The Kashmir Sedan, this is what the American traveler and Christian missionary Reverend F. Ward Denys writes in his 1915 travelogue to Kashmir.

Kashmiri Muslims under the Dogra tyranny were dehumanised to the point that their lives mattered lesser than animals. The law actually stated that a Muslim slaughtering cattle would be killed and one could get away from murdering a Muslim with a fine.

They were enslaved to the point that generations of Kashmiri Muslims escaped into what is today’s Pakistan and India’s Amritsar including families of Iqbal, Manto, Sharifs among others.

In the 1877-78 famine, a significant population of Kashmiris died, and those who tried escaping were either killed or sent back. The saying goes that Drag tsalih dag tsalih ni, the famine will go away but the pain won't.

Kashmiri Muslims were landless serfs of feudal lords. In 1950, at least 800,000 of them worked the fields but didn’t own the lands that they tilled for generations.

Kashmiri Muslims who failed to pay crippling taxes were basically enforced into slavery. These men were gathered and used as couriers to carry loads for the Army and their campaign in Gilgit.

hrough the treacherous passes of Karakoram would be thrown into the gorges by the soldiers.

Those who survived would be then caged in Benji or Bawanj in Gilgit, where many were sold off as slaves to the highest bidder.

Kashmiris fought their destitution and oppression with bare hands. But only to be subjugated into a different one.

In Washington University of St. Louis, an award is named after Denys and it’s for creative prose. The winner gets $250. Wonder if they would travel in the ‘Kashmir Sedan.’
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