| Languages | |
|---|---|
| Kashmiri, Urdu | |
| Religion | |
Predominately:  Islam Minority:  Hinduism,  Sikhism |
The Kashmiri diaspora refers to Kashmiris who have migrated out of the Kashmir into other areas and countries, and their descendants.
| Languages | |
|---|---|
| Kashmiri, Urdu | |
| Religion | |
| Predominately: Islam Minority: Hinduism, Sikhism |
The Kashmiri diaspora refers to Kashmiris who have migrated out of the Kashmir into other areas and countries, and their descendants.
Estimated, 1,000-1,200 Kashmiri Hindus live in Pathankot, Gurdaspur and the Cities of Doaba region and Punjab. [1]
10,000 Kashmiri Hindus live in Gujarat. [2] They settled here after the 1990 exodus.
The state of Himachal Pradesh in India has the second-largest Kashmiri language speakers after Kashmir Valley and adjoining areas. Kashmiri Pandits migrated to this region over centuries and including from 1947–48 to 1989–91. Large number of Kashmiri Pandits also came here after the eruption of militancy in the valley.
Heavy taxes under the Sikh rule, coupled with famine and starvation, caused many Kashmiri villagers to migrate to the plains of Punjab. [3] [4] These claims, made in Kashmiri histories, were corroborated by European travelers. [3] When one such European traveler, Moorcroft, left the Valley in 1823, about 500 emigrants accompanied him across the Pir Panjal Pass. [5] The 1833 famine resulted in many people leaving the Kashmir Valley and migrating to the Punjab, with the majority of weavers leaving Kashmir. Weavers settled down for generations in the cities of Punjab such as Jammu and Nurpur. [6] The 1833 famine led to a large influx of Kashmiris into Amritsar. [7] [8] Kashmir's Muslims in particular suffered and had to leave Kashmir in large numbers, while Hindus were not much affected. [9] Sikh rule in Kashmir ended in 1846 and was followed by the rule of Dogra Hindu maharajahs who ruled Kashmir as part of their princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. [10]
Many Muslim Kashmiris migrated from the Kashmir Valley [11] to the Punjab due to conditions in the princely state [11] such as famine, extreme poverty [12] and harsh treatment of Kashmiri Muslims by the Dogra Hindu regime. [13] The Punjab Census Report, in 1891, enumerated 111,775 Muslims born in Kashmir who settled in Punjab, which was also equivalent to the entire population of Srinagar, back then standing at 118,960. [14] According to the 1911 Census there were 177,549 Kashmiri Muslims in the Punjab. With the inclusion of Kashmiri settlements in NWFP this figure rose to 206,180. [15]
Scholar Ayesha Jalal states that Kashmiris faced discrimination in the Punjab as well. [16] Kashmiris settled for generations in the Punjab were unable to own land, [16] including the family of Muhammad Iqbal. [17] Scholar Chitralekha Zutshi states that Kashmiri Muslims settled in the Punjab retained emotional and familial links to Kashmir and felt obliged to struggle for the freedom of their brethren in the Valley. [18]
According to the 1921 Census the total Kashmiri population in Punjab was 169,761. However, the Census report stated that only 3% of Kashmiris settled in Punjab retained their Kashmiri language. The number of people speaking Kashmiri in 1901 was 8,523 but had decreased to 7,190 in 1911. By 1921 the number of people speaking Kashmiri in Punjab had fallen to 4,690. The 1921 Census report stated that this fact showed that the Kashmiris who had settled in Punjab had adopted the Punjabi language of their neighbours. [19] In contrast, the 1881 Census of Punjab showed that there were 49,534 speakers of the Kashmiri language in the Punjab. [20] The 1881 Census recorded the number of Kashmiris in the Punjab as 179,020 [21] while the 1891 Census recorded the Kashmiri population as 225,307 [22] but the number of Kashmiri speakers recorded in the 1891 Census was 28,415. [23]
Common krams (surnames) found amongst the Kashmiri Muslims who migrated from the Valley [11] to the Punjab include Butt (Bhat), [24] [25] [26] Dar (Dhar), [24] Lun (Lone), Wain (Wani), Mir and Shaikh. [27] [28] The 1881 Census of the Punjab recorded these major Kashmiri sub-divisions in the Punjab along with their population. The Butt (Bhat) tribe numbered 24,463, the Dar (Dhar) tribe numbered 16,215, the Lun (Lone) tribe numbered 4,848, the Wain (Wani) tribe numbered 7,419, the Mir numbered 19,855 and the Sheikhs numbered 14,902. [28] Watorfield also noted the presence of the Butt (Bhatt) and Dar (Dhar) castes amongst the Kashmiris of the town of Gujrat in Punjab. [27]
In 1961, there were 10,000 refugees of Kashmiri origin in Pakistan, who had voting rights in elections of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. They were given an equal amount of representation in the election as the 109,000 Jammu refugees. [29] [30] In 1990, there were 400,000 refugee voters, compared to 1.2 million Azad Kashmir residents. The refugees continued to receive higher representation in the legislatures compared to the residents, Kashmiris being favoured more. This was justified on the grounds of showing "solidary with the Kashmiris in the Indian-administered Kashmir". Scholar Christopher Snedden remarks that the higher representation given to refugees endows opportunities to the central government of Pakistan to influence the election results. [30]
During the 1990s around 50,000 Kashmiris fled from Indian administered Kashmir to Pakistan, which as of 2010 had not granted citizenship to up to 40 per cent of the refugees. [31] Ms Lucas suggests that the Pakistani government has been slow in providing citizenship to the refugees because doing so might nullify their right to self-determination.[ citation needed ]
The city of Karachi is home to a significant diaspora of Kashmiris. [32] According to the 2017 Pakistan Census, 63,784 people in Karachi reported Kashmiri as their mother tongue. [33]
Around 70% of all British Pakistanis in England trace their origins to the administrative territory of Azad Kashmir in northeastern Pakistan, mainly from the Mirpur, Kotli and Bhimber districts. [34] [35] [36] Many of them migrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s to work as labourers after the construction of the Mangla Dam by the Pakistani government. [37] Large Azad Kashmiri communities can be found in Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Leeds, Luton and the surrounding towns. [38] [35]
The Valley Kashmiris in the UK maintain that they are "Kashmiris" and the Azad Kashmiris are "nouveaux Kashmiris". [39]
Approximately 40,000-45,000 members of the Kashmiri diaspora live in the United States.
In the 2016 Canadian census, approximately 6145 people reported being of Kashmiri descent. [40]
A community of approximately 250 Kashmiri Pandits lives in Singapore. [41]
Indo-Canadian Kashmiri Forum
Azad Jammu and Kashmir, abbreviated as AJK and colloquially referred to as simply Azad Kashmir, is a region administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing entity and constituting the western portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947. Azad Kashmir also shares borders with the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the south and west, respectively. On its eastern side, Azad Kashmir is separated from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir by the Line of Control (LoC), which serves as the de facto border between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Geographically, it covers a total area of 13,297 km2 (5,134 sq mi) and has a total population of 4,045,366 as per the 2017 national census.
Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompasses a larger area that includes the India-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
Srinagar is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region. It is the largest city and summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, which is an Indian-administered union territory. It lies in the Kashmir Valley along the banks of the Jhelum River, and the shores of Dal Lake and Anchar Lakes, between the Hari Parbat and Shankaracharya hills. The city is known for its natural environment, various gardens, waterfronts and houseboats. It is also known for traditional Kashmiri handicrafts like the Kashmir shawl, papier-mâché, wood carving, carpet weaving, and jewel making, as well as for dried fruits. It is the second-largest metropolitan area in the Himalayas.
The history of Kashmir is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent in South Asia with influences from the surrounding regions of Central, and East Asia. Historically, Kashmir referred to only the Kashmir Valley of the western Himalayas. Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
The Kashmiri Pandits are a group of Kashmiri Hindus and a part of the larger Saraswat Brahmin community of India. They belong to the Pancha Gauda Brahmin group from the Kashmir Valley, located within the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmiri Pandits are Hindu Kashmiris native to the Kashmir Valley, and the only remaining Hindu Kashmiris after the large-scale of conversion of the Valley's population to Islam during the medieval times. Prompted by the growth of Islamic militancy in the valley, large numbers left in the exodus of the 1990s. Even so, small numbers remain.
Mirpur, officially known as New Mirpur City, is the capital of Mirpur district located in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan which has been subject of the larger Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India since 1947. It is the second largest city of Azad Kashmir and the 74th largest city in Pakistan.
Mirpur District is a district of Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region. It is one of the 10 districts of Pakistan's territory of Azad Kashmir. The Mirpur District is bounded on the north by the Kotli District, on the east by the Bhimber District, on the south by the Gujrat District of Punjab, Pakistan, on the south-west by the Jhelum District of Punjab, Pakistan, and on the west by its Rawalpindi District. The district is named after its main city, Mirpur. The Mirpur District has a population of 456,200 and covers an area of 1,010 km2 (390 sq mi). The district is mainly mountainous with some plains. The Mirpur District has a humid subtropical climate which closely resembles that of the Gujrat District and the Jhelum District, the adjoining districts of Pakistan's Punjab Province.
The British Mirpuri community comprises people in the United Kingdom who originate from the Mirpur District and surrounding areas in Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu and Kashmir, thus being a part of the Mirpuri diaspora. While no accurate statistics are available, an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of British Pakistanis in England trace their origins to the administrative territory of Azad Kashmir in northeastern Pakistan, mainly from the Mirpur, Kotli and Bhimber districts.
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, and also between China and India in the northeastern portion of the region. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier, and 70% of its population; Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; and China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.
Kashmiris are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group speaking the Kashmiri language and originating from the Kashmir Valley, which is today located in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
Kashmiri Muslims are ethnic Kashmiris who practice Islam and are native to the Kashmir Valley, an area that includes the India-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract. The majority of Kashmiri Muslims are Sunni. They refer to themselves as "Koshur" in their mother language.
Islam is the majority religion practised in Kashmir, with 97.16% of the region's population identifying as Muslims as of 2014. The religion came to the region with the arrival of Mir sayed Ali shah Hamdani, a Muslim Sufi preacher from Central Asia and Persia, beginning in the early 14th century. The majority of Kashmiri Muslims are Sunni Muslims, and Shias account for between 20% and 25% of the Muslim population, who mostly reside in north and central Kashmir. They refer to themselves as "Koshur" in their mother language. Non-Kashmiri Muslims in Kashmir include semi-nomadic cowherds and shepherds, belonging to the 𝙂𝙪𝙟𝙟𝙖𝙧𝙨 and Bakarwal communities.
Kashmiri Hindus are ethnic Kashmiris who practice Hinduism and are native to the Kashmir Valley of India. With respect to their contributions to Indian philosophy, Kashmiri Hindus developed the tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism. After their exodus from the Kashmir Valley in the wake of the Kashmir insurgency in the 1990s, most Kashmiri Hindus are now settled in the Jammu division of Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country. The largest group of Kashmiri Hindus are the Kashmiri Pandits.
The Mirpuri diaspora constitutes individuals with an origin in the Mirpur District of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, now living outside that district. Migration from Mirpur started occurring in the 1920s, when many Mirpuris left for Bombay to work on merchant ships. During the partition of British India in 1947, many Mirpuri Hindus and Mirpuri Sikhs were forced to flee to cities in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. The construction of the Mangla Dam by the Pakistani Government in the 1960s caused many of Mirpuri Muslims to migrate to the United Kingdom to work as labourers.
Jammu is a city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region. It is the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir, which is an Indian-administered union territory. It is the headquarters and the largest city in Jammu district. Lying on the banks of the river Tawi, the city of Jammu, with an area of 240 km2 (93 sq mi), is surrounded by the Himalayas in the north and the northern plains in the south. Jammu is the second-most populous city of the union territory. Jammu is known as "City of Temples" for its ancient temples and Hindu shrines.
The Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, or Pandits, is their early-1990 migration, or flight, from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in Indian-administered Kashmir following rising violence in an insurgency. Of a total Pandit population of 120,000–140,000 some 90,000–100,000 left the valley or felt compelled to leave by the middle of 1990, by which time about 30–80 of them are said to have been killed by militants.
After the Partition of India, during October–November 1947 in the Jammu region of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, many Muslims were massacred and others driven away to West Punjab. The killings were carried out by extremist Hindus and Sikhs, aided and abetted by the forces of Maharaja Hari Singh. The activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) played a key role in planning and executing the riots. An estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred. Subsequently, many non-Muslims were massacred by Pakistani tribesmen, in the Mirpur region of today's Pakistani administered Kashmir, and also in the Rajouri area of Jammu division.
The Kashmiris in Punjab are ethnic Kashmiris who have historically migrated from the Kashmir Valley and settled in the Punjab region. Many ethnic Muslim Kashmiris from the Kashmir Valley had migrated to the Punjab region during Sikh and Dogra rule.
Under Dogra rule, people in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir launched several political movements. Despite ideological differences and varying goals they aimed to improve the status of Muslims in a state ruled by a Hindu dynasty.
Kashmiris in Azad Kashmir are the ethnic Kashmiri people who reside in Azad Kashmir, a territory which constitutes part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir since the end of the First Kashmir War. Their demographic includes up to 40,000 registered Kashmiri refugees who have fled the Kashmir Valley, located in Indian-administered Kashmir, to Pakistan since the late 1980s due to conflict in the region. As of 2010, only around 60 percent of Kashmiri refugees had acquired Pakistani citizenship.
Kashmiri histories emphasize the wretchedness of life for the common Kashmiri during Sikh rule. According to these, the peasantry became mired in poverty and migrations of Kashmiri peasants to the plains of the Punjab reached high proportions. Several European travelers' accounts from the period testify to and provide evidence for such assertions.
The picture painted by the Europeans who began to visit the valley more frequently was one of deprivation and starvation...Everywhere the people were in the most abject condition, exorbitantly taxed by the Sikh Government and subjected to every kind of extortion and oppression by its officers...Moorcroft estimated that no more than one-sixteenth of the cultivable land surface was under cultivation; as a result, the starving people had fled in great numbers to India.
What with the political disturbances and the numerous tyrannies suffered by the peasants, the latter found it very hard to live in Kashmir and many people migrated to the Punjab and India. When Moorcroft left the Valley in 1823, about 500 emigrants accompanied him across the Pir Panjal Pass.
In the beginning, it was only the excess of population that was increasing rapidly, that started migrating into Punjab, where in the hilly cities of Nurpur and Jammu, that remained under the rule of Hindu prince the weavers had settled down for generations...As such, even at that time, a great majority of the weavers have migrated out from Kashmir. The great famine conditions and starvation three years earlier, have forced a considerable number of people to move out of the valley and the greater security of their possessions and property in Punjab has also facilitated this outward migration...The distress and misery experienced by the population during the years 1833 and 1834, must not be forgotten by the current generation living there.
Owing to a large influx of Kashmiris into Amritsar during the great famine which occurred in Kashmir in the year 1833 A.D., the number of shops increased in Amritsar to 2,000 and the yearly out-turn of pashmina work to four lacs of rupees.
In the year 1833 A.D. owing to a great famine in Kashmir, there was a large influx of Kashmiris into Amritsar.
Moreover, in 1832 a severe famine caused the death of thousands of people...Thus emigration, coupled with the famine, had reduced the population to one-fourth by 1836...But still the proportion of Muslims and Hindus was different from what it is as the present time inasmuch as while the Hindus were not much affected among the Muslims; and the latter alone left the country in large numbers during the Sikh period.
From the late nineteenth century, conditions in the princely state led to a significant migration of people from the Kashmir Valley to the neighboring Punjab province of British-as distinct from princely-India.
Extreme poverty, exacerbated by a series of famines in the second half of the nineteenth century, had seen many Kashmiris fleeing to neighbouring Punjab.
Prem Nath Bazaz, for instance, noted that 'the Dogra rule has been Hindu. Muslims have not been treated fairly, by which I mean as fairly as Hindus'. In his opinion, the Muslims faced harsh treatment 'only because they were Muslims' (Bazaz, 1941: 250).
According to the 1911 census there were 177, 549 Kashmiri Muslims in the Punjab; the figure went up to 206, 180 with the inclusion of settlements in the NWFP.
...Kashmiris engaged in agriculture were disqualified from taking advantage of the Punjab Land Alienation Act...Yet Kashmiris settled in the Punjab for centuries faced discrimination.
Like most Kashmiri families in Punjab, Iqbal's family did not own land.
Kashmiri Muslim expatriates in the Punjab had retained emotional and familial ties to their soil and felt compelled to raise the banner of freedom for Kashmir and their brethren in the Valley, thus launching bitter critiques of the Dogra administration.
The only language belonging to the non-sanskritic sub-branch of the Indian branch of the Aryan sub-family spoken in the provinces is Kashmiri. The number of persons speaking this language was 8,523 in 1901 and 7,190 in 1911; but has now fallen to 4,690, a fact which shows that Kashmiris who have settled in these provinces have adopted the Punjabi language of their neighbours. This is amply proved if we compare the strength of Kashmiris returned in the caste Table XIII with that shown by the language table. Kashmiri now appears in the return as the language of 4,690 persons though Kashmiris themselves have a strength of 169, 761; in other words only about 3 out of every 100 Kashmiris still retain their own language.
Kashmiri is the language of the valley of Srinagar in Kashmir which nowhere touches our border. But famine and other causes, already fully discussed in the chapter on the Fluctuations of Famination, have driven a considerable number of immigrants at one time or another from Kashmir into the Panjab; and the language is now spoken by no fewer than 49,534 inhabitants of the Province.
The But/Butt of Punjab were originally Brahmin migrants from Kashmir during 1878 famine.
The But/Butt of Punjab were originally Brahmin migrants from Kashmir during 1878 famine.
The Kashmiris have returned numerous sub-divisions of which the few largest are shown in the margin.
Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from Indian-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, a country that has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 per cent of the migrants....migrants speak the Kashmiri language whereas many of the locals speak a dialect of Punjabi.
Individual migration from what later became AJK started already before the Subcontinent's partition and independence. From the 1950s, chain migration developed, transferring large portions of the population of southern AJK (today's districts of Mirpur, Kotli and Bhimber), resulting in quite concentrated settlements of Kashmiris in Britain, especially in Birmingham, Bradford, different towns in Lancashire and around London.
Migration from AJK in search of greener pastures dates back to the early 1920s when many people shifted to Bombay for jobs on merchant ships. The second wave of migration was induced by the Mangla dam construction in the 1960s. The difference between the two waves of migration is that while the first one was voluntary, the second one was forced. The construction of the Mangla dam had led to the submergence of vast chunk of fertile land and triggered migration as agro-based activities had collapsed. ... Since the construction work of the dam was with a British company, as per an understanding between the company and the government of Pakistan, 300 displaced persons from Mirpur were given work permits in Britain. After settling in the UK, these people sponsored their relatives living in AJK to immigrate.
Kashmiris from Azad Kashmir (the Mirpur and Kotli districts) relocated to Britain in the 1950s, especially to the towns of Bradford, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Luton, on account of the availability of unskilled work.
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