When the British sold Kashmiris for three rupees per capita

Two and a half hundred years ago today, a unique historical event took place, the like of which is difficult to find. In 1846, a country was sold with its land, mountains, valleys, rivers, pastures, birds and human population.

This country was Kashmir (at that time the region was an independent country) and the infamous agreement is called ‘Biya Nama Amritsar’ under which the British gave 2.5 lakh population of Kashmir (three rupees per person) for 7.5 lakh rupees. ) and sold two lakh 18 thousand square kilometers to Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu. After this incident Dogra rule was established in Kashmir.

According to an estimate, 75 lakh Nanak Shahi of that time was around 55 thousand British pounds of that time, which is 650 million pounds today. If this amount is transferred to today’s Pakistani rupees, it is equal to 14 billion Pakistani rupees, as if the entire Kashmir was traded at the rate of approximately 65 thousand Pakistani rupees per square kilometer.

Exactly one hundred years after this agreement, in 1946, the prominent political leader of Kashmir, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, realizing the changing situation of the subcontinent and the negative effects of the Second World War on British power on the world stage, started the ‘Quit Kashmir’ movement. .

Accelerated the series of meetings with the leaders of the Indian freedom movement and started organizing large-scale jalsa processions to create enthusiasm among the Kashmiri people.

A meeting was held at Haba Kadal, Zendar Mahalla, Srinagar, in which Sheikh Abdullah delivered a passionate and emotional speech, which created excitement and excitement throughout Kashmir.

In the speech, he said, ‘We will collect every rupee and in this way we will return to Maharaja Hari Singh the sum of Rs 75 lakh for which his great-grandfather Maharaja Gulab Singh gave Kashmir exactly one hundred years ago. had bought.

However, Sheikh Abdullah did not need to collect a single rupee. Just as the East India Company had to leave India due to the compulsion of circumstances, similarly Maharaja Hari Singh also continued to move. One country has become two countries, both claim independence but the dream of Kashmiris could not be realized shamefully.

Well-known Kashmiri historian and poet Zarif Ahmed Zarif told Independent Urdu that indeed Maharaja Hari Singh had to flee in view of the situation in 1947, but as he went, India held the key to the chains of slavery of Kashmiris. .

‘The Dogra Raj is over, but sadly we are still not freed from centuries of slavery. Again and again we were enslaved, even bought for a pittance. It is difficult to remove this burden from our minds. Our minds and pens have never been freed from slavery. In the present cruel and oppressive era, we are all forced to live a doubtful life.’

How did Gulab Singh become the owner of Kashmir?

According to the renowned Ladakh historian Abdul Ghani Sheikh, Gulab Singh was born on 17 October 1792 in a poor peasant family in Jammu and in 1810 he was appointed as a personal guard in the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire.

In 1808, Ranjit Singh brought Jammu under his rule. In 1819, his generals Dewan Chand and Gulab Singh defeated Jabar Khan, the Pathan governor of Kashmir, and annexed Kashmir to Punjab. Ranjit Singh was greatly impressed by the victories and performance of his general Gulab Singh. On this basis, in the year 1822, he gave Gulab Singh the Jammu Jagir and awarded him the title of Raja.

In 1829 Gulab Singh attacked Kishtwar under the direction of Ranjit Singh and defeated Raja Muhammad Tegh Singh and annexed Kishtwar to Jammu. In fact, Muhammad Tegh Singh had sheltered the fugitive king of Kabul, Shuja-ul-Mulk, in 1815, on which Ranjit Singh was angry.

In August 1834, Raja Gulab Singh’s general Zoravar Singh attacked Ladakh on the advice of Ranjit Singh, for which formal permission was obtained from the East India Company. Zoravar Singh annexed Ladakh to Jammu and thus ended a thousand years of independent rule of Ladakh.’

According to Abdul Ghani Shaikh: ‘In the year 1839, Zorawar Singh invaded Baltistan and conquered it and made it a part of Jammu. Two years later, in 1841, Zoravar Singh attacked Tibet, but the Dogra army suffered a heavy defeat there and Zoravar Singh was killed. After that, Gulab Singh did not dare to invade Tibet.

The East India Company wanted to make Punjab a part of its empire, but it was not possible during the lifetime of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Ranjit Singh died on 27 June 1839. But his descendants and successors proved to be weak rulers.

‘Two successors Kharak Singh and Nunhal Singh died mysteriously within a year. He was succeeded by Sher Singh but fell victim to civil war and his younger son Dilip Singh succeeded to the throne in Kumsani. In 1845, the Sikhs were defeated in the battles between the British and the Sikhs and the Punjab began to fall from the hands of the Sikhs.

Waris Al Anwar, a young Kashmiri research scholar and columnist from Aligarh Muslim University’s Department of History, told Independent Urdu that under the ‘Treaty of Amritsar’ or ‘Treaty of Friendship’ of 1809, Ranjit Singh and the East India Company agreed not to confuse each other. What was promised? But after the death of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Empire became unstable and rapidly declined. The biggest blow to the Sikh Empire was the crushing defeat in the ‘First Anglo-Sikh War’ fought in 1845 and 1846 and it had to surrender a large part under the Treaty of Lahore.

The defeat in the war paved the way for the East India Company to occupy Punjab. In the second Anglo-Sikh war of 1848, the British occupied Punjab with full authority and thus the Sikh Empire ended in Punjab.

Young Kashmiri researcher Dr. Sohailur Rahman Lone says that in the past, when there were wars between two countries, the cost of the winning country had to be paid by the losing country.

On losing the war, the Sikh Empire had to pay one and a half million rupees to the British under the Treaty of Lahore on March 9, 1846. His treasury had only 50 lakh rupees. In return for the remaining one crore rupees, he surrendered the territory between the river Beas and the river Indus, including the provinces of Kashmir and Hazara.

Gulab Singh played the role of mediator in settling matters between the Sikh Empire and the East India Company, but then just six days later i.e. on 16 March 1846, under the ‘Treaty of Amritsar’, he bought various territories, including Kashmir, from the East India Company. Earlier the Sikhs were part of the empire.

Three rupees per Kashmiri

The Treaty of Amritsar was concluded on 16 March 1846 between the British Government and the self-styled Maharaja Gulab Singh by order of Sir Henry Hardinge, the then Governor-General of the East India Company, by Frederick Curie and Major Henry Montgomery Lawrence, and affixed with Sir Henry Hardinge’s seal. It was approved.

Article No. 1 of the Treaty states: ‘The British Government shall retain all the hilly territory with its appurtenances lying to the east of the Indus and to the west of the Ravi, including Chhamba without Lahore, as per Article 6 of the Treaty of Lahore of March 9, 1846. Henceforth the State of Lahore ceded to the British Government, Maharaja Gulab Singh and his descendants convert for ever into the independent possession of Narina.’

Article number three of the Treaty of Amritsar states that Maharaja Gulab Singh and his heirs will pay 75 lakh (Nanak Shahi) rupees to the British government as compensation for the territories transferred to them. 50 lakhs on or before 1st October 1846.

Zarif Ahmad Zarif says: ‘There was a time when Gulab Singh was a favorite military officer of Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire. He was given considerable powers by Ranjit Singh, but being a mischievous and greedy man, he gradually looted the treasury of the Sikh Empire.

Considering that Jammu and some other areas were already with Gulab Singh, the British did not have to think much about handing over Kashmir and other areas to him.

‘The price of handing over Kashmir to Gulab Singh was fixed at 75 lakh (Nanakshahi) rupees. At that time the population of this unfortunate region was around 25 lakhs. That is, the British sold Kashmiris for three (Nanak Shahi) rupees per capita.

‘At the time this infamous deal took place, a Nanakshahi rupee was worth only 12 rupees to an Indian rupee. Calculated in Indian currency, Kashmir was sold for a mere Rs 5625,000. The Treaty of Amritsar was a conditional agreement. According to the agreement, Gulab Singh had to give 12 pashmina goats (six male and six female), six Kashmiri pashmina shawls and one horse to the British every year.

Zarif Ahmad Zarif said that like the Sikh Empire, Gulab Singh’s coffers were also empty, but he took a loan and paid the first installment to the British.

‘Gulab Singh borrowed some money from merchants in Amritsar to pay the first installment. When the time came to return the money, Gulab Singh, instead of returning the money, set up a market in Maharajgunj, Srinagar.

It is recorded in some history books that after paying the first installment, Gulab Singh asked for a receipt of money from the East India Company. But the British did not give them a receipt. As a protest, Gulab Singh did not pay the remaining 25 lakh rupees to the British. Thus Gulab Singh got Kashmir for a mere 50 lakh (Nanakshahi) rupees.’

Eminent Kashmiri historian, researcher, critic and writer Muhammad Yusuf Teng told Independent Urdu that history is full of stories of powerful people occupying countries and regions by force, but such incidents are rarely mentioned when not only A country, but the people living in it, their possessions and above all their honor and dignity have been sold for a few lakhs of coins. The person with whom the Kashmir deal was made was a greedy and uneducated person. He did not leave a single rupee.’

O wind of the morning if I pass Geneva
Recitation of the letters by the Assembly of Nations

They sold fields and farms and streets.
Nations sell and sell cheap

(O Bad Saba, if you want to go to the city of Geneva, ask the Assembly of Nations on my behalf. The farmer, the field, the river and the garden have all been sold. A nation has been sold and at what a cheap price.)

Muhammad Yusuf Teng, reciting the mentioned poems of Eastern poet Allama Muhammad Iqbal, said: ‘Allama Iqbal was extremely sorry that the East India Company had given Kashmir to Gulab Singh in exchange for a few lakhs of Nanakshahi coins under the infamous Treaty of Amritsar. sold

O kishti-gul-lala-bah-pakhti bakhre-chand

Allama Iqbal says in this stanza that the British handed over Kashmir to a few khars. He points to Gulab Singh.

According to Muhammad Yusuf Teng, it was Allama Iqbal who prepared the people here to raise their voice against the Dogra Raj.

As the head of the All India Kashmir Committee, he appealed for a strike for the freedom of Kashmir. I have the poster of this strike appeal. This appeal was followed by a strike across United India. Whenever someone from here went to Lahore and met Allama Iqbal, he used to tell everyone to continue their struggle for the freedom of Kashmir at all costs.

Historian and poet Zarif Ahmad Zarif was asked if any other local or non-local poet apart from Allama Iqbal has written on the infamous ‘Kashmir Ka Sauda’, he said: ‘Just as the label of treason is attached to the talk today. In the same way, the punishment for treason was severe in the Dogra royal government. Apart from Allama Iqbal, no one has openly raised a pen on this cruelty. At that time pens were also under control, so it was not possible for any Kashmiri poet to write anything on it.

Allama Iqbal was a person of national honor. Above all, since he was a Kashmiri by descent, he was very concerned about his ancestral homeland.’

When Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian nation, visited Kashmir in July-August 1947, he called the Amritsar Pact ‘Bakriputra’ and expressed his deep displeasure at the ‘atrocities’ of the Dogra Raj.

In a letter to a ‘cabinet mission’ of the British government visiting India in April 1947, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah wrote: ‘One hundred years ago Kashmir was traded by the agents of the East India Company. 75 lakh only for Nanakshahi Rs. Kashmir, its people, its green fields and meadows and all such resources were sold by Raja Gulab Singh, a tax collector of the Sikh Empire.

“The then governor of Kashmir, Sheikh Imamuddin, resisted the deal of Kashmir in connection with this treaty, but he was brought into submission with the help of the British army. Thus the Bakriputra of 1846, erroneously called the Treaty of Amritsar, sealed the fate of the Kashmiris. We challenge the moral and political status of this pledge to which the people of Kashmir have never been a party.’

According to Waris Al-Anwar, the governor of the Sikh Empire in Kashmir, Sheikh Imamuddin, who was loved by the local people, fought Gulab Singh’s army but was unsuccessful.

The resistance of Sheikh Imamuddin was crushed with the help of the British. In order to weaken Imam-ud-Din, his advisers and associates were lured with jagir and other privileges.’

What do common Kashmiris think about this?

When Independent Urdu asked a common Kashmiri named Muhammad Afzal about the Treaty of Amritsar, he said: ‘The infamous Treaty was the final limit to the exploitation of the East India Company and Raja Gulab Singh’s narrow-minded and sectarian tyranny. Evidence Dealing with a nation without knowing the opinion of its dignitaries and dignitaries is a barbarity whose example can hardly be found anywhere in the history of nations. We are that unfortunate nation.

“Under the Amritsar Agreement, where we were humiliated by selling us at very cheap prices, our human and moral values ​​were also blown away.”

Service reward or compulsion?

According to historian Abdul Ghani Sheikh, Raja Gulab Singh sided with the British during the ‘First Anglo-Sikh War’ between the East India Company and the Sikh Empire, which was acknowledged by the then Governor General Sir Henry Hardinge in the ‘Secret Committee’ report. what is

Dr. Sohailur Rahman Lone says: ‘I have studied Sikh history. It is written there that Gulab Singh betrayed the Sikh Empire. In some books, he has been written as a traitor.

Gulab Singh did not participate in the war of 1845 and 1846. He was the guardian of a large part of the army. When Gulab Singh and his army did not fight against the British, the Sikhs consequently lost.’

Dr. Sohailur Rahman Loan rejects the argument that the East India Company gave Gulab Singh Kashmir and other territories in return for his ‘pro-British services’.

‘The British were not generous enough to give someone a large area in return for services. Making Gulab Singh the master of Kashmir had economic and geographical aspects.

‘The British thought that directly ruling the region would bring little revenue. He believed that the amount of money spent on deploying the army and running government affairs in the region would be less than the revenue. The East India Company was facing threats from Russia on one side and Afghanistan on the other in this region. Seeing this, the British made Kashmir a buffer state. That is, if there is an attack from Russia or Afghanistan, they will first clash with the Kashmir army.

According to Dr. Sohailur Rahman Lone, Kashmir was the only ‘princely state’ where a resident of East India was not posted.

‘The Resident was not merely an ambassador but a controlling authority. These Residents looked after the affairs of the Rajas or Maharajas of the various states. The purpose of the British not to appoint a Resident in Kashmir was to convey to Gulab Singh that we have great confidence in you.’

Abdul Ghani Sheikh says that before his death on 30 June 1857, Maharaja Gulab Singh wrote a patta (instruction) to his son and successor, Maharaja Ranbir Singh, in which he was told that ‘this state is a gift of the British Government which will always be For our children are owned. Therefore, it is your first duty to be loyal to them with your heart and mind.’

He adds: ‘A year after Maharaja Ranbir Singh’s accession to the throne, in 1857, the first war of independence was fought against the British, which the British called Ghadar.

‘Ranbir Singh sent about three thousand soldiers to help the British who played an important role in the siege of Delhi. Later the British Governor General appreciated the Maharaja’s services while the Queen of England sent gifts. He was also honored with the Star of India award.

The beginning of a new era of oppression

According to Zarif Ahmad Zarif, as long as Gulab Singh remained on the throne, he oppressed the Kashmiris as much as he could.

‘Wherever any money was found, he deposited it in his treasury. Gulab Singh was already very attached to money and wealth.’

Dr. Sohailur Rahman Lone says that Gulab Singh issued a decree in 1848 stating that the entire land of Kashmir belonged to the Dogra family.

‘Gulab Singh did not stop the cultivators from using the land, but they had to deposit so much grain in the treasury that at most 25 per cent of the grain was left with them. Some cultivators used to bury the grain under the ground and then take it out when they were satisfied that they would not be caught.’

However, according to Muhammad Yusuf Teng, after collecting a large share in the government treasury, the Dogra government officials used to loot the grain.

Now, if anyone was given tax-exempt land, he would not be a Muslim, but a Hindu Dogra or a Kashmiri Hindu Pandit. As the Kashmiri Pandits were educated, they not only worked for the Dogra government but also performed the duty of informers.’

Waris Al-Anwar says: ‘Kashmiri Hindu Pandits had control over the finance department and other departments. That is, the Pandits remained close to the Dogra regime as they are today.

‘During Gulab Singh’s time, every thing and every event was taxed. Religious freedom of Muslims was taken away. Azan was banned and slaughterhouses were closed.

“During the Sikh rule, offerings or funds were given to Muslim religious places, but Gulab Singh stopped all such funding when he became the master of Kashmir. But on the other hand, he generously gave money for the construction of Hindu religious places, especially temples. Admiration was also given to people associated with Hindu religious places.

Today we say that RSS wants to make India a Hindu state, but during the Dogra Raj, Kashmir was made a Hindu state in which Muslims did not enjoy any religious freedom.

Gulab Singh was a ruthless ruler. If anyone gave the most money to build Lahore University, it was Gulab Singh. But no educational institution was established in Kashmir. The purpose of generous funding of Lahore University was to improve its image outside Kashmir.

‘Why don’t the British occupy Kashmir?’

According to Waris Al Anwar, Kashmiri Muslims were so fed up with Gulab Singh that they used to ask British tourists visiting Kashmir why they don’t rule here themselves.

“Many British tourists have written that when they and their companions visited the villages of Kashmir, the local people used to ask them why you do not rule here.

‘Indeed, Gulab Singh bought Kashmir but his government was run under the supervision of East India. The people here were thinking that perhaps the British had made Gulab Singh the governor of Kashmir for a temporary period.’

Muhammad Yusuf Teng says that Dogra family considered Kashmiris as their valuable slaves. “Kashmiris were sent to beggar or forced labor and were not paid any money. Many people died during this forced labor.

A parade of people was held in the villages to carry the beggar and other people, especially the youth, were selected for it except the elderly.’ Dr. Sohailur Rahman Lone says that when people were paraded in a village to carry the beggar, there used to be mourning.

“Just as women came forward to protect men from the Indian Army during the crackdowns in the 1990s, the same happened in Dogra Raj. When 100 people were sent from here to Gilgit for Begar, only 90 returned from there. Kashmiris were often taken to Gilgit during the autumn season where they had to carry ammunition and food grains on their shoulders for the army stationed on the borders. The beggars were barely given food and clothing. Some were sold on the way.’

Dr. Muhammad Amin Malik in his book ‘Role of National Conference in Tehreek Hurriyat Kashmir’ writes that Hindus, Sikhs, Pirzades, Gujjars and those cultivators who worked on payments to government officials were exempted from Begar.

Zarif Ahmad Zarif says that although the Dogra rule in Kashmir came to an end after 101 years in 1947, their system of government, including stamps and laws, remained in force until 1949.

“The Ranbir Penal Code or the Ranbir Code of Penal Code will continue until the end of the special constitutional status of Kashmir i.e. 2019.”