Talk:Kashmir

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Refugees - unreliable source

There are roughly 1.5 million refugees from Indian-Administered Kashmir in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir and other parts of Pakistan.

References

@Fenrir77: The content you have added (reproduced above) is sourced to a self-published source. The author is the Director of the Institute of Policy Studies (Pakistan) and the editor of the journal (apparently an in-house journal of the Institute) [1]. I am replacing it by reliably sourced content. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:28, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I have now done a little bit of calculation since all kinds of numbers are being thrown around. According to Snedden's data, there were 1.2m Muslims in the Jammu province in the 1941 census. There was pretty much no migration from the Kashmir province. So, it is clearly impossible for 1.5m Muslims to have migrated to AJK from the Indian-held Kashmir!

If I subtract Mirpur and half of Poonch populations, then the rest of the Jammu province had only about 700,000 Muslims (about 50% of the population). India's Jammu province is still 33.5% Muslim. So, the maximum number that could have migrated is 17% of the-then population, which is about 250,000. Even the 500,000 number that was accepted by Christopher Snedden is an overestimate.

While we are at it, let me also note that the 17% Hindus of Mirpur and 9% Hindus of Poonch (about 100,000 in total) have vanished. Nobody talks about them. So much for reliable sources! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:28, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Lead section

@101.50.115.215: Can you explain how this content is irrelevant? --SMS ^Talk 09:41, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Reason For Nominating for Neutrality

This article has been nominated for neutrality because it contains insufficient information on the Muslim Rule of Kashmir, while providing extensive information on the Hindu/Buddhist and Sikh rule. Insufficient information because it talks about the Muslim Rule until 1342, then skips to the Sikh rule in 1842. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:183:8102:40DF:42F:76BD:87BB:F26D (talk) 02:19, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Lack of this information about history does not qualify as an NPOV issue. You are welcome to add this information. --SMS ^Talk 10:42, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

NPOV issue in the Dogra Rule section

I am putting a POV tag on the Dogra Rule section because it is overweight on Muslim grievances. This article is on the entire Kashmir region and not on just Kashmiri Muslims. There is no doubt that the grievances were real, but they have to be described in a historically correct way. Are they different from the ryotwari system elsewhere in the subcontinent? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:37, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

The sentence Scholar Ayesha Jalal states that the Maharajahs nurtured ties with Kashmiri Pandits and their Dogra kinsfolk in Jammu to trample on the rights of their subjects is also a misrepresentation of the source. It implies that they nurtured ties for the purpose of trampling on the rights. There is no such causation in the source. They seem to be separate phenomena. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:49, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Huge revert

I notice that Fowler&fowler did a huge revert this morning, apparently to his own version from 16 July, with the edit summary removing POV-ridden Hindu Dogra Rule and restoring last stable version. Please take it to the talk page and gain consensus. Lost in the process were a large number of improvements over these months such as the updated demographic statistics, archived sources, and also the Kashmiri Muslim grievances that I complained about in the section above.

Coming to the "POV-ridden Hindu Dogra rule", most of this content is mine and I am no Hindu apologist or Dogra apologist. The content is sourced to K. M. Panikkar's 1930 book, which continues to be cited in scholarly works till today, cross-checked with Bawa Satinder Singh's journal article. If Fowler finds "POV" in this content, I would like to hear what it is. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:06, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I have now also cross-checked it also against Mridu Rai and added it as a source.

It also occurs to me that F&f argued with me vehemently in May that "Kashmir" means the entire Jammu and Kashmir. It is ironic, therefore, that he should object to the content about Dogras, who are an integral part of "Kashmir" in his sense. As a matter of fact, the entire article is terribly overweight on the Kashmir valley with very little said about Jammu, Ladakh and Gilgit, a problem that needs to be corrected in due course. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:12, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Foreign rule

I am tentatively labelling the Mughal, Afghan and Sikh rule as "foreign rule". I was prompted by a comment of Wasiq 9320. But this is in fact how Kashmiris themselves think of this period. Some citations:

• Minahan, James B. (2012), Ethnic Groups of South Asia and the Pacific: An Encyclopedia: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, pp. 185–, ISBN 978-1-59884-660-7
• Dulat, A. S.; Sinha, Aditya (2015), Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, HarperCollins India, pp. 130–, ISBN 978-93-5177-067-1
• Kalla, Krishan Lal (1985), The Literary Heritage of Kashmir, Mittal Publications, pp. 52–, GGKEY:7JAXGZQJRGN

Comments welcome. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:01, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

There is no Wikipedia mandate to spout the views of native Kashmiris in an article on Kashmir. Historians around the world don't grant Kashmirs any such privilege. Christopher Snedden for example, says, on page 55 of Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris (OUP, 2015) "Following two attempts in 1813 and 1814, the Sikhs finally captured Kashmir in 1819 from the Durrani Afghans. This ended Muslim rule in, and over, this region, that had begun in 1339." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:19, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Christopher Snedden is not a historian. He is a political scientist. He tends to view Kashmir in terms of present day political conflicts. But there is no evidence that this "view" is historically valid.

Chitralekha Zutshi states, on the contrary:

Almost all works on the history of Kashmir consistently portray the incorporation of the Kashmir Valley into Mughal India after Chak rule as the beginning of the end of Kashmiri independence, when Kashmiriyat came under threat from outsiders.

and when it passed to Afghan hands:

The same process unfolded in Kashmir, with the significant difference that, instead of becoming an independent kingdom, Kashmir succumbed to the Afghans in 1752.

and, finally, for the move to the Sikh hands, she doesn't even grace it with a separate section in the book. More emphatically, she says:

And yet, Kashmir from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries presents a clear case for the existence and articulation of a sense of belonging to a homeland, or mulk, which, although uttered in muffled tones for fear of persecution, was hardly weak or incoherent.

I also find your words Historians around the world don't grant Kashmirs any such privilege quite ironic. Nobody needs to grant any such privilege. Every people have an inherent privilege to define themselves. It is not anybody's job to define it for them or "grant" it to them. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:08, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

See also Victoria Schofield, p.3:

With the incorporation of Kashmir into the Mughal Empire, the valley of Kashmir’s long history as a kingdom in its own right came to an end... although the lives of the people were undeniably harsh, none of their rulers was answerable to some alien power in Kabul, Lahore or Delhi; accordingly, their actions form part of a history which Kashmiris regard as undeniably their own.

No religious distinctions here. The distinction between native and alien rule is clearly made.

Perhaps we can say "alien rule" instead of "foreign rule"? I am open to suggestions. What I don't want is a colonial-style religious classification into Hindu/Muslim/Sikh rules, when it is clear that it has no historical validity. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:50, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Please stick to the relevant points not to ironies perceived, epiphanies experienced about systemic bias or rescue fantasies nurtured about native Kashmiri historiography. Again, in less allegorical language: how history of a certain region is documented by scholars of that region may be a WP editor's burning desire for seeing in print, but it is not Wikipedia policy. The best sources, published by well-regarded academic presses, reviewed in reputed academic journals, and cited by other scholars, come before shabby scholarship, whether foreign or indigenous. Period. Whether Snedden is in a political science department is unimportant. He has done work in the history of the Kashmir dispute, especially the Poonch rebellion of 1947, work that has been "christopher+snedden"+kashmir&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5 reviewed in scholarly journals. In contrast, A. S. Dulat, the man you have requisitioned for doing yeoman work on the native Kashmir POV is a policeman, the former head of India's famous or infamous spy agency RAW as well as the internal spy agency Intelligence Bureau, during the years the Hindu nationalists were in power 1998-2005. Dulat famously said that a Kashmiri “rarely speaks the truth to you because he feels you are lying to him”. A quote he repeats is “the only thing straight in Kashmir is a poplar tree”. I am very confused. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:25, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

References

@Kautilya3: Why not retitle all the subsections by century or year? Like pre-14th century, 14th-18th, etc? Or, pre-1338 CE, 1338-1819 etc? Alien rule is as odd as Foreign rule. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 20:55, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, the section titling is not really the big issue. If and when Mughan rule and Afghan rule have decent coverage, they can become sections of their own. But I am keen on documenting the fact that this is how Kashmiris view their history. And, that is something every reader of this page needs to know. It is not something that I particularly like. But who am I to say? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:18, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

The new section titles are better. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:54, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Hindu elite

@Towns Hill: Your recent edits to the Dogra rule section added material alleging that it promoted a "Hindu elite" to the detriment of the Muslim masses. The implication seems to be that, since Dogras were Hindus, they promoted Hindu elites and oppressed the Muslims. Yet, Chitralekha Zutshi says

As we saw, Kashmiri Pandits had entered the administrative machinery of state during the Afghan period, and by the Dogra period they were firmly entrenched in the lower levels of the state bureaucracy. Although the Pandits were, like all Kashmiris, excluded from the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, they continued to exercise control in the countryside, away from the urban centers of power.

In fact, another PhD thesis on the land revenue system says that the Afghans tried to replace the Pandit officials but didn't succeed. This tells me two things: (1) the Pandits were working as officials even before the Afghan rule, (2) the employment of Pandits had nothing to do with religion. For all we know, the Pandits have been playing this role for eternity (for we can't imagine that Mughals specially brought Pandits do it nor that that Shahmiri dynasty did it.)

You are also forgetting the fact that the Pandits were Brahmins. And, the Brahmins had a hold on the state machinery all over the subcontinent. In the British-ruled Madras Presidency, there was a non-Brahmin movement demanding reservations for jobs for non-Brahmins in the 1920s. The Kashmiris launched a similar movement in the 1930s, only ten years behind. In other parts like Uttar Pradesh, there were no such reservations until a couple of decades ago.

Given the historical context and the socio-political factors, I don't see any Hindu-Muslim divide in this affair, and I intend to get rid of any text that suggests there was. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:23, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Zutshi also says,

Furthermore, many Kashmiri Pandits in rural areas were simply cultivators, with no connection to the revenue administration. Additionally, there was an important Kashmiri Muslim element in the revenue administration, drawn mostly from Sayyids and Pirs.

So, Muslims were not excluded from the administration, and it is wrong to make it look as if they were. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

A small clarification. 'Sayyids' and 'Pirzadas' (Pirzada being the 'kram' name) were not Kashmiris. They were exploitative outsiders and not part of the Valley's native Muslim peasantry who suffered during the Dogra rule. There was also Dogra state discrimination with anti-Muslim religious bias. There were also Kashmiri Pandits such as Prem Nath Bazaz who were sympathetic to the plight of their Kashmiri brethren among the Muslims. So its true that not all Kashmiri Pandits exploited Kashmiri Muslims. Lawrence also documents that there were many 'kind and gentle' Kashmiri Pandit officials, though as a body they were 'cruel'. But there was definitely a class divide which coincided with the religious divide in the Valley (it was somewhat different in Jammu). Kashmiri Pandits dominated the landowning and administrative classes and did exploit the Muslims (again, not all of them). Anti-Kashmiri Muslim peasantry co-operation also certainly existed between the Dogras and the Kashmiri Pandits, as the chakdari system demonstrates. Towns_Hill 01:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC) Towns Hill

I think you did not get my point. Whatever system was operating during the Dogra rule, was operating for a long time, as long as we can see in the past. So, you cannot put this under the Dogra rule section, implying that they instituted it. Do you have evidence that they instituted anything new (other than the fact they brought in Dogra overlords from outside the Valley)?

Secondly, you are communalising history. State officials exploited the poor peasantry. It so happened that, in Kashmir, the majority (though not all) officials were Hindu and the majority (thought not all) peasantry were Muslim. And this was the case even when the Kashmiris were ruling themselves, i.e., before the Mughals occupied Kashmir. Akbar tried to break the power of the officials, by getting rid of the one-third that they were collecting from the peasants. (See the section below.) But the system came back eventually, again well before the Dogras came into the picture.

All the scholars you are reading are not honest-to-goodness historians. They are looking at narrow parts of history and telling us what they find. They are also reproducing the observations of the local observers, who are also not historians. The PhD theses that I am citing from India are doing proper historical analyses, under historian supervisors, who are all guided by established historians of India like Irfan Habib, Ram Sharan Sharma etc. We can't discount the evidence they present.

Pinging Kashmiri, Wasiq 9320, Vanamonde93, Ghatus, to get outside opinion before we start going in circles. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

References

References

Mughal rule, land revenue, and oppression

I see a lot of talk about how the Mughal rule was oppressive and all. An example:

The Mughal period also saw a new development, namely increase in land and other revenues,[38: Land revenue was increased from one-third to one-half. Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, 374] drain of wealth, and withdrawal of state patronage to the development sector.[39: More than one half of the GDP was drained out of Kashmir, and except the construction of pleasure gardens; a a few mosques and a military cantonment, no interest was shown to the productive sector.] Without any regard for one-crop-a-year economy in Kashmir, the Mughals increased the land revenue from one-third to one-half,[40: Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, 374] and not less than half of the gross domestic product (GDP) was drained out of Kashmir to the capital of the Mughals as the state share.[41, Allami?]

Yet, Hangloo says

In 1586 when the valley was included in the Mughal empire, the land revenue was theoretically demanded at one third of the produce but in practice it amounted to two thirds. Emperor Akbar fixed the land revenue demand at one half.[2] Under the Afghans (1553-1819) the state demand worked out to 60 to 65 percent of the produce.[3] The Sikh rulers (1819-1846) fixed the state's share of produce generally at one half but over and above this share the state levied a number of cesses.[4]

This illustrates the difficulty of assessing land revenue demands. The headline figure is not all there is to it. A lot depends on the revenue collection system. I expect the pre-Mughal revenue collection system used middlemen, who apparently took as much money as the state. Akbar, on the other hand, employed salaried employees to collect revenue. But salaried employees are prone to corruption. So the system seems to have returned to middlemen again.

There are two other facts from Wani's account that are worth noting:

• drain of wealth. Whatever money the Mughal court took would have been spent on the state machinery and the army etc. The Kashmiris, who had little participation in these, would have seen little of it. So, roughly half the money went out of the Kashmiri economy. This kind of drain would have continued under Afghans and Sikhs too. But Dogras, being locals, couldn't "drain" the wealth in that way. The money paid to Dogras stayed within the Kashmiri economy. So, one would expect that things must have gotten better under the Dogras.
• one-crop-a-year-economy. If Kashmiris could grow only one crop a year, they would be obviously be poorer than the rest of the country. This would explain the observations of the British observers, many of whom say that the Kashmiris were poorer than what they saw in the rest of India. This has very little to do with what the government did. Jammu and Kashmir, being a large, underpopulated state, would have had higher administrative costs than other places. In fact, it seems that the Dogra regime was often in the red. Despite all the self-congratulatory accolades that Lawrence gives himself, Zutshi says that he didn't make much difference in practice. His reforms were also counterproductive in some ways. We should be careful not to take Lawrence at face value. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:49, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

It is also interesting that Wani is writing in 2016 in an apparently international venue, yet he doesn't know the standard history that the Indian historians know. The reference "[2]" in Hangloo's article is

• Irfan Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1962

This should have been standard stuff that every historian is expected to know. So, almost nothing you read regarding Kashmir is historically based. Notice also this comment from Zutshi:

King Lalitaditya, who ruled Kashmir in the eighth century, is quoted in the Rajatarangini as having said, “Cultivators must be repressed and their style of living must be lower than that of the city people or the latter will suffer.”[22] Clearly, this system was not a product of the nineteenth century, although Kashmiri poetry from this century is rife with references to the evisceration of the countryside to provide for the inhabitants of urban areas.

We don't know the land revenue demand of Lalitaditya but I don't think it would have been particularly different from the modern times. This is how India always operated. And, for the first hundred years of their rule, the British happily collaborated with the system, draining India's wealth to Britain. They even did worse, by instituting trade protection, which impoverished the urban populations in addition to the rural populations. Look at famines during the British rule. So, sorry, if Lawrence comes tom-toming himself to be a big hero trying to save the Kashmiris, we have to take it in perspective. Lawrence was also politicising and communalising the Kashmiri grievance, which was probably not much different from the rest of India, except for the fact that they were living in a one-crop-a-year economy. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

References

References

Anti-Muslim policies of Sikhs

The current text says:

The Sikhs enacted a number of anti-Muslim laws,[45] which included handing out death sentences for cow slaughter,[43] closing down the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar,[45] and banning the azaan, the public Muslim call to prayer.[45]

This was apparently done by the governor Moti Ram, about whom we hear, he was the "best governor" and "kind-hearted and liked by the people". Despite the measures indicated above, In all other religious matters Muslims were given full freedom. It also appears from this source that the Jama Masjid was not closed, but congregational prayers on Fridays in the Jama Masjid of Srinagar were banned.

Meenakshi Jain, a reasonably good but pro-Hindu historian, says this, regarding Ranjit Singh:

Similarly, the Sikh ruler, Ranjit Singh, while identifying with the Khalsa tradition, issuing coins in the name the Gurumutta (the general council of Sikh leaders), banning cow slaughter in his domain and azam in the holy city in Amritsar (his only recorded act which could be considered "anti-Muslim," Bayly 2001:219-220), did not endeavour to curb the practice of Islam in his kingdom. Muslim learned men were invited to the court when Ranjit Singh first assumed royal title in 1801. Ranjit Singh also appointed Nizamuddin qazi and head of the Muslims of the Lahore region, thereby fulfilling an important requirement for Punjab to be regarded dar-ul-Islam, a land where Islam could be freely practised. In a public gesture or respect, Ranjit Singh visited the mausoleums of Data Ganj Bakhsh and Shah Abdul Maali and made offerings.[4] He contributed to the repair of mosques in his kingdom, besides granting land for the upkeep of several Muslim shrines (Gupta 1991:425-428).

So the evidence is mixed, which is not reflected in the article text. I don't know enough about the Jama Masjid closure, but I do know that the Jama Masjid is an intensely political place till this day. Banning or restricting it could have been a political measure, rather than a religious one, especially given all the other evidence we have of the religious tolerance of these rulers. Pinging Joshua Jonathan and Ms Sarah Welch for their input. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:59, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

We also know that Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed for defending Kashmiri Brahmins. That needs to be covered too, to set the scene of the religious conflicts of the period. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:03, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

And also the fact that Kashmiri Hindus were force fed beef in order to convert them to Islam permanently. Once again, this means that cow slaughter has become a political symbol, rather than a religious one. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:10, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: First thing first. A quick wikitool scan suggests that at least one large para in Sikh-Kashmir section is exact copy of page 12 of this published about 3 years ago (don't know who copied whom, but 'lulu' publisher is non-RS, and if the wikipedia article is a copy of that source, we need surgery and rewrite).

Evidence is mixed indeed. While working on the Ranjit Singh article with @Apuldram, it was loud and clear that sources were divided on Sikh-Muslim relations during his era. Some Sikhs and Muslims had a relationship of respect, tolerance and support, as well as had serious regional conflicts, each side presented as persecuting the other. Ranjit Singh's army and administration had Muslims, for example. There was a period of mutual retaliation, particularly in Kashmir and elsewhere, depending on who was in power. For balance and NPOV, all this needs to be carefully summarized, they do not suggest one side only as persecutor or only as persecuted. Further, there were differences in the quality and aspects of Sikh-Sufi, Sikh-Shia, Sikh-Sunni relations. Other sources to consider for that section: Bayly, Ahmed, Low, and Murphy.

The text was contributed by Fowler&fowler in 2011. So it is obvious who copied from whom :-) Not that I would ever doubt the integrity of Fowler! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Apuldram: any other sources and suggestions to improve the balance and quality of Sikh-Kashmir section? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 14:03, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

After some research, here are my conclusions. The banning of cow-slaughter and the banning azan were policies of the Sikh state, which were implemented throughout the empire, not specifically with regard to Kashmir. Rajmohan Gandhi Chitralekha Zutshi says at one point that these were ways of the Sikh state distinguishing itself from a Mughal identity. But Meenakshi Jain shows that the banning of cow-slaughter was done by all "Hindu" (i.e., Indic) rulers in this period throughout the subcontinent, clearly a religious, but not necessarily communal, assertion. The Hindu-Sikh distinctions were not underlined at this time. So, Hindus and Sikhs jointly formed the "ruling class" of the Sikh empire. At the same time, there was no religious bigotry. Ranjit Singh's rule seems more akin to Akbar's than Aurangzeb's.

The "closure" of the Jama Masjid was a specific policy of Dewan Moti Ram in Kashmir. Victoria Schofield explains:

Fearing discontent amongst the local population, Moti Ram closed the Jama Masjid to prevent crowds of disaffected Muslims from gathering there. Although the motive may have been political rather than religious, the closure of the mosque upset the local Muslim Kashmiris.

So I was right in saying that it was a political measure, rather than a religious one. I will edit the article according to this information. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:37, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I suggest that you, and others here, not engage in research, treating all sources as equal---and with those suiting your long-held prejudices more equal---and making a mess of the page semantically and stylistically. Instead, let the experts who write text books, tertiary texts, or survey articles on Kashmir historiography, draw those conclusions. Please also don't edit the article according to whatever "information" you have divined unless you want to turn this article into a disputed page. There is no dispute about the horrors of Sikh rule in Kashmir. How many sources published by academic presses do you want me to cite? This is the main article on the Kashmir region. Its history section is perforce written in summary style. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:58, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Both @Kautilya3 and you are seasoned editors; for new editors/watchers of this page, let us recap WP:PSTS: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." Zutshi source used in the current section is not an encyclopedia nor text book nor tertiary source, it is a secondary source. So are others, they too survey/review past literature in part, just like Zutshi does. If you two and others want to see the history section in a tertiary source, see the history section in this. Reads very different from the history section in this article. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 20:46, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Please don't try recap WP policy sanctimoniously. I can do that too. Academic presses are more reliable than books published by Podunk Press on a side lane off Ansari Road in Old Delhi especially those dear to authors carrying monkeys of Hindu nationalist bias on their backs and nursing long ambitions to see them in print. Wikipedia doesn't explicitly say that, but it does more or less allude to that. See WP:SCHOLARSHIP: "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. ...Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." Compare the Google Scholar citation index of Chitralekha Zutshi's book or Mridu Rai's book and contrast it with those of the nobodys you are discussing here. In what history journal has 5000 years of Kashmir History been reviewed? (Really 5000 years?). The particular Britannica page you have cited is mostly about the post 1846 history of Kashmir. The pre-1846 history of the region, if it important, is in the Regonal States c. 1700--1850 page in Britannica's India page, and written by historian Sanjay Subrahmanhyan. That is doesn't say anything explicitly about Sikhs and Kashmir is because it does not consider it notable in such a compressed history. Let me put it bluntly: please don't engage in research here or in assessing due or undue weight and then in the interests of putative balance, like CNN, lower the bar so much that every prejudice leaps over it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:03, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler, Sorry, I didn't realize when I started this discussion that it was your text. Nevertheless, I am afraid your text is not convincing. It sounds at best like a Muslim POV gripe. The banning of cow-slaughter and the banning of azan are essentially symbolic, and the "closure" of Jama Masjid is a political act, as Schofield has explained. If this is the best evidence you can come up with, it seems like you are blowing things up. I don't have access to the TN Madan source that you cited, and I guess you don't have access to Rajmohan Gandhi source either. But I can reproduce copious passages from it if you like. "Horrors of Sikh rule" sounds bad. More sources would be helpful. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

If you are serious, please revert the page to the stable version that had existed for ten years and that you and others are for a month now fast turning into a semantic and stylistic nightmare. We can then discuss what to add, remove, or amend. Otherwise, you are looking at this page turning into a disputed page. For your information, Triloki Nath Madan is one of India's most esteemed sociologists. That you don't have access to his work is not my problem. Go to a library. In contrast, Raj Mohan Gandhi is merely a popular biographer, who for most of his career was rearming people morally and declaiming from the lecterns of high schools of many continents: "If you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing back at you." Where did he receive his PhD and in what field? In what field of scholarship has he published? His foray into the 300-year history of Punjab has been published by a little known press in New Delhi (with address: SECTOR-2, 110049,, Pocket B, Sector 2, RK Puram, New Delhi, Delhi 110001) and founded in 2011. Please contrast the reviews of the book in scholarly journals (zero) with Zutshi's or Rai's books. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:03, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Please don't badger Ms Sarah Welch. She only came over to offer advice on the Sikh rule coverage. I haven't done that much with the article either. Towns Hill has been adding a large amount of material lately. I cam over to review it and, if possible, clean it. I was more or less happy with what was here earlier but I also think it had seeds for degeneration. Given that Kashmir is a highly contested topic, that was bound to happen sooner or later.

My impression is that the History of Kashmir is an underdeveloped subject, quite surprising given its importance. What exists is basically reconstructed from popular memory, notes or texts from local people and observers etc. But this reconstruction does conflict quite seriously with authentic history we know about the other areas. Akbar is known as one of the kindest rulers of India, but the Kashmiris regard his rule as loss of independence. Ranjit Singh is known as a tolerant ruler, but Kashmiris see religious persecution in the Sikh rule. So on. These contradictions haven't been resolved. Zutshi presents both sides of the picture and leaves it at that. Perhaps we should do the same.

I am getting busy with RL at this time. Give me a couple of weeks, and I will move stuff over to History of Kashmir and leave this article roughly what it was earlier. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:13, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler:, @Kautilya3: Indeed. I have never edited this article, am here because I was pinged. I am glad @F&f concurs secondary sources are fine. Quality of the source matters indeed. Well-respected publishers or those with a peer review process, sources that have been reviewed in journals, sources cited in scholarly publications, sources authored or edited by peer-reviewed oft-cited scholars are better, and WP:RS to be preferred particularly in contested articles. @K: per my hazy memory, many of your comments in several posts on this talk page are generally supported by better quality sources, but these need to be located and cited. You are also quite right about Zutshi's publications. Her 2004 and 2014 books present many sides of the Kashmir literary story/history. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 11:20, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I am saying something more than just that secondary sources are fine. Rather, in compressed histories, especially in topics in which there are so many secondary sources as to support the craziest assertions, the job of selecting what to highlight, or of choosing how to summarize, can't be left to WP editors. I am suggesting that it belongs to authors of high-level (or, rather, higher-level) histories such as secondary/tertiary textbooks, or survey books, and sometimes in their absence, the set of books that might qualify have to be chosen judiciously. There is not always a WP guideline for this. That is the reason why in the histories I have written on WP, such as, for example, in the India, the British Raj and Company rule in India page, I have preferred textbooks used around the world (such as Burton Stein's A History of India or Metcalf and Metcalf's A Concise History of Modern India or Asher and Talbot's India before Europe or Anthony Low's book on Decolonization) to more specialized monographs (such as Bayly's Empire and Information or Low's Britain and Indian Nationalism, the Imprint of Ambiguity etc); when the latter are used, it is to illustrate a consensus view or a significant disagreement. I'm not sure what Kautilya3 has been doing on this page. For example, there are a number of reputable textbooks or scholarly surveys which talk about the Hindu elite in Kashmir during Dogra rule. One example is, Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, Cambridge University Press. Pp. xviii, 206, ISBN 978-0-521-76177-2:

The modern history of Jammu and Kashmir is normally dated from the Treaty of Lahore (1846) which ended Sikh rule in the province and marked the beginning of a Hindu monarchy what lasted almost a century. During this period the Hindu elite established an ethnically and economically stratified society in which the status of the vast majority of Muslims was reduced to that of a heavily exploited and servile peasantry. (p. 54)"

In the presence of such high quality high-level opinions what is the point of mentioning a journal article as a "but on the other hand" opinion, unless it is a significant disagreement? In that sense, especially in vital, high-level, summary articles, all reliable secondary sources are not equal. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:54, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: For more than 85% of world's population, English is neither the first nor the second language. Claims such as "textbooks used around the world" need caution and verification, even in the English-as-first-language part of the world. This and other meta-discussion on other articles or wiki policy in general is best addressed on some other talk page(s). For NPOV in this article, all significant sides found in quality sources are best summarized, just like Zutshi does, and as @Kautilya3 is suggesting. If multiple quality sources present different views/sides, more so. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:14, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Fowler that, for deciding what to highlight in a summary article, textbooks are a good guide. But for figuring out what the scholarly consensus is (or even whether it exists), we need to look at all the available sources. WP:NPOV asks us to do so. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Ms Sarah Welch: This is the English Wikipedia. I have never seen any injunction to accommodate all scholarly opinions in all languages of the world. The sources that Kautilya3 has listed here are multiple no doubt, but quality they are not. One the one hand are two well-known historians of the 1947 partition, especially in the Punjab, Ian Talbot and Gurhapal Singh, from whom I have quoted above. On the other hand is an Indian policemen, the head of the notorious Indian spy agency, RAW, under Hindu nationalist dispensations, no less---during whose tenure many Kashmiris disappeared, and the ones who did not were at least maimed, blinded, tortured or had their loved ones disappear---who has written a book on Kashmir, as a cruel joke. We are being told that the rigorous work of Talbot should be considered just as reliable and the garbage written by the retired cop. What sort of joke is this? As for Zutshi's book, which I first introduced on this page, as did I Mridu Rai, it is a cross between a literary history and a longue durée. It is easy to write it as literary non-fiction in which nothing explicit needs to be said. Wikipedia histories are not. They are meat and potatoes histories If you so desire, you can create a new page Historical imagination in Kashmir and quote Zutshi to your heart's content. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:04, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Kautilya3, please don't do me the disservice of claiming that you agree with me. I am suggesting that WP editors are not in a position to determine what the scholarly consensus is. It is the meta histories, macro histories, that make that determination. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:04, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler:, @Kautilya3: Claims that "a scholarly book is a widely used textbook and therefore tertiary/meta-history" needs verification. If it is "widely used textbook", someone should be able to identify a list of schools that use it as textbook. Who is the RAW/cop-author mentioned above? I suggested Bayly, Ahmed, Low, and Murphy above, along with the 2 books and other papers of Zutshi. Quality of the source matters indeed. Reread my comment above. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 20:45, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I think we are hopelessly mixing up issues here. Neither Talbot/Singh nor the Indian policeman had anything to say about the Sikh rule in Kashmir. As far as the Sikh rule is concerned, all the sources we have been discussing here are scholarly.

• Fowler wants to contest whether Rajmohan Gandhi is a scholar. Well, he is not an academic or researcher. I suppose I might call him a writer. His specialty is communal conflicts and that is what he is trying to discuss in this book. He has some 5-10 page discussion on Ranjit Singh's communal/non-communal outlook and he reviews a lot of literature on the subject, whose authors are people that Fowler will probably accept as scholars.
• The same goes for Zutshi. Her own research is on Kashmiri literature but, in the course of presenting it, she reviews the history, attributing it to historians (both Kashmiri historians and academic historians). The remark about Ranjit Singh trying to distinguish himself from a Mughal identity is sourced to Christopher Bailey.
• Meenakshi Jain is a historian but, in this book Parallel Pathways, she is reviewing the literature (on Hindu-Muslim relations generally, in the post-Mughal period). She has 3-4 page coverage on Ranjit Singh, which is all sourced to historians who researched the subject.

All of them count as "textbook authors" to me, who are bringing together a lot of published material, precisely the kind of sources Fowler is recommending we should use.

I see that we are hopelessly deadlocked. Any source that we bring, it appears will be shot down by some criterion that Fowler has set for himself. The only solution might be to go for mediation. I don't know if I am up to it at this point. (As I have already said I am getting busy with RL.) So I will just sign off. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:58, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ms Sarah Welch and Kautilya3: OK, let's stick to Bayly. Where in Empire and Information does he talk about the benign attitude of the Sikhs to the Muslims in Kashmir? Please provide chapter and verse. The only remote connection I can see there is his evocative description of William Moorcroft (in Bayly's words "one of the great European explorers and antiquarians of Central Asia ... who added greatly to the British stock of information about the Punjab and the western Himalayas, quite apart from the mapping of Turkestan. A veterinary surgeon trained in the Scottish and Continental schools, his reports were voluminous, empirical and discursive. His description of the varieties, manufacture and trade in Kashmir shawls, for instance, was one of the densest pieces of commercial reporting to pass through the Company's archive in the early nineteenth century." Well, what does this have to do with Sikh rule in Kashmir? Obviously, the same Moorecroft had something to say about the Sikh rule in Kashmir as well. Here is a native Kashmiri academic (so dear to Kautilya3) telling us what: Wani, Aijaj Ashraf (2016). "Ethnic identities and dynamics of regional and sub-regional assertions in Jammu and Kashmir". In Yu-Wen Chen (ed.). Borderland Politics in Northern India. Chih-yu Shih. Routledge. pp. 45–. ISBN 978-1-317-60517-1. :"In 1819, Afghan rule was replaced by Sikh rule, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, who carved out a strong empire by defeating the Afghans, annexed Kashmir in 1819, and governed it through his deputies called Subedars. The Sikh ruled Kashmir up to 1846, i.e. for 27 years; but during these few years, Kashmir suffered too much to find any precedent in the annals of its history. ... Moorecroft who visited Kashmir just five years after Sikh occupation of Kashmir has left many heartrending accounts of oppression ... by Sikh administrators. He says:

Everywhere the people are in the most abject conditions; exorbitantly taxed by the Sikh government and subjected to every kind of extortion and oppression by its own officers."

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Please reread my comment above. Nowhere does it state "benign attitude of X towards Y". From what I remember from my readings of Sikh history, Muslim governments/armies oppressed Sikhs, Sikh governments/armies oppressed Muslims, in a cycle of distrust and retaliatory violence. They also cooperated (Sufi Muslim saints and Sikh Gurus). On Bayly, see page 85 (Ranjit Singh - Izatullah cooperation). The political dynamics in the Sikh Empire, including those related to Kashmir, are on pages 128-141. Bayly and the additional sources I suggested above, are for @Kautilya3 and you to consider, both of you may decide, they are or they are not relevant for this article. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 06:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I asked because I had read Bayly's book carefully when it first came out some 20 years ago. I didn't think then, nor do I now, that it has much information on the Punjab. Although, its focus is intelligence and its use by the British to prevail (and at times to bumble) in India, Bayly's main field of interest had remained the North-Western Provinces (the name for United Provinces during the 19th century), his first love. Anyways, thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:43, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

References

F&f's refs for taxation in Kashmir during Sikh rule

• (Kashmir: Shawls and Empires, 1500-2000, Michelle Maskiell, From: Journal of World History, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2002 pp. 27-65 | 10.1353/jwh.2002.0019) "The Kashmiri shawl trade in Asia was often disrupted by political turmoil in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by the heavy tax demands of the Afghan and Sikh regimes that conquered Kashmir."
• Chowdhary, Rekha (2015). Jammu and Kashmir: Politics of Identity and Separatism. Routledge. pp. 5–. ISBN 978-1-317-41405-6. "The early assertion of Kashmiri identity was a consequence of the socio-economic situation in which the Kashmiri Muslims were placed. As the historical evidence shows, the condition of Kashmiris was quite dismal, as they were stricken by widespread poverty and faced severe hardships. Most depressing was the class of peasantry and the artisans who formed the largest number of people. The peasantry did not enjoy the proprietary rights on the land. While many of the provided labour to the absentee landlords in the Valley, many others were forced to leave the Valley in search of livelihood. The Dogra rule, established in 1846, had continued with the oppressive pattern of land ownership and land-tenure that was introduced since the tie of the Sikh rulers. As per this pattern, though the state owned all the land, jagirdars were granted large tracts of land and other than the landless peasantry the tilling was done by the tenants and tenants-at-will." Quote in Chowdhary's text: "Quote: The land revenue was exorbitant and the rent which the land-holders, farmers, and jagirdars collected was heavy. The peasantry usually left the land fallow and took to less exacting vocations; and in the Kashmir province, it was usually forced to cultivate the land. The peasantry also bore the brunt of paying a large number of cesses and taxes that the State imposed upon them. The State was also entitled to Begar, which meant forced labour and compulsory appropriation of goods and services from people (Kaur, 1996: 6) "
• Ekhtiar, Maryam (2011). Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 399–400. ISBN 978-1-58839-434-7. Quote: "Kashmir was famous for the production of this type of textile. However, during the 1830s, hardships and severe taxation led Kashmiri weavers to leave the country ..."
• Textile Museum Journal. Textile Museum. 1982. p. 8."... the shawl industry in Kashmir faced increasing economic difficulties. Famines, epidemics among the shawl goats, growin competition from Eruope, and most important, severe government taxation, all had a detrimental effect on the industry. Diwan Kripa Ram, who became Sikh governor of Kashmir in 1827, demanded a tax of 26 percent ad valorem, which secured a considerable part of his annual state revenue. Such excessive taxes forced large numbers of Kashmir weavers to leave the country in the 1830s."
• Ames, Frank (1986). The Kashmir shawl and its Indo-French influence. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 978-0-907462-62-0. "The shawl industry began to decline with the institution of the dagshawl tax system during the beginnings of Afghan rule in Kashmir. The warring Sikhs sustained this system, perhaps not in name but in practice, if only to support their military exploits. The natural calamities of the 1830s caused the weavers to emigrate en masse to the Punjab, leaving their homeland. Finally, the master weavers refused to teach young apprentices their trade. As Jacquemont wrote in 1831, 'not one white beard was seen throughout the karkhandars'. The arrival of the French agents gave the industry a tremendous lift which lasted for twenty years. The moving eulogy of Hajji Mukhtar Shah's narrative shows the Kashmiri's deep recognition of the French, who did so much to spur creativity and employment in a depressed industry."
• Rizvi, Janet (2001). Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh. Oxford University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-19-565817-0. "Moorcroft himself, passing through Amritsar in 1820, had encountered refugee Kashmiri weavers. He reported that: 'The yarn was formerly imported from Kashmir, but the [Sikh] Governor of that country has prohibited the export at the request, he pretends, of the Kashmirian weavers but, in reality, to discourage the foreign manufacture of shawls, the duty on which constitutes the chief source of his revenue.' "

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:53, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Foreign rule section

ps: why is that section called "Foreign rule"? why not "Sikh rule" or something more appropriate, descriptively neutral. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 14:18, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

See the section above titled "Foreign rule". More generally, I thought there was overuse and abuse of religion in this article. And, it is getting worse. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

References

@Kautilya3: Indeed. The Muslim rule section, one above the Foreign rule section, looks short and odd. Needs more summary from WP:RS. It has a quote, the source claimed for that quote is Muhammad Asimov and Clifford Bosworth. The source starts the same way, but is stating something different:

Shah Mir arrived in Kashmir in 1313 along with his family, during the reign of Suhadeva (1301–1320), whose service he entered. In subsequent years, through his tact and ability, Shah Mir rose to prominence and became one of the most important personalities of his time. Later after the death in 1338 of Udayanadeva, the brother of Suhedeva he was able to assume the kingship himself and thus laid the foundation of permanent Muslim rule in Kashmir. – Muhammad Asimov and Clifford Bosworth

I don't see the "due to his race" etc part. The part starting with "Rinchan..." looks odd. We should be quoting exact. Do you see the support for "race" etc part anywhere? Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:34, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Looks like it was vandalised. I have fixed it now. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:53, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

References

Paraphrasing

Will someone explain to me how, and by what rules of precis writing, the sentence:

Not only are Jammu, Ladakh, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan separate from the Kashmir Valley geographically, they are also non-Kashmiri areas, with the Kashmir Valley being the genuine ''Kashmir'

constitutes a paraphrase of the longer quote from Christopher Snedden's book, Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris (OUP, 2015, pages 18 and 19) to which the sentence is cited:

In 1947, Kashmir was a geographically identifiable region that was called the Vale of Kashmir or the Kashmir Valley...In 1947, the other regions of J&K were not as well known as Kashmir. Jammu and other non-Kashmiri areas of J&K, except possibly Ladakh, had never enjoyed the geo-political unity, regional existence or continuous rule that Kashmiris had experienced for long periods...Kashmir's acclaim is why J&K was popularly called 'Kashmir'

Will they explain why this particular excerpt from Snedden has been chosen and how does highlighting it reconcile with other significant content about usage involving the word "Kashmir" in the introduction of the book, for example, in the first paragraph of the introduction, on page 7:

What is Kashmir? Who are Kashmiris? Terminology is important, especially if its use is clear. The term 'Kashmir' refers to the former princely 'State of Jammu and Kashmir', to use its official title. Under British rule of the Indian subcontinent that ended in 1947, the people called this entity 'Kashmir'.

Finally, will they explain, what significant NPOV content does this sentence add that is not already included in the sentence occurring earlier in the lead: "Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range."

Until such time as I receive a cogent answer, I shall be removing this sentence from the lead. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:01, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

The previous sentence is simply not sufficiently clear enough and only seems to be limited in scope to the mid 19th century. It does not really make clear that 'Kashmir' is uniquely the Valley in all ways-geographically, culturally and ethnically- even today (and will be forever). Towns Hill

I asked for rules of paraphrasing, not your personal emotional fantasies. Please take this seriously, otherwise I will take this page to dispute resolution. You and other editors who are adding nonsensical, undigested, content are doing a major disservice to Wikipedia. Again, tell me how you managed "genuine." It doesn't occur anywhere in the first 100 pages of the cited text. This page has been stable for some ten years. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:37, 3 January 2017 (UTC)