Mirza Sher Mohammad and Sardar Gyan Singh. Zoolams of the Cashmere State Council and Particularly of Rai Bhag Ram: or an Open Letter to the Viceroy of India.

“Sun” Printing Works: Lahore, British India. 1897.

Sewn wrappers. 46 pp. Text printed via letterpress. CONDITION: Good, vertical fold, some surface losses along spine-edge, wrappers moderately soiled, leaves minimally creased at margins, text clean and clear.

An apparently unrecorded tract on the corruption of an influential court minister in late nineteenth century Jammu and Kashmir, written by Hindu and Muslim politicians and calling for the Raj’s immediate intervention.

This pamphlet, addressed to Viceroy of India, Victor Bruce, describes how “the natives of the State are being turned out of State employments…and it seems that there is nothing for them but to cho[o]se between leaving the home of their fathers for other places in the British dominion and dying in penury and misery,” all due to one Rai Bhagram, a judicial and financial official in Maharaja Pratap Singh’s court. The authors enumerate the varied grievances caused by Bhagram’s balancing of the budget, which among other things called for the lands of Muslim rajas to be seized and mosques to be dismantled. Much of the tract’s contents describe Bhagram appointing his friends and family to positions of power, his appropriation of state funds for his personal luxuries, and how he goes unpunished for crimes as severe as vehicular manslaughter. The authors argue that Bhagram is a wolf in sheep’s clothing within Pratap Singh’s court, but that there is nothing that the Maharaja or any official in Jammu and Kashmir can do without the Viceroy’s prior approval. Mention is made of the subjects on the frontier of the state who find themselves particularly disaffected with British governance and consider them a hindrance to the Maharaja’s rule.

While secondary sources provide minimal information on authors Mirza Sher Mohammad and Sardar Gyan Singh, we note that Mohammad’s portion of the tract ends with a request to print a translation of a “Petition” that had been written in Urdu by the “people of Jammu and Cashmere.” Gyan Singh’s portion concludes with a printed signature of “the oppressed Hindu and Muhammadan Inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir.” 

OCLC locates no holdings of this pamphlet. We locate only two other publications of the “Sun” Printing Works in Lahore, both at the British Library.