KASHMIR IN COOL

Kashmir was originally an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism. In 1349 Shah Mirza became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir and started the line Salatin-i-Kashmir.^[1] For the next five centuries Kashmir had Muslim rulers, which included Sultan Sikandar (also known as Butshikan, or "iconoclast") who ascended the throne in 1398, Zain-ul-abidin, who became the ruler in 1420, the Mughals, whose rule lasted until 1751, and the Afghan Durranis, who ruled Kashmir from 1752 until 1820.^[1] That year, the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir, and held it until 1846,^[1] at which time, the Dogras, starting with Gulab Singh, became the rulers of Kashmir upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar. The Dogra Rule (under the paramountcy, or tutelage, of the British Crown) lasted until 1947, when the former princely state became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries, India, Pakistan, and China.

The Kashmir region has long been a Muslim majority region. In the 1901 Census of the British Indian Empire, Muslims constituted 74.16% of the total population of the princely state of Kashmir and Jammu, Hindus, 23.72%, and Buddhists, 1.21%. The Hindus were found mainly in Jammu, where they constituted a little less than 50% of the population.^[2] In the Kashmir Valley, Muslims constituted 93.6% of the population and Hindus 5.24%.^[2] These percentages have remained fairly stable for the last 100 years.^[3] Forty years later, in the 1941 Census of British India, Muslims accounted for 93.6% of the population of the Kashmir Valley and the Hindus for 4%.^[3] In 2003, the percentage of Muslims in the Kashmir Valley was 95%^[4] and those of Hindus 4%; the same year, in Jammu, the percentage of Hindus was 66% and those of Muslims 30%.^[4] Among well-known people of Kashmiri lineage are Muhammad Iqbal, the Urdu poet, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, and Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister of Pakistan.

The Nilamata Purana describes the Valley's origin from the waters, a fact corroborated by prominent geologists, and shows how the very name of the land was derived from the process of desiccation - Ka means "water" and Shimir means "to desiccate". Hence, Kashmir stands for "a land desiccated from water". There is also a theory which takes Kashmir to be a contraction of Kashyap-mira or Kashyapmir or Kashyapmeru, the "sea or mountain of Kashyapa", the sage who is credited with having drained the waters of the primordial lake Satisar, that Kashmir was before it was reclaimed. The Nilamata Purana gives the name Kashmira to the Valley considering it to be an embodiment of Uma and it is the Kashmir that the world knows today. The Kashmiris, however, call it Kashir, which has been derived phonetically from Kashmir, as pointed out by Aurel Stein in his introduction to the Rajatarangini.