Preface of my recently published book "Kashmir 1586:Annexation Atrocities and Aspirations

Kashmir has been for centuries a place of attraction for all types of men. It has fascinated kings, conquerors, scholars, mystics and above all, men gifted with creative imagination. The unending varieties of its landscape, the magic of its natural scenery, the glistening glaciers and the rushing torrents are at once its strength and weakness, and the source of its triumph and tragedy. It has inspired alike marauders, who plundered it again and again, and poets and man of imagination who use all the ingenuity and sophistication at their command to describe its charm and prettiness. The people of such a blessed place had been victimised by the mighty rulers of adjoining regions by fair or foul means, since the dawn of Lidder Valley civilization. These rulers were alien and mostly from Central Asia or India. They ruled with the iron fist and subjugated the hapless masses to their whims. The immortal word of Kalhan, the illustrious historian of Kashmir, elaborates the crisis as “this land after having been virtuous women, has fallen like a prostitute into the arms of the insolent. Henceforth, whoever knows how to succeed by mere intrigue will aspire to that kingdom, whose power has gone”.

            Kashmir’s independence was challenged in the second decade of the eleventh century, by Mahmood of Ghazni. Although, he was unsuccessful because of the internal stability and well preparedness of the rulers who took much care to keep a strong hold upon the entrances and roads leading into it. It was, however, the Mughals of Central Asia who after suffering several reverses, annexed this ‘isolated mountainous bowl’ a sovereign country, by deceit and by their wily tricks, merged it with their larger Mughal Indian Empire, thenceforth the affairs were conducted from Delhi, Lahore or Agra. Thereafter, the political and economic aspirations of the masses were made subservient to the rulers of alien lands. What was worse, Kashmir was placed at the mercy of short-lived Governors and deputy-Governors, who lacked administrative experience, were mostly ignorant of local conditions, customs and traditions, as Walter Lawrence noted, they “looked upon Kashmir in the same light as that in which the Roman proconsuls regarded Africa”. They exploited their subjects and treated them inhumanely and utilized their services almost without remuneration and with force if necessary. They were squeezed by the illegal cesses, exorbitant taxes, and the unjust demands of the ‘rulers on spot’ who went beyond the procedures set by the Mughal Emperors. As the process of exploitation, by different means continued, the masses had to adjust their meagre means to satisfy their bare essentials of life. They were driven from pillar to post by the whimsical behaviour of the higher-ups. About the amount of atrocities Kashmiris have undergone over the ages, Tyndale Biscoe in his book, ‘Kashmir in Sunlight and Shade’ observes that, if the British had faced the same, they would have lost their manhood!

During the long Mughal era (1586-1753), people were killed without thought, oppression was indiscriminate and the sectarian clashes rampant. Many of the governors deliberately created a baffling religious climate that revived sectarian syndrome, resulted in inter-clan and inter-religious skirmishes; eventually, the so-called ‘terrestrial paradise' engulfed in Sunni-Shia insurgency in which considerable loss of life and property took place. This all created an idiosyncratic psycho-social trait of cowardliness and fear psychosis which within a period of time became the preponderant features of Kashmiri personality, which even today is not absent. Perhaps one of the reasons for the present upsurge is associated with this perceived loss of identity, which started in Mughal era.