British Centralisation, Geopolitics, and the Subversion of Local Authority in the Gilgit Agency (1935–1947)

• MAISAM ABBAS

  Author

This research paper presents a historical appraisal of the British lease years in the Gilgit Agency, arguing that the period between 1935 and 1947 was not merely a strategic military interlude but a concerted and deliberate campaign of political centralisation that fundamentally undermined the existing indigenous and diarchal power structures. The primary catalyst for the lease, secured from the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, was rooted in the escalating geopolitical anxieties surrounding the expansion of Soviet communism in Central Asia, a continuation of the ‘Great Game’ played out on the ‘Roof of the World.’ However, this strategic rationale served as the immediate pretext for a deeper imperial objective: the systemic singularisation of authority. Through administrative fiat, incentives, and the subordination of local chieftains (Mirs and Rajas), the British Political Agent became the sole sovereign. This process curtailed the independent foreign relations of principalities like Hunza and Nagar, alienated the Gilgit region from the Dogra administration, and established a uniform, centralised rule. The subsequent abrupt termination of the lease and the hasty handover of this strategically realigned territory back to the Dogra regime in 1947 directly precipitated the local rebellion, a violent reaction against the failure of the centralising British project and the unwanted return to a despised external authority. The Gilgit Rebellion, therefore, was the inevitable political culmination of a decade of systematic administrative and psychological alienation engineered by the paramount power.

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