Jurum ma mara choo damanigir shud
quome Singan warade Kashmir shud
(When the Sikhs entered Kashmir, the Kashmiris cried out in pain! ‘our sins overtook us.’)
A few thousand stupid brutal Seikhs [Sikhs] with swords at their sides or pistols in their belts drive this ingenious and numerous, but timid people, like a flock of sheep.
—Jacquemont
“Whoever of my officers is appointed in Kashmir, before occupying himself with anything, he must make the people happy and earn their good wishes. For Kashmiris are worshippers of one Universal Almighty, and their prayers shall bring the Maharaja and his Kingdom prosperity and felicity.”1
Sounding perfectly plausible, this policy statement of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, on the occasion of victory celebrations, came as a morale booster to the Kashmiris; raising their expectations and hopes, which had diminished over the years of oppression, very high; bloating them with his passionate belief in what he was going to do with Kashmir whose annexation was a dream come true, after having baffled him twice earlier. It prompted them to believe that the political structure of their land would be topped with a noble and generous class of Governors; it would be carried by honest, dedicated and enterprising administrators; it would promote the interests of industrial, I commercial and agricultural population; it would ensure I abundant and regular supply of essential commodities from Punjab the frequent scarcity of which forced prices up ten to fifteen times their normal price; it would be based on I principles of justice and fair play; it would guard people , against falling prey to sectarian acrimony and religious I discord.
But it did not take long for hopes to wither, and the poor Kashmiris were thrown from the frying-pan into the fire. They were absolutely shattered when they discovered that Ranjit Singh had simply lied to them. The first Akali regiment that entered Srinagar triumphantly on 15th July, 1819 A.D., failed the Maharaja by doing what he had not advised them to do. In their war outfit, the troops paraded through the city not for peace keeping duties but for hurling I pejoratives, insults and abuses at the passers-by. Filled with venom, anger and hatred against the conquered, they poured ‘ great scorn, publically, on the Kashmiris and virulently promoted recrudescence of anarchy by indulging freely in loot, plunder and murder. The Sikhs inaugurated a new era of Bebuj Raj, to quote Hameed-ullah Shahabadi; an era of unforgettable brazen savagery and Muslim bashing; an era when the majority community came to be on the receiving end of extreme bigotry and communalism which resulted in shutting down Jama Masjid, the most celebrated mosque in Srinagar, on the plea that its larger premises provided ample opportunity to the Muslims to assemble there to discuss community matters on week ends after Friday prayers. Other mosques were also seized and converted into ware-houses. Then the azan or call for prayer was prohibited.Phula Singh, an over enthusiastic Sikh commander and leader of the Nihangas and the Akalis was determined to even destroy and demolish all the signs and symbols of Islamic culture in Kashmir. Actually he trained his guns on the Shrine of Shah Hamadan to blow it up, but the last-minute intervention of Pandit Birbal Dhar saved it from this outrageous attack. He had to part with his cash and a few other valuables to goad the rude and ferocious Phula Singh into giving up his ugly scheme. The big zamindars too had to fall in line to tie his bigotry by presenting him gifts, cash and horses.
But the undesirable activities and intolerable and bitter eloquence of the new regime did not end here. These continued unabated, and manifested themselves in:
- a) making cow – slaughter a crime punishable by death;
- b) hanging publicly butchers as a display of intent;
- c) prohibiting mozin to give call for prayers;
- d) the confiscation of jagirs held by the Muslim zamindars;
- e) the pressure exercised on neo- Muslims to return to their original faith, Hinduism;
- f) the forced conversion to Sikhism;
- g) the revival of sati (of which Mujrim has left a pathetic and distressing eyewitness account in his Persian elegy, Soz-o-Gudaz); and
- h) the exodus of Muslims to distant places to escape conversion.
The knotty problem confronting the Kashmiris, during the Sikh rule, was not politics. It was the management of public affairs that created a serious dichotomy and imbalance between the ruler and the ruled. Expected to fetch and carry for the Lahore Darbar all the time, the administration of the Valley was entrusted to a bureaucracy whose character and temperament were tough enough in their horror of determination to exact as much as could be from the subjects.
In his Bebujnama (story of lawlessness), Hameed-ullah, an eyewitness has lifted curtain from the unfettered cruelty and high-handed action of the Sikh rule; exposing unequivocally the obnoxious face of its administration; satirically depicting the glaring inhumane traits of the bureaucracy from patwari upto nazim; coining terms and names befitting the character of the officers, and analogous with their nature and designation. The essence of these names can better be guessed than described. For example when he selects the names: Kazib Rather for qaunungo, Adawat Kaul for patwari; Fasad Bhat for harkara; Riskwat Baba for qazee; Gurez Singh for Mir Shamsher; Shamat Singh for police chief; Chugli Beg for news reporter; he reveals the true meaning and significance of their inherent character, and manner of their functioning. Finding himself unable to cope with the prevailing milieu of corruption and resignation, he gives vent to his feelings as a protest against the system; invoking God to destroy it.
While narrating all-time high incidence of crime against humanity, Khalil Mirjanpuri, another contemporary writer, states:
Jamadar Khushal Singh used the known methods of beatings and whippings, and put in prison all kardars in Basant Bagh [a Mohalla in Srinagar] where he put them to torture, till he collected the sum of twenty lakhs and innumerable rolls of pashmina.
Sohan Lal, the court chronicler of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, further substantiates the use of torture against the kardars when he writes:
They [the Sikh regime] put in prison all the kardars…. and began to realize nazarana [gifts] from them….All the fine things….were taken into possession by them.
However, fortune supplementing was the sole purpose of the administrative apparatus and, consequently, the provincial functionaries were always on their toes to satisfy the sovereign demands; filling the coffers of the Maharaja, besides their own. But the Khalasa demands were so overbearing that even if the Governors ‘pulled together with the oxen’ these could not be fulfilled. These demands, as a matter of fact, determined the course of the Sikh Government’s action in Kashmir which became so fraught every year that only grasping Governors were considered compatible with the wholeness of the arbitrary and the most exasperating regime. Missar Diwan Chand had his scornful dismissal revoked by presenting huge and valuable gifts and enormous wealth to the Maharaja which he raised by the grossest extortion. He was re-instated with the title of Fateh-Jung. Diwan Kripa Ram secured his position by amassing more than the stipulated amount of mpees twenty-six lakhs and shawls worth fourteen lakhs of rupees. Hari Singh Nalwa wrested all jagirs and Endowments held by the ulamas and Khankah’s to fulfil the Khalasa demand, besides his own intense lust for wealth. But the spectacle of suicide, committed by Diwan Chunilal, surprised non because he failed miserably to satisfy the Maharaja’s demand and lacked courage to face ; his wrath. The main concern of the Maharaja lay in receiving regularly the stipulated remittances than in affording even marginal satisfaction to the producers of ; this wealth’. The Governors were, thus, given a free hand to deal with Kashmir whose peculiar geographical position further made their way easy to carry on their mission of peering the people of the Valley.
Some of them had a nasty habit of crossing all barriers of brutality to perpetrate dreadful outrages, and human rights violations beyond description. Madly impulsive in letting loose a reign of terror, they hanged scores of Kashmiris publicly with great impunity and without regrets. The Governor, Bhima Singh Ardali, plowed no remorse for his crimes and instead he sounded extremely boastful while counting two hundred bodies he had hanged in the first year of his Government, observed Jacquemont. The European traveller writes:
When the Governor [Bhima Singh Ardali] visited me, be told me with a very careless air that in the first year of his government he had hanged two hundred [Kashmiris] but now, one here and there was sufficient to keep country in order.
Setting out to govern Kashmir, these unbridled and haughty Governors remained greatly favourable to themselves but resolutely hostile to the natives whom they considered as a flock of sheep and worthless creatures of inferior stuff. Treated little better than cattle, as Moorcroft observes, the Sikh Government did not hesitate to seize the Kashmiris as unpaid porters. He writes:
… .People accompanying us were seized by the Sikhs as unpaid porters and were not only driven along the road by a cord tying them together by arms, but their legs were bound with ropes at night to prevent their escape.
Elaborating further on the Sikh oppression, Moorcraft states:
The Sikhs appropriate 7/8 of the sar-kishte and 3/4 of the pai-kishte crops. The straw falls to the share of the cultivator but his case would be desperate, if it were not practicable to bribe the overseer or watchman to let him steal a portion of his own produce.
The Sikh rulers were the potential beneficiaries of the system whose most striking feature was the gradual replacement Of the top ranking traditional functionaries of the Government by the Punjabis who had become so inebriated with power that they showed a cynical disdain for the Kashmiri culture; frequently spurning the natives didactically; completely segregating them from the mainstream to preserve their own cultural and social hegemony, identity and heritage. Besides, the linguistic barriers largely hampered them to socialize with the Kashmiris; preventing them to promote multi-culturism and to develop an understanding and just approach. Devi Das, a contemporary Punjabi minister of the Lahore Darbar states;
There is no report and reconciliation between Punjabi officers and Kashmiri masses, because the officers are ignorant of the Kashmiri language and the masses of the Punjabi.
The new regime sought to subordinate the Kashmiri interests to the Punjabi elitism which encouraged racialism, parochialism and communalism. The style of its working exemplified chauvinism and discrimination at its best; even the punishments meted out to the native offenders reflected racially and communally motivated discrimination. Moorcroft, an eyewitness, writes:
The murder of a native by a Sikh is punished by a fine to the Government of from sixteen to twenty rupees, of which four rupees are paid to the family of the deceased if a Hindu, and two rupees if a Muhammadan.
For solemnizing marriage, the Muslims were required to pay marriage tax; each nikah was validated by this tax, called zari-nikah. Almost all the professions and Occupations, pursued by the Muslims, were brought under State taxation; even the boatmen, fishermen, wood cutters, washermen, singhara sellers, milkmen, sweepers and prostitutes were not immune from taxation.
Similarly shawl-weavers, dyers, jewellers, ironmongers, pattern designers and talim writers were the victims of impecunious circumstances. But the shawl-bafs were more taxed; their products being taxed at forty two custom houses. Major R. Leech writes:
The shawl-weavers of Cashmere are more taxed than workmen. They are bound to work night and day when the proceeds of the farm threaten to fall off. The shawl-merchants are also prisoners being strictly watched to prevent their emigrating.
The annual capitation on each shawl-baf was in the range of rupees 94/10; his meagre earning was always disproportionate to the cost of shali which he had to purchase from the Government compulsorily. It was the price of shali, not the shawl, that determined the economy of the country. So bad was the plight of the shawl-bafs, writes Birbal Kachru, that:
Many of them cut off their fingers, some even blinded themselves to escape their miserable condition.
There were no safeguards available in the system against tyranny; even for a routine case a judge received huge bribes to relieve both the plaintiff and defendant.
Baron Hugel States:
A Kashmiri would put up with any wrong rather than seek redress from his Sikh master, as he is invariably obliged to pay the judge a huge price for his decision, without the slightest prospect of recovering his lost property.
Thus, the Kashmiri spirit totally collapsed under the heavy burden of a burly administrative machine whose key objective was to look after the Punjabi elitist interests of augmenting fortunes by maximising revenue demands and taxes, and bullying all and sundry into paying bribes and nazaranas. Heavily burdened with a platoon of maqdams, patwaris, tehsildars, shikdars etc; this machine with these sharp edged mattocks shattered the confidence of the people; breaking their backbone by subjecting them to crippling extortions and, eventually, reducing them to abject penury and beggarly existence.
Even the bottom wrung of this system, comprising the Sikhs and the Kashmiri Pandits, acted as small despots, fleecing people day in and day out. They had grown rich enough to invest their surplus money in business to drive more profits and augment their wealth. Ganesh Lal, a contemporary writer, writes:
The chief revenue and judicial functions of the Kashmir Province are administered by a set of native Pandits who have grown rich at the expenses of the Mohammadans…
The poetry of the times also reflects the gruesome picture of this state of affairs. In his collection of poems (Dewan), Mujrim holds local officials responsible for the administrative chaos and identifies Tika Ram Bhan, Suraj Bhan, Ganesh Dhar, Kailash Dhar, Sat Ram Pandit, Himat Pandit Foetedar, Chandra Bhan Dogra and Deva Kak as the main culprits who played havoc with the Kashmiris.
The contemporary writers are unanimous in their condemnation of the collection of extortionate kharwars in addition to the stipulated revenue from the peasants for whom the Sikh regime was synonymous with the hated begar and the worst kind of exploitation. The kardars, supervisors of harvest assessment, if found slightly sympathetic towards the plight of the peasants, were imprisoned and deprived of cash, jewellery, gold and silver. The Sikh regime was shrewd enough to prevent the creation of patron-client ties in the villages by rotating the officials rapidly, besides awarding punishments to mild-mannered functionaries. This was increasingly a viable policy to maximize the loyalty of the officials to the regime, and their commitment to the ideology of obedience. It made them capricious, oppressive, rude and haughty. Thus, devoid of human feelings, they showed least patience to listen to peasant grievances and joined hands with the top officials; nazim, diwan, qiladar etc; to do irreparable harm to Kashmir’s economy, and inhibit the formation of rural alliance against the regime.
The vagaries of climate, recurrence of famines and other calamities further aggravated the crises; taking a heavy toll of life; rendering the survivors so hungry that they sold their sons and daughters’ to fill up their empty bellies. Many peasants, artisans, labourers and traders quit the valley and ‘gathered together in Amritsar in thousands and spread out to Delhi, Calcutta and Banaras’; reducing Kashmir to a barren land of hardly several lakhs; plummeting its population from eighty hundred thousand I to two hundred thousand to bear the brunt of the Khakha- Bomba ravages.
Kashmir was, thus, socio-economically obliterated by the Bebuj Raj of the Sikhs which lasted for twenty seven years. For this the entire blame rests on Maharaja Ranjit Singh who was hand in glove with his provincial Governors to make the life of the people a misery. His attitude towards the Kashmiris was not paternalistic; in actuality it was that a ‘systemic grinder’ whose intention was to suck their blood ‘most mechanically’ by denuding them of their resources and wealth apart from the exploitation of their labour power for taking out surplus in agriculture and industry. He let the Valley go to rack and ruin by changing it into a Fauji Chawani where thousands of ‘stupid mid brutal Sikhs’ (laments Jacquemont), ‘with swords at their side and pistols in their belt drew this ingenious and numerous people like a flock of sheep’. His political jealousy led him to create ‘vexatious obstructions’ in the way of their economic prosperity for he feared, to quote Vigne:
The greater the prosperity of Kashmir the stronger would be inducement to invasion by the East India Company.
However, after the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839 A.D., the Sikhs sent their first Muslim Governor, Sheikh Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din who immediately reopened the Jama Masjid, closed since 1819 A.D., and installed a new lingam at Shankaracharya hill. He also issued Government grain at controlled prices.But it was all too late; the Sikh rule was destined to perish soon by its own excesses and weaknesses.
Dr. Abdul Ahad is a well-known historian of Kashmir. He presents a perspective on the Kashmir issue and talks about Kashmir’s history and individuality and personality. For feedback the author can be mailed at drahadhist@yahoo.co.in
