Kashmir Valley · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya
There was no British administration in the valley to agitate against. From 1846 Kashmir was a province of a princely state, so anti-colonial politics arrived late and arrived sideways — as a demand for responsible government from the state's own ruler rather than for independence from an empire, and with the British presence felt through a Resident rather than a collector. What came first was economic: shawl weavers protesting taxation in 1865 and silk factory workers striking in 1924, both suppressed, neither party-political. Organised politics dates from the agitation of 1931, and the parties formed after it split within a decade over whether the movement should be broadly based or community-based. The account below ends in 1947.
Risings and revolts
Shawl weavers in Srinagar, taxed through the state's dagshawl department and bound to their karkhanas by debt, assembled at Zaldagar to press their grievances after wages were withheld.
Outcome: State troops broke up the gathering; a number of weavers died, some in the canal beside the ground, and organisers were imprisoned or expelled from the trade. It is the earliest recorded collective labour action in the valley.
Workers at the state silk factory in Srinagar struck over wages and the conduct of supervisors, and a memorandum of grievances was submitted during the Viceroy's visit to the state that year.
Outcome: Leaders were dismissed and prosecuted, but the memorandum is generally treated as the first political petition by Kashmiri Muslims as a group.
A speech at the Khanqah-i-Muallah in June led to the arrest of Abdul Qadeer for sedition. On 13 July a crowd gathered outside Srinagar Central Jail where his trial was being held, and was fired on; twenty-two deaths are the figure usually given.
Outcome: The state appointed the Glancy Commission, which reported in 1932 on grievances in employment, education and land. The valley's first political parties were formed in the same year and a Praja Sabha with a partly elected membership followed in 1934.
The National Conference launched an agitation arguing that the Treaty of Amritsar of 1846 was not a valid basis for the dynasty's title to the territory, and demanded that the state's government be handed to its people.
Outcome: The leadership was arrested and tried; Sheikh Abdullah was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in September 1946.
People
| Name | Years | Movement | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abdul QadeerSrinagar | dates not established | The agitation of 1931 | An outsider working as a servant to a European traveller, whose speech at the Khanqah-i-Muallah in June 1931 led to his arrest on a charge of sedition. The crowd that gathered at his trial on 13 July was fired on, and the case became the occasion for the valley's first mass political mobilisation.Convicted and imprisoned. |
| Sheikh Mohammad AbdullahSoura, Srinagar | 1905–1982 | Reading Room Party, Muslim Conference, National Conference | A science graduate refused state employment, he emerged from the 1931 agitation as the principal organiser of the demand for responsible government. He was a founder of the Muslim Conference in 1932, drove its conversion into the National Conference in 1939 to open membership to all communities, was associated with the Naya Kashmir programme of 1944, and led the Quit Kashmir agitation of 1946.Repeatedly imprisoned; sentenced to three years in September 1946. |
| Chaudhri Ghulam AbbasJammu | 1904–1967 | Muslim Conference | A lawyer and a founder of the Muslim Conference in 1932, and its principal leader in the Jammu province. He opposed the change of name and basis in 1939 and revived the Muslim Conference as a separate party in 1941.Imprisoned several times during the 1930s and 1940s. |
| Mirwaiz Muhammad Yusuf ShahSrinagar | 1894–1968 | Muslim Conference | Mirwaiz of Kashmir and one of the religious leaders around whom the mobilisation of 1931 formed. He was among the founders of the Muslim Conference in 1932 and later opposed the National Conference, the split between the two leaderships shaping valley politics through the 1940s. |
| Prem Nath BazazSrinagar | 1905–1984 | Journalism, Kashmir Socialist Party, National Conference | Journalist and political writer. He launched the weekly Hamdard in 1935 with Sheikh Abdullah, argued for a movement built across communities rather than within one, and published Inside Kashmir in 1941, the first sustained political account of the state written by a Kashmiri. |
| Kashyap BandhuSrinagar | 1899–1985 | Social reform and journalism, later the National Conference | Editor and reformer active in the Kashmiri Pandit social reform movement of the 1930s, campaigning against marriage expenditure and for education, and later associated with the National Conference. |
| Ghulam Mohiuddin KarraSrinagar | 1911–1973 | National Conference, Quit Kashmir | One of the organisers of the National Conference in Srinagar and of the Quit Kashmir agitation of 1946.Imprisoned in 1946. |
People from Kashmir Valley who resisted colonial rule, and the regional risings and revolts that shaped that resistance. (11)