Kashmir
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Kashmir,region of the northwesternIndian subcontinent. It is bounded by theUygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang to the northeast and theTibetAutonomous Region to the east (both parts ofChina), by the Indian states ofHimachal Pradesh andPunjab to the south, byPakistan to the west, and byAfghanistan to the northwest. The region, with a total area of some 85,800 square miles (222,200 square km), has been the subject of dispute betweenIndia andPakistan since thepartition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The northern and western portions are administered by Pakistan andcomprise three areas:Azad Kashmir,Gilgit, andBaltistan, the last two being part of a single administrative unit called Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly Northern Areas). Administered by India are the southern and southeastern portions,Jammu and Kashmir andLadakh, which were reorganized as union territories in 2019. The Indian- and Pakistani-administered portions are divided by a “line of control” agreed to in 1972, although neither country recognizes it as an international boundary. In addition,China became active in the eastern area of Kashmir in the 1950s and has controlled the northeastern part of Ladakh (the easternmost portion of the region) since 1962.
Land and people
The Kashmir region is predominantly mountainous, with deep, narrow valleys and high, barren plateaus. The relatively low-lyingJammu andPoonch plains in the southwest are separated by the thickly forested Himalayan foothills and thePir Panjal Range of theLesser Himalayas from the larger, more fertile, and more heavily populatedVale of Kashmir to the north. The vale, situated at an elevation of about 5,300 feet (1,600 meters),constitutes the basin of the upperJhelum River and contains the city ofSrinagar. Jammu and the vale lie in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, while the Poonch lowlands are largely in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Rising northeast of the vale is the western part of the GreatHimalayas, the peaks of which reach elevations of 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) or higher. Farther to the northeast is the high, mountainous plateau region ofLadakh, which is cut by the rugged valley of the northwestward-flowingIndus River. Extending roughly northwestward from the Himalayas are the lofty peaks of theKarakoram Range, includingK2 (Mount Godwin Austen), which at 28,251 feet (8,611 meters) is the second highest peak in the world, afterMount Everest.
The region is located along the northernmost extremity of the Indian tectonic plate. The subduction of that plate beneath theEurasian Plate—the process that for roughly 50 million years has been creating the Himalayas—has produced heavy seismic activity in Kashmir. One especially powerfulearthquake in 2005 devastated Muzaffarabad, which is the administrative center of Azad Kashmir, andadjacent areas including parts of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state (now Jammu and Kashmir union territory) and Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (nowKhyber Pakhtunkhwa).
The climate of the region ranges from subtropical in the southwestern lowlands to alpine throughout the high mountain areas. Precipitation is variable; it is heavier in areas that can be reached by the monsoonal winds west and south of the great ranges and sparse to the north and east where continental conditions prevail.
The people in the Jammu area are Muslim in the west and Hindu in the east and speakHindi,Punjabi, andDogri. The inhabitants of the Vale of Kashmir and the Pakistani areas are mostly Muslim and speakUrdu andKashmiri. The sparsely inhabited Ladakh region and beyond is home toTibetan peoples who practiceBuddhism and speak Balti and Ladakhi.
History
The region to 1947
According tolegend, anascetic named Kashyapa reclaimed the land nowcomprising Kashmir from a vast lake. That land came to be known as Kashyapamar and, later, Kashmir. Buddhism was introduced by the Mauryan emperorAshoka in the 3rd centurybce, and from the 9th to the 12th centuryce the region appears to have achieved considerable prominence as a center of Hinduculture. A succession of Hindudynasties ruled Kashmir until 1346, when it came under Muslim rule. The Muslim period lasted nearly five centuries, ending when Kashmir was annexed to theSikh kingdom of the Punjab in 1819 and then to theDogra kingdom of Jammu in 1846.
Thus, the Kashmir region in its contemporary form dates from 1846, when, by the treaties ofLahore andAmritsar at the conclusion of the FirstSikh War, RajaGulab Singh, the Dogra ruler of Jammu, was created maharaja (ruling prince) of anextensive but somewhat ill-defined Himalayan kingdom “to the eastward of the River Indus and westward of the River Ravi.” The creation of thisprincely state helped theBritish safeguard their northern flank in their advance to the Indus and beyond during the latter part of the 19th century. The state thus formed part of a complex political buffer zone interposed by theBritish between their Indian empire and the empires ofRussia and China to the north. For Gulab Singh, confirmation of title to these mountain territories marked the culmination of almost a quarter century of campaigning and diplomatic negotiation among the petty hill kingdoms along the northern borderlands of the Sikh empire of the Punjab.
Some attempts were made in the 19th century to define the boundaries of the territory, but precise definition was in many cases defeated by the nature of the country and by the existence of huge tracts lacking permanent human settlement. In the far north, for example, the maharaja’s authority certainly extended to the Karakoram Range, but beyond that lay a debatable zone on the borders of theTurkistan andXinjiang regions ofCentral Asia, and the boundary was never demarcated. There were similar doubts about the alignment of the frontier where this northern zone skirted the region known asAksai Chin, to the east, and joined the better-known and more preciselydelineated boundary with Tibet, which had served for centuries as the eastern border of the Ladakh region. The pattern of boundaries in the northwest became clearer in the last decade of the 19th century, when Britain, in negotiations with Afghanistan and Russia, delimited boundaries in thePamirs region. At that time Gilgit, always understood to be part of Kashmir, was for strategic reasonsconstituted as a special agency in 1889 under a British agent.