Kashmir
is the habitat of numerous game animals, including the markhor and ibex (wild goat), stag, and bear. Most of the population is engaged in agriculture; the principal crops are rice, corn, wheat, and oilseeds. Among livestock raised are buffalo, cattle, sheep, goat, and poultry. Silk weaving and carpet weaving are major industries. The majority of the population is Muslim. Hindus and Sikhs are concentrated in the south around Jammu; a Buddhist minority is present in the northeast.
Kashmīr is an ancient area, deriving its name, according to tradition, from the Khasi, a people who lived in the northern mountains several centuries before the Christian era. The country was originally a stronghold of Hinduism; Buddhism was introduced about 245 bc. Beginning in the mid-14th century ad, Muslim sultans controlled the area for two centuries. Akbar, the Mughal emperor of Hindustan, conquered Kashmīr between 1586 and 1592, and it became a part of the Mughal Empire. In 1819, after a period of Afghan rule extending from 1756, Kashmīr was conquered by Ranjit Singh, the Sikh maharaja (Indian king or prince) of the Punjab. In 1846 Galub Singh, the ruler of Jammu, concluded a treaty with Britain, which by then dominated most of India, and was confirmed as ruler also of Kashmīr.
Following the August 1947 partition of British India into Pakistan and the Republic of India, a small portion of the predominantly Muslim population of Kashmīr demanded accession to Pakistan, a Muslim state. The reigning maharaja, Sir Hari Singh, a Hindu, resisted the pro-Pakistani movement. Pakistan invaded the area, after which the maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union. India thereupon dispatched troops to Kashmīr and in the ensuing conflict forced the Pakistanis to yield ground. Through mediations organized by the United Nations (UN), a cease-fire agreement between the two nations was concluded in January 1949. The agreement created a cease-fire line that divided the territory into Indian and Pakistani areas of control. Subsequent UN efforts to secure troop withdrawals and mediate a resolution satisfactory to both sides were unsuccessful. Heavy border fighting broke out in 1965, resulting in the second Indo-Pakistani war. A UN-brokered cease-fire agreement ended the war in late September, after three weeks of fighting.
In 1972 both sides agreed to abstain from the use of force to settle the Kashmīr dispute. However, a militant Muslim separatist movement opposed to Indian control in Kashmīr emerged in the late 1980s, and India increased its troop deployment in the region. India accused Pakistan of covertly supporting the militants, who were mostly based in Pakistani-controlled Kashmīr, but Pakistan claimed it provided only moral and diplomatic support. India refused secessionist demands to hold a plebiscite (a vote in which the local population would determine the territorial status) in the portion it controlled, claiming that the vote of the Jammu and Kashmīr legislature in the mid-1950s to integrate fully into India made a plebiscite unnecessary. In the absence of a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, violent clashes continued between Indian troops and secessionist militants in the region. Armed conflicts escalated in 1999 and 2002, raising concerns in the international community that India and Pakistan were on the brink of another war over the disputed territory.
The border between India and China in Kashmīr has also been a matter of dispute, and the issue flared into open battle in 1962. Since then the two countries have respected current lines of control, and in the 1990s the countries’ leaders signed agreements to reduce troops along the line, open border posts to trade, and to resolve the dispute by peaceful means. |
