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Gilgit

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Debanjan Bandyopadhyay
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11 views

Gilgit

Uploaded by

Debanjan Bandyopadhyay
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A n Indian scholar, Dr. H.L.

Saxena, maintained not so long ago that at the heart of the


Kashmir problem lay the nature of
British strategic interests in the region and the manner in which the
British hoped that those interests would be maintained following the
Transfer of Power in 1947.' Everything that happened in the State
of Jammu and Kashmir between 1846 and 1947 was in some way a
product of this strategic policy. What the British really wanted was
control over the Gilgit Agency, that key observation point into the
affairs of Central Asia and defensive outpost against any hostile
incursions from that direction.
Dr. Saxena claimed that the Government of India used Sheikh
Abdullah as its agent to stir up communal trouble in Srinagar in 193 1
so as to destabilise the State of Jammu and Kashmir and thereby force
the Maharaja Sir Hari Singh to give in to British pressure and hand
over the Gilgit region on a long lease. In 1947, Dr. Saxena continued,
Mountbatten made sure that Gilgit somehow did not revert to the
State of Jammu and Kashmir but passed into the hands of Pakistan
so as to enable the "Anglo-Americans" to maintain their base in this
key Central Asian outpost after the Transfer of Power.
There was, it need hardlv be said, much distortion in all this: and
the records do not support the basic thesis. The British did not create
or inspire the disturbances in Srinagar during the earlv 1930s which
are described in Chapter 5. Nor, as we shall see. did Lord
Mountbatten make the slightest effort to hand oIrer the Gilgit .-\ge~-rc\
to Pakistan; indeed. he did his best, although without success. to
create the circumstances which would lead to the e\.entual Indian
domination over this key strategic region. Writers like Dr. Snsena are
LADAKH AND THE GILGIT AGENCY
forever searching for traces of the sinister hand of British policy
behind the recent history of the subcontinent. The law of averages
would suggest that from time to time they will hit a target of some
kind, though it may not be that at which they have aimed. This is a
case in point. While Mountbatten did not lift a finger to push the
Gilgit Agency towards Pakistan, as Dr. Saxena suggests, yet British
policy for a century or more, culminating in Mountbatten's ultimate
Viceroyalty, was directed towards the security of that part of the
frontier of the subcontinent which is symbolised by the name "Gilgit
Agency"; and the history of the State of Jammu and Kashmir from
its creation in 1846 until the crisis of 1947 was dominated by the
implications of that policy.
In 1846 the British could probably, despite considerable practical
difficulties, have held on to the Vale of Kashmir after they acquired
it from the Sikhs whom they had defeated at the battle of Sobraon
on 10 February 1845.I~n stead, as we have already seen, they decided
to transfer it to the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, to bring into
existence the State of Jammu and Kashmir. This creation the Indian
Government of Sir Henry (later Lord) Hardinge resolved to exploit
as its chosen instrument for the protection of what came to be known
as the Northern Frontier.
The Northern Frontier ran along the high mountains of the
Karakoram and associated ranges which create the main watershed
between the Tarim basin, that vast expanses of internal drainage
which is now part of Sinkiang Province of China, and the Indus river
system flowing into the Indian Ocean. To the west these mountains
run into both the Pamirs in what is today Soviet Tadzhikistan and the
Hindu Kush of Afghanistan: to the east they meet the western edge
of the high Tibetan plateau, bounded to its north by the Kunlun and
to its south by the Himalayas. All these formidable ranges can be
imagined schematically in the form of a very erratic letter H, with the
Karakoram representing the horizontal line connecting the two
verticals.
Over the horizontal line run two major routes across the main
watershed. On the east there is the Ladakh route, the approach to
Khotan (Hotan), Yarkand (Shache) and Kashgar (Kasha) in Sinkiang
(Xinjiang) from Leh in Ladakh by way of the Karakoram Pass (or
near it). On the west is the Gilgit route, a line of communication from
Gilgit, on a tributary of the Indus, through Hunza to ash gar over
the Mintaka, Khunjerab and other passes of the western Karakoram
Range. Both can be approached from Srinagar which not only
controls the easiest access to Leh but also until 1947 was a logical
starting place whence to set out overland for Gilgit; and both pass out
of the subcontinent through territory which was technically part of
the old State of Jammu and Kashmir as it evolved during the final
century of the British Raj.

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