History of Kashmir

According to legend, Kashyapa, an ascetic, reclaimed the land that is now Kashmir from a vast lake. That territory became known as Kashyapamar and, later, Kashmir. Buddhism was introduced by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, and the region appears to have achieved considerable prominence as a centre of Hindu culture from the 9th to the 12th centuries CE. Kashmir was ruled by a succession of Hindu dynasties until 1346, when it fell under Muslim control. The Muslim period lasted nearly five centuries, and it came to an end when Kashmir was annexed by the Sikh kingdom of Punjab in 1819, and then by the Dogra kingdom of Jammu in 1846.

Thus, the Kashmir region in its modern form dates from 1846, when Raja Gulab Singh, the Dogra ruler of Jammu, was created maharaja (ruling prince) of an extensive but somewhat ill-defined Himalayan kingdom "to the eastward of the River Indus and westward of the River Ravi" by the treaties of Lahore and Amritsar at the conclusion of the First Sikh War. The establishment of this princely state aided the British in securing their northern flank during their late-nineteenth-century advance to the Indus and beyond. The state thus formed part of the British's complex political buffer zone between their Indian empire and the empires of Russia and China to the north. Gulab Singh saw the confirmation of title to these mountain territories as the culmination of nearly a quarter-century of campaigning and diplomatic negotiation among the petty hill kingdoms along the northern borderlands of the Punjab Sikh empire.

Some attempts were made in the nineteenth century to define the territory's boundaries, but precise definition was often thwarted by the nature of the country and the existence of vast tracts devoid of permanent human settlement. The maharaja's authority certainly extended to the Karakoram Range in the far north, but beyond that lay a debatable zone on the borders of Turkistan and Xinjiang in Central Asia, and the boundary was never demarcated.

There were similar concerns about the alignment of the border where this northern zone skirted the region known as Aksai Chin to the east and joined the better-known and more precisely delineated border with Tibet, which had served as the eastern border of the Ladakh region for centuries. The pattern of boundaries in the northwest became clearer in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when Britain delimited boundaries in the Pamirs region in negotiations with Afghanistan and Russia. Gilgit, which had always been considered a part of Kashmir, was established as a special agency in 1889 for strategic reasons, with a British agent in charge.

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The Kashmir issue

As long as the territory's existence was guaranteed by the United Kingdom, the flaws in its structure and along its periphery were not significant, but they became apparent following the British withdrawal from South Asia in 1947. The terms agreed to by India and Pakistan for the partition of the Indian subcontinent gave the rulers of princely states the option of joining either Pakistan or India, or remaining independent with certain restrictions.

Hari Singh, the maharaja of Kashmir, initially believed that delaying his decision would allow him to preserve Kashmir's independence; however, caught up in a chain of events that included a revolution among his Muslim subjects along the state's western borders and the intervention of Pashtun tribesmen, he signed an Instrument of Accession to the Indian union in October 1947. This signalled the need for intervention from both Pakistan, which saw the state as a natural extension of Pakistan, and India, which wanted to confirm the act of accession. Localized warfare continued throughout 1948, finally coming to an end in January 1949, thanks to the United Nations' intervention. In July of that year, India and Pakistan established a cease-fire line, known as the line of control, which divided administration of the territory. The partition along that line, which was regarded as a temporary measure at the time, still exists.

Resolution and legitimization attempts

Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir prior to the 1947 partition, and its economic, cultural, and geographical proximity to the Muslim-majority area of Punjab could be convincingly demonstrated, political developments during and after the partition resulted in the region being divided. Pakistan was left with territory that, while predominantly Muslim, was sparsely populated, inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim group, estimated to number more than half the population of the entire region, was located in Indian-administered territory, with its former routes through the Jhelum valley blocked.

Many proposals were later made to resolve the Kashmir dispute, but tensions between the two countries rose following the Chinese incursion into Ladakh in 1962, and warfare erupted between India and Pakistan in 1965. A cease-fire was declared in September, followed by an agreement signed by both sides in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) in early January 1966, in which they agreed to try to resolve the conflict peacefully. Fighting between the two erupted again in 1971 as part of the India-Pakistan war, which resulted in the formation of Bangladesh. An agreement signed in the Indian city of Shimla in 1972 expressed the hope that the region's countries would be able to live in peace with one another in the future. It was widely assumed that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's then-prime minister, had tacitly accepted the line of control as the de facto border, though he later denied this. After Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and executed in 1979, the Kashmir issue resurfaced as the primary source of contention between India and Pakistan.

A number of movements have sought either the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan or the region's independence from both India and Pakistan. To deal with these movements and to confront Pakistani forces along the cease-fire line, the Indian union government has kept a strong military presence there, particularly since the end of the 1980s. Until 2019, the military presence was also intended to protect Jammu and Kashmir state's administrative integrity from movements seeking Indian union territory status for Buddhist Ladakh.

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

Disillusioned with the democratic process's lack of progress, militant organisations began to emerge in the region in the late 1980s. Their goal was to defy the Indian union government's control. By the early 1990s, militancy had evolved into an insurgency, prompting India to launch a crackdown campaign. The fighting became less intense in the mid-1990s, though there was still some violence.

Border conflicts have frequently occurred in the Kargil region of western Ladakh, including a serious incident in 1999. Pakistan increased artillery shelling of the Kargil sector in May of that year. Meanwhile, the Indian army discovered that militants had infiltrated the Indian zone from Pakistan, establishing positions within and west of the Kargil area. Fighting raged for more than two months between the infiltrators and the Indian army. The Indian army was able to reclaim the majority of the territory occupied by infiltrators on the India side of the line of control. Hostilities ended when Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised that the infiltrators would leave.

However, shelling across the line of control continued intermittently until 2004, when a cease-fire agreement was reached. Tensions in the region have since subsided, and India and Pakistan have sought more cordial relations and greater regional cooperation. Passenger bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad on either side of the border began in 2005, and following the devastating earthquake in the region later that year, India and Pakistan allowed survivors and trucks carrying relief supplies to cross at several points along the line of control. Furthermore, for the first time since the 1947 partition, both countries opened cross-border trade links through the Kashmir region in 2008; trucks carrying locally produced goods and manufactures began operating between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad and Rawalkot, Pakistan, and Punch, India.

Despite these advances, tensions in the region have continued to flare up on a regular basis. Prolonged violent protests erupted in 2008 and 2010 over control of a plot of land used by Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath cave shrine east of Srinagar after Indian soldiers killed three Pakistani villagers they claimed were militants attempting to infiltrate across the line of control. Following an investigation, it was discovered that the soldiers had in fact lured the men to the area and murdered them in cold blood.

After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won elections across India in 2014, a new cycle of unrest began. The party had won an outright majority in the national legislature and began promoting nationalist policies across the country. The BJP, which strongly supported Kashmir's union with India, had become the second largest party in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly and formed a unity government with the slightly larger People's Democratic Party (PDP), whose platform centred on implementing self-rule in Kashmir. As the BJP's pro-India policies fueled the anxieties of the region's predominantly Muslim population, unrest in Kashmir increased. In July 2016, rioting broke out after the commander of an Islamic militant group was killed in an operation by Indian security forces. As a matter of national security, India's union government, dominated by the BJP, began asserting increased control over the state and launched a crackdown on militants. After the BJP left the state's unity coalition, causing its collapse, the union government dissolved the government of Jammu and Kashmir and began direct rule of the state in late 2018.

In February 2019, Kashmir experienced its most violent conflict in decades. A suicide bomber linked to a militant separatist group killed 40 members of India's Central Reserve Police Force on February 14, the deadliest attack on Indian security forces in three decades. With a difficult election cycle on the horizon, India's BJP-led government was under pressure from its supporters to take decisive action. Days later, India sent fighter jets across the line of control for the first time in five decades, claiming to have struck the militant group's largest training camp. Pakistan denied the claim, claiming that the jets had collided with an empty field. The following day, Pakistan shot down two Indian jets in its airspace and kidnapped the pilot. Despite this, many analysts believed that both India and Pakistan intended to avoid escalation. Following the attack, Pakistan launched a crackdown on militants, making arrests, closing a large number of religious schools, and promising to update its existing laws. A few months later, the BJP won a landslide victory in India's elections, increasing its representation in the lower chamber of parliament.

As the BJP continued its aggressive campaign in Jammu and Kashmir, the union government increased its military presence in the state in August and took steps to formalise its direct control within days. It suspended Jammu and Kashmir's autonomy and fully applied India's constitution to the territory by utilising a constitutional provision that allowed the union government to integrate Jammu and Kashmir with the approval of a no longer-existent elected body. It also passed legislation in October to downgrade the state to a union territory, giving the union government complete control over its governance, and to split off the Ladakh region into its own union territory.

Chinese concerns

China had never accepted the boundary agreements negotiated by the British in northeastern Kashmir. This remained the case following China's communist takeover in 1949, despite the new government's unsuccessful request to India to open border negotiations. Chinese forces infiltrated the northeastern parts of Ladakh after Chinese authority was established in Tibet and reasserted in Xinjiang. This was done primarily to allow the Chinese to construct a military road through the Aksai Chin plateau area (completed in 1956-57) to improve communication between Xinjiang and western Tibet; it also gave the Chinese control of passes in the region between India and Tibet. The late discovery of this road by India resulted in border clashes between the two countries, culminating in the Sino-Indian war of October 1962. Since the conflict, China has occupied the northeastern part of Ladakh. India refused to negotiate with China on the alignment of the Ladakhi boundary in this area, contributing significantly to a diplomatic schism between the two countries that did not heal until the late 1980s. In the decades since, China has worked to improve relations with India, but the disputed Ladakh border has remained unresolved.

Summary

Kashmir is a region in India's northwestern subcontinent. It is bordered by China to the northeast and east, India to the south, Pakistan to the west, and Afghanistan to the northwest. The terrain is mostly mountainous, with K2 and other peaks in the Karakoram Range. Since India's partition in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought over the region. Pakistan controls the north and west, while India controls the south and southeast, which are organised as Jammu and Kashmir union territory and Ladakh union territory, respectively. Furthermore, China has governed parts of the northeastern section since 1962.