A Day When Humans Were Sold!
Our world, inhabited by the supreme creation that we call Humans, witnessed the rise and fall of many empires over its history. History has many distinctive aspects that turn it to an exceptional entity thereby letting people of all ages, colours, and tastes to oscillate about its timeline and get a line of events from diversified perspectives arriving at conclusions, though diversified in nature. That is the essence of history and its timeline is an axis of that essence. The influence of events of history do not just lock up to the walls and barricades of the time they occur in, however, it stretches across many generations of human society directly affecting their lives.
British Empire, one of the major empires of the world’s history, brought our part of the world, Indian Sub continent or more specifically South Asia, under its domain and allowed it to enjoy the sobriquet “the empire on which the sun never sets” while being its part for scores of decades. Empires, when fade away, leave their legacy behind on the timeline of history. British Empire was no exception and hence, left behind enormous legacy for the people of the sub continent to move on from there. Were people of the sub continent able to steer the wheels of the British legacy and polish it to uplift their societies is a story for another day to dabble about. However, British legacy is there on the timeline of history for us to dive in to see all its sides, angles and curves and doing so while being just, honest, earnest, rational and objective would surely add the required flavor for our dive. Anyone, with brains not frozen beyond any rational objectivity, can dip a toe in the ocean of British legacy and enjoy its rise and fall over the timeline of history.
Calling it imperialistic or colonial legacy will have no bearing on the positives that it offered to the sub continent to cherish. British rewarded sub continent with India, which met with a tragic partition causing untold human sufferings with the formation of new independent states of India and Pakistan. Had it not been for the British sub continent would have turned into hundreds of countries. There then, of course, are myriad concrete threads to pick up from this very legacy in terms of infrastructure, industry, institutions, and the list go on the trot. Above them all British offered sub continent, democracy. Uh-oh! These lines could cause knee-jerk reactions amongst many readers but it is a reality. That said, therefore, no fiddlesticks!
While one trickles through the timeline of history, the chinks in the British Empire’s legacy begin to surface indicating the empire’s reputation was in shreds at many points of time. There were many events that marked the lowest ebb in the history of British Empire in sub continent. One such day was March 16, 1846 when the notorious Treaty of Amritsar was signed between British Empire and Maharja Gulab Singh Dogra. Indeed! It was the day when clouds of despair engulfed the shining sun and hanged over the entire sub continent. There was no sun ray that could pierce the clouds and blossom the land, and how could it be, since an unholy deal, the precedence of which was never seen before on the timeline of history, got struck between the two parties over the fate of the nation (or kingdom) of Kashmir.
British Empire, while being in its early sojourn of the sub continent, sold Kashmir to Maharaja Gulab Singh for just 75 lakhs (7.5 million) of Nanukshahee Rupees, the then currency of Punjab, and left behind the mark on the timeline of history so deep that it is still reverberating amidst the enchanting valleys of Kashmir. Thus, Kashmir along with its beautiful plains, golden-yellow plateaus, lush green meadows, colorful mountains, and above them all hospitable people living here were put on a weighing scale by none other than British. Nation along with the humans was sold and bought by the parties who were both aliens to them. How ironic? Isn’t? A deep crevice, right in the middle of the shining wall, cuts through the British legacy. The shining sun of British Empire would have hid its face behind the gloomy clouds of hopelessness because the demonic deal not just dumped the people of Kashmir physically but it drew the curtain on their wishes, desires, hopes, dreams and aspirations. Peace, in Kashmir, got faded into that spring evening and is yet to appear from the east in the morning. People of Kashmir ever go back to that day and wonder how things would have gone if British had not sealed the deal of their dreams. No deal, while significant, strategic and even sacred, is equivalent to human lives. British put Kashmir off the radar on that fateful spring day. Scores of years, around 170 in number, have passed by. Myriad generations arrived and lived the timeline of history. British Empire is no more existent after enjoying its rise to horizons, downfall to ground and finally perishing to ashes. However, Kashmir is still searching for a frequency that will push her back to the radar.
It baffles the neurons, does it not, as to what let British to turn from being human rights propounders to human rights violators. British were the torch-bearers in abolishing the phenomenon of slavery whereas on that day of spring, in the sub continent, they enforced it on the people who over the centuries have been known for their simplicity and hospitality. Isn’t a gory crime to sell a nation? In what category does this inhuman crime falls? That fateful day of March 16 would have shaken up the very foundations of the British Empire, as British not just perpetrated the flagrant violations of human rights and civil rights but they went one step ahead by whacking their own British or Western values.
History plays its own music that fills the atmosphere when its unique strings vibrate. History, in 1947 exactly after 100 years of that fateful spring day of 16 March 1846, was on the side of British and offered them a golden opportunity to correct all the wrongs that had been dogging them for over a century. British Empire, no suspicion about it, was on the verge of relegation when sub continent met with the catastrophic partition. However, it still mustered the strength to challenge the adversity and supervised the birth of two independent states of India and Pakistan. The events that careened into a calamity of partition turned sub continent into blazing flames, sky above sub continent lost the shine, earth got shattered, rivers and lakes turned to red and above them all indescribable human sufferings. Our sub continent during partition was infused and infected with a sting worse than the most dangerous snake on the planet. The gory events could have been avoided if the players of British Empire and stalwarts of Congress and Muslim League would have thought rationally and objectively. At the end, with one of the great tragedies of the world’s history, two new states appeared on the map of the world. However, in the midst of all, British failed to address Kashmir again. Hospitable People of Kashmir clung on to a sense of hope, hoping British would transform it into belief. All those doubts about what British had done before, those suspicions about their inhuman act before a century, those queries over whether British would do it this time could not slide away. Instead, they remained there in the form of dark and black clouds hovering over the sky of Kashmir. Kashmir, since then, is still struggling to find a saviour.
Had British addressed it at the time of partition itself, Kashmir would not have been what it is today? Sub continent would have been a better place. That said, no jury could decree otherwise. It was total fiasco on the part of British that they could not identify the crucial moment. Fortunes of people of Kashmir got dipped and soared yet again as they contemplated an uncertain future. Prophecy, ranging from British fiasco passing through partition, UN resolutions, 1953 event, 1975 accord to the current chaos (from 1990-till date has pushed Kashmir deep into murky waters and torn apart her everything including the sacred social fabric) has left an ugly stain on the Paradise of earth. British could have put on brakes over all this because they were in the perfect position to address it once for all. Had they addressed it, of course, without any doubt, it would have kept the British legacy’s head above water.
Circumstances, in Kashmir as of now, are less than ideal. However, it is about Kashmiri people, of all spectrums, who do not give up in the face of adversity and persevere with their valued efforts and priceless contributions, which will bring back peace, diversity, harmony, tranquility and above them all the very culture of Kashmir, the roots of which have been watered over by the harmony and love of the generations preceding us.
‘Hopelessness is sin’, is what is very apparent in bold letters in the divine text. Morning, while peeping out every dawn after piercing through the dreaded darkness of the night, brings with it the heavenly message of hope, progress, love, and nurturing of life to all the spheres of the planet surpassing all the boundaries of regions and cultures. A morning will surely rise above from the east over the skies of Kashmir heralding in a new era where everyone will be back to their homes, human hearts will find solace, music of humanity will fill the air and sooth the spirit, the aroma of social fabric will get laden in the surroundings and disperse over the skies of the entire sub continent. Kashmir will get back the sheen that it has lost. Kashmir will surely display the essence of living together in plurality the way it had shown before, even in times when sub continent was in flames. Let us not allow our sacred hopes to fade away.
About Author :
Ajaz Khan is a Solutions Architect and hails from Srinagar, Occupied Kashmir.He can be reached at [email protected].
Courtesy :
http://kashmirtimes.com/news.aspx?ndid=30736
