Kashmir
Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, and for more than six decades it has been described as one of the most militarised zones in the world. Three nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable countries, India, Pakistan, and China, administer pieces of it. None of them recognises the others' claims. Two nations have fought three wars over it. The United Nations called for a vote that was never held. How did one valley between mountain ranges become a permanent international crisis? The answers lie in a 19th-century bill of sale, a maharaja's hesitation, and a population that belonged, on paper, to no one country in particular.
Panini, the Sanskrit grammarian, called the people here Kashmirikas in his Ashtadhyayi during the 5th century BC, making that the earliest direct textual reference to the region by name. The word itself is thought to derive from Sanskrit, and one popular local explanation reads it as land desiccated from water. An alternative tradition links the name to the Vedic sage Kashyapa, yielding either kashyapa-mir meaning Kashyapa's Lake, or kashyapa-meru meaning Kashyapa's Mountain. Ancient Greeks called the region Kasperia, which scholars identify with Kaspapyros of Hecataeus of Miletus and Kaspatyros named by Herodotus. Ptolemy's Kaspeiria is also believed to refer to the same territory. Additional early references appear in the Mahabharata's Sabha Parva and in puranas including the Matsya Purana, Vayu Purana, Padma Purana, Vishnu Purana, and Vishnudharmottara Purana. The Buddhist scholar and Chinese traveller Huientsang called it kia-shi-milo; other Chinese accounts used ki-pin. In modern European languages the name shifted: Cachemire in French, Cachemira in Spanish, Casmiria in Latin, and Cashmir in Occitan. In the Kashmiri language itself, the region is known as Kasheer. The Irish poet Thomas Moore spelled it Cashmere in his 1817 romantic poem Lalla Rookh, which one source credits with making Kashmir a household term in Anglophone societies, conveying the idea of a kind of paradise.
In the first half of the first millennium, the Kashmir region became a major centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism. A succession of Hindu dynasties governed until 1346. During the 7th through 14th centuries, Kashmir Shaivism, a distinct philosophical tradition, arose. In 1320, Rinchan Shah became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, beginning the Kashmir Sultanate. The region then passed into the Mughal Empire from 1586 to 1751, and after that into the Afghan Durrani Empire until 1820. In 1819, the Kashmir Valley shifted from Durrani to Sikh hands when Ranjit Singh's armies swept in from the Punjab, ending roughly four centuries of Muslim rule under the Mughals and the Afghan regime. Kashmiris initially welcomed the Sikhs after their suffering under the Afghans. That welcome did not last. Sikh governors proved hard taskmasters, protected perhaps by the remoteness of Kashmir from the Sikh capital in Lahore. Their anti-Muslim measures included death sentences for cow slaughter, closure of the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, and a ban on the adhan, the public Muslim call to prayer. European visitors of the period recorded abject poverty among the Muslim peasantry and exorbitant taxation. Some contemporary accounts described high taxes depopulating large stretches of the countryside, leaving only one-sixteenth of cultivable land actually under cultivation. Many Kashmiri peasants migrated to the plains of the Punjab. After a famine in 1832, the Sikhs cut the land tax to half the produce and began offering interest-free loans to farmers; Kashmir became the second-highest revenue earner for the Sikh Empire.
Gulab Singh, a young member of the House of Jammu, enrolled in Sikh forces and rose through military campaigns. He was anointed Raja of Jammu in 1822. Together with his general Zorawar Singh Kahluria, he subdued Rajouri and Kishtwar in 1821, Suru valley and Kargil in 1835, Ladakh between 1834 and 1840, and Baltistan in 1840, surrounding the Kashmir Valley from multiple directions. When the First Anglo-Sikh War broke out in 1845, Gulab Singh held himself apart from the fighting, emerging after the battle of Sobraon in 1846 as mediator and trusted advisor to Sir Henry Lawrence. Two treaties followed. The first required the Lahore state to hand territory between the Beas and Indus rivers to the British as an indemnity of one crore. The second, the Treaty of Amritsar, transferred to Gulab Singh all the hilly and mountainous country east of the Indus and west of the Ravi, including the Vale of Kashmir, for 75 lakhs. Drafted by treaty and bill of sale, the Princely State combined regions of radically different peoples. Ladakh to the east was ethnically and culturally Tibetan and largely Buddhist. Jammu to the south held a mixed Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh population. The central Kashmir Valley was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, with a small but influential Kashmiri Pandit Hindu minority. Baltistan to the northeast practised Shia Islam among an ethnically Ladakhi population. The British census of 1941 recorded the princely state as 77 percent Muslim, 20 percent Hindu, and 3 percent Buddhist and Sikh combined. That same year, the Kashmiri Pandit journalist Prem Nath Bazaz wrote: "The poverty of the Muslim masses is appalling. ... Most are landless laborers, working as serfs for absentee Hindu landlords." Muslim peasants had no political representation until the 1930s.
Hari Singh, grandson of Ranbir Singh, had ascended the throne in 1925 and was the reigning maharaja when British rule ended and the subcontinent split on the 14th and the 15th of August 1947. His state was 77 percent Muslim and shared a boundary with Pakistan, so most observers expected accession to Pakistan. Hari Singh hesitated. Pakistan launched a guerrilla assault meant to force his hand. The Maharaja turned instead to Mountbatten, the last Viceroy who had stayed on as the first Governor-General of independent India. Mountbatten agreed to military assistance on condition the maharaja accede to India. Indian troops entered and drove the Pakistani-backed irregulars from most of the state. The United Nations was called in to mediate. The UN insisted the opinion of Kashmiris must be ascertained; India insisted no referendum could proceed while irregulars remained on the territory. A ceasefire was agreed at the end of 1948 under UN auspices, but the promised plebiscite was never held. Relations deteriorated into further wars in 1965 and 1999. China separately entered the northeastern Ladakh area in the 1950s and completed a military road through Aksai Chin by 1956-57 to link Xinjiang and western Tibet. India's delayed discovery of that road led to the Sino-Indian War of October 1962. On the 5th of August 2019, India bifurcated its administered portion into the separate union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, revoking the limited autonomy the region had held since the 1940s.
Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain on Earth, anchors the western end of the Himalayas at the region's edge. The Karakoram range, crossing the north, is the most heavily glaciated area outside the polar regions. The Siachen Glacier and the Biafo Glacier rank as the world's second and third longest non-polar glaciers. Three rivers, the Indus, the Jhelum, and the Chenab, divide the region into three valley systems separated by high mountain ranges. Elevation drives everything about the climate: the plains of Jammu sit below 1,000 feet with a humid subtropical character, while terrain in Ladakh and Baltistan reaches between 17,000 and 22,000 feet. A single cloudburst in July 1935 raised the upper Jhelum river level by 11 feet; the 2014 Kashmir floods inundated Srinagar and submerged hundreds of villages. The Dachigam National Park in the valley holds the last viable population of the Kashmir stag, known as the Hangul, and the largest population of black bear in Asia. The Deosai National Park in Gilgit-Baltistan protects the largest concentration of Himalayan brown bears in the western Himalayas. Snow leopards concentrate in high density in Hemis National Park in Ladakh. At least 711 bird species have been recorded in the valley alone, with 31 classified as globally threatened. The tulip gardens of Srinagar, built in the Zabarwan hills, cultivate 60 varieties of tulips and are considered Asia's largest tulip garden. Cashmere wool once made the region famous worldwide, but exports have declined due to the reduced abundance of the cashmere goat and increased competition from China; craft traditions in Srinagar including silver-work, papier-mache, and silk weaving continue today.
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Common questions
What does the name Kashmir mean?
The word is thought to derive from Sanskrit. One popular local explanation reads it as land desiccated from water, suggesting the valley was once a lake. Another tradition links it to the Vedic sage Kashyapa, giving meanings such as Kashyapa's Lake or Kashyapa's Mountain. The earliest direct textual mention is in Panini's Ashtadhyayi, written in the 5th century BC.
How did the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir come to exist?
It was created in 1846 after the British defeated the Sikh Empire in the First Anglo-Sikh War. Under the Treaty of Amritsar, the British transferred mountainous territory east of the Indus and west of the Ravi rivers to Gulab Singh for 75 lakhs. The state combined ethnically and religiously diverse regions including Buddhist Ladakh, mixed Jammu, and the overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir Valley.
Why was there no plebiscite in Kashmir after 1947?
The United Nations brokered a ceasefire at the end of 1948 and demanded a plebiscite to determine Kashmiris' wishes. India insisted no referendum could be held while Pakistani-backed irregulars remained on the territory. The plebiscite was never conducted, and the unresolved dispute hardened into multiple wars.
Which countries administer parts of Kashmir today?
India controls roughly half the former princely state, administered as the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh since 2019. Pakistan controls about a third, divided into Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. China controls the northeastern Aksai Chin area and the Trans-Karakoram Tract, having entered the region in the 1950s and consolidated control following the Sino-Indian War of 1962.
What was the demographic makeup of Kashmir before 1947?
The British census of 1941 recorded the princely state as approximately 77 percent Muslim, 20 percent Hindu, and 3 percent Buddhist and Sikh combined. In the Kashmir Valley itself the Muslim share was higher. The Kashmiri Pandit community, the Hindu minority of the Valley, underwent a near-complete exodus in the 1990s during the Kashmir insurgency; estimates range from around 100,000 to as many as 300,000 people who left.
What natural features define the Kashmir region?
Kashmir is almost entirely mountainous, traversed by the Himalayas, the Karakoram, and the Hindu Kush. The Karakoram is the most heavily glaciated region outside the polar areas, containing the world's second and third longest non-polar glaciers. Three major rivers, the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab, drain the territory. Elevations range from subtropical plains in Jammu below 1,000 feet to near-rainless high-altitude desert in Aksai Chin above 17,000 feet.