A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting with some local guys consuming copious amounts of alcohol to the backdrop of a varied playlist, and it dawned upon me that my opposite number were unaware of the caste titles they were fondly using as an address of endearment. “Chaudhry” this, “Rajah” that, these were the sorts of titles thrown about as if the persons being addressed in this manner belonged to a background that distinguished them from those being addressed by their names. Not that I had any anxieties about the labels, how could I? I come from the same backgrounds. In Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (we need to stop acting like cowards – Pakistan is militarily occupying Kashmir), my clan members are commonly addressed as Chaudhry whilst those living on the opposite side of the border in mainland Pakistan are identified as Rajeh. I’m speaking of distant cousins from the same landed ancestral backgrounds whose great, great,… grandparents would marry into the extended tribal networks, or at least those committed to preserving kinship ties and their sense of tribal honour. They would never marry out of the tribe except to landed tribes and clans with greater prestige. As the landed groups grew progressively poorer, this priority seemed illusive.

In my adolescent years, I used to think of the distinguishing clan titles as rather curious, but as I began to dabble in the history and historiography of the subcontinent, the latter of which was heavily influenced by colonial paradigms, I discovered the arbitrary nature of nobility titles within a fluid system of patronage greatly exaggerated by colonial ethnologists. This is a fascinating history if properly understood would reveal how much colonial ethnographers and administrators influenced an entire nation’s attitudes, and it’s not necessarily positive. The caste identities they confronted, lineage-based and occupational, (an entirely colonial distinction for “the low castes”) were categorised according to a system that fixed the boundaries of group identities and their corresponding social prestige.

The irony of this is that the colonial Brits created the categories, modern Brits debunked them, whilst the colonised are still posturing through the old paradigms. Colonialism may have ended, but its legacy still lives on through mental occupation.

Can ironies get more poetic?

Let me be crystal clear though. When I speak of the pervasiveness of caste attitudes I’m really speaking about feudal Pakistan of the old ancestral tribal networks from which most of Pakistan and North India’s landed communities originate. Recruitment into the Pak Fauj (army) is mostly restricted to these “lineage” groups. It is absolutely the case that colonial notions of the martial race theory predetermine who gets recruited into the Military Establishment, minus affirmative action like policies that incorporate the upwardly mobile occupational castes.

In the domain of the upwardly mobile Pakistanis, the cities and their urban heartlands, things are different and not necessarily for the better. 

In recent decades, western commentators have been referring to British Pakistanis “from the cities” as citified Pakistanis. Originally comprised of humbler backgrounds, “the occupational castes” of the British colonial imagination, citified Pakistanis do what upwardly mobile people do everywhere, they try to morph into the dominant social groups when they become educated, affluent and socially connected. Within the specific context of Britain’s system of social stratification, this has meant posturing through highly imaginary class distinctions that separate “village Pakistanis” from “citified Pakistanis”; the working class and the middle class. As a self-conscious group – akin, perhaps, in the tradition of Mrs Bouquet, “Mrs Bucket” – I deploy the idea analytically and not pejoratively, the identity in question is performative. It is rooted in the anxiety of being urban and not rural to contrast oneself, or a set of related people, from the lessor Pakistanis – “the gaun logg” (village people).

Mrs Bouquet fits the social profile of upwardly mobile Pakistanis and has become the basis of jokes and humour across Pakistan, a kind of unconscious inversion of the system by those feeling demeaned on account of being reduced to “villager” status. Likewise, the performative aspect of originating from a city owes a lot to insecurities and anxieties of a people, who can’t quite shrug off aspects of their former lives, notably the low-caste identities of ancestral forebears.

The older memories are still accessible to people less amenable to the changing identities, (adopting Urdu, moving to urban spaces, claiming a Muslim origin despite one’s ancestors being low caste Hindus, stigmatising “the village (landed) Pakistanis”, who are now being accused of being Hindus, albeit high caste ones). The landed Pakistanis continue to have a sense of their own downward mobility. Their collective power has been greatly depleted, which holds equally true for the landed lineage-based identities in India. Successive Indian governments have tried to address the scourge of caste-based inequality in India, which means empowering and disempowering certain identities to bring about equality in the society.

A good thing, no doubt, some would say. I have my reservations.

In Pakistan, the upwardly mobile Pakistanis adopt Persian and Arabic sounding names, claiming newer titles to accommodate a completely fabricated social status that doesn’t even exist outside their groups. It includes a middle-class salariat doing government jobs, acquired mostly through nepotism – the incumbents recruit from their own circles. Like their Zamindar (landed-peers), the newly constituted Pakistanis lack a basic familiarity with the older social norms that had never existed in the way the identities are being instrumentalised, socially and politically. Both groups are imagining their purported “backgrounds” in terms of how they see themselves, which in the case of urban Pakistan is becoming fractious.

Citified Pakistanis are trying to approximate to more respectable backgrounds outside Pakistan because they want status, something their forebears acutely lacked. In the process, they become distant from the actual past of their parents and grandparents, who, sadly, put them on this trajectory. The incumbents end up creating boundaries with otherwise closely related people, as opposed to extolling the past glories of a forgotten age, which, strictly speaking, belongs to the downwardly mobile groups, not necessarily connected with the people now claiming that identity either.

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Looking back now, years later, at the lively conversations between my peers about their respective backgrounds, I laugh with such ferocity that you would be forgiven for thinking that I was high on some illicit substance. Nothing can get you flying through the clouds like the convictions of well-intentioned people passionately arguing about realities they’ve never probed. Of course, they get offended when you tell them, “no, it’s just not true. Just because you say you’re a ‘Rajah’, doesn’t mean that your ancestors lived in the Taj Mahal. And no, you’re not connected with the Royal Rajput families of medieval India because you said you’re a Rajah. How can you be, when you keep saying that your ancestors came from Afghanistan, or was it Turkey now? You really need to get your story straight. I have yet to read about the Rajput Dynasties of Afghanistan which apparently are connected with Pathans, which you claim to be when it suits you!”

Talk about being confused.

Conventional wisdom is a terrible thing if you’ve never had the occasion or willingness to question what people are telling you. Popular anecdotes are worse. Take the claim that Rajeh sold out to the British, a favourite past time of those who want to flog this dead horse. What about the similar charge against the Jat? They too ‘sold out’, apparently, happily being recruited into the British Indian Army. Numerous Princely Rulers across the British Indian Empire came from Jat and Rajput backgrounds. Being unfamiliar with how these identities came about and how diverse the groups actually were leads to messy conclusions. Not all Jat are Jat in the way a universal Jat identity is imagined on the Punjab Plains, and likewise not all Rajeh are connected with the Tribal Confederacies of Ancient India that historians speak of as the Rajput. This is a particular formation that belongs to a particular region and period of Indian history not necessarily connected with the hills and mountains of Jammu & Kashmir and contiguous areas. The Rajput label means different things to different people and is being used by divergent groups not necessarily connected with the original progenitors of that identity. But even this complex history is contested. It is really difficult to understand, the terrain is hard to map, and no one knows for sure how the group-identities emerged.

And this was what I was up against when I said to a friend, “please don’t call me a Chaudhry or a Rajah because I don’t feel like one.” There was a subtext here that my readers won’t understand until they’ve had the misfortune of growing up in a caste-conscious, male-dominated patriarchy, that has no sense of history. Without exaggerating the problem, attitudes have massively changed here in the UK amongst a generation with different anxieties and priorities. The caste system is, more or less, dead for British-born Azad Kashmiris, which is a good thing.

British Azad Kashmiris are effortlessly merging into different communities, marrying into different backgrounds, developing a sense of the endless possibilities the Free World can offer them; democracy, genuine freedoms, human rights, real personal autonomy, and a genuine outlet for their aspirations and creativity. But, the pervasiveness of Pakistan’s caste system (the elephant in the room) greatly exaggerated by colonial officers still linger in their conversations.

We know nothing of that past. And this is evident in the conversations we have in private among like-minded peers, who think they are experts on the actual social stratification of regions, conflating authoritarian politics with ethnology, confusing social class with social climbing, instrumentalising colonialism as the archenemy of Islam, a religion that first came into the frontiers of India through an invading army according to the Arabs writing this history. The net result of being ignorant are deep seated insecurities about one’s place in the world. So many times I’ve had to say, “listen you idiots, there’s no such thing as a “Kammi” or lowborn caste, your mate is not ‘cheap’ or ‘miserly’ because he happens to come from the barber or labouring caste.

“What you’re saying is untrue and deeply racist!”

Ironically, upward mobility of the “low castes” is behind the new identities, and it is not merely about getting ahead in life, as it is about escaping social stigma – the actual memories being suppressed. The people doing the hating are overcompensating to belong to a nobler origin, when they try to demean others in the hope of solidifying their social boundaries, proof that they were never of humble stock, which they were all along. 

It is a very different social and economic dynamic to downward mobility, which is the real story of the real Rajeh and the real Chaudhry of the Western Himalaya (a place of refuge, and not a place of origin), or, at least, those connected with this documented past, a very small number of “identities” connected with an old nobility class outside the region. The scions of this history ended up in various parts of the Western Himalaya – the mountains – because of conflict and war, usually as vanquished tribes, merging into the existing networks.

They were exiled from more powerful regions, memories that continue to be passed down throughout the generations. I have been exploring this history for more than a decade now, and it is at complete variance with the narratives being churned out on YouTube and Pakistani-Indian forums that want to degrade the linear descendants of this past, oddly by people claiming to come from the same backgrounds, which begs the question, who is really behind the political propaganda?

The term “Kammi” for identities outside this particular history is pejorative and offensive. It can mean “lowborn”, “low-caste”, “of low social status“, “peasant”, “of no independent means (lacking lands) linked with patronage” . The Arabic equivalent is “Ajlaf” which implies the same thing. Both terms capture the deeply dehumanising idea that people who belong to stigmatised backgrounds, the non-landed occupational castes, are somehow “less refined” or “gracious” in their dispositional habits and traits because they are bereft, “faqid ul-shay la u’ti”, to borrow an Arabic saying.

Now, just imagine for one moment, someone arguing such a point displaying the projected traits, attending charitable functions because food will be served? Or someone paying for a buffet meal insisting that he eat everything in the restaurant because it costs a measly £20? Imagine, for one moment, “a self-appointed elite”, amongst their own circle, behaving sheepishly around others, claiming to have descended from ancient rulers, with no genuine social status outside the one ascribed to themselves? You would hardly think this behaviour reflective of refined traits genetically inherited from a nobility class that built huge palaces which are still visited today by millions of tourists?

If someone has anxieties paying the fee to enter such a venue, what’s the likelihood of the person descending from the people being celebrated? Norms that are celebrated, are celebrated because they are valuable (valued = values). In my mind such behaviour is what is meant by the term cognitive dissonance. According to the theory, a person whose beliefs are inconsistent with his or her behaviour exhibits dissonance. He or she is other than what is being claimed. This would be akin to immigrant Muslims insisting on eating halal (permitted) foods and staying away from haram (prohibited) acts – as the cost of their identity, accruing haram income through impermissible (shar’i) professions, trades and criminal behaviour; in Islam the means always justify the ends. They then donate some of the proceeds of their illicit activities to the construction of Mosques, sadaqa being the motivating factor, they tell others. In the Islamic ethical code system, means must always justify the ends, inconsistencies around this norm would not be permitted.

This is precisely an example cognitive dissonance, the acts in question do not flow from the values and core beliefs embodied in the celebrated, and supposedly, cherished identity. 

There is a disconnect.

To say someone is “cheap” or “lowborn” because of questionable traits, whilst the enlightened protagonist hides his favourite sweets, not sharing them out, eagerly accumulating a stockpile from the largess of others, claiming to be highborn, is dissonance – apologies for the crude metaphors. Constantly being entertained at someone’s expense, turning up at someone’s residence to hang out with “equals”, would not have put you in good stead with the old nobility class. Aside from issues of “lineage”, the old groups knew who was who.

The Rajah and Chaudhry of the past belonged to an established patronage network with a complex system of investiture, both symbolic and material. We are speaking of honorific titles for people connected to potentates. They are not the residue of a distant primordial origin, greatly imagined by people inventing their pasts. The old feudatories were linked to a nobility class on the basis of military or tax collecting services (reciprocation) rendered to the overlords. There were of course other functions. The titles varied. Sometimes, they were dropped in exchange of other titles; the more a nobleman surpassed his competitors, the weightier his title. A particularly ambitious Rajah would be awarded more land as he pushed the frontier of his master’s realm into the lands of enemies. The larger his landed estate, the greater his social prestige, all of which was in lieu of cash payments. For obvious reasons, the King wasn’t handing out salaries to his feudatories with accompanying P60s, and so land had a special significance in the minds of the people living during this period.

Not only was it a source of income, but it proved who the nobility class were. 

The situation was fluid, and patrons would demote their clients often. Wars were a liability for existing feudatories, required to fight with their men or tribally-linked mercenaries whenever the Emperor summoned them. With limited prospects for booty (a troubling proposition in its own right, humans were being enslaved), most chiefs were reluctant to heed the call “get ready for war!” Ask any modern General, he’d tell you war is horrible and death-bestowing. Ambitious people are usually in the business of living and not dying. It’s usually self-appointed patriots who never do the fighting, their sons and daughters comfortably lodged at boarding school, eager to send the sons of the poor into battle.

“Fight for Queen and Country!” “Fight for your honour”.

It is always the naive and impressionable who fall for propaganda, to quell some deep disquite in their own persons – akin, perhaps, to the upwardly mobile, looking to reinvent themselves because they feel ashamed of their past. Political or ideological manipulation isn’t just a racial or religious supremacist problem, it’s a global problem. The people engaged in war-talk rarely venture into the death-bestowing arenas they worship. Casualties and fatalities – usually women and children, are always collateral to the actual firebrands spearheading the patriotic acts of national glory. The hyper-masculinity on display is a performative group identity, and not a lived experience, it’s actually borne of insecurities and anxieties.

Think of it this way, why would people with money sing about money? Why would HipHop rappers sing about women, wealth and fame – of being strong and independent, if there was no insecurity on account of a past we all should find disturbing? And what is the identity of the people who buy into such narratives? The upwardly mobile, whether it is fashion, social status, or some other illusory priority, become receptive audiences, they can approximate to the new identities.

The elites of colonial India weren’t dissimilar to elites in any other part of the world, where we have documented history. They could separate the rhetoric of their propaganda from actual priorities. And they weren’t deluded by hype. The power-structure could and did change, new aspirants would enter the patronage networks, others would be ejected from it, by having their heads chopped off. It was that brutal.

Then there was the old age problem of sibling and family rivalries, bitterness and resentment, brothers trying to topple brothers, nephews trying to undermine uncles, ambitious rivals jostling for position, whilst others watched on, sneakily – “like a fox” from the sidelines to take advantage of the internal chaos. The old nobility would always chastise themselves for allowing themselves to be played by the “pretenders”. This is a system that has been documented, and whenever we speak of the clan based tribes of a lineage system in our ancestral regions, we are speaking about a particular entente, and not necessarily a caste identity rooted in North India, purportedly, dividing millions of people into a four-fold idealised scheme of castes with corresponding notions of ritual purity – a different social and cultural ecology that is similarly exaggerated by people now claiming to be Brahmans. What is today Jammu & Kashmir, or at least the south western regions of Kashmir State, and the neighbouring regions, were Buddhists and not Hindus. When the invading Muslims first encountered “the natives of this region, which, incidentally, included Afghanistan, they spoke of Buddhists, and not Hindus.”


The New Brahmans

I’ve often heard from individuals from “Kashmir”, originally from the Panjab Plains merging with the hills/mountains of the Western Himalaya, where Kashmir State is located, making ahistorical and self-affirming claims about their backgrounds, not realising that they are imagining the past from the vantage of occupational caste anxieties. To give you one example, I’m surprised by the number of ‘caste-Kashmiris‘ living in the Punjab now, Punjabi speaking people from mainland Pakistan claiming to have originated from Kashmir on the strength of an adopted surname. By the sheer ingenuity of adding a surname to their birth names, they’ve become Brahmans, “because every primordial Kashmiri was a Brahman before he was forcibly converted to Islam”, according to the Hindu Nationalists pushing this propaganda, aware of the anxieties of the Punjabi Caste Kashmiris and the stigma of the Pakistani caste system.

To redeem my brothers and sisters who are obsessed about returning themselves as Kashmiris by Zaat, I would like to point out to them that Hindus have always been a minority amongst Kashmiris – that’s just a fact of history, mindful of how actual identities emerge and are subsequently documented. The old books exist, and they should read how Kashmiris emerged in the full light of history.

When the term Kashmiri was first invoked during colonial times for an imagined group from Jammu and Kashmir State, (when Kashmir became the land of Kashmiris), it implied “Muslim” and not “Hindu”, and usually people who were poor, landless and of occupational backgrounds. There’s a reason why Hindu Pandits were keen to add the word Pandit to Kashmiri, giving us the Kashmiri Pandit alternative.

If you’re a “Kashmiri”, why would you add the word, “Pandit” to your identity?

Kashmiris were, of course, Muslims.

Ethnonationalists in India, the Hindu Nationalists, are telling everyone on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and their domestic “News” audiences that Hindus have always been the real “ethnic” Kashmiris since the beginning of the human race. Muslims are thus imposters to this identity, apparently, because they were forcibly converted to Islam. The claim is simply not borne out by any historical evidence.

Punjabi Caste Kashmiris (Pakistanis) frequently deploy the Hindu Nationalistic claims unaware of what is really being argued, namely Kashmir belongs to Hindus, and the descendants of Kashyap Rishi, a Hindu sage who apparently has “Brahman” descendants in Tamil Nadu too. The sheer cynicism of the claim is apparent to anyone who understands political propaganda masquerading as lineage and ancestry; fortunately, we have genomic data to prove and disprove which people descend from which people (clusters), so long as the politics of authoritarianism does not become genomic research, but I have my reservations. If Authoritarians can take over States, what stops them from taking over commercial DNA companies and determining the correct labels for genetic clusters? A discussion for another post.

One merely need visit Quora, Wikipedia, and the other interactive digital spaces dominated by the anonymous accounts to see the journey of false narratives. Pakistan’s ISI are currently trying to manipulate “real Kashmiris” of Pakistan Punjab Province against the “false Kashmiris” of Azad Kashmir, who want Kashmir to become an independent state, not just from India but Pakistan too.

The caste Kashmiris buying into the confirmation bias of a Pakistan nationalistic identity are unaware of the sensibilities behind the politically constructed memories. There was no idyllic Kashmiri Identity in the Kashmir Vale before their “ancestors” ended up on the Plains of the Punjab as refugees from Kashmir. Aside from not being connected to a Kashmir heritage through linear descent, there was no Brahman priestly order of any sizeable stature in the region (areas converted to Islam) that existed centuries earlier, on the outskirts of an established Brahmanical order.

One can extract this history from the works of highly reputable Indian scholars, who are being chastised as being Marxists, Liberals, and Muslims. In ancient times, (if history counts for anything) the Gandhara and Kamboja regions where modern-day Kashmir is located, was described by Brahman writers as ‘Mleccha-desh‘ or the ‘land of the barbarians/foreigners’. The area was home to a thriving Buddhist heritage that was considered outside the pale of the ‘twice-born’ upper-caste Hindus in what is today North India.

This is history, and it is documented in numerous ancient writings.

In North India, the people subscribing to brahmanical norms were subject to the patronage of Kshattriya rulers (later identified as the ancestors of the Rajput). The Buddhists of the region before Islam swept across the region after 1000 CE, didn’t care an iota for the self-affirming prejudice of Brahmans, and this could be seen in the writings of the latter. The Buddhists were far more affluent than their Brahman rivals, courtesy of the Silk Road.

The region’s proximity to Central and West Asia, without obsessing about race theories – a recurring theme on Pakistani internet forums, (the claims are beyond cringe-worthy), meant that it was really a frontier to the Indo-Gangetic Plains of North India. It was understandably the first region to be settled by foreigners, if indeed we imagine this vast expanse to be part of a primordial India, which it wasn’t. 

The India of the Hindu Nationalists is a fiction. It is akin to the Islamist fiction of the Muslim World.

It is akin to the fiction of “white power” of the White Supremacist imagination.

We are dealing with imaginary identities. In this respect, I recall Will Self’s claim just after Brexit that not all “Brexiteers are racists, but all racists are Brexiteers” to capture some of the ironies behind group identities posturing through anxieties. Some people exclude others from a shared group belonging, not because they are separate groups, but because they want to police the group boundaries.

We are dealing with anxieties and insecurities, and not primordial identities. The ambitious upwardly mobile always join the dominant groups (the majority) because they feel they have been given a stake in the new world order. History tells us an altogether different story.

It is always the “primordial” outsiders who eventually get persecuted.

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The populations that settled the frontier regions of the old India, according to Western accounts, were originally nomadic offering little deference to Brahmanical norms of ritual purity. The nomads consumed meat, fraternised freely with different backgrounds including women (no caste restrictions), and worshipped a pantheon of gods, foreign, native, or otherwise. In time, they settled, became Buddhists and some became Hindus, moving eastwards onto the Plains of India to join the emerging Aryan Confederacies there, but not in the way we would imagine a modern-day nationalistic identity. 

The Hinduism of the past – a highly sophisticated system of thought with a beauty of its own – was a lot more fluid, more flexible than what it is today, outside the ideological rumblings of Hindu Nationalism, a political project that has usurped a Hindu identity, a bit like Islamo-fascists (Islamists) claiming to be Muslims. The chap credited for founding Hindu Nationalism, or Hindutva, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, was an atheist, and quite a formidable intellectual to be fair to him.

The chap credited with creating Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was also, in all likelihood, an atheist to capture the ironies of political ideologues speaking in defence of “persecuted minorities”. The parallel between Jinnah and Savarkar however stops with disbelief in God. Unlike Savarkar, openly atheist, Jinnah was a closet atheist and the grandson of a Hindu convert to Islam, colluding with British India to get his Pakistan. Savarkar was imprisoned on numerous occasions because of his beliefs, which is a good indicator of which interests approximate to power structures, and which interests seek to overthrow them.

Pakistan was created by colonial Britain, and yet we have ideological Pakistanis speaking ill of colonialism.

This too is an example of cognitive dissonance.

With the upheavals in our region and neighbouring areas, a power-structure emerged rooted in the patronage network I’ve described. It was power that defined privilege and status, and not necessarily the sacred vocation of Brahman priests, who were keen to promote themselves to the top of their own caste-system, or at least, this is how colonial writers described their behaviour. I’m more concerned with how groups were represented, (narrative-creation), as opposed to how actual power is exercised by elites; aspirants of social status usually approximate to the dominant groups. The rulers had real power, the Brahmans were subservient to the rulers and at the mercy of their largess. Although ‘lower-castes’ existed within the region (non-lineage based), what the British called ‘occupational groups’ courtesy of their prejudice, there was little interconnection between brahmanical norms and an “untouchable class” of “outcasts”. The word “outcast” is related to the Portuguese word “caste”, to appreciate how words are used in everyday speech, mindful of the people who take such words for granted unaware of how the corresponding ideas emerged in the first place.

The new “Brahmans” are unaware of how Kashmiri occupational castes (non-clans/tribes, i.e., non lineage-based) were treated in the wider region even in recent decades. I encourage them to speak to their grandparents, the majority of whom were not Brahmin, and whose forbears neither identified as ‘Bhat’, ‘Dar’, ‘Khawajah’, ‘Mir’ – terms wrongly associated with the social stratification that emerged in the Vale precisely because of unjust social norms. 

The invented caste titles projected through surnames, were adopted later by “descendants” projecting backwards, and mean different things to different people. They carry different levels of social prestige for unrelated groups not necessarily connected with the landed-backgrounds. Crucially, they are not the exclusive property of “ethnic Kashmiris” with supposed roots in the Vale of Kashmir, Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, let alone the property of the landless refugees settling on the Indian Plains because of famine and poverty. Many groups outside the Vale, use these titles without necessarily making claims to a primordial Kashmiri background.

As a side note, some ethnic Kashmiris converted to Sikhism, but because Sikhism is connected with the Punjab, it as if every Kashmiri Sikh migrated to the Vale from the direction of the Punjab, and not the other way round. I cite the Sikh example to show how false narratives emerge around ethnicity and conversions, instrumentalised later to include and exclude populations for political reasons.

The overwhelming majority of caste-Kashmiris in the Punjab, were increasingly being identified as Kashmiris (i.e., Kashmiri by “zaat”/caste as separate to nation, “qaum”) by a power structure creating the categories. It was officials who ended up, inadvertently, creating the caste Kashmiri identity for Muslims, and not an ethnicity rooted in a particular cultural ecology. The majority of the outbound Kashmiris were not from the Vale of Kashmir in the sense of originating from a boxed-off and delineated ethnic space, as many Punjabi “Kashmiris” obsess about this ahistorical identity given the contested nature of the Kashmir Conflict. 

“Muslim Kashmiris” came from all over the Jammu & Kashmir State, with large numbers coming from the Chibhal region – as it was called during the famines, the Pahari speaking areas of Jammu & Kashmir. Azad Kashmir is located entirely in this space, but even this innocuous fact of history is being contested by Pakistan and India, who want to locate Azad Kashmir in the Punjab and not Jammu & Kashmir. The Pahari speaking region of erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir is situated on tectonic plates that have caused numerous earthquakes in the region, the Muzaffarabad earthquake being the most recent in 2005, leading to destruction of settlements and population dispersals.

“Kashmiri” refugees were fleeing famine, ending up on the Plains of Panjab, and further afield in India, precisely because they were landless and poor – nothing tied them to land, from which social status was traditionally accrued and ascribed. They were treated poorly on the Plains because of being landless, “Kammi”, “Ajlaf” – to use the corresponding and dehumanising labels. It was much easier for the census takers in Kashmir State and British Punjab Province to subsume the outbound migrants within a generic “Muslim Kashmiri” category. The census compilers explicitly mentioned that the majority of “Muslim Kashmiris” returned in Punjab and Kashmir State censuses were actually from Chibhal and not the Vale of Kashmir. These official writings predate the Kashmir Conflict to appreciate the skewed narratives one encounters on Wikipedia about ethnic Kashmiris in Punjab, and oddly, Azad Kashmir.

Who exactly are “Kashmiris” in Azad Kashmir, if not the 4.5 million Azad Kashmiris? More pertinently, who exactly is writing the Wikipedia posts on Azad Kashmiris?

Outside Kashmir State, Kashmiris were treated poorly on account of being landless. It was because of colonial practises that rendered an incredibly diverse population from the Western Himalaya, from numerous Valleys, “Kashmiri”, and not because of some primordial “Kashmiri” identity that had existed for thousands of years. The fact that I have to say, ethnic primordialism is a ludicrous idea because ethnic identities are social constructs linked with nation states, just shows how far simplistic ideas can spread in communities with limited human capital. Ethnic group identities are modern-day inventions. No one with a modicum of intellectual integrity would deny this fact, except for the ethno-nationalists policing identities.

We are dealing with group fictions – that’s the academic consensus across the world.


Kashmir State was Territory, not Ethnicity

Before the emergence of Kashmir State as 85, 86000 square miles of territory, the landmass (geographical region) traditionally connected with the idea of Kashmir (a place) was much larger than the small Vale of Kashmir now imagined as the exclusive locus of an ethnic identity called Kashur. The Kashmir of Antiquity was larger than the Kashmir of the ethnic Kashmiri imagination and it had historically extended westwards into the Pothohar Uplands and the Hazara Hills of today’s Khyber Pakhtunkwa Province. 

The Mughals at the time of Akbar reconfigured areas traditionally associated with Kashmir and added them to their expansive Lahore Province, but some of Ancient Kashmir’s adjacent areas remained connected with the Mughal’s Kashmir Subah (province). These areas continue to be part of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (Jibhal or Chibhal is one such example), having been ruled for a short time by the Sikh Confederacy, whose leaders had their own definitions of the Punjab which, revealingly, excluded the Pothohar Uplands and the Hazara Hills from their Punjab-specific definition of what constituted Punjab. The Panjab definition was not merely geographic, linked with 5 rivers, but descriptive; it implied flat fertile lands that happened to be situated in Eastern Punjab, conterminous with the Alluvial Plain that goes by the same name. In the strictest possible sense of the term, the Punjab celebrated by writers comprised a geological plain, from which imagery derives sentiments of a rural Punjabi identity rooted in the idea of farming and lush harvests. This definition excluded what is today Azad Kashmir from notions of a Punjab-wide identity, except fertile lands. The fact of having fertile lands in Azad Kashmir does not make Azad Kashmiris, Punjabis – that’s an extrapolation of an origin myth.

Eventually, the term Punjab, geographically speaking, became conterminous with the idea of the Lahore Province as it expanded to include the old Mughal Multan Province and many other areas. It excluded areas of Jammu & Kashmir State. Moreover, Western Punjab, (I speak of the Province), was never really considered part of the Punjab Proper to use the correct colonial terminology. 

But that’s just the nature of changing power-dynamics and how identity-labels subsequently emerge. It has nothing to do with what dialect a person speaks, which has become an Indian-Pakistani ploy to render Azad Kashmiris, “Punjabis”, to erase them from Kashmir State. The same Azad Kashmiris today extolling a Punjabi identity, thinking they’re Punjabis because they listen to Punjabi music would have been treated terribly on the Punjab Plains in light of the history I explore here. Revealingly, they also listen to Hindi and Urdu songs, but curiously, don’t go about their business self-affirming as Hindustanis, or Urdudan, which just shows the illogicality of Occupation Narratives. 

In fact, some dam affectees of Mirpur’s Mangla Dam in 1967, were forcibly resettled in the Punjab Province, where they complained about discrimination from Punjabi locals. The “Kashmiris”, as they were identified by the natives, had none of the supposed “ethnic” dividends that came by way of a Punjabi group belonging. Of course, socioeconomic factors have always overridden ethnic delusions, irrespective of the propaganda pushed by Occupying Powers.

Rich Kashmiris will always be treated better than poor Kashmiris in the Punjab.

Rich Punjabis will always be treated better than poor Punjabis in Kashmir.

On the Plains of India, with little material prosperity and non-landed connections, refugees from Kashmir State worked as tailors, barbers, shoemakers, labourers, etc., and this had enormous implications for how they were perceived by the Zamindar classes, who had traditionally dominated the Plains. Colonial writers described the various colonies associated with Kashmir’s refugees (“the Kashmiris”) disparagingly, calling them “scavengers” – hardly the hallmarks of a Brahman identity!

I speak of painful historical realities that are attested facts in the literature, and by which term I do not imply the wishful thinking of people with zero intellectual investiture in the ideas they espouse courtesy of Wikipedia and Quora posts spreading disinformation about real and false Kashmiris. Experts studying prejudice and stigma, and the political instrumentalisation of negative sterotypes are aware of the psychological tendencies involved in the process.

It is at this point I would like to speak up for the genuine Kashmiris in the Punjab, who never speak about real or false Kashmiris because they understand how the word emerged within the context of injustice, oppression and cruelty. Kashmiris have always supported the right of Kashmiris to decide their own future on their own terms, which means independence (Azadi) for millions of Occupied People, out of a deep sense of a shared history. Such attitudes contrast sharply with India and Pakistan’s narrative on Kashmir. Kashmiris do not belong to India or Pakistan, they belong to Kashmir.


Zamindari and the Patronage Network

The Udaipur City Palace; the Rajputs were prolific builders of Palaces

Owning land was a distinguishing social marker in this system, it symbolised something more profound than possessing hectares and hectares of land. It was about patronage, proof that you were connected. The Zamindar, or the landed-nobility, would use the term to highlight this aspect of the network. The Mughals would use the term universally to describe feudatories that included Hindu Rajputs, or those originally connected with the older identities. The Rajput were encouraged to convert to Islam, and their descendants would drop their Singh titles for Khan, begrudgingly holding onto the Singh title as long as they could if they had been forced to convert through compulsion. At the instigation of the Mughals, they would stop using the term Rajah and other related titles of this heritage. To illustrate, hypothetically, the formally Raja Chand Singh, would be now described as Mirza or Mir Qamar Khan. Suraj Singh would become Shamas Khan. Different titles were also deployed. The Mughals preferred Persian-sounding titles as opposed to Indic ones. But, as I said the system was incredibly fluid. Whenever Muslim rulers were ousted, the Hindu rulers would reassert themselves, and the titles would change again.

Khan or Mir “so and so”, would revert back to being called Rajah “so and so”.

Being a “Khan” is not proof of a Pathan background, or more correctly speaking proof of a Pashtun or Pakhtun ethnic heritage. The fact that some “Pathans” maintain this today, aggregating the title for themselves just shows how far false narratives can spread within an unsuspecting population. The protagonists are unfamiliar with the actual history of Afghanistan, historically an ambiguous frontier between Iran and India that had always been an ethnically diverse place with a myriad of evolving social groups. Its poverty today on account of so much engineered conflict, one of the poorest countries on earth because of the insistence of the Free World to keep the Soviets out of the region, makes claiming an Afghan identity within the context of our region’s tribal structure a rather curious move.

For instance, you will come across individuals emphatic that the original Khans were Pathans. The term Khan does not originate with the ethnic Pashtun but has its origin in the folk nomenclature of the Mongols from whom Turkic groups adopted the title. The Mongols and Turks, although separate groups shared the same Central Asian Steppes, the one pushing the other into the direction of the Iranian Plateau and further afield. The emerging Turkic groups adopted the Persian language after having converted to Islam, some of their number centuries later settled neighbouring regions. They eventually crossed the Khyber Pass to settle India, and they began to use titles borne of this historical baggage. The great Mongol Genghis Khan was actually born Timujin. In the native language of his peers, ‘Chinggis Khagan’ simply meant ‘Ruler of the World’; the Persian equivalent being Jahan-gir Khan. The Indian Mughals having descended from a Turkic branch connected with Tamerlane where also descended from Genghis Khan, on their maternal line, or at least this is how they presented themselves contrary to more recent claims that Babar, the founder of the Mughals, was not a descendant of Genghis Khan.

It was clear by evoking descent from the great Timujin, the Mughals were keen to connect themselves with an older lineage. They didn’t care that their alleged pagan ancestors had destroyed much of Baghdad’s Islamic heritage and wiped out Muslim populations everywhere. We are talking about the wholesale destruction of entire cities, the murder of entire populations and mass rape of women and children. The Mongols would pile the skulls of their victims to make heaps of skulls out of a macabre desire to frighten opponents, or at least, these were the sorts of eye witness testimonies we read from Arabic and Persian writers alive at the time.

None of this mattered for the claimants of a Mughal-Muslim identity in India; Pakistanis love romanticising this past from the perspective of a warped nationalism that connects “them”with Muslim Rulers – an obsession of many cosmopolitan Pakistanis with no sense of Muslim history and the ordeals ordinary Muslims embodied. 

The Mughals wanted to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, and so the identity labels they used had a completely different meaning to the ones upwardly mobile people are using today. The feminine equivalent in the Persian language for ‘Khan’ is ‘Khanum’ (‘Khatun’), and again was used as a title of nobility for women connected to this heritage, it’s similar to the Turkic term ‘Begum’ being the female equivalent of ‘Beg’, (nobleman) which has become a popular surname for women outside this history. And yet you would rarely come across people arguing that the Khatun and Begums were of Pashtun or Turkic origin. This would be akin to someone arguing that the original Singh were Sikh despite the title, now a popular surname for Sikh males, originated centuries before the birth of Guru Gobind Singh (died.1708 CE). The Singh title is connected with India’s medieval Rajput houses, and can be dated even earlier to the regional Kingdoms they vanquished. Rajputs did not simply convert to Islam, but Sikhism too, and it was on account of Rajputs becoming Sikhs that the word Singh was conferred onto all Sikhs. The Sikhs wanted to create equality amongst their followers. Equality is deeply hardwired in the Sikh Scripture, despite the failings of Sikhs to live up to this great expectation. 

Owning land was a distinguishing social marker in this system, it symbolised something more profound than possessing hectares and hectares of land. It was about patronage, proof that you were connected. The Zamindar, or the landed-nobility, would use the term to highlight this aspect of the network. The Mughals would use the term universally to describe feudatories that included Hindu Rajputs, or those originally connected with the older identities. The Rajput were encouraged to convert to Islam, and their descendants would drop their Singh titles for Khan, begrudgingly holding onto the Singh title as long as they could if they had been forced to convert through compulsion. At the instigation of the Mughals, they would stop using the term Rajah and other related titles of this heritage. To illustrate, hypothetically, the formally Raja Chand Singh, would be now described as Mirza or Mir Qamar Khan. Suraj Singh would become Shamas Khan. Different titles were also deployed. The Mughals preferred Persian-sounding titles as opposed to Indic ones. But, as I said the system was incredibly fluid. Whenever Muslim rulers were ousted, the Hindu rulers would reassert themselves, and the titles would change again.

Khan or Mir “so and so”, would revert back to being called Rajah “so and so”.

Being a “Khan” is not proof of a Pathan background, or more correctly speaking proof of a Pashtun or Pakhtun ethnic heritage. The fact that some “Pathans” maintain this today, aggregating the title for themselves just shows how far false narratives can spread within an unsuspecting population. The protagonists are unfamiliar with the actual history of Afghanistan, historically an ambiguous frontier between Iran and India that had always been an ethnically diverse place with a myriad of evolving social groups. Its poverty today on account of so much engineered conflict, one of the poorest countries on earth because of the insistence of the Free World to keep the Soviets out of the region, makes claiming an Afghan identity within the context of our region’s tribal structure a rather curious move.

The New Khans Vs the Old Khans

For instance, one comes across individuals emphatic that the original Khans were Pathans. The term Khan does not originate with the ethnic Pashtun, but has its origin in the folk nomenclature of the Mongols from whom Turkic groups adopted the title. The Mongols and Turks, although separate groups shared the same Central Asian Steppes, the one pushing the other into the direction of the Iranian Plateau and further afield. The emerging Turkic groups adopted the Persian language after having converted to Islam, some of their number centuries later settled neighbouring regions. They eventually crossed the Khyber Pass to settle India, and they began to use titles borne of this historical baggage. The great Mongol Genghis Khan was actually born Timujin. In the native language of his peers, ‘Chinggis Khagan’ simply meant ‘Ruler of the World’; the Persian equivalent being ‘Jahan-gir Khan’. The Indian Mughals having descended from a Turkic branch connected with Tamerlane where also descended from Genghis Khan, on their maternal line, or at least this is how they presented themselves contrary to more recent claims that Babar, the founder of the Mughal Empire, was not a descendant of Genghis Khan.

It was clear by evoking descent from the “Great Timujin”, the Mughals were keen to connect themselves with an older lineage. They didn’t care that their alleged pagan ancestors had destroyed Baghdad’s Islamic heritage and wiped out Muslim populations everywhere. We are talking about the wholesale destruction of entire cities, the murder of entire populations and mass rape of women and children. The Mongols would pile the skulls of their victims to make heaps of skulls out of a macabre desire to frighten opponents, or at least these were the sorts of eye witness testimonies we read from Arabic and Persian writers alive at the time.

None of this mattered for the claimants of a Mughal-Muslim identity in India, ironically in the name of Zahir ul-Din Muhammad, Babar, (1483 – 1530) who despised Mongals, making his aversion known in his writings. The wrongly identified Sultanat-e-Mughliya should have been identified Sultanat-e-Turkiya, but for the fact that numerous rulers of Turkic backgrounds never identified as Turks either. Turk implied the common Turk (nomadic) and not Turks of respectable lineages like the Ottomans or the Seljuk. Pakistanis love romanticising this past from the perspective of a warped nationalism that connects “them” fictitiously with Muslim Rulers – an obsession of many cosmopolitan Pakistanis with no sense of Muslim history and the ordeals ordinary Muslims embodied. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the majority of Pakistanis descend from Hindus of non-landed backgrounds, whose forbears were murdered, raped and, at times, enslaved by the new Muslim rulers. The frontier regions of India, what is today Pakistan, were highly susceptible to the Muslim raid, entire populations were ransaked, but again this painful history is too nuanced.

The Mughals wanted to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, and so the identity labels they used had a completely different meaning to the ones upwardly mobile people are using today. The feminine equivalent in the Persian language for ‘Khan’ is ‘Khanum’ (‘Khatun’), and again was used as a title of nobility for women connected to this heritage, it’s similar to the Turkic term ‘Begum’, the female equivalent of ‘Beg’, (nobleman), which has become a popular surname for women outside this history. And yet one would rarely come across people arguing that the Khatun and Begums were of Pashtun or Turkic origin. This would be akin to someone arguing that the original Singh were Sikh despite the title, now a popular surname for Sikh males, originating centuries earlier before the birth of Guru Gobind Singh (died.1708 CE). The Singh title is connected with India’s medieval Rajput houses, and can be dated even earlier to the regional Kingdoms the Rajputs vanquished. Rajputs did not simply convert to Islam, but Sikhism too, and it was on account of Rajputs becoming Sikhs that the word Singh was conferred onto all Sikhs. The Sikhs wanted to create equality amongst their followers. Equality is deeply hardwired in the Sikh Scripture, despite the failings of Sikhs to live up to this great expectation. Sikhism is very closely aligned to Sufism to understand the shared currents of humanism in both traditions.


The Colonial Ethnologist; Reinventing the Older Identities

Like previous rulers to India, English and then British merchants were integrated into the system through the patronage network. Successors of the Mughals awarded them their own Jagirs (estates). The East India Company was awarded its Jagir from a Mughal Nawab. The English East Company started out in the early 1600s as an inoffensive trade mission but gradually morphed into an aggressive military presence with its own private armies comprised of Indian Sepoy (soldiers). Over the following decades and centuries, the East India Company moved from its coastal bases in the North East of the subcontinent to the North West finally overthrowing the last of the great regional bastions of power, the Sarkar-e-Khalsa, the Sikh Confederacy. 

It was no idle boast of the Sikhs, whose feudatories included Muslims and Hindus (‘Rajeh’, ‘Chaudries’, ‘Sardars’, ‘Nawabs’, ‘Mirs’, etc)’, that they were a formidable fighting force and the British respected them for it. The East India Company tried to contain the expansionism of the Sikh State, what they would call the Lahore State. Had Sikh power not imploded after the demise of Maharajah Ranjit ‘Singh‘, the ‘Jat’; (others have ascribed a different background usually to disparage him), the regions in the North West of the subcontinent would not have fallen into British hands.

The entire landmass of the subcontinent with the help of Britain’s new feudatories, the Native Indian Princes, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, was firmly in check. But, unlike previous rulers, the colonial Brits were far more resourceful and far-sighted. Inadvertently, they were in the business of statecraft (nation building), whilst extracting the resources of an India that was being exploited with the help of native clients. They wanted to buy and sell products that they had manufactured from the natural resources of the numerous countries they had colonised. They wanted to find markets for their products and connect frontier lands with interior lands all over the place. They built an impressive railway system in India that gave their notion of India a coherent veneer. They liked to map and categorise their territories and ‘subject peoples’. They wanted to understand the cultures and dialects of “the natives”, many of whom didn’t see themselves as belonging to the same ethnic, religious or national fraternities. Colonial linguists produced groundbreaking research, the Linguistic Survey of India being a good example. It was colonial linguists who wrote the first grammars of Indian languages. It was because of colonial policies that inadvertently made Urdu-Hindi, an amorphous Indic dialect of native North Indians spoken around the Delhi area that had been gradually evolving into a literary standard, the official native language of British India. Muslim and non-Muslim elites of India spoke Persian in their courts and not Hindi-Urdu, which was greatly influenced by Persian. Hindi-Urdu writers were emulating Persian writers. It was also colonial policies that rendered Punjabi, “a most barbarous tongue” not fit for sophisticated thought, demoted to the language of “uneducated village folk” to appreciate how ideas evolve in the first place, and which constituencies become impacted by the corresponding ideas.

New Myths – “Race”, “Language” and the formation of “Social Class”

Pakistanis unfamiliar with Urdu’s history exaggerate the importance of Urdu to the emerging Muslim power-structure in British India. In this respect, native Urdu-speakers, who used to be identified as Hindustanis, were stigmatised in the Panjab by the Zamindar clans as being salaried personal, (officials from non-landed backgrounds – “the Salariat”, or “Munshis” of the colonial British usually in junior and clerical roles. 

The term Munshi carries connotations of social prestige in India, whilst in Pakistan it conveys a different sense on account of the sentiments I explore here; it is used negatively. The material prosperity of the Salaried Class, what became the Punjabi Salariat, was not comparable to the wealth of the richer land barons, who had little to no inclination to speak the language of the emerging administrative elite, Urdu-Hindi. Punjabi Urdu speakers, not to be conflated with native Urdu speakers whose identity has been problematised, unfairly I believe by Punjabis ironically speaking Urdu, went on to assume power in both India and Pakistan, all the while the power and social prestige of the landed-groups was diminishing.

The colonial Brits were heavily influenced by the racial theories of the time and wanted to distinguish the different “Races” of British India, and the Princely States, whose ruling class they surmised were foreigners just like them. They had merely overthrown the most recent of the foreigners, the ‘Persian-speaking’ “turkic Mughal” of Mongol origin. They expended every effort to study the various races of India, and their ethnologists would go on to argue that the Jat race was originally of Scythian racial-stock, whilst the original Royal Rajput race, closely related to the Jat race, descended from the Kushan, the Hun, the Hephtalite and other Central Asian Hordes around the turn of the 1st century, CE. Other ethnologists had different opinions. It was all pie in the sky theorising with a smattering of historical truth, here and there, massively exaggerated to fit colonial priorities. Where the ethnographers were correct was in deducing that some of India’s ancient rulers, which included Hindus and Buddhists, were also of foreign extraction like later Muslim and Christian Rulers. Hindu Nationalists consider such a viewpoint politically blasphemous, and for obvious reason too. They contend that ancient Indians are being written out of their actual history. If there is some truth to this claim, and I suspect there may be, it hasn’t stopped Hindu Nationalists engaging in similar tactics against Independence Kashmiris, writing them out of Kashmir State.  

Colonial ethnologists and race theorists weren’t just researchers though. They were ideological pioneers. They not only documented and categorised the various tribes that had been submerged within the system, but they added their own veneer of interpretation and eventually fixed the identities in question, which is quite a remarkable feat if you think about it.

As they went about researching the caste-groups, measuring heights, body weight, distances between eyes and nostrils, the length of a nose, skull sizes, intelligence, facial complexion or ‘hue’, even facial hair, they created all manner of bogus social constructs. In effect, they became the gatekeepers for entry into certain sectors of society – (these charts/tables still exist and one can see how the British aggregated India’s population into illusory group identities). 

Crucially, there was no corresponding fascination with ethnic or Kashur speaking Kashmiris, let alone Punjabi caste Kashmiris, to highlight the plight of Jammu & Kashmir’s natives today. Notions of false racial pedigree that should help explain the reification of Kashmir because of the Indo-Pak Conflict, show how Kashmir is being instrumentalised by interests that want to police the Kashmir Conflict. One frequently comes across self-affirming Kashmiris in the UK who have a tendency to point out that the reason why “they don’t look like other Indians and Pakistanis”, is because “they are from Kashmir”. In simulated chorus, the Indians and Pakistanis, approximating to the same priorities, retort in anger that they too do not look like Indians and Pakistanis. I’m merely repeating what we all know of upwardly mobile people who instrumentalise their group identities with zero commitment to the corresponding narratives. Indians and Pakistanis could learn a lot from the African American Civil Rights Movement.

It was colonial officers who had the final say as to whether someone was ‘lowborn’ or ‘highborn’. In their minds, they were simply documenting, objectively, they would say, India’s native “races”. But they weren’t. They were race-engineering. They noted that the higher castes were, generally, fair-skinned, tall and not much darker, if not of the same complexion as the Mediterranean Races of Europe. Being fair skinned within this social context was not proof of nobility though, it merely confirmed the British in their claim that the higher castes were not originally native to India. It was surmised that the “lower castes and untouchables” were dark-skinned if not outright “black” like South Indians and sub-Saharan Africans. In effect, all manner of false narratives about Dravidians of South India, who are no more darker, or less fair skinned, shorter or taller, than populations in North India, were instrumentalised to stigmatise groups, prejudicially.

The stereotypes have sadly stuck and one can see how they’ve been reinvigorated in the works of journalists to appreciate how far false narratives spread. One can see the colonial narrative unfolding through North Indian and Pakistan Media platforms, Urdu-Hindi speaking ones to appreciate where the problems lie. The identities deployed are fictions, exposing what is really being sought, social respectability through approximation of more celebrated identities. In the case of Afghanistan and Kashmir, the aspirants are climbing a racial hierarchical ladder that has no basis in truth, but has become entrenched in the Pakistani and Indian imagination. Outside paradigms of race, the same Afghan and Kashmiris being celebrated, racially, are then problematised by Indians and Pakistanis. 

In terms of Azad Kashmiris, I encourage my readers to YouTube some of the videos to appreciate how the ISI is instrumentalising a degraded “Punjabi” identity for Azad Kashmiris to disconnect them from the ‘Kashmir’ Pakistan supposedly celebrates. The Azad Kashmir on display impedes approximation for British Azad Kashmiris scratching their heads unable to recognise the people in the videos. Every region has its own stories, landscapes, and cultural artefacts that are celebrated through a particular aesthetic. Pakistan wants to disconnect British Azad Kashmiris from Azad Kashmir in the same way they want to disconnect British Azad Kashmiris from Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistan’s Azad Kashmiris are disposable, something that seems to be lost on Azad Kashmiris doing Pakistan’s bidding, when they happily work for Pakistan to impede the Kashmir Independence Movement, despite claiming to represent “Azadi” (the freedom struggle).

My readers should now understand the biased subtext behind lots of false narratives. British colonialism, an otherwise inventive enterprise in many redeeming ways, did indeed project its racial superiority onto the natives of India and the rest of Europe, but there was also a willing audience for such ideas amongst the colonised – native clients. Colonial race scientists similarly categorised the peoples of Europe through the same schema. They presented themselves as Nordic Aryans. Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes had no say in how they were being identified. The Nordic Race was placed at the top of the Race Tree. Ironically, the term Arya, or Aryan, belonged to Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian speaking populations and not Europeans. It implied nobility, and not racial superiority linked with a particular migration of nomads originating from the BMAC who had already merged with Central Asian Steppe pastoralists. The race scientists plonked the Slavic populations of Eastern and Central Europe at the bottom of their race fictions, with a particular loathing for Jews, who were subsumed within the Semitic Race – a non-European race, apparently. In other words, European Jews were not considered European, despite being no less European than any other European.

Of the latter prejudice, some Renaissance writers claimed that the ingenuity of Western Europeans, or those of original “Aryan” descent – a totally bogus proposition, had been sapped by the introduction of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in Europe at the hands of a much inferior Semitic Race. Other writers did not share such sensibilities. Ironically though, the theorists, (Nordic Aryans), viewed themselves to be racially superior to the Mediterranean Race, all the while claiming the Roman-Greco heritage as part of the European classical heritage.

This did not stop ambitious Europeans – the ambiguous “whites” as the classifications were emerging – from seeking work in the British Indian Empire, and similarly being affected by the race theories of the time. “Up-starters”, (that’s how the emerging “lowborn” Europeans in the colonies were described by the Establishment Elite in “the mother countries”), came from modest backgrounds and eventually merged into a European nobility in India. In their home countries, they lacked the sense of social prestige that they had been aggregating for themselves in Britain’s most lucrative colony – British India. They were acutely aware of their lessor British roots when they returned to the UK. This held equally true for North Americans, South Americans and Australians visiting Europe for the first time. It became abundantly clear to them that they were not really part of a European “elite”, and in many ways they were being excluded from the societies they purportedly originated from. Although their wealth became an equaliser in terms of opportunities, it didn’t automatically remove social stigma on account of the older prejudices.

The idea of the Nabob, (from the Persian word “Nawab” (nobleman)), has its origin in such a dynamic. “Bob has become a Nabob dressed in Indian Regal Attire!” “He’s become a Lord of the Realm. He can buy himself a peerage courtesy of all the loot he has acquired through the East India Company”. The word loot is of Indian origin to appreciate who was “looting” what and from where. There was profound anxiety on the part of “old money” towards “new money”, and the latter were stigmatised by the former.

In India, if a person was identified as a ‘Jat’, ‘Gujjar’, ‘Rajput’ or, say, ‘Yusufzai’, or ‘Afridi’ – Pashtun because of Yusufzai roots; Sikh because of Jat roots; Panjabi or Rajasthani because of Rajput, Jatt or Gujjar roots; this is how the actual priorities moved, he became a member of a ‘martial race’. Entry was permitted into the British Indian Army. 

The Gujjar were an ambivalent group because they had participated in a number of rebellions against the East India Company, notably during the “Mutiny” of 1857, and alongside some Brahman groups, were demoted from the Martial Race classifications. The East India company gutted entire Gujjar and Brahman villages to make an example of the mutineers, firing their bodies from Canon. Subsequently, the Gujjar would be described as “criminals” in the ethnographic literature. One can still see the remnants of these ideas on Pakistani Forums, where some citified Pakistanis poke fun of “milk-herding Gujjar”, the Gujjar Bakarwal of Jammu & Kashmir, “the nomadic Gujjar of Kashmir”.

Recalcitrant Brahmans were similarly impugned and erased from the new race narrative. There were also Muslim and Hindu Rajputs who participated in the “mutiny” but because large numbers of Rajput Hindus and Sikh Jat fought on the side of the East India Company, their respective identities were not problematised. The Princely States were considered loyal subjects of British Colonialism. In fact, the Muslim Pashtun tribes of the North West Frontier Province, volunteered their mercenary services in return for a share of the booty, and they too were described more positively in colonial ethnography. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America instrumentalised a lot of the older colonial sentiments to present the Afghan “savage” as a “freedom loving warrior”.

Landowners in general, again with illusion to the historical patronage network described above, were permitted to buy land because they, supposedly, descended from the “Agricultural Castes”. Colonial officers argued that this was to protect the agricultural clans from unscrupulous money lenders, the “Mahajan”, who belonged to ancestrally less distinguished backgrounds like the trading castes (Khatris). The race ideas were crude, the Rajput and Jat, although strong and brave were incredibly unintelligent and simple, easy to manipulate. The money lenders and traders were physically weak but crafty and cunning.

In effect, caste-groups were being pitied against other caste-groups.

Colonial writers, it would appear from their writings, were not enamoured by Brahmans in particular. Prejudice can be seen in how they described the Brahmans as being weak, scheming, prone to telling falsehoods, whilst keen to promote themselves over above the more industrious castes, notably the ruling clans. It didn’t matter that the Brahmans had, historically, formed part of the same ruling class, albeit as priests and assistants to the Rulers. Lots of Indian Rulers were of Brahman descent, but this fact of history was simply tossed to the side. 

Occupational castes, by far, didn’t even register with the colonial ethnologists. They were described as “aboriginals”, and not originally of Aryan racial descent, (note how some Pakistanis claim foreign Muslim descent to escape the idea of being aboriginal Indian). Occupational groups not part of the Agricultural Castes were proscribed from buying land. By not only creating race-fictions, the colonial officers created new forms of social discrimination. Ambitious individuals from the occupational castes jostled to get identified as Martial Races, or Agricultural Castes, to simply get ahead in life. To become soldiers (obtain a respectable income) or buy land (investments, obtain social prestige) they had to fabricate their caste-identities and many did exactly that. This dynamic strengthened the prestige of identifying with the empowered caste backgrounds, empowering identities that hadn’t existed previously in the way we imagine the identities today.

The colonialists created new norms of social interaction which we sloppily assume to have always been there. There is a wider point that I’m trying to get across to my readers. They fixed what was essentially a fluid situation. In the past, the nobles had to physically demonstrate their nobility to their Overlords.


Upward Mobility Vs Downward Mobility

Before the advent of the East India Company, the feudatory or ‘Jagirdar’, (synonymous with ‘Zamindar’, landowner) was the only patron in his lands. Occupational groups would service the needs of the landowning groups, reliant on their goodwill, similar to how European serfs were in a state of bondage to the landbarons. It was the responsibility of the Jagirdar to ensure law and order and oversee disputes. How he behaved distinguished him from his equals and inferiors, carrying great symbolism. The Nawabs, (the ‘nobility class’), all manner of titles existed, had to behave in a dignified manner. They would not eat from people below their status, obliged to feed and help their subjects to show their largess. This is not bigotry but a public announcement of authority. How and where they lived was also a demonstration of power, ancestral forts were built on the summit of hills, and named after ancestors. For instance, the Zamindar would never be seen tilling their lands, this was an insult and proof that they had fallen from the status of forebears.

Observing this phenomenon of downward mobility, colonial ethnologists coined the term ‘debased Rajputs’, and argued that many of the lineage-based Rajput clans that ended up on the Himalayan Hills having fled the Indo-Gangetic Plains in defeat were only later identified as Jat (‘farmers’). Revealingly, many of Azad Kashmir’s Jat identities continue to maintain a Rajput origin, looking suspiciously to those self-affirming as “Rajeh” amongst their midst, whom they accuse of siding with the older power structures – a completely unwarranted indictment if one understands how Pakistan’s Kashmir propaganda (‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’) is being instrumentalised in the region between various clans.

The Jat of Azad Kashmir get frequently confused with the emergence of Jat on the Indo-Gangetic Plains following the implosion of Mughal hegemony after the demise of Aurangzeb. The Jat were of nomadic origin, having moved from the direction of Sindh into the Gujarat, Rajasthan and Eastern Panjab regions, centuries earlier, where they became militarised. In the 17th century, they took up arms against the defeated Mughal rulers, who had been exploiting them. Afterwards, they coalesced with a new emerging ruling class, the Sikh Confederacy, and the emergence of the Sikh Jat had its origin in these dynamics. Rajputs of the Chauhan lineage, and others that included the Bhatti, were actively involved in anti-Mughal agitations and uprisings. Historians explain how they captained and led the resistance because of grievances against the Mughal, who had misappropriated their lands. The Rajputs who eventually converted to Sikhism, today identify as Sikh Jat linked with various clans of the older Rajput to show the fluid nature of the Jat and Rajput identities.

This is not to say that the emerging tribal formations, Jat or Rajput, belonged to separate or distinct ancestral groups to somehow create new primordial myths. On the contrary, modern DNA studies have shown a common origin for various populations, and many other communities that otherwise wouldn’t posture through such identities today. Ironically, the Pashtun and Tajik are closely related to the Jat to give an idea of this shared but distant past. Ethnicity like race is a social construct, but linear descent to forebears is something altogether different. Nomads have been some of the most successful groups to spread their DNA, which has been popping up in the most unlikeliest of places, hundreds of years laters. Sadly, the history of nomadism is always problematised by writers celebrating the sedentary narrative of cities and urban spaces. The Empires of the Silk Kingdoms, across Central Asia were linked to Nomadism. The Ottoman and the Safavid Rulers descended from nomads, as did the purported ancestors of the Indo-Europeans.

Such have been the upheavals in the Western Himalaya and the wider Plains, a history that goes back centuries and involves diverse peoples who have left their mark on history and not just place names. This has been a history mired in seismic events across North India. It is the complete opposite of the disparaging anecdotes of people who like to posture through illusory backgrounds, demeaning those they think are somehow inferior to them, not understanding the actual backgrounds in question, not even their own humble origin. 

New Haplogroup Identities

Of late, I have noticed that some dilettantes have taken to deploying genetic categories like y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplogroups, terms that deal with ancestral populations tens of thousands of years old, to affirm or negate racial claims about the socially-constructed identities borne of the colonial legacy I’ve been discussing. Terms such as ‘ancestral ethnic admixtures’, and ‘autosomal DNA’ are being used to identify ancestral populations, supposedly connected with modern-day populations courtesy of arbitrary and fluid identity labels (social constructs). The writers of such posts are affirming themselves. The crude ideas are incredibly flawed. The entire edifice of such an enterprise is based on flawed colonial ideas that have long been debunked by experts in the realm of biology, anthropology and history. Revealingly, western academia, completely free of government interference, is at the forefront of population genetics to understand the anxieties and insecurities of ethnonationalists in authoritarian regimes invoking the demon of European Colonialism, conveniently.

If the West is not afraid to deconstruct its own racial myths, what’s stopping the countries evolving out of the colonies Britain created, looking critically at their own unequal social structures? One can see through the anxieties of Indian and Pakistani commentators though, leaving a huge trail on numerous social media forums, speaking about real and false ethnic groups, with the Pro-Independence Kashmiris at the top of identities to be demonised. Others seek proximity to power. They have yet to wean themselves off debunked race myths. Even individual castes and ethnic groups (social constructs) are being identified through “ancient haplogroups”, a concept best deployed in the realm of genetics. Haplogroups cannot be used to understand socially, or politically constructed identities of the modern age, the two considerations deal with different phenomena.

Sadly, this is lost on our social commentators, who seek confirmation bias for their outlandish claims telling the diverse people of Jammu & Kashmir that they cannot self-affirm as Kashmiris. To reiterate the absurdity of the logic, Indian Brahmans can become Kashmiris even the ones from Jammu, so long as they identify with Hindu Nationalism, and claim the entirety of the Indian Peninsular for their fictitious ancestors. Likewise, Pakistani Caste Kashmiris can become Kashmiris so long as they claim the entirety of Kashmir for Pakistan, but Independence Kashmiris must never claim Kashmir for 17 million people.


The Way Forward; Maintaining Humility

Fast forwarding to today, my peers who live in the UK have no sense of their own history of upward mobility. I have been exploring the history of downward mobility as it applies to the old landed groups to explain that approximating to power is the driving force behind a lot of our anxieties. From power comes prestige and the ability to participate in the fictions, which we call privilege. Dominant groups have power, privilege and prestige – fringe groups lack these characteristics. In the absence of the patronage network, its vast proceeds, lands, upheavals, and symbolism, it’s bizarre to hear someone call another “Rajah” or “Chaudhry Saab” (from Saahib/Sir). This would be akin to hearing someone called Bob, (outside the context of the Nabob slur), living on a council estate calling his neighbour “Duke Dave” or “Earl Tim”, thinking nothing of it. Again, analogous to the people of the dispossessed villages of Azad Kashmir, from Bhimbar all the way to Neelum, calling themselves, Jat, Rajput, Sudhan, Mughal or some other fanciful label, despite the entire area being exploited by Pakistan.

Some Azad Kashmiri YouTubers want to show the entire world the terrible infrastructure blighting their villages, lack of jobs and opportunities in a location of ridiculous mansions – funded by Azad Kashmiri expatriates living abroad. These unsightly and out of place buildings, add more insult to Azad Kashmir’s sense of outrage and frustration. 

Empty mansions look out onto rubble and poverty stricken villagers, who have been unable to flee the cruelty of the Pakistan Occupier, unlike the 1 million British Azad Kashmiris, who return periodically in the tradition of the global tourist, with no care in the world for how Azad Kashmiris are being treated by ethnic Punjabis. It is not enough that they get humiliated at Islamabad Airport, but they want to add to Azad Kashmir’s humiliation. Some YouTubers do not not understand how their “Punjabi” videos are contributing to Azad Kashmir’s powerlessness, creating the divide that the ISI wants to disempower the Pro-Independence Kashmiris. If a region is presented negatively by its own natives, why would its diaspora go there? 

Paradoxically, Azad Kashmir is capital-rich because of UK remittences according to numerous western academics and scholars. The experts have been telling us for decades that the Pakistan Establishment has been diverting Azad Kashmir’s large GBP-based deposits to fund projects in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, deliberately disinvesting the region. They had even diverted Azad Kashmir’s earthquake aid into projects in Pakistan. What kind of fake fraternity is this that masquerades itself as Muslim Unity?

A painting of a Rajput Princess enjoying her leisure

Whether my peers will heed my call to stop using titles that are now disconnected with their lives, and there’s no proof that any of us was ever part of the past I’ve tried explaining, I leave to their conscience. We are all equals today on account of being human. We should redeem our humanity on the basis of universal human rights, the rule of law, and a fairness that characterises western liberal democracies – systems of governance that actually work. There are no Jat, Rajeh, Sardar, Malk, Ghakkar, Kashmiris by Zaat, Awan, Bhat, Bains, Arain, Gujjar, Tarkan, Lohar, Mochi, Darzi, Musali, Janjuah, high caste, low caste, no caste, in our communities. 

This is “Divide and Rule”. 

The old system of social stratification, greatly exaggerated by British colonial ethnologists to their own strategic and material advantage, I’m keen to reiterate has long passed. The corresponding titles and backgrounds are throwbacks for a people who should identify on the basis of their lived experiences. To repeat a long-accepted fact courtesy of observers who have not forgotten the evils of Nazi race science and Apartheid South Africa, the struggles and ordeals of our shared forebears, connect us with human beings across the world.

British Azad Kashmiris are from Kashmir State

For those of us from divided Jammu & Kashmir and a particular cultural sphere now living in Britain we are British Azad Kashmiris and not Pakistanis. Howsoever we want to label the ethnic space of our forebears, we need to understand narratives of disinformation, and the identities behind Occupation. It was officers of colonialism, having aggregated for themselves the role of official cartographer, who mapped our regions, and assigned its various parts to the evolving geo-administrative configurations they created. Britain created the Punjab Province, from the foundations of the Lahore Subah, just as the same interest created Pakistan from British India. Such categories do not reflect the actual history of our region, and the political and economic priorities of the natives, which for Azad Kashmir is linked to occupation politics. Azad Kashmir is Jammu & Kashmir, and no power on earth can change this fact of history.

Culturally speaking, our ethnic homeland is one uniform region known broadly and somewhat erroneously as the Pahari-Patwari Ilaaqah because it extends to the Pothohar Plateau and the Hazara Hills, Khyber-Pakhtunkwa. Over millennia, the people have been moving eastwards from a centre of gravity that used to be located in the Peshawar Basin and Swat Valley, as far as the Pir Panjal Mountain Range, in what is today Indian-administered-Kashmir. Our stake in this cultural sphere is located in Kashmir State, and not Pakistan. We should take the time to learn about the cultural heritage of divided Jammu & Kashmir, its languages, cultures and even religions, as opposed to posturing through the false consciousness of a Pakistani nationalistic identity that wants to exploit and own Azad Kashmir by telling naive and impressionable people that they have no right to their homeland because they are ethnic Punjabis and Muslims.

So, let me illustrate the absurdity of not knowing history, in closing.

I recall an incident in my youth, two individuals were arguing about their caste backgrounds. The one presented himself as a Rajah whilst the other puffed his chest out as a Jat. The Rajah stated that his caste was the higher because the Rajput are higher than the Jat and in previous centuries his ancestors were Kings! The exchange got incredibly heated when the Jat accused the Rajah of being a ‘Pittoo’ (‘stooge’) of the British. 

This altercation happened some twenty years ago. The protagonists were older than me and I had no reason to question what they were saying, at the time, I just listened. I only know now how incredibly impressionistic their respective arguments were, having spent more than a decade scrutinising the false narratives around caste, ethnicity and patronage from reputable sources, both Western and Indian. 

The Jat had maintained all along a Bhatti (Plains) Rajput origin, whilst the Rajah, for some strange reason, claimed to have come from the Sudhan tribe that has never been considered Rajput in the classical definition and imagery of the term. He also used the term Sardar, although given the label’s association with the Sikh in the mind of the Jat Muslim, I think this may explain why he chose to self-affirm as a Rajah – lots of Sikhs are Jat. One can see the actual priorities of the identity labels we conveniently deploy when it suits our interests though the past in question is imagined. Moreover, the error on the part of the Rajah was to juxtapose hi self-styled title, ‘Rajah‘ with an illusory background called Rajput, conflating the two with a history he didn’t understand. 

The Sudhan of Jammu & Kashmir have never been Kings but tribes of Hindu origin in a part of the world that was dominated by Muslim Rulers. Colonial writers explained how lots of groups tried aggregating Muslim backgrounds, some of which claimed a Mughal origin. The Sudhan fell within this camp, there is no mention of Sudhan Muslim roots prior to this period in history, which just shows which priorities were being pursued. The Sudhan are reimagining their history when they claim to be of Afghan Muslim descent – innovating the word Sadozai; an analysis of their genome by population geneticists will reveal what I am saying – they are related to Sudhan Hindus in Jammu. Sudhans converted to Islam at a particular juncture in history like the Ghakkar, if indeed their history approximates with the documented groups of the wider region, which includes the Rajput and Jat. Lots of Muslims in Pakistan are trying to approximate to Muslim lineages, and one can see this in the fanciful writings produced by “Pakistani academics”. Pakistan’s ethnonationalists are behind a lot of the false Muslim narratives, which are creating anxieties and insecurities on the part of a people, most closely connected to Indians. 

Of course, not every Sudhan is a tribal leader. As for the Bhatti Jat, otherwise considered Rajput on the Plains of India, he wasn’t aware that Bhatis, Jats, Sudhan and all the other “Martial Races” admitted into the British Indian Army, were native clients of the colonial enterprise. It was these groups that inadvertently helped prop up the colonial order without which British rule would have been impossible. This is how tribal groups survived, existing on the frontiers of more powerful Rulers. It has nothing to do with treachery against ordinary people, who never mattered during this period in history. Ordinary people matter in democratic systems, and not patronage networks. One cannot, however, escape the inevitable conclusion about the collusion of native clients and the instrumentalisation of religion.

History is a very disturbing Pandora’s Box, once it’s opened, it cannot be closed. For instance Muslim Mughal Kings were married to Hindu Rajput Princesses to ensure the loyalty of their feudatories, many of whom were themselves of prestigious backgrounds and had their own private armies. Mughal Rulers were thus partly descended from the Rajput, a reality that wasn’t lost on them when they were fighting intractable Rajputs. Conversion to different religious faiths within the context of this power-dynamic had never been based on religious convictions, but out of the strategic desire to survive. Numerous defeated Hindu elites became Muslim precisely for this reason.

Upwardly mobile citified Pakistanis are completely unaware of this past.

Of course, I’ve tried to argue in this piece that none of us in Britain is a Rajah or Chaudhry. We are Britons of Azad Kashmir descent. We should discard caste titles like all the other fanciful titles some of us claim when imagining our past. Our heritage is one of dispossession, and in the case of Azad Kashmir, economic and political exploitation at the hands of an incredibly dishonest elite. We should never forget why and how we ended up in the UK to redeem caste titles that are in all honesty disconnected from our people’s experience of suffering. 

It is folly of the worst kind to imagine one’s past disconnected from one’s present. It is an ugly kind of hubris that exposes us for what we really are.

In the words of Psalm 83:04, “Our enemies keep saying now is the time to wipe Isreal off the map. We’ll destroy even the memory of her existence!”

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Equality & Human Rights Campaigner, Researcher, Content Copywriter and Traveller. Blogger at Portmir Foundation. Liberal by values, a centrist of sorts, opposed to authoritarianism - States must exist for the welfare of people, all of them, whatever their beliefs or lifestyles. People are not "things" to be owned, exploited, manipulated and casually ignored. Political propaganda is not history, ethnicity, geography or religion. I love languages and cultures - want to study as many as I can; proficient in some. Opposed to social and political injustice anywhere in the world. I believe 'life' is a work in progress, nothing is fixed even our thoughts! Feel free to contact me - always prepared to widen my intellectual horizons and stand corrected - don't insult me though. Be grown up. Tell me why you think I'm wrong. If you make sense, I'll change my views. My opinions are not necessarily those of the Portmir Foundation; the Foundation does not do censorship; if you disagree with any of us, and you espouse liberal values, write your own opinion piece, and we'll publish it even if we disagree with it. It has to be factual and original. You can contact us at info@portmir.org.uk.