys. Adjacent to these hills are the lofty Great Himalayan ranges (14000–15000 feet), which divide the drainage of the Chenab and Jehlum from that of the Indus. Beyond this range lies a wide tract of mountainous country of 17000–22000 feet in Ladakh and Baltistan.

Kashmir has a different climate for every region owing to the significant variation in altitude. The temperatures range from the subtropical heat of the Punjab summer to the intensity of the cold, which keeps the perpetual snow on the mountains. Jammu Division, excluding the upper parts of the Chenab Valley, features a humid subtropical climate. The Vale of Kashmir has a moderate climate. The Astore Valley and some parts of Gilgit-Baltistan feature a semi-Tibetan climate. While the other parts of Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh have a Tibetan climate, which is considered an almost rainless climate.

The southwestern Kashmir, which includes much of the Jammu province and Muzaffarabad, falls within the reach of the Indian monsoon. The Pir Panjal Range acts as an effective barrier and blocks these monsoon tracts from reaching the main Kashmir Valley and the Himalayan slopes. These areas of the region receive much of their precipitation from the wind currents of the Arabian Sea. The Himalayan slope and the Pir Panjal witness greatest snow melting from March until June. These variations in snow melt and rainfall have led to destructive inundations of the main valley. One instance of such Kashmir flood of a larger proportion is recorded in the 12th-century book Rajatarangini. A single cloudburst in July 1935 caused the upper Jhelum river level to rise 11 feet. The 2014 Kashmir floods inundated the Kashmir city of Srinagar and submerged hundreds of other villages.

Flora and fauna

Kashmir has a recorded forest area of along with some national parks and reserves. The forests vary according to the climatic conditions and the altitude. Kashmir forests range from the subtropical deciduous forests in the foothills of Jammu and Muzaffarabad, to the temperate forests throughout the Vale of Kashmir and to the alpine grasslands and high altitude meadows in Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh.

The Kashmir region has four well-defined zones of vegetation in the tree growth, due to the elevation difference. The subtropical forests up to 1500 m are known as the Phulai (Acacia modesta) and Olive (Olea cuspid ata) Zone. There occur semi-deciduous species of Shorea robusta, Senegalia catechu, Dalbergia sissoo, Albizia lebbeck, Garuga pinnata, Terminalia bellirica, and Tilia tomentosa, as well as Pinus roxburghii are found at higher elevations. The temperate zone between (1,500–3,500 m) is referred as the Chir Pine (Finns longifolia). This zone is dominated by oaks (Quercus spp.) and Rhododendron spp. The Blue Pine (Finns excelsa) Zone alongside Cedrus deodara, Abies pindrow, and Picea smithiana occurs at elevations between 2,800 and 3,500 m. The Birch (Betula utilis) Zone has Herbaceous genera of Anemone, Geranium, Iris, Lloydia, Potentilla, and Primula interspersed with dry dwarf alpine scrubs of Berberis, Cotoneaster, Juniperus, and Rhododendron, which are prevalent in alpine grasslands at 3,500 m and above.

Kashmir is often referred to as a beauty spot for the medicinal and herbaceous flora in the Himalayas. There are hundreds of different species of wild flowers recorded in the alpine meadows of the region.

The Kashmir region is home to several rare animal species, many of which are protected by sanctuaries and reserves. The Dachigam National Park in the Valley is home to the last viable population of Kashmir stag (Hangul) and the largest population of black bear in Asia. In Gilgit-Baltistan, the Deosai National Park is designated to protect the largest population of Himalayan brown bears in the western Himalayas. Snow leopards are found in high density in the Hemis National Park in Ladakh. The region is home to musk deer, markhor, leopard cat, jungle cat, red fox, jackal, Himalayan wolf, serow, Himalayan yellow-throated marten, long-tailed marmot, Indian crested porcupine, Himalayan mouse-hare, langur, and Himalayan weasel. At least 711 bird species are recorded in the valley alone with 31 classified as globally threatened species.

Horses grazing at Trunkol meadow, Jammu and Kashmir, India (crop).jpg|Horses grazing at a Himalayan meadow below the Gangabal Lake in Jammu and Kashmir

Snow leopard in Ladakh.webm|Snow Leopard with prey filmed in the Hemis National Park of Ladakh

Himalayan bulbul (Pycnonotus leucogenys) near Mehmood Gali in Pakistan-administered Jammu.jpg|A Himalayan bulbul eating berries near Mehmood Gali, AJK

Yellow & Orange flowers at Deosai National Park Pakistan.JPG|Wildflowers in the Deosai National Park of Gilgit-Baltistan

</gallery>

Demographics

Colonial era

In the 1901 Census of the British Indian Empire, the population of the princely state of Kashmir and Jammu was 2,905,578. Of these, 2,154,695 (74.16%) were Muslims, 689,073 (23.72%) Hindus, 25,828 (0.89%) Sikhs, and 35,047 (1.21%) Buddhists (implying 935 (0.032%) others).

The Hindus resided mostly in Jammu, where they constituted a little less than 60% of the population. In the Kashmir Valley, the Hindus represented "524 in every 10,000 of the population (i.e., 5.24%), and in the frontier wazarats of Ladhakh and Gilgit, only 94 out of every 10,000 persons (0.94%)."

The Kashmiri Pandits, the only Hindus of the Kashmir valley, who had stably constituted approximately 4 to 5% of the population of the valley during Dogra rule (1846–1947), and 20% of whom had left the Kashmir valley to other parts of India in the 1950s, underwent a complete exodus in the 1990s due to the Kashmir insurgency. According to numerous authors, approximately 100,000 of the total Kashmiri Pandit population of 140,000 left the valley during that decade. Other authors have suggested a higher figure for the exodus, ranging from the entire population of over 150 thousand, to 190 thousand of a total Pandit population of 200 thousand (200,000), to a number as high as 300 thousand (300,000).

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+ Population of Jammu & Kashmir Princely State by Province (1901–1941)

! rowspan="2" |Census Year

! colspan="2" |Jammu Province

! colspan="2" |Kashmir Province

! colspan="2" |Frontier Regions

! colspan="2" |Jammu & Kashmir Princely State

!Population (human biology)|

! 1901

! colspan="2" |1911

! colspan="2" |1921

! colspan="2" |1931

! colspan="2" |1941

!Population (human biology)|

! Islam 15px

| 2,154,695

| 2,398,320

| 2,548,514

| 2,817,636

| 3,101,247

! Hinduism 15px

| 689,073

| 690,390

| 692,641

| 736,222

| 809,165

! Buddhism 15px

| 35,047

| 36,512

| 37,685

| 38,724

| 40,696

! Sikhism 15px

| 25,828

| 31,553

| 39,507

| 50,662

| 65,903

! Jainism 15px

| 442

| 345

| 529

| 597

| 910

! Christianity 15px

| 422

| 975

| 1,634

| 2,263

| 3,509

! Zoroastrianism 15px

| 11

| 31

| 7

| 5

| 29

! Tribal

| 134

| 51

! Judaism 15px

| 10

! Others

| 60

| 0

| 1

| 0

| 95

! Total population

! 2,905,578

! 3,158,126

! 3,320,518

! 3,646,243

! 4,021,616

|- class="sortbottom"

| colspan="11" |

Modern era

People in Jammu speak Hindi, Punjabi and Dogri, the Kashmir Valley people speak Kashmiri, and people in the sparsely inhabited Ladakh speak Tibetan and Balti. that of Pakistan-administered territory of Azad Kashmir is 4,045,366; and that of Gilgit-Baltistan is 1,492,924.

{| class="wikitable"

! Administered by !! Area !! Population !! % Muslim !! % Hindu !! % Buddhist !! % other

| rowspan="3"|

|Kashmir Valley

|~4 million (4 million)

|95%

|4%

|–

|Jammu

|~3 million (3 million)

|30%

|66%

|–

|4%

|Ladakh

|~0.25 million (250,000)

|46%

|12%

|40%

|2%

| rowspan="2"|

|Azad Kashmir

|~4 million (4 million)

|100%

|–

|Gilgit-Baltistan

|~2 million (2 million)

|99%

|–

| rowspan="2"|

|Aksai Chin

|–

|Trans-Karakoram

|–

| colspan ="7" |

Statistics from the BBC.

File:Muslim-shawl-makers-kashmir1867.jpg|A Muslim shawl-making family shown in Cashmere shawl manufactory, 1867, chromolithograph, William Simpson

File:KashmirPundit1895BritishLibrary.jpg|A group of Pandits, or Brahmin priests, in Kashmir, photographed by an unknown photographer in the 1890s

File:Kashmir Ladakh women in local costume.jpg|Brokpa women from Kargil, northern Ladakh, in local costumes

</gallery>

Economy

Kashmir's economy is centred around agriculture. Traditionally the staple crop of the valley was rice, which formed the chief food of the people. In addition, Indian corn, wheat, barley and oats were also grown. Given its temperate climate, it is suited for crops like asparagus, artichoke, seakale, broad beans, scarletrunners, beetroot, cauliflower and cabbage. Fruit trees are common in the valley, and the cultivated orchards yield pears, apples, peaches, and cherries. The chief trees are deodar, firs and pines, chinar or plane, maple, birch and walnut, apple, cherry.

Historically, Kashmir became known worldwide when Cashmere wool was exported to other regions and nations (exports have ceased due to decreased abundance of the cashmere goat and increased competition from China). Kashmiris are well adept at knitting and making Pashmina shawls, silk carpets, rugs, kurtas, and pottery. Saffron, too, is grown in Kashmir. Srinagar is known for its silver-work, papier-mâché, wood-carving, and the weaving of silk. The economy was badly damaged by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake which, as of 8 October 2005, resulted in over 70,000 deaths in the Pakistan-administered territory of Azad Kashmir and around 1,500 deaths in the India-administered territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Transport

Transport is predominantly by air or road vehicles in the region. Kashmir has a long modern railway line that started in October 2009, and was last extended in 2013 and connects Baramulla, in the western part of Kashmir, to Srinagar and Banihal. It is expected to link Kashmir to the rest of India after the construction of the railway line from Katra to Banihal is completed.

In culture

thumb|Large Kashmir Durbar Carpet (detail), 2021 photo. "Durbar", in this context, means [[Royal family|Royal or Chiefly.]]

Irish poet Thomas Moore's 1817 romantic poem Lalla Rookh is credited with having made Kashmir (spelt Cashmere in the poem) "a household term in Anglophone societies", conveying the idea that it was a kind of paradise.

References

Bibliography

General history

Kashmir history

Historical sources

Blank, Jonah. "Kashmir–Fundamentalism Takes Root", Foreign Affairs, 78.6 (November/December 1999): 36–42.
Drew, Federic. 1877. The Northern Barrier of India: a popular account of the Jammoo and Kashmir Territories with Illustrations; 1st edition: Edward Stanford, London. Reprint: Light & Life Publishers, Jammu. 1971.
Evans, Alexander. Why Peace Won't Come to Kashmir, Current History (Vol 100, No 645) April 2001 p. 170–175.
Hussain, Ijaz. 1998. "Kashmir Dispute: An International Law Perspective", National Institute of Pakistan Studies.
Irfani, Suroosh, ed "Fifty Years of the Kashmir Dispute": Based on the proceedings of the International Seminar held at Muzaffarabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir 24–25 August 1997: University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, AJK, 1997.
Joshi, Manoj Lost Rebellion: Kashmir in the Nineties (Penguin, New Delhi, 1999).
Khan, L. Ali The Kashmir Dispute: A Plan for Regional Cooperation 31 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 31, p. 495 (1994).
Knight, E. F. 1893. Where Three Empires Meet: A Narrative of Recent Travel in: Kashmir, Western Tibet, Gilgit, and the adjoining countries. Longmans, Green, and Co., London. Reprint: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company, Taipei. 1971.
Knight, William, Henry. 1863. Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet. Richard Bentley, London. Reprint 1998: Asian Educational Services, New Delhi.
Köchler, Hans. The Kashmir Problem between Law and Realpolitik. Reflections on a Negotiated Settlement . Keynote speech delivered at the "Global Discourse on Kashmir 2008." European Parliament, Brussels, 1 April 2008.
Moorcroft, William and Trebeck, George. 1841. Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir, in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara... from 1819 to 1825, Vol. II. Reprint: New Delhi, Sagar Publications, 1971.
Neve, Arthur. (Date unknown). The Tourist's Guide to Kashmir, Ladakh, Skardo &c. 18th Edition. Civil and Military Gazette, Ltd., Lahore. (The date of this edition is unknown – but the 16th edition was published in 1938).
Stein, M. Aurel. 1900. Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī–A Chronicle of the Kings of Kaśmīr, 2 vols. London, A. Constable & Co. Ltd. 1900. Reprint, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1979.
Younghusband, Francis and Molyneux, Edward 1917. Kashmir. A. & C. Black, London.
Norelli-Bachelet, Patrizia. "Kashmir and the Convergence of Time, Space and Destiny", 2004; . First published as a four-part series, March 2002 – April 2003, in 'Prakash', a review of the Jagat Guru Bhagavaan Gopinath Ji Charitable Foundation. Kashmir and the Convergence of Time Space and Destiny by Patrizia Norelli Bachelet
Muhammad Ayub. An Army; Its Role & Rule (A History of the Pakistan Army from Independence to Kargil 1947–1999). Pittsburgh: Rosedog Books, 2005. .

External links

United Nations Military Observers Group in Kashmir