Condition Of Kashmir Under Ranjit’s Rule

Thus Kashmir, after several generations of Muslim rule lasting about five centuries, passed again into the hands of non-Muslims. In the meantime, however, over nine-tenths of the population had accepted Islam. The capital city, called Kashmir during Muslim rule, was re-named Srinagar. Though Sikh sovereignty and Ranjit Singh were acclaimed Dharma Raj, ‘The Reign of Religion,’ by Kashmiri Pandits, whose leading caste-man was instrumental in inviting Ranjit Singh to Kashmir, Sikh rule brought little gain to them; since the ‘Pandits were justly complaining of the oppresson of the Sikhs’ to Vigne . Pandit Birbal Dar who had himself gone out to Lahore at considerable risk and had urged and led Ranjit Singh to invade his own native land, suffered imprisonment on the charge of mis-appropriation of state revenues, which was also the reason of Birbal’s running away from Afghan rule. And the poor man died in jail! All his property was confiscated in Diwan Moti Ram’s second regime.

The “grey-beared Musalman,” remarked to Vigne, “with sorrow on the present condition of his beautiful country and compared it with what he had read of the dominion of the Mughals or remembered of the time of the Pathans.” William Moor-croft, who was in the country in 1824AC, five years after its annexation by the Sikhs when Diwan Moti Ram was governor a second time, says that “everywhere the people are in the most abject condition, exorbitantly taxed by the Sikh Government and subjected to every kind of extortion and opression by its officers..Not more than about one-sixteenth of the cultivable surface is in cultivation and the inhabitants, starving at home, are driven in great numbers to the plans of Hindustan.”  Every shawl was taxed at 26 percent of its estimated value, besides a heavy duty on the imports of its materials and every shop or workman connected with its manufacture was taxed. Every trade was also taxed. “Butchers, bakers, boatmen, vendors of fuel, public notaries, scavengers, all paid a sort of corporation tax.” “Even the chief officer of justice paid a large gratuity of 30,000 rupees a year for his appointment, being left to re-imburse himself as he may.” Villagers where moorcroft stopped in the Lolab direction where half-deserted and “the few inhabitants that remained wore the semblance of extreme wretchedness.”.. The poor people were likely to reap little advantage from their labours, for a troop of tax-gatherers were in the village, who had sequestered nine-tenths of the grain of the farmer for the revenue. Islamabad was “swarming with beggars,” and the inhabitants of the country around “half-naked and miserably emaciated, presented a ghastly picture of poverty and starvation.” “The Sikhs seemed to look upon the Kashmirians as little better than cattle. 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 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 he was a Mohammedan”

The description of G T Vigne, who was in Kashmir from June to December 1835, is hardly less pathetic. “The villages,” he says, “were fallen into decay. In the time of the Moguls Kashmir was said to produce not less than 60 lakhs of Kirwahs (Kharwars) of rice, which was there grown wherever a system of irrigation was practicable; but such is the state to which this beautiful but unfortunate province is now reduced and so many inhabitants have fled the country that a vast proportion of the nice-ground is uncultivated for want of labour and irrigation.” Shupiyan is a miserable place and Islamabad is “but a shadow of its former self.” The houses “present a ruined and neglected appearance, in wretched contrast with their own gay and happy condition and speak volumes upon the light and joyous prosperity that has long fled the country on account of the shameless rapacity of the ruthless Sikhs.”

Even Kishtwar was not safe. “The oppression and rapacity of the Sikhs reduced its revenue to a Paltry amount of a few thousand rupees per annum.” The house of the old raja of Kishtwar was used as a Prison. “The building in the Shalamar, a favourite garden of the old Rajah’s …on the eastward of the town, was razed to the ground by the Sikhs.”(Vigne’s Travels, Vol. I, pages 204-05).

No wonder, then, that the Kashmiri cried out in pain and despair –

[Our sins overtook us when the Sikh people entered Kashmir]

At this time the Sikh administrator and Qala’dar bore the name of Gurmukh Singh, which can be written in Persian as Kur-mukh Singh : The satirist said that the hakim (administrator) is Kur or eyeless and Ranjit is but one-eyed; when these are the days of eyelessness, should there be a plaint against their tyranny?

“After the conquest of the valley by Ranjit,” writes Vigne, “Moti Ram was appointed Viceroy for five Years. He was a bigoted Sikh, who put several men to death for killing cows and occasionally threw milk into the Jylum. His steward was made by Ranjit to refund thirty lakhs that he had amused.”

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