Pursidan naz kharabiy
gulshan zi baghban
Afghan kashid guft ki
Afghan kharab karad
When the poet asked the gardener who laid waste this garden (Kashmir)? Drawing a deep sigh he replied: ‘it was the Afghan’.
This Persian couplet succinctly sums up what happened to Kashmir under the Afghan regime which converted the Valley into a Pathan colony to fill its history with a terrible chapter of brutality and ribaldry and to fix in position an apparatus whose unforgettable oppression, tyranny and corruption left the Kashmiris high and dry; and whose mischievous tricks marred the peaceful coexistence for which the Paradise was enviably reputed.
While inviting Abdali the Kashmiris had hoped that the Afghans would hammer out order from chaos and behave generously to lift their spirits up by restoring their social and cultural hegemony. Little did they envisage that they would be landed into the serpentine course of culture shock, indignation, impertinence, barbarity and vulgarity. The warm smile, which their faces wore at the time of inviting Abdali and on the ceremonial occasion of unfurling the Afghan victory banner on the ramparts of Nagar fort, soon disappeared when the new regime unfolded its strong jaws to bring under control everything that Kashmir possessed; when a deceptive style, wolfish grin, and excessive greed for material possession drove it obtain whatever it could through freakish means; when its impetuosity, outrage and ferocity let it go wild to cut a human head like plucking a flower.
The Afghans had developed a fierce behaviour and abnormal character while living amid inhospitable, treacherous and rugged mountains of Hindu Kush and Sulaiman Range. They had acquired notoriety as ‘deceptive in their common intercourse’; and their ‘conventions of amity’ were ‘savour of the wolf’. Glutton, nasty and avaricious as they were by nature, plenty of fortune always seemed insufficient to them and far beyond their satiety; hence the intense lust for amassing as much as they could not withstanding the paying-capacity of their subjects. This subtle infusion of avarice, desire, lust and greed into their soul, mind and body largely determined the course of their actions in Kashmir.
After destroying the Mughal supremacy the Afghans ruled Kashmir for sixty-seven years during which period they least disturbed the administrative set-up established by the Mughals. They reaffirmed the Mughal administrative tradition which continued to be carried by the provincial functionaries as before under the control and supervision of the Pathan lords who were responsible to no one else but the Afghan overlord, Abdali and, subsequently, to his sucessors; Timur Shah, Zarnan Shah and Shah Shuja.
What made the Afghan regime different to the Mughal Imperium was its apparatus of taxation whose economic repercussions were enormous everywhere?
The Afghan regime was sustained by the despotism of governors whose sole concern was to squeeze every penny out of the impoverished Kashmiris by imposing a variety of taxes such as: zari-i-ashkhas (protection tax), zari-i-habubut (land tax), zari-i-daud (double tax), dagh-i-shawl (stamp tax on shawls). Lawrence writes:
Men with interest were appointed as governors who wrung as much money as they could out of the wretched people of the Valley. Wealth had to be accumulated rapidly, as no one knew how many days would elapse before he was recalled to Kabul, to make room for some new needy favourite of the hour.
To support their tax apparatus and enrich themselves by foul means, the Afghans created a whole new generation of selfish and hellish officials: maqadams, patwaris, qanungos, tehsildars, zamindars, shikdars etc; who set themselves to serve their masters, like mosquitos and bees always ready to sting the poor Kashmiris for more tax and more money. They amassed enormous wealth by wicked means and collected a fortune of crores of rupees for the Afghan Governor, Azim Khan. They generated such a huge wealth for another Governor, Fateh Khan that he was able not only to quench his thirst for riches but also to pay eight lakhs of rupees to Ranjit Singh annually to evade his Kashmir conquest. According to an another estimate, Kashmir came to maintain a huge army of ‘sixty thousand horse and foot belonging to Atta Muhammad Khan [the Afghan Governor 1800-1805 A.D.], giving him also a surplus income of two lakhs of rupees in cash and some rolls of pashmina. Every Kashmiri was brought under the wide and oppressive tax-net; nobody dared it because death was the reward of defiance.Even on a slightest suspicion that any Kashmiri was embroiling with the feelings of anguish or resentment against the regime the entire clan of the suspect was drowned in the Dal (lake). Some of the Afghan rulers were much given to outbursts of temper; having the tendency to fits; letting loose an orgy of loot, murder and arson. A few of them ransacked the houses of the rich and did not hesitate to even apply red-hot iron bars to the bodies of the respectable people; or unleash a deadly spray of incendiary words against the learned, the revered, and the well-to-do people.They punished offenders with the loss of their noses or ears for small and petty offences. They drove sadistic delight in tying up the Kashmiris, irrespective of their religious background—not only the Kashmiri Pandits as depicted in Lawrence’s inspired narration—‘two and two, in grass sacks’ and would sink them in the Dal. “As an amusement, a pitcher filled with ordure [was] placed on the [victim’s] head [which was, subsequently,] pelt with stones till it broke, the unfortunate [Kashmiri] being blinded with filth”.
Their’s was nothing but an era of plundering properties; an era when despicable crime, viciousness and tyranny ruled the roost; when the Kashmiris endured jeers and sneers without a murmur. It was an era when the greater spending of Abdali on his Indian campaigns and on suppressing the retaliatory uprisings of the Marathas and the Sikhs led to enlarging the revenue demand which was totally incommensurate with the Kashmiri capacity. As a result, resignation and penury found a ready soil in Kashmir to grow at an alarming speed. The Valley, thus, represented a despondent and broken look; the streets wore a deserted look; the grocers abandoned their shops; the people did not venture out in fear of being robbed of even their scanty clothing. In the gathering gloom the prospect of survival became increasingly remote. The life came to a standstill.
No one had ever thought of such a situation before. The Kashmiris had fallen on evil days. They were in total confusion; looking sullen and emaciated; presenting a sordid, squalid and tragic picture with pathetic signs of constant fear of being denuded of their honour and dignity. They were subjected to a great humiliation by the ferocious Pathans — Buta chuk ta khosa dita, is a Kashmiri saying which signifies a Muslim who implores a Pandit to give him a cup (khosa) for filling it with milk, water, oil, sugar or salt; but it becomes a teenage slang when khosa is spelt or pronounced as khoshi (sodomy); Lawrence has been grossly misguided to interpret it wrongly-— who were always on lookout for feeble Kashmiris to jump on their back and take a ride while placing their feet in the pockets of phiron (loose gown) worn by these poor creatures. Deep repugnance surrounded the Valley; the.Kahsmiris were cursing the day they had invited the Pathan’s to rule their land. The common sight of forcing of women of every description shattered their pride; filling them with shock and considerable disquiet about the safety of their daughters, sisters and mothers. In this embarrassing situation the women dared not go walking past the streets to be insulted by the rogues; they preferred staying indoors to avoid humiliation, abduction and molestation. The girls disguised themselves as boys and spoilt their beauty by shaving their heads—Lawrence’s assertion that the Pandits were the sole followers of this practice is no longer tenable in view of the contemporary source material—to evade the Pathan overtures. Even small handsome boys were prevailed upon by their parents not to venture out lest they might fall prey to the Pathan wanton mood.
The Afghan regime lasted for about sixty-seven years which period, as we have seen, was distinctly marked by chaotic administration, oppressive taxation, vandalism and culture shock. Further-more the regime did not lag behind in exciting sectarian sentiments. Flimsy excuses were exploited to enrage the Sunnis and the Shias into a frenzy of violence which resulted in loot, plunder, arson, assassinations and destruction of property. Hindu-Muslim amity too was disturbed; forcing the Hindustani mercantile establishments to wind up their business in Kashmir.
Thus, there prevailed total anarchy and chaos which inflicted a lasting damage on industry, trade and agriculture. A considerable gloom and doom was writ large on the Kashmiri faces.
Alongside the sectarian violence came sudden incursions, of the furious Bombas, which were a source of great misery to the people. The Bombas, ‘traditional enemies of Kashmir,’ destroyed completely the observable signs of life; they carried loot and murder to extremes through the bands of renegades and left behind the shrieks of orphaned children and the wailing of infirm to rent the sky. They wreaked havoc on the people, killing them mercilessly to fill the atmosphere with the nauseating odour from their putrefied bodies.
Close at the heels of these unforgivable events came a series of calamities which wiped off a sizeable chunk of population. The ‘dead bodies lay strewn on the ground, unburied and uncremated, to be eaten by vultures. It was a horrible sight to find the famished survivors crawling their way to India and dying like flies due to exhaustion and hunger’.
Again in 1814 A.D.,there occurred a severe famine due to a failure of crops and, consequently, revenue collection fell short by a lakh of rupees; a great loss to the exchequer for which the Afghan Governor, Azim Khan held his tax-collector, Pandit Birbal Dhar responsible. To avoid falling a victim to the wrath of the Pathan Sardai Birbal Dhar decided to escape, alongwith his son,to Punjab Entrusting the ladies of his family to the care of Qudus Gojwari, a local Muslim, the Pandit left for Punjab which had already fallen to new power: the Sikhs, who under their leader, Maharaja Ranjit Singh had almost completely dismantled Afghanistan’s Indian Empire in South Asia. Imbued with ambition, Dhar’s native little ingenuity impelled him, at Lahore, to involve the Sikh Darbar into hobnobbing which had earlier made way for the Mughal and the Afghan occupation of Kashmir. Thoroughly understanding the niceties of the politics of his times, the Dhar knew that the key to Kashmir was the Punjab and he who controlled Punjab was going to annex Kashmir.
It was a God-given opportunity for the Kashmiri Pandit to have an access to the Lahore Darbar through Dhyan Singh (brother of Gulab Singh) who arranged his audience with Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Pandit succeeded in propitiating the Maharaja into intervening in the Kashmir affairs.
The Sikh Maharaja was increasingly eager to occupy Kashmir. It was his cherished dream. He was desperate to possess it for it promised to enlarge his prestige in the North-West Frontier politics and to strengthen his position among the powers that were directly or indirectly interested in Kashmir.
Meanwhile the Afghan Governor of Kashmir had further alienated the Kashmiris by frightening them with dire consequences if they did not come forward to strengthen his hands to sabotage Ranjit Singh’s Kashmir campaign. But no purpose was served by his threatening attitude as the zamindars of Kashmir had already decided to support the Maharaja. The chiefs of Akhnoor, Bhimber, Rajouri and Punch also paid no heed to the Pathan Governor’s coaxing and cajolery. All these developments boosted the morale of Pandit Birbal Dhar; he persuaded the Maharaja to invade Kashmir, and even gave an undertaking to accept any penalty if the Sikh troops failed to annex the Valley. He also kept his son, Raja Kak, as a hostage for the security of the performance of the Maharaja’s engagement.
With these irresistibly tempting offers, which carried promises of successful accomplishment of his mission Kashmir, the fortunes of Maharaja Ranjit Singh were on the upswing. Holding out an olive branch to him to achieve his political, economic and military objectives, these offers induced the Maharaja to send a force of 30,000 to conquer Kashmir. Although the Afghans gave a fierce battle to guard against the Sikh invasion, they were defeated at the top of the Pir Panjal. In yet another battle at Shupian they were completely routed; and Kashmir fell finally to the Sikhs in 1819 A.D. The Sikhs were so exhilarated by the news of victory that they illuminated the entire city of Lahore for three days and distributed, jubilantly, robes of honour among the nobles and their Kashmiri Pandit supporters. Scenes of jubilation among the Punjabis were everywhere in sight; in cities, towns and villages where the Akalis, the Granthis, the Khatris and others crowded the streets to raise shouts of ‘long live the Maharaja’, and to show lively interest in the occupation of Kashmir by singing and cheering loudly.
Thus, came to a quite sudden end the Muslim rule in Kashmir. The Valley passed into the non-Muslim hands once again after an interlude of five hundred years of the Muslim rule not because of any conspiracy but due to the incompetence, mismanagement and irrationality of the Afghan regime. The Pathan apparatus crumbled under its own weight. But it would be too naive to believe that Pandit Birbal had any game-plan to vindicate his communal aspirations by inviting the Sikhs. His escape to Punjab and subsequent manoeuvrings at the Lahore Darbar manifested his restlessness and anxiety to get rid of the Afghans who were bent upon taking him to task for his revenue liabilities. The whole hearted Muslim support that facilitated his escape, and sheltered his wife and daughter-in-law, amply negate the existence of any communal dimension to the event. His own son-in-law, Munshi Trilok betrayed him by disclosing the hiding place of the Pandit ladies to the Afghans. Munshi’s disclosure caused irreparable damage not only to the Dhars but also to the Muslims who had shown exemplary courage in concealing the Pandit ladies in their house; Birbal’s wife preferred suicide to compromising her honour, his daughter-in-law agreed to be sent to Kabul, and the Muslim family was put to death. Other Muslim supporters of Birbal were deprived of their jagirs and other assets.
However, the Muslim zamindars did not relent in I their support to the Dhar. Not caring a straw about the Afghan feelings, they continued extending moral support to Birbal Dhar inspite of the threatening behaviour of their I masters. They showed great daring by openly making preparations to welcome the Sikh troops.
But the entire community of the Pandits was trembling with fear at the thought of retaliatory course of the Pathan action against them for the ‘sins’ of their coreligionist. Their fears were well-founded for they were wholly and solely responsible for the transaction of Government business. This fear psychosis and worry for the safety of the community, thus, gave rise to a nasty rumour that the Pandits were in league with Birbal and his political mentors for bringing min to the Afghan regime by forcibly annexing Kashmir to the domains of Lahore Darbar. But the regime had already ruined itself through years of its misrule and oppression; it was awaiting a final blow to brittle before Ranjit Singh whose star was shining brightly on the horizon in ascendancy over all his rivals. The Kashmiri Pandit played no significant role in its downfall; Birbal Dhar was forced by the peculiar circumstances to escape to Punjab where he fell in the lap of the Sikhs to make a good use of his native talent and politicking which, eventually, proved to be a portent of disaster not only for the Pathan regime but also for the whole community of Kashmiris.
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