Author : Wahid Ahmad
In
the year 1889, some Kashmiri peasants were running to escape from a group of sepoys.
An English officer intervened and gave them refuge in his tent. Why were these
people escaping from the sepoys and who was this English officer?
These
Kashmiris were attempting to avoid being called for beggar a by an army officer
named Natha. The English officer was none but Sir Walter Lawrence, A British
Indian Civil Servant who had come to Kashmir as a Land Settlement officer.
From
these people, Lawrence came to discover that Natha had removed the moustaches of a
villager for failing to deliver enough rice. Lawrence, saw the desperation in
the peasants' eyes as the peasants told their story, he became increasingly
outraged by the sepoys' actions and vowed to do something to help. The
confrontation that followed culminated in Lawrence sending a telegram to Maharaja
Pratab Sing stating that either Natha must be dismissed or Lawrence would
resign. After a few days, the order came that Natha was to be removed.
Dealing with many situations like these Lawrence became a household name in late nineteenth century Kashmir.
This
article is divided into three parts:
I. In the first part we will discuss the early career of Lawrence as an ICS and how it
influenced his approach in Kashmir.
II. We
will discuss the historical events leading to his appointment as a Land
settlement in Kashmir.
Part-I
Walter
Lawrence, topped the Indian Civil Service list in 1877. After qualifying for the Indian
Civil Service there was a two-year probationary period to be spent at one of
the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, London, or Trinity College, Dublin.
He had an unusually varied career and served
sixteen years continuously without a break, finally returning to England in
1895.
Late
in 1879 Lawrence sailed for Bombay and took up his first Indian Civil Service
appointment in Lahore on 5 December.
Lawrence experienced postings at all levels of the Indian Civil Service and in a wide geographical area like Punjab, Kurram Valley, Peshawar, Rajputana, Shimla and Delhi
Significant
experiences shaping Lawrence’s approach to Kashmir were
i.
His posting with Denzil Ibbetson who was
a Census officer for the city and District of Peshawar. Ibbetson was one of the
pioneers of anthropological and ethnographic studies in India.
Working
with Ibbetson enabled him to build up a fascinating and revealing picture of
Indian life, covering religion, race and customs.
Ibbetson highlighted the recognition of the importance of the village community, caste, and customary law and inculcated a climate of sympathy towards Indian society which had been lacking among most other officers. He argued that the British encouragement of the rights of the individual over the community had been a "grievous blunder" and saw anthropology and the understanding of Indian society to be key to the training of Indian Civil Service officers.
Ibbetson's own studies, Report on the Census of the Punjab 1881 and Punjab Castes are still standard works today. Lawrence's The Valley of Kashmir was to follow in this tradition.
i. In his Posting from 1882 until 1884 in Rajputana he became used to life without frequent European contact and began to assimilate Indian ideas and explore the language, customs (such
as festivals and processions) and village songs.
In Ajmir he first met his
future friend Edward Buck, who was a
Secretary to the Government of India and a mastermind in agricultural
development. Lawrence saw him as a great visionary.
ii.
In 1885, he acted as a Settlement
Officer for the assessment area of Kurnal-Umballa. One of Lawrence's two
principal assistants was a Muslim called Shah
Sahib. Lawrence respected his work and persuaded him to join the Kashmir
Settlement team in 1889.
iii.
But then came a letter from Sir Charles
Aitchison with the offer of the great advancement of an Under Secretaryship in
the Government of India, which Lawrence accepted. Lawrence naturally was
pleased about the promotion, but what delighted him more was that his chief
would be his old friend and mentor Sir Edward Buck, who was then Secretary to
the Government of India in the Department of Land Revenue and Agriculture.
These experiences enabled Lawrence to develop
expertise in the knowledge of agriculture and inculcate an appreciation for the
simple village life in the subcontinent.
In
the year 1888 Lawrence was offered a choice between three posts:
a. Under
Secretaryship in the Foreign Department;
b. First
Assistant to the Resident at I00 Hyderabad;
c. Settlement
Commissioner in Kashmir.
According
to his autobiography, it was the lure of the very name of Kashmir that drew him
to opt out for the third. To some friends, it seemed strange that Lawrence
accepted the Kashmir appointment - having reached the dizzy heights of central
government it seemed foolish to disappear out of sight, where he might be
overlooked for later promotions.
So,
in March 1889, at the age of 32, Lawrence and his family were to set off to
Kashmir.
Lawrence
was the Settlement Commissioner in Kashmir and Jammu State from April 1889
until after the Land Settlement survey was completed in September 1894.
This
Settlement and associated reforms were crucial elements in the development of
Kashmir and in the relations between the Government of India and Kashmir.
Part-II
Kashmir Before Lawrence Arrived
In
this part, we will discuss the historical events leading to the appointment of
Lawrence as a Land Settlement officer in Kashmir.
Transportation
problems
1. The
major problem in Kashmir before the 1880s was the lack of roads for wheeled carriages.
Therefore, the building of a cart road along the
Jhelum Valley to link Srinagar with the railway at Rawalpindi two hundred miles
away was a truly revolutionary development. This road was opened in 1890.
2. There
was no road over the Banihal Pass linking Jammu and the Valley until 1915.
Beggar
1. Under
this system peasants were forced to act as coolies, with no wages and no
compensation.
2. Women,
Sikhs, Hindus and city dwellers were all exempt, so the work always fell on
Muslim cultivators.
3. Naturally
enough, when officials approached a village the men would run and hide to avoid
being called to work as coolies - men pressed into service would sometimes be
away for weeks at a time if the official wanted something to be carried a long
way.
4. Since
he might be sent away at the harvest time, and since so much of the yield was
taken as revenue, there was little value in increasing his production.
5. Of
course, the system of beggars also generated deep bitterness among the Muslim
cultivators, especially in the villages near Srinagar which were always hardest
hit, because they were the easiest for the officials to reach.
6. Beggar
had significantly depopulated the villages following the 1877-79 famine which
led to a smaller workforce to call on, and a small but increasing number of
European tourists who also requisitioned labour.
Administration in Kashmir
i. The
appointment of Lawrence has antecedents which date back to the British victory in
the First Sikh War of 1845 Sikh rule ended in Kashmir. Under the Treaty of Lahore in 1846 the
British annexed much Sikh territory and by the Treaty of Amritsar in the same
year in turn granted Kashmir to Gulab Singh in return for Rs 75 lakhs. From this point began a period of Hindu Dogra rule
which saw Kashmir almost in the position of a semi-feudatory state.
ii. Many Brittishers consider the cession of Kashmir to
Gulab to be a big blunder.
iii. From
1846 Gulab Singh was to reign a state whose economy
had been devastated by the Sikh rule and had totally
iv. Gulab
Singh's first task was to restore order; he then had to improve trade and
commerce; reorganise the revenue administration, improve the distribution of
rice between urban and rural areas; reform begar (or forced labour); and
overhaul the shawl industry. He was unable to coordinate these reforms, nor
could he create a stable machinery of government.
v. He installed his son Ranbir Singh as Maharaja in 1856. Ranbir Singh attempted to follow in his father's footsteps as a reforming ruler but his efforts at land reform were of limited effectiveness. He made many efforts to improve trade and governance in Kashmir His well-intentioned efforts were nullified, however, for two reasons. The first was the result of the activities of his officials, who still tried to extract as much as they could out of the people,
As a result, people became unwilling to cultivate
more land as they received no benefit from doing so.
Britshers become more intervenist in Kashmir after
Gulab Sing. They wanted to avoid internal instability in Kashmir in order to
avoid the possibility of Russian Invasion. The British were happier with a buffer
between the frontiers of British India and Russia, rather than having a common
border and direct contact with Russia.
vi. BThe British appointed a special officer on duty to observe the territorial ambitions of the Dogras. As Britshers wanted stability on the northern borders.
When Ranbir Singh died in 1885, the British forced
his son Pratap Singh, the new Maharaja, to accept the appointment of a British
Resident. Which means more British intervention in Kashmir.
vii. There
were internal discords in Kashmir as people were extremely aggrieved by the
Maharaja. Clearly, something had to be done for Kashmir, an outright annexation
might provoke the very disturbance the British were striving to avoid, and in
any case, would be financially and militarily costly.
viii. In order to avoid both internal and external
threats British encouraged internal stability. British forced Maharaja Pratap
Singh to accept a British Land Settlement Officer, whose task would be to bring
about land reform. The reforms fell into two categories:
ix. Primary: The Foreign Department of the Government of India and the Resident saw reform of the state finances and judicial system as the primary objectives.
x. Secondary: The secondary measures were the improvement of the roads and bridges, the improvement of postal and telegraph arrangements, and the introduction of a coinage system.