About Kashmir
The map shows mountainous Kashmir, a region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent and the northernmost geographical area of South Asia.
The region lies within the territory where the Indian tectonic plate meets the Eurasian Plate. The collision between the two plates created the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya Mountains. Some of the highest mountains in the world dominate the landscape of Kashmir. Several major mountain ranges of the Himalayas run in a west-northwest to east-southeast direction through the region; the Karakoram Range in Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Ladakh Range, the Zanskar Range, the Great Himalaya Range, and the Pir Panjal Range in India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
The greater region of Kashmir borders the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as North-West Frontier Province) and Punjab in the west, the Wakhan Corridor of
Afghanistan to the north, the disputed area of Aksai Chin (formerly part of Ladakh), the Chinese Autonomous regions of Xinjiang and
Tibet in the east, and the Indian state of
Himachal Pradesh to the south.
The area was home to several semi-independent Muslim, Buddhist, and Sikh kingdoms until the British came along. After the Anglo-Sikh wars, the British East India Company stripped the culturally different territories from the Sikh Kingdom of Punjab to form a new state and sold it as a whole to Gulab Singh, a local Sikh Maharajah.
[1] Under British suzerainty, the formerly politically semi-independent territories of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh became the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, for convenience mostly called just Kashmir. It was a political and administrative construct, the "Sentry State" of the British Indian Empire, bordering the three great powers in the East—the British, the Russian and the Chinese.
The British eventually withdrew from British India in 1947, and the former empire was partitioned into two independent countries - India (mostly Hindu) and Pakistan (primarily Muslim). At the time of the British withdrawal from India, Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, preferred to become independent and to remain neutral between the successor states of India and Pakistan.
Today the northern part of Kashmir is held by
Pakistan. The disputed regions are
Gilgit-Baltistan in the north and
Azad Kashmir, the nominally self-governing territory to the west of the Indian-administered state of
Jammu and Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir is the northernmost part of
India; its capitals are Srinagar (in summer) and Jammu (in winter).
More about Kashmir
In 1834, the Punjab based Sikh Empire invaded and annexed Ladakh, formerly one of the provinces of Tibet, and the region became part of the Indian dominion. After the defeat of the Sikhs in the Anglo-Sikh wars in 1846, the province of Jammu and Kashmir was transferred by the British (in return for payment) to
Gulab Singh. It became a part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, the "Sentry State" of the British Indian Empire. British rule of India was developed through a combination of military force and alliances with Indian rulers
[2] (mainly by coercive diplomacy). The vassal state was part of the British Empire in India until 1952.
Vale of Kashmir topography, with Pir Panjal Range (left) and the Great Himalaya Range (right).
Image: Google Earth
Gilgit-Baltistan, together with the territory of Azad Kashmir, is the dominion of the "Pakistan controlled Kashmir." The territory of Gilgit-Baltistan became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name "Northern Areas." But the legal identity and constitutional status Gilgit-Baltistan’s has been disputed ever since the Indo-Pakistani partition in 1947.
[3]
Gilgit-Baltistan covers an
area of 72,971 km², compared it is about the size of
Ireland (the Republic), or about half the size of the US state of
Iowa.
Gilgit-Baltistan has a
population of about 1.9 million people. Capital city is Gilgit. Urdu is the official language.
Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir is India's northernmost state. With an
area of 98,340 km², India's controlled portion of Kashmir is about the size of Iceland. Kashmir (the princely state) was originally the size of
Great Britain (island), or slightly smaller than
Minnesota.
Approximately 14 million people (est. 2018) live in India's northernmost state which consists of four regions; the hilly
Jammu Division in the southwest, home to
Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
The
Kashmir Valley (Vale of Kashmir), the valley situated at an average elevation of 1,000 m, is surrounded by the Pir Panjal Range and the Great Himalaya Range. Within the valley lies
Srinagar, the state's largest city and its summer capital. The Kashmir Valley has a predominantly Muslim population.
The mountainous
Ladakh; its population is split roughly in half between the districts of Leh and Kargil. About 77% of the citizens of Kargil is Muslim, while Leh's population is 66% Buddhist. In the northeastern corner of the state is the Siachen Glacier, an inhospitable area where nobody really lives.
Official
languages are Urdu, Kashmiri, and Dogri, an Indo-Aryan language.