The polls in the Northern Areas

The elections for the Federally Administered Northern Areas, now known as Gilgit-Baltistan, have been conducted, with the expected victory for the PPP, but the giving of the area the status of a province, should not disguise the fact that the new ‘province’ is not at par with the other provinces, got its status has been established by a presidential order, not by an amendment to the constitution which otherwise governs provinces. Also, it establishes a third province where there had previously been one Princely State. However, Gilgit-Baltistan is merely the continuing of the tradition whereby this area was administered separately from the state, and before partition had formed part of the Gilgit Agency, which had been leased for 60 years in 1935 from the Kashmir state, and was taken over by a Dogra Governor, representative of a dynasty that had been placed in charge by the British of India’s Northern Frontier, and to which the agency had reverted at partition. The area had been particularly troublesome ever since coming under the Dogras, and when the Dogras had come under the British, when it has formed the eastern end of the frontier with China. It was this presence of Chinese influence, and British suspicion of indirect Soviet influence, that made this area crucial, and prompted much British interest, not just in this area, but in Kashmir as a whole. It is not clear, and perhaps never will be, what was the intention of the Dogra Maharaja when he did not accede to Pakistan. However, whatever was to be the fate of the state, he clearly intended to take along the Gilgit Agency, now the Gilgit Wizarat, which could be seen by his dispatch of Brigadier Ghansara Singh of the Kashmir state forces, as its first post-lease governor, appointed by Srinagar without any intervention by the British resident.
However, the representatives of the Kashmir state, the garrison, consisted entirely of Muslims, and thus, Ghansara Singh or no Ghansara Singh, decided to go over to Pakistan as soon as it came into existence on August 14, 1947. This they managed to do, and during the first Kashmir war, presented Pakistan with part of Kashmir state that had won freedom without having taken part in the freedom struggle in what is now Azad Kashmir, led by Sardar Qayyum, but which had waged its own freedom struggle.