Jammu and Kashmir: In the Shadow of Imperialism Home
Maharaj K. Kaul
[Taken from Essays in Inequality and Social Justice (Essays in honor of Ved Prakash Vatuk), Edited by Kira Hall, Archana Publications, Meerut, India, 2009]
HARI SINGH, THE LAST RULER
When Pratap Singh died in 1925, his nephew Hari Singh, Amar Singh’s son, ascended the throne to the full satisfaction of the British. Yet the British soon discovered that this new ruler was not to be their stooge. Hari Singh immediately began asserting his authority, to the discomfort of the British: he replaced British Indian Army troops in Gilgit Agency with state troops; and he restored the jurisdiction of state courts over state subjects and Indian visitors. The British and the Maharaja were in confrontation.
Hari Singh additionally instituted a number of reforms in the state, progressive for his times, that put him ahead of many of the other 562 Indian princes and even parts of British India. In the social sector, his reforms included setting up a minimum age for marriage (despite opposition by a representation of Muslims in 1929 because such restrictions were at odds with Muslim Law); prohibiting the practice of older men marrying much younger girls; removing the ban on remarriage for young Hindu widows; providing untouchables with access to public services and public places, especially state owned temples (despite great opposition by temple priests); and eradicating the infanticide of girls, which was particularly prevalent among Rajputs. Reforms in education included reservations for Muslims, scholarships to make education more affordable, an increase in the number of primary schools, and compulsory education for children. His achievements in the health sector were no less significant: he made a number of improvements in health facilities; required compulsory vaccinations against small pox; set up travel dispensaries; and established a first-class up-to-date hospital in Srinagar that could be accessed by all. In addition to these reforms in the social and education sectors, he set up woolen and silk weaving industries; gave the peasantry concessions in the form of protection from the dispossession of land by money lenders who were mostly Hindu; established cooperative credit societies and ceilings on interest rates; and allocated government land to peasants. A state grain procurement system protected peasants from price fluctuations. The absence of a similar system elsewhere in India had proved catastrophic for the peasantry during the worldwide depression of the 1930s, when prices took a steep dive.
Also noteworthy are the prohibitions that Hari Singh initiated against non-hereditary state subjects with regard to the purchase of immovable property and appointments to civil administration positions. These prohibitions form the bone of contention between supporters and opponents of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Legally defined in 1927, hereditary state subjects were those who had settled in Jammu and Kashmir before 1885. One of the first groups to oppose this policy was the Kashmir Muslim Conference, an organization set up in Lahore in British India by communalized Punjabi Muslims who had lost their access to representation in state services. But the beneficiaries of the policy were intended to be Kashmiri Muslims, whose lack of formal education had been exploited by Punjabi Muslims. Over the years, Punjabi Muslims had replaced them in state services. A second group that lost employment opportunities in the higher echelons of state services under this policy were the Englishmen who were thinking of settling in Kashmir and turning it into a White colony, both for its climate and strategic location.
Finally, in addition to this anti-British development, Hari Singh denied the British many privileges that they had before this point enjoyed in Kashmir. His acts of defiance were mostly symbolic, but they led to quite significant confrontations with the British. In a climactic moment, Hari Singh delivered an address on the future constitution of India to the First Round Table Conference in London in 1930, in which he identified himself as sharing the aspirations of the Indian people:
Throughout the address, Hari Singh stressed “the communal harmony in his state as a living example of how Hindus and Muslims could live peacefully as brethren” (Raina 1988:73). He was rightfully proud of the existence of communal peace in his state. But everything was to change after 1930, when the British began actively encouraging communal elements both in and outside of the state so as to precipitate a crisis for the Maharaja. In short, the British objective was to put enough pressure on the Maharaja to force him to cede control of all of Gilgit.
As Indians and loyal to the land whence we derive our birth and infant nurture, we stand as solidly as the rest of our countrymen for our land’s enjoyment of a position of honour and equality in the British Commonwealth of Nations. (Hari Singh 1930, cited in Saxena 1975:110)
