Robert Thorpe: The man who gave his life for Kashmir
Nisar Ahmed Thakur
In the troubled history of nineteenth-century Kashmir, few figures stand out with the moral courage and compassion of Lieut Robert Thorpe—a British traveler and writer who visited the Valley in the 1860s. It was an era in which the Kashmiri Muslims were reeling under the despotic rule of Maharaja Ranbir Singh (1857–1885), who assumed the throne after Maharaja Gulab Singh.
Gulab Singh had acquired Kashmir from the British under the notorious Treaty of Amritsar of 1846, for the princely sum of 75 lakh Nanakshahi rupees—a transaction remembered as the sale of a land and its people. The sale-deed virtually reduced Kashmir and its inhabitants to little more than a commodity, to be bartered away in a bargain struck between rulers.
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