Haseeb Drabu: Decoding Darbar Move

By Dilip -
From being an independent princely state under a monarch, J&K was a legislatively empowered quasi autonomous constituent unit of the India Union. Recently it was dismembered and downgraded to a centrally administered Union Territory

In all these forms, the government whether anointed or appointed, imposed or elected, administering or governing has one constant feature: the darbar move. While the nomenclature, a vestige of the monarchy hasn’t changed, the need for it has been constantly reinvented ever since it was started 148 years ago.

Contrary to the popular belief, the reason for darbar move was not climatology: to escape the harsh winters of Kashmir Valley or the scorching summers of Jammu. Nor was it clairvoyance; the vision of Ranbir Singh. It was a compulsion; of the British to protect their Indian Empire. The great game in the Pamirs and Hindukush, which put the Kashmir valley on the international map of Russians, was afoot in the mid-19th century. 

By 1868 Russia had advanced in the Central Asia and extended its influence to Samarkand. These movements created panic in Britain and made them alive to the strategic importance of the Kashmir valley. Faced with the “Russian Peril”, darbar move was symbolic relocation for a strategic reason. It was element of “forward policy” (also known as “spearhead capital policy”) of the British in the run up to their agreement of 1873 with the Russians. This was the start of the process that culminated in the Kashmir valley becoming a frontline area of the British in 1889....
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/decoding-darbar-move/


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