Kashmir-The Ggreat Game
With the popular discovery of cricket, football, golf etc., everything suddenly became a game. The word was bandied about as loosely as, more recently, the word ‘scene’. The phrase ‘Great Game’ was coined in mid-nineteenth century following the long rivalry between Russia and British India for control of Central Asia. Kashmir itself became a game when British Government transferred it to Maharaja Gulab Singh of Jammu for a sum of Rs. 75 lakh in March 1846. Gilgit, the remote outpost of the Dogra Dynasty became a nerve centre of the Great Game.
At the time of partition of the Indian sub-continent, Kashmir Valley became a game between India and the newly carved state of Pakistan. After a few years, evil eyes of western powers fell on it, creating a headache for India with which Maharaja Hari Singh, the last Dogra ruler acceded the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Since then the state once again bade adieu to peaceful days. Peaceful times can be counted as merely punctuation marks in a long description. The situation reached its nadir in 1989 when secessionist elements revived their nefarious activities under the cover of religious fanaticism in an unprecedented manner. By 1993, the movement for azadi was completely usurped by Islamic terrorists. Since then, Kashmir Valley followed by Jammu have become a playing ground for ‘dirty games’ by religious leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and their political and religious mentors across the line of control between India and Pakistan, dividing Kashmir into two parts. The victims are hapless Kashmiris who have fallen pray to dirty games.
At the time of partition of the country in 1947, Majaz said quietly:
All these whose hands are dripping with blood
They were the very messiahs, the Khizrs.
There is an old saying about Kashmir “The earth, whose dust conceals the fire of the Chinar in its conscience
Can never go cold,
