The ripples of unrest began to surface when the Kashmiris became conscious of lack of their influence on the decision making process; of their economic exploitation to the benefit of aliens, and when they propelled their voice across the line and vehemently spoke up against atrocities.
—Dr. Ahad
The centuries of subjugation and surrender to arbitrary powers had made Kashmiris ambivalent towards their rulers but they had reconciled themselves to a lifetime subordination because the Mughals, the Afghans and the Sikhs had established their regimes in Kashmir with the connivance of the indigenous support. The growing abhorrence against a regime would prompt them into inviting another power with the hope that their aspirations would be accommodated in the new set-up. Through this mechanism of politics of invitations they exercised their influence on the affairs of their country and reconciled with what followed under the new invited regime. As a good safety- valve for the tensions they built up under an oppressive regime, this course of action, available in the circumstances, was adequate enough to enable them to shape their attitudes and not to resort to agitations and virulent protests.
But the transfer of their land to an upstart by an unrelated power deprived them of this safety- valve; rendering them helpless in face of the new developments that followed the Treaty of Amritsar in 1846 A.D. The vacuum created by the loss of this opportunity was, however, filled up with the rising turbulent spirit which was capable of launching agitations and protests from time to time.
The Kashmiris began showing a little fighting spirit when the ghost-ruler, Gulab Singh’s name was officially declared as the future Maharaja of Kashmir. They were conscious of the wider implications of the new arrangement for their future which was likely to land them in deep trouble and bog them down in the quagmire of exploitation to the benefit of the new ruler of whose despicable actions they had enough previous experience. They showed enthusiasm in cooperating with those who were hostile to Gulab Singh and determined to stall his entry into the Valley by force. And when the Dogras appeared on the Kashmir soil the people rose in unison, filling the air with the cry of ‘Nara-i- Takbir ’ which resounded throughout the Valley; inspiring their brethren to respond by letting out an ear- splitting yell: Allah-u- Akbar. The entire lot of the Kashmiris left their homes and hearths to join the agitators, comprising the manufacturers, the merchants, the hill chiefs and the regular forces, to challenge the legitimacy of the Dogra regime whom the British (unconcerned power) had given the mandate to rule Kashmir; a crucial and ubiquitous factor in Kashmir’s history which was bound to deprive the people of their control on the means of production and subject them to the new forces of coercion and Lord’s extortions. They fought shoulder to shoulder till they were suppressed by the British armed intervention.The Kashmir army too was quelled through threats carried out by the British; intimidating them into doing what they wanted.
They warned them:
Let it be known to the Kashmir army that it has come to our knowledge that you have joined hands with the Shaikh [Imam-ud-Din] and started troubles and seized the fort of Hari Parbat. Hence a warning is issued to you so that you may see reason and come to terms; for in it lies your betterment. You must obey, for your obedience and surrender is demanded and is in accordance with the instructions of the Lahore Government if you do not heed, you must remain prepared for destruction. You must surrender and lay down your arms this side.
The hill chiefs were also thrown into complete disarray when the British tried threats and intimidation:
…Shaikh Imam-ud-Din…has taken the path of rebellion and is engaged in war with Gulab Singh, it is declared that all should keep themselves aloof from him, till Gulab Singh is installed in Kashmir, by all possible means.
To end the uprising, the British employed all methods for they did not want it to develop into a big flare up to create enormous difficulties for them.
The failure of the Kashmiris did not, however, dampen their hurly- burly attitude; it continued reigning supreme in their life throughout the Dogra regime and gave a clear notion to the British of what the Kashmiris required at that juncture as a new dispensation. As a result, the British sought an undertaking from Gulab Singh that he would:
- dispose of the produce of Kashmir, received as revenue, at a khush khared
rate;
- collect custom duties only at specified places;
- treat his subjects equally;
- guarantee religious freedom to the Muslims;
- give fair treatment to hill chiefs and Khakhas and Bombas;
- pay eight Kashmiri rupees monthly to each soldier as emolument;
- not increase the revenue;
- pay two annas to each, engaged in begar, as remuneration.
KHANDWAW’S HARTAL—A PRIMORDIAL SWAMP
But this agreement turned into a complete fiasco owing to the duplicity of Gulab Singh. He had neither the inclination nor the will to introduce the changes as envisaged in the agreement. He was, as noted earlier, determined to be mean enough to extract every penny from the people like a cork from a bottle; converting the situation into a slanging—match in which shawl-bafs, farmers, shopkeepers and manufacturers created hue and cry. The prospect for improvement became more gloomy when the Maharaja enforced begar vigorously and initiated rapacious measures to fleece people ruthlessly; earning for himself the notoriety of money grubber and parsimony. The worst afflicted Kashmiris, with the Maharaja’s tax policy, were the poor shawl weavers upon whose earnings he fell like a serpent; forbidding them ‘whether half blind or otherwise incapacitated’,to abandon their operation without finding a substitute in order to ensure a nonstop flow of income for himself.Torrens writes:
Gulab Singh went beyond his predecessors in the gentle acts of undue taxation and extortion. They had taxed heavily it is true, but he sucked the very life blood of the people. They had laid violent hands on a large proportion of the fruits of the earth, the profits of the loom, on the work of men’s hands. But he skinned the very flints to fill his coffers.
The shawl weavers were forced to prepare ‘ gaily coloured shawls, the threads of which were not the only ones woven on the loom to their completion, threads of life, more costly than the softest pashm, whose price would be demanded by heaven, yet were spun out there on the loom of sickness and suffering’. Nothing but death could release them from the Maharaja’s ‘bondage, since the discharge of a shawl-baf would reduce the Maharaja’s revenue by 36 Chilkees a year’, besides extortions.
About 4,000 shawl-bafs managed to flee the Valley to escape the horror of horrors: forcible extortions; ruinous taxation; cumbersome administrative procedures; compulsory weaving; dolorous wage system; begar into which even their children were conscripted.Fraught with the consequences of inflicting a severe blow to the shawl industry, the real goose that laid golden eggs, this unhealthy trend disturbed him a lot. To prevent the growing emigration of the shawl-bafs, and, thereby, save the inevitable doom of the industry, he introduced rahdari system; ordering his troops to plug all escape routes and passes. Thus, stranded in the whirlpool of unprecedented oppression, the hapless shawl-bafs began straining at the leash to escape weaving. To them no other course seemed as a welcome relief from their suffering than to peel off their thumbs; a choice that disabled them from pursuing weaving but with a bounden duty to keep the trade going by providing a substitute.
Unable to comply with the harsh directives, the scarcely remunerated, scantily clad, poorly fed, shabbily treated, emaciated looking and sullen shawl-bafs refused to attend their looms. They observed a complete hartal on June, 12,1847 A.D., and unequivocally demanded:
- the reduction in taxes,baj,nazrana and extortions
- the fixation of wages
- the establishment of rule of law; and
- the introduction of new regulations for the reorganization of the shawl industry.
The upsurge of their anger was so unsparing that they declined to work; compelling the Maharaja to accept their demands in an open Darbar.But sufficiently trained in deceit, he withheld his promise after dissuading them from the strike which was more an expression of the helplessness of workmen than of any organized struggle. The fate of the hartal was well sealed before it could mature into a trade- union movement of the sort.
ZALDAGAR UPRISING — A MILLENARIAN REBELLIO
That the Maharaja had played a hoax on the shawl- bafs became amply known to them after they resumed their work. Things continued as they were before; not allowing them to even eke out an existence in face of their ever increasing bondage. The other Kashmiris were equally suffering from years of want; there was no one to have pity for the starving millions. Following the traditions of his father, the new Maharaja (Ranbir Singh) exploited them to the full, aggravating their economic ruin beyond imaginable proportions. He did not even hesitate to get hundreds of famine stricken Kashmiris drowned in the Wular for which inhuman act he was, subsequently, exonerated because no Kashmiri dared come forward to give evidence. As a consequence started the migration march towards Lahore in violation of rahdari, and a good number of Kashmiris succeeded in getting past the passes by withstanding extremes of atrocities, committed by the soldiers, and by bribing the guards.
The tradition of protest set in 1847 A.D., by their predecessors and bequeathed to their successors by the march of history, gave a cue to about 1500 shawl workers in 1865A.D., to proceed in vain to present to Kripa Ram, the governor designate (in place of Punno), on his way to Srinagar, these demands:
- allow them to purchase more than eight kharwars of shali yearly;
- full deduction in the price of shall sold to them by the Government; and
- sell them shall at the rate of seventeen annas a kharwar instead of eighteen
Having failed to meet the governor at Pampore, they went in large numbers to gather at Zaldagar where from they marched in a procession towards his residence to submit their petition. Rajkak, the clever darogah, an accomplished intriguer, however, thwarted their mission. He wrongly informed the governor that the crowd was there to assault him; provoking him into ordering his soldiers to disperse them. The troops opened fire and indiscriminate shooting panicked the crowd into running helter-skelter down the road towards the Zaldagar bridge where another Dogra contingent was already present to attack and encircle them; leaving them with no option but to get killed in the melee or to jump into the kul (canal).The bridge also collapsed under heavy pressure; sending many down into the canal. The following day they made frantic efforts at taking out their dead colleagues in a procession but were dispersed with the show of armed strength and the arrest of their leaders, namely Kudda Lala, Ali Pala, Rasool Sheikh and Sona Shah who were beaten to death. And those who withstood the torture were imprisoned at Bahu fort, Jammu. A large number of workmen were also rounded up and sent to jails where they died of physical and mental torture. The dead bodies afloat the water of the kul were secretly buried by the authorities.
The sudden outburst of the shawl-bafs anger, resulting in great bloodshed, was, thus, an unprecedented upheaval which left a lasting imprint on the community Of handicraftsmen. The great powers of endurance, sacrifice and resistance exhibited by their leaders, against heavy odds, throughout the turbulence, aroused workmen’s conscience, beckoning them to make a compact of defence against those who threatened their survival; thus, setting a precedent for the future generations to follow. Even though it failed to become a collective social action for wider societal issues due to the isolationist syndrome and unsympathetic attitude of dispersed, unconnected and unorganizable masses, this rising unnerved the authorities and compelled them to contrive a device of dirty tricks to suppress it. By fomenting Sunni-Shia discord they divided the artisans and incited them to sectarian violence that besieged the entire city with riots, loot, arson and rape; a good excuse for the Government to clamp down on rioters and bring Srinagar under army control.About 300 Kashmiris were banished to Jammu; 180 were interned in Ram Nagar Jail; a large number of them was fined. A fine of rupees 5000 was imposed on Mohi-ud-Din Gandroo; Moulvi Nisar-ud-Din had to pay a fine of rupees 2000.
Thus, the authorities suppressed the uprising by an appalling display of naked force but nevertheless they gauged the strength of the rising tension from the outburst which was indicative of the workmen’s shift from obeying the Government to rebelling against it. To prevent its recurrence, they reduced the tax of 49 rupees by 11 rupees. Three years later Maharaja Ranbir Singh reduced the price of shali as well, and abolished the tax retaining only a nominal duty on the export of shawls. Then in 1886 AD., Maharaja Partap Singh abolished this nominal duty too.
The shawl-baf’s uproar was a first stepping stone on the path of resistance against the State oppression; an unflinching and unprecedented strength to voice their growing disquiet about the continuation of the autocratic crimes. But nevertheless it was a short-lived urban affair which, even though landed the entire city into a frenzy of sectarian violence, got stuck with the community of artisans and did not percolate through the countryside to evoke the sympathy of the villagers. The cultivators and peasants, whose plight presented a spine- chilling saga of horrible exploitation, were not least stirred by this event. Feeble and docile, as they were, they continued enduring great economic deprivation by working to feed others before they could feed their own. They were not even prompted into dreaming about an illusory justice that would spiritually illuminate them to aspire for their release from the clutches of begar; the arsenal of exploitation and oppression, which divorced them, not infrequently, from their families and occupations during winters and obliged them to carry loads at the risk of losing fingers and toes from frostbite. Their lives would often slip away from their fists while ascending the difficult mountains with the heavy loads to ensure regular supply of food, arms and ammunition to the soldiers, and merely for the sake of humouring the sporting propensities of the Europeans. Through the dense forests and up above the snowy hills, the piercing sound of their pathetic cries reverberated without attracting the attention of the callous soldiers and the hoity-toity visitors. This saga of their pitiably patched lives repeated every year with increasing enormities of disaster and crime till 1947.
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
