Chapter VII: Kashmir–its People, Etc

It may be well to precede Dr. Elmslie into the valley that is to be the principal scene of his future labours, to get a glimpse of the country, the people, the Government, &c., that we may the more intelligently accompany him in his work.

The valley of Kashmir is situated to the north of the Punjaub, between north latitudes 33° and 35°, and east longitudes 74° and 76°. Its height above the level of the sea is about 5350 feet. The range of mountains to the south of this far-famed valley, and separating it from the Punjaub, is called the Pir Panjal, the average height of which, above the level of the sea, is about 12,000 feet. The two main passes in this mountain range are the Banihal, at an elevation of 9200 feet, and the Pir Panjal at a height of 11,400 feet. The valley itself, which is very flat and fertile, is about 50 miles in length and 20 in breadth. Through the middle of the valley flows the broad bosomed Jhelum in a westerly direction. On both banks of this river, and equally distant from either end of the valley, stands Kashmir or Srinagar, the capital of the country. Although Srinagar, as a city, is possessed of uncommonly great facilities for excellent sanitation in a magnificent river and numerous canals, it is nevertheless extremely filthy.

The climate of the valley of Kashmir is characterised by great salubrity. From the middle of June till the middle of August, the heat in the valley is sometimes a little disagreeable. The nights, however, are always cool and pleasant. The temperature is sometimes as high as 90° indoors during the time specified.

The total population of the valley, excluding that of any of the surrounding countries, and the inhabitants of the mountains is 402,700.

This number is divided thus:–

1. Sunnees, or Mussulmans as they call themselves, 312,700
2. Sheeas, sect of Mussulmans, 15,000
3. Hindoos, 75,000
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Total population, 402,700
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Population of Srinagar:–

1. Sunnees, 95,400
2. Sheeas, 7,000
3. Hindoos, 25,000
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Total population of Srinagar, 127,400
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In Kashmir there are 29,430 shawl weavers.

"The clothing of the Kashmiris, both men and women, consists essentially of one long loose woollen garment, which extends from the neck to the ankles, and is not very unlike a woollen night-gown. So far as this article of clothing is concerned, men and women are dressed exactly alike. The men, however, frequently wear a kamarband round their waists when they have a journey to make, or some piece of work to perform which requires more or less of activity. The sleeves of the garment being wide and capacious, the wearer can with the greatest facility take his or her arms out of them, and place them alongside the body, in immediate contact with the bare skin....

"The houses of the Kashmiris are not at all calculated to afford efficient shelter to their occupants against the inclemency of the weather in winter, being for the most part built of wood, and being besides generally in the most rickety and tumble-down condition imaginable. So far as the writer is aware, they are entirely destitute of fireplaces, and when a fire is kindled inside one of them, the smoke must find a way of escape, either by the door or the window, which is never of glass, but, as a rule, of trellis work, which is often very pretty, and for which Kashmir is justly famous.

"Coal being unknown in the valley, wood is the material generally employed as fuel. The very poorest of the people, however, collect in the summer and autumn the ordure of cattle, which they mix with straw and then form into round cakes, which they dry in the sun's rays and carefully preserve against the coming winter....

"The Kashmiris being extremely poor and inactive, and the climate at different seasons of the year being unpleasantly and bitterly cold, the inhabitants of the Fair Valley are in the habit of carrying about with them, wherever they go, earthenware pots, which they have denominated kangris. These kangris or portable braziers are made of clay of varying fineness, and are usually covered with wicker-work, more or less ornamented according to the price of the article. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor, Hindoo and Mussulman, all have their kangri, and all consider it indispensable in the cold season. The fuel consumed in the kangri is charcoal, and the heat evolved is often considerable....

"When the weather is extremely cold, it is customary for both men and women, while walking about out of doors, to carry the kangri under their loose woollen gowns, and in close proximity with the bare skin, the effect of which is often to produce a kind of cancer on those parts of the body most frequently subjected to this kind of irritation."

In the "_Christian Intelligencer_" for March 1871, there is an anonymous paper of much beauty and power from which the following particulars are gleaned:–"Let me speak first of the beauties and excellencies of the valley, and let me afterwards tell why, notwithstanding all these, Kashmir has left a sad picture on my mind. First–The country itself. Where, taking it as a whole, is anything more beautiful? I do not mean to say, that after all one has heard of it, there is not a shade of disappointment as one enters the valley by the Murree route; for it is not until you are fairly in the midst of the valley that you appreciate its beauty. To say that it is like an emerald set in silver, is to give but the faintest idea of the exquisite beauty of that bright green plain, with its broad stream, the Jhelum, running through it, and encircled on every side by snow-capped hills. Beautiful as a whole, it is far more so in its details. Its great swelling quiet river rippling down from one end to the other; its glittering lakes overshadowed by giant rocks of every shape and shade; its grand groves of chinar (the grandest tree I have ever seen, its colouring so full of contrast, its shade so perfect, its size almost incredible); its orchards of fragrant fruit; its numberless mountain streams and rushing brooks (for it is indeed a land of fountains and streams of water); its quaint picturesque villages, with their houses almost like the fanciful Dutch houses of our children's toys; its massive ruins carrying one back into another world, and about which the English visitor is almost inclined to endorse the superstition of the natives,–that they were not built by men, but by some race of giants who lodged those great stones in the places from which man has never been able to remove them,–all these make its beauty as varied as striking; such a variety as perhaps is seen nowhere else in the world. And then, whichever way you branch out from the central valley up its smaller vales, there is still the same or even greater beauty. Rushing rivers with snow cold water flinging themselves over rocks and stones; little villages hid under the shade of towering walnut trees; and, as you get further up, peaks reaching up to heaven, glaciers, from under which bellow forth dark dazzling streams. Or, if we climb the hills round the valley, we come upon beautiful _murgs_, as they are called, plains on the tops of hills, covered with wild flowers, among which you may wade above your knees and in ten minutes gather such a variety, as your two hands cannot clasp,–forget-me-not, Canterbury bells, buttercups, columbine, and a hundred other dear old English friends,–while round the edge of these bright green meadows rise up the dark green deodars. Or we go up bleaker hills, and come upon great mountain lakes (tarns we should call them in Yorkshire), so cold, so solitary, so awing.

"But there are other things in Kashmir to please besides the scenery. The people are certainly a peculiarly fine race. The men strong and handsome, capable of carrying with ease a maund, or even more, for fifteen miles over steep difficult hills, with such sturdy limbs as contrast almost ridiculously with the long thin tight-trousered legs of the Sikh soldiery. They really are, too, a most ingenious and clever and tasteful people. This is evident not merely from their exquisite shawls, but from the good taste of their papier-maché, and silver work, and jewellery, so far superior, not merely in execution, but in design and taste, to that of their Hindustanee neighbours. The women, perhaps, owe most of the fame of their beauty to their contrast with the expressionless faces of Hindustanee women; but still no one can go into Kashmir without seeing some few faces that strike him as very fine, not merely from the fresh colour and animated expression, but from the real excellency of the features. The climate, too, is unquestionably very delightful.... I doubt whether an English summer is, on the whole, so equable and pleasant....

"Lastly, the produce of the country is almost everything that heart could wish. As regards grain, it is especially a rice-growing country, but really almost every kind of grain may be and is grown there. No greater testimony to the extreme fertility of the country can be given than the fact that, notwithstanding the terrible extortion and oppression to which the people are subject, the agricultural part of the population is well clothed, and generally far from lean. But, of course, what strikes a visitor is not the grain, but the fruit, and of this there is the greatest variety and abundance....

"But there is a great 'but' to all these which spoils everything. With all this light there is a deep shadow. And why should I stop and hesitate to mention and to repeat that which comes up first into my mind–the disgraceful oppression of the people. Yes, disgraceful to _us_ English, for we sold, literally sold, the country into the hands of its present possessors; and selling it, sold with it the flesh and blood of thousands of our fellow creatures,–sold them into a perpetual slavery. Disgraceful, too, that it should lie under the shadow of our well-ruled provinces, and yet be so ground down; that the ruler should be a tributary of ours, and yet be allowed so to tyrannize.

"It is impossible that this oppression can cease so long as the Maharajah keeps up an army so utterly disproportionate to the size of his country. He must grind the faces of the poor to sustain such a large permanent force. That the army is ill-paid, discontented, inefficient, none can doubt, but still the men must have something given them to keep them in service.... This year, at a review which was on a Sunday, in honour of Sir H. Durand, the powder flask of one man blew up while a regiment was formed in square, and the explosion passed from man to man until more than eighty were prostrate. The army may do very well to bully the Kashmiri, or plunder the weak native states around, but it would never even think of standing before a British force....

"But what is this oppression that I have spoken of? It is this–that at one swoop half of every man's produce goes into the Government treasury. Half of everything, not merely of his grain, but even of the produce of his cattle, or whatever he has; so that from each cow he must give every second year a calf to Government, and from every half dozen of his chickens three go to the all-devouring sirkar. More than this even, his very fruit trees are watched by Government and half taken for the Maharajah. A poor Kashmiri can call nothing his own. But, in reality, it is not only half a man loses, for at least another quarter is taken by the rapacious government officials who have to collect the nominal half. Shakdars, Kárdárs, Ziladárs, soldiers, and others, all come in for their share. The wonder is, how the people exist at all. Of course I am a credulous missionary, and believed every story I heard, but I should like to find the man in Kashmir who could deny these facts. But it is not only the poor peasants who suffer; perhaps the condition of the shawl weavers is worse still. They are all the servants of the Government, which supplies them with material, and doles out to them a scanty pittance of two annas a day, and then sells them the rice (which it has taken from the peasants) at any price which it chooses to set upon it. These shawl weavers are a lean wan race, recognisable at once from their sallow complexion, thin cheeks and desponding look. Of course the idea at once suggests itself, why do not all the people run away and come into India? But if they had the chance, can you wonder at their almost preferring to starve in their own home paradise rather than live in the furnace of India? Yet numbers of Kashmiris do prefer India to their own lovely land, simply because in India every man can live and be his own master, whatever else he has to put up with. But few are the happy men who can get away. A few are allowed to go into India, if they leave their wives and families behind as a guarantee for their speedy return, but only a few. As I was leaving Kashmir, two or three of these shawl weavers smuggled themselves out of the country as my coolies. I knew they must be shawl weavers from their pinched faces, and so did the soldiers stationed at the top of the Pir Panjal to prevent people escaping into India, and the guard would have stopped them, but that they had no coolies to give me instead of them to carry my loads.[2]... Of course, this oppression gives the whole country a look of poverty. No one can help being struck as he enters Srinagar by the dilapidated look of the place.... There is no respectable quarter, not a single good street; scarcely even a single respectable bazaar, considering the size of the place. And what is true of Srinagar is more than true of all the smaller towns. They are ruinous in the extreme.

"In the country hundreds of acres of land are mere swamp, or almost unused pasture ground that might smile with corn. Everywhere the fruits are degenerating, because the people don't care to cultivate that of which they obtain so little; and an old Kashmiri told me that he could recollect the day when there were eighteen different kinds of grapes, but now most of them have died out, and there are only four or five kinds to be had in the whole valley....

"But there are other things in Kashmir which most terribly detract from its pleasure as a place of residence. The dirt is beyond description. Who can tell what Kashmir smells are? Not the odours of roses, such as one has expected to fill the air; but, oh! such, that the dirtiest of London courts is sweeter than the cleanest of Kashmir villages. The clothes, too, of the people are filthy; not that the filth shows much, for all their garments are of grey wool, which is a most perfect concealer of dirt; but not a few of their diseases are the result of their uncleanliness, and how often I have almost shrunk away from them, as, in my dispensary, while I have been examining a patient, I have seen the lice crawling on his clothes and his fleas skipping over to me. Of course, if you can avoid all intercourse with the natives, then dirt is not such a continual source of annoyance, but to us it was a daily trouble. But yet there is one thing which makes a Christian man far more sad than those things I have spoken of, and that is the frightful immorality of the people, and the even less excusable wickedness of our countrymen. It may be that the latter is not _so_ bad as it was–that vice is less open and shameless than it was a few years ago–but it is so open and so bad that no one need be afraid to speak of it. It is a fact that none can conceal, that numbers of young men only know Kashmir as the place where they can gratify every unhallowed passion; and an army surgeon, high in the service, told me that numbers of young officers went up every year to Kashmir in perfect health, and, after six months in its splendid climate, came down into India only to be invalided home, and many to suffer more or less for life from their own wicked folly.... Well might I be taunted, as I was, when I tried to preach the gospel in villages far distant from the capital, with the unblushing wickedness of my own countrymen. How steeped the people themselves are in sin none can tell but those who have seen them as I have done. How one corroding sin seems to be eating out the vitals of all classes, casual visitors to the valley would perhaps scarcely guess. They may say, as every one does, that there are no such liars and deceivers in the world, as in Kashmir; no, not even in India; but the utterly rotten state of social life they will probably have little idea of.

"But let me leave this and just say a few closing words as to mission work. It seems to me that the Church Missionary Society have most wisely associated themselves with the Punjaub Medical Missionary Society in sending a medical man as missionary to this difficult and delicate field of labour."...

The _Church Missionary Intelligencer_ for 1st August 1866 gives the following brief notice of what had been attempted in the way of missionary effort amongst the truly necessitous Kashmiris, up to the season that preceded Dr. Elmslie's arrival:–

"The two first missionaries of the Church Missionary Society by whom the valley was visited, the Rev. W. Smith of Benares, and the Rev. R. Clark of Peshawur, reached Kashmir in the spring of 1863. At the end of the summer Mr. Smith returned to his station at Benares, and Mr. Clark, after an ineffectual attempt to remain in the valley during the winter, was compelled, by the opposition of the authorities, to return to the plains.

"In the month of April 1864, Mr. Clark, accompanied by Mrs. Clark, and having with him some reliable native assistants, re-entered the valley, having secured beforehand a house which he had rented from the proprietor. On their arrival at Srinagar they were at once mobbed by a crowd of a thousand people, who threatened to set the house on fire, some of them coming within the compound and throwing stones. Further disturbances being threatened, a French gentleman resident in the city, accompanied by two of his friends, waited on the authorities, and remonstrated with them on their permitting such tumultuous proceedings, not only insulting to the missionary, but endangering his personal safety and that of his family. The mob-greetings were accordingly stayed, but other means were adopted of obstructing the missionary in his work, in the hope that, becoming discouraged, he might abandon it, and, retiring from the valley, allow all things to fall back into that condition of spiritual death in which they had for ages lain. Men were stationed on the bridge close to his door, to prevent any one from coming to visit him, or, if they persevered, to report their names to the Wuzeer. His servants could not succeed in purchasing the mere necessaries of life, and M. Gosselin's servant had to be sent to the other end of the city to buy àtà for them. So determined were the authorities to prevent all intercourse between the missionary and the inhabitants, that when, on the occasion of a large fire, in which many poor people lost their all, a little sum was collected and distributed among them, they were compelled to refund it, because the native Christians, with Mr. Clark, had contributed to it.

"Meanwhile, although in the presence of so great irritation public preaching was not attempted, yet inquirers came in, some of them entreating that they might be baptized at once. One of them was beaten by his master, who threatened to kill him if he persisted in frequenting the missionary's house. This young man, Husu Shah, during the previous year had been imprisoned for the same offence, having been forcibly taken out of Mr. Clark's house under the written orders of the authorities. During the time of his imprisonment he had been repeatedly beaten, and had logs of wood tied to his feet.

"At length, at the suggestion of the British Resident, Mr. Clark offered to vacate the house within the city, provided suitable accommodation was provided for him outside the city, near the Shekh Bágh. And yet, while thus in every way consistent with his duty, endeavouring to conciliate, he had the pain of learning that Husu Shah was again imprisoned. They offered him, indeed, his liberty, on the understanding that he would not again visit the Christian missionary, nor try to escape to the Punjaub; but, on his refusal, the logs of wood were again fastened to his feet. Through the interference of the British Resident, he was, after some days, liberated, and his first act was to revisit the missionary."

Although the Resident, Mr. Cooper, wrote to the Maharajah, asking that Mr. Clark might be allowed to remain, he was "inexorable, and as he had by treaty the right to insist on the withdrawal of Europeans from the valley during the winter season, he claimed to exercise it in relation to Mr. Clark, who was thus compelled to return to the Punjaub."

One of the reasons urged by the Resident for the extension to Mr. Clark of the privilege of remaining in the valley, is interesting:–"His Highness is not perhaps aware that the wife of Mr. Clark is an accomplished physician, and has devoted her life, her strength, and her talents to the relief of the sick and the suffering. I suggest, therefore, my dear friends (the Diwans), that you represent to his Highness that while he is consulting the religious feelings of his Srinagar subjects, and perhaps the general peace, in maintaining, as long as may be necessary to his Highness, the principle or custom that Europeans should not be allowed to reside in the city without express permission of the Government, his Highness would be inflicting a real injury on his people, if he withheld his permission from Mr. Clark and his family to continue to reside during the cold weather, because the humane exertions of the lady have already been attended with wide benefit and comfort to the Maharajah's people." The lady, who still seeks to improve her medical knowledge, would not, in 1864, have endorsed the compliment that she was an "accomplished physician," but she may take the comfort of knowing that her medical services were useful and much appreciated. It gives us peculiar pleasure to record this, for the encouragement of female medical missionaries. Her husband, writing to Mr. Wm. Coldstream from Srinagar, in May 1864, informs him that "Mrs. Clark has begun a dispensary, which is crowded daily, and takes up daily three hours of her time in _hard_ work. To-day there were eighty-four (?) cases,–one man came twelve miles from a village, and a poor woman, thought to be dying, having recovered, the dispensary stands high in public estimation. The native apothecary, who is supposed to cure all the Maharajah's soldiers at one pice a-head daily (_when the M. H. is here_, for they have no medical attendance at other times), came to-day, and wants to send his son for instruction. All this will do good." But it is time to accompany Dr. Elmslie in his interesting work.

[Footnote 2] Coolies are used everywhere, for there is not such a thing as a road, nor a cart in the whole of Kashmir, though in the valley itself it would be the easiest thing to make good and permanent roads. The country is level, and kunkur abundant.