ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the interface of religion and polity in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is organized into four sections, chronologically analyzing the influence of religion in the polity since its foundation till the present time. The first section examines the process of formation of the nucleus of the princely polity – Jammu Raj by Gulab Singh in the early 19th century through conquest and consolidation as a unit of Punjab Empire of Ranjit Singh. The expansion of the polity through annexation and construction of the present Jammu division, conquest of Ladakh, Balistan and Gilgit into Jammu Raj as frontier division and finally completion of the polity after integration of valley through treaty as the third unit or Kashmir division has been analyzed. Religion and caste were utilized as sources legitimacy to govern by the maharaja, a common practice in ancient and medieval India, but problematic for his time when religion of majority of his subjects in all the three units of the polity was Islam. The chapter explores the intervention of the suzerain British India to minimize the effects of the religious contradiction of the ruler and subjects in the perspective of colonial modernity. The second section presents a critique of the struggle to achieve responsible government, its strength and weakness on religion and how its dialectical course was ruptured by decolonization and partition, accession had to be accepted when the ruler and political leaders both were aspiring to independence in their respective perspectives. The third section analyses the evolution of the constitutional framework of Jammu and Kashmir as a constituent unit of the Indian republic in the context of war and international monitoring. It also examines the complexity of religious variables and its implications for the future democratic polity which demanded deliberated consensus or compromise, which were set aside and parties agreed in political expediency. Failure of the state leadership to build the republican democratic polity according to a constitutional process based on consensus or compromise of the religious communities degenerated into an arena of religious rivalry among its different religious communities and a battleground of Indian and Pakistani nationalisms taking away the agency of its citizens. In the final section, the intensification of religionist politics into violent struggle for secession from India on the one side and end of the agreed constitutional framework or balkanization of the polity into hegemonic homelands of the religious communities on the other has been reviewed. All relevant and recognized primary, secondary and tertiary sources have been used as evidence in references and notes wherever necessary. The chapter concludes with the argument of dereligionization of the polity in its internal governance and centre state relation as the only rational visible solution of the imbroglio.
