The History of Gilgit-Baltistan

Abstract The Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) region in northern Pakistan, formerly known as the Northern Areas of Pakistan, has a long history. The people of the region, described as Dards, are mentioned by classical Greek and Roman historians and in sacred Hindu texts. This early history (3rd century ce–10th century ce) of the region shows it as ruled by the Kushan, Chinese, and Tibetan empires. In the 7th-century accounts of Chinese travelers and 8th- and 9th-century Arabic and Persian chronicles, the region is named as Palolo or Bolor in Arabic. It is also mentioned in the 10th-century Persian chronicle Hodud al-ʿĀlam, the 11th-century Kashmiri classic Rajatarangini, and the 16th-century Tarikh-e-Rushdi of Mirza Haider Dughlat, a chronicler of the Mughal emperor Akbar’s court. The colonial history of the region began with the forays of the Dogra generals of Gulab Singh, the Raja of Jammu in the first half of the 19th century. It is this history of foreign invasions and local rebellions that lies at the heart of the confusion that surrounds the legal, political, and constitutional status of the region to this day. The successive invasions of local Rajas from Jammu and later on from Kashmir, then of the British, as well as the region’s attachment to Pakistan have resulted in multiple claims and counterclaims of sovereignty. Today, the region is mired in the intractable dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. At one point in the late 19th century, the Kashmir state, the British, and the Chinese all simultaneously laid claim on the small kingdom of Hunza. Between 1947 and 1974, the Pakistani government administered GB in much the same way as the British had done, that is, without political representation of the region in the national Parliament. The history of GB since Partition has been essentially a history of its struggle to become a full member of the Pakistani state. This history is fascinating as a case of graded sovereignty. Some piecemeal reforms and agonizingly slow implementation of those reforms since the 1950s has occurred. The hope of the local people in 1947 that they would join the Pakistani federation as a province, as other regions of the country, has essentially remained unrealized.

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