The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-14 00:00:00

210
111

The Valley of Cashmere•

_
(From a Correspondent of the Times.)

SRISUGG May 26
You will, no doubt, bo glad to hear the truelTß, account. of
the little disturbance which we had here about a fortnight
ago. Everybody you meet has something to say about it,
but few know really what has happened. In a country
whore, from the Maharajah downwards, every native thinks
it to be to his interest to mislead the European or to prevent
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with one another. Besides, information often filters through
questionable channels to the English visitors of Cashmere.
Some have implicit trust in their khupsumahs (butlers) ;
others repose confidence in thepolitical wisdom of the boat-
men who paddle them up and down this delightful country
of streams, rivers, lakes, and pools, or hear the words of
truth and soberness from the lips of some fair but frail
Cashmere beauty. As to the agents of the British Govern-
ment, who are to give and should be supposed to possess ac-
curate information as to what is going on, they are, especi-
ally if they are "swells," so overwhelmed with acts of
kindness by the Maharajah and his Ministers, so much
"feted," that it is not to be wondered at that they leave
Srinuggur with the impression "that the Rajah is one of the
most enlightened Oriental princes ;" that he is much misun-
derstood ; that he has of course the good of his country at
heart, but cannot do everything in one day. Indeed only the
person who has a thorough knowledge (unfortunately only
to be got through experience) of all the revolting intricacies
of Oriental cunning, of its almost unfathomable duplicity
of the heartless and shortsighted selfishness of native rulers,
and the absolute demoralisation of the ruled, is competent
to take the right course for inquiring into the course of
events which take place around him. "Mais revenons
nos moutons." The mutiny was perfectly spontaneous. The
people who took part in it were driven to it by the artifi-
cial condition of starvation in which it is the good pleasure
of this worst of all governments to keep them.
To understand this you must know that everything in
Cashmere, either by assumed right or by direct spoliation,
is the private property of the Maharajah. He is the absolute
proprietor of the lives and property of his subjects. It is
from him that they have to bay their own produce, and on
that he levies enormous taxes. In ordinary times, when
the ruler is just, or already saturated with the gains of ex-
actions, he is content to appropriate—say, talking of the
produce of the land, one-half, and to levy taxes to the
amount of 30 and 40 per cent. on the remainder. The pre-
sent Maharajah is scarcely satisfied with this, or, at any
rate, if ho is his officials are not. The people of this country
mainly live on rice. Well, this rice is accumulated by the
Rajah, and sold to his subjects. This year its price is
trebled, the ostensible cause of this circuumstance being the
influx of visitors (who are comparatively very few) ; its
real cause the insatiable avarice of the Government. The
people unable to pay this price—and the difference of the
present price and that of the two preceding years—have
to live on grass and roots. Driven by hunger, a mob as-
sembled in the streets of Srinuggur, and, although un-
armed (which the Maharajah takes good care they shall
be) threatened by their numbers to become dangerous.
They shouted for food, and it is said menaced one of the
Ministers of the ill-advised Rajah. In reply his highness's
sepoys were let loose on them, cut down a few, and drove
the crowd on to one of the bridges which connect the seve-
ral parts of this sham Venice. The bridge broke down, we
must charitably suppose accidentally, by the weight of the
people on it, and about 36 persons were drowned. It is
said that the sepoys tried to save them, and also that they
pushed back into the water those who endeavoured to gain
the shorn. I will you leave to judge which of. the two ac-
counts is likely to be the correct one. For the edification of
the European visitors a story was subsequently got up, in
which this petty outbreak was ascribed to the shawlmakers
striking for higher wages (they have about ss. a month left,
after deduction of taxes), and a reduction of the scandalous
price at which rico is sold.

All I can say is this, that to induce the timid Cashmerian
(and of all the races that I have seen the Cashmiri is deci-
dedly the most timid) to express his dissatisfaction in a
public manner, the cup, even of oriental tyranny, must
have been overflowing. Happily the outbreak to which this
letter refers took place at the beginning of the "season,"
'when some Europeans were present, and it is probably due
to their presence that in order to prevent further outbreaks
and thus draw their attention to hie misrule, a few conces-
sions were made or, rather, promised by the Maharajah. In
the winter, when the snow obstructs the passes and Euro-
peans aro politely turned out of Cashmere nothing inter-
feres with the patriarchial government of his Highness.
The taxes are levied or, rather, robbed from the defenceless
population ; one or the other of the few who, in spite of the
vexatious imposts by which trade is fettered, have grown
wealthy, is seized on some frivolous pretext, thrown into
prison, where he may be tortured, and from which ho is
only released on payment of a considerable sum to the Ex-
chequer ; people are beaten, tortured, and, I fully believe,
whenever disaffection is spreading in any district, espe-
cially a mountainous one, decimated without mercy or ap-
peal. Whether the late outbreak is the precursor of many
others, or merely one of a number of which the British
Government is kept in ignorance, is of course difficult to
say. It is, however, certain that on one question—that of
the trade of Cashmere—our Government should take a de-
cided stand. We should interfere, and that at once, on be-
half of our merchants of India, whose prosperity is strongly
affected by the unwise restrictions and the heavy duties
which the Maharajah puts on trade. Already the commercial
intercourse between India, Cashmere, and the adjoini4ig
countries (tributary or independent of the latter) has within
the last three or four years sunk to one- third of what it
was before. To give you an idea of what our worthy feu-
datory, the Rajah oVashmere, thinks proper to inflict on
commerce, I will quote fi om a minute of Sir R. Montgo-
mery, the late Governor of the Punjab, dated Jan., 1863.
The rates are those levied on goods exported from the Pun-
jab to Cashmere by the Jumna and Bannihal road, which
are considerably lower than those levied on any other road,
as the Rajah is anxious to make Jumna the most important
place in his territories, to which it is less entitled than
almost any other town or village in his domains. The
Jumna and Bannihal road is the worst of those conduct-
ing into Cashmere. "Percentages of duty—Sugar, 126 ;
molasses, 150 ; coarse sugar, 100 ; tea, 78 ; spices, &c., 19
to 200 ; pewter, 104 ; iron, 90 ; broad cloth, 29, Stc." Sugar
is one of the most favourite articles of consumption in this
country, where confectionery is made oven of the reeds
that grow on the river side.

The lowest taxed goods are " flowered piece goods,"
which pay a little over 8 per cent. Anything that tho
people are really in want of is taxed extravagantly. The
same goods have to pay taxes as high as those quoted on
the Ladakh frontier, which is within the Maharajah's ter-
ritory. To all this must be added the potty exactions of
the officials all over Cashmere and in Ladakh, who plunder
the merchant on their own account, and to give presents to
the Maharajah or his Ministers by means of legal con-
trivances. _

--- •
It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that English com-
merce can at present not compete with that of Russia in
Central Asia, to which Cashmere is the most direct route.
Indeed the greatmystery which hangs over Central Asiais
mainly due to the stupidity and rapaciousness of the Maha-
rajah, or rather to our own folly in not compelling him to
open his country to commerce and civilisation. Had we
done so we should be able to exercise a pressure on Cabul,
and the trade of the Punjab with Central Asia would have
received an immense development. Cabul, Bokhara,
Khokan, Tartary, would have become an area of
friendly commercial rivalry between England and Russia,
and net, what unfortunately it is becoming now, a hotbed
of intrigues dangerous to the peaceful maintenance of our
rule in India. I am not a Russophobist, but no man in his
senses can contemplate with indifference the immense
strides which Russia has lately been making in th
direc-
tion of Hindustan. People in England may say what they
like, and fancy their Eastern possessions secure in the bra-
very, the public spirit, and the wisdomof those it sends out
to govern them. I deliberately affirm that the whole of
Central Asia is directly, and to a small extent indirectly,
under the influence of Russia, and owing to the short-
sightedness of the " rest and be thankful policy," we have
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could easily reign supreme. Some, indeed most, of ourgoods
could undersell those of Russia in the great marts of Russia.
The mission which some time ago was to have proceeded
from the Punjab to Yarkand would have conferred incalcul-
able benefits on British commerce, had the Supreme Go-
vernment not at once stopped it. The marauding tribes
between Leh and Yarkand might have been subsidised, an
agent (agsakal,"greybeard")appointed to watch over Indian
commerce at Yarkand ; invaluable scientific, linguistic, and
historical information would have been obtained, and the
fact of our political existence would have been rendered pa-
tent to the races inhabiting those immense regions. It is
idle to weigh against these considerations the dangers to
life which the members of the proposed mission might have
run at the hands of robbers infesting the roads between
Ladak and Yarkand. Hundreds of native merchants cross
the roads every year, and as the mission would have been
under the especial protection either of our own feudatory,
the Maharajah of Cashmere, or of that of the Khan of
Khokan, who invited it, and was ready to give every pledge
to the British Government of its safe arrival and return—
had the members of the mission, in spite of these precau-
tions, been assassinated by some band of robbers, our
Government could not possibly have been involved in war,
as there would have been no Government to go to war
with. One thing is quite clear. We must either annex
Cashmere in order to have a safe frontier against Russia and
a secure and untrammelled commerce with Central Asia, or
force the Maharajah to open his country unreservedlyto
Europeans, to give access to every information, topographi-
cale and political, which we may desire, and tonadbo.li
ridiculously extravagant taxation on exports a importhts.
In the interests of civilization ho should also bo compelled
to govern his subjects in a more merciful and, above all,
regularnaanner ; to levy his taxes more in money than kind,
and to establish the equality before the law of the oppressed
Mussulmans with the ruling Hindoos. The prayer of every
Cashmere is that the " sahibs" would take the country from
the Maharajah. At any rate, with the outposts of Russia
almost opposite Gilghit, with every information pertina-
ciously kept from us by the Rajah under a false show of
readiness to give it, we shall, I trust, better ourselves and