History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c84.s5.t1.5

v5.c84.s5.t1.5

The common people of Kashmir were sunk in the deepest ignorance and poverty ; many of the villagers lived in primitive simplicity and went about almost naked for want of clothing ; they merely wrapped a blanket round their bodies for warmth. Long distances and lack of roads made it impossible to import grain from outside and every valley had to be self-contained in the matter of its food supply ; and when a natural calamity like flood or heavy snowfall* cut off communications, the inhabitants perished helplessly of famine in thousands. They had no savings, no economic staying power. The province was off the routes of the civilised world ; difficulty of transport raised the cost of marketting its produce. Hence, even in the case of its most valuable products, such as saffron and fine woollen yarn, their high sale price was mostly swallowed up by the middleman and the grasping landlord, while the feeble peasant or shepherd, though their actual producer, gained only a remuneration as poor as that of the cultivator of the commonest crops of the plains, and much less than that of the grower of opium or indigo. The province had no local industry. Even shawl-weaving was mostly a Government monopoly, and the people earned from it only the wages of daily labour at the State factories. The fine Kashmiri paper was consumed only by the Court, and made to order.