‘Comeback Of Dogra Rule’: With Special Status Gone, Kashmiris Fear Losing Land Rights Once Again scroll.in

“They would beat us if a single grain fell out of place, they would check our teeth to see if we had eaten any of the corn,” said Mohammad Sultan Malik, tapping his front teeth. At 90, he is one of the few people in Singhpora to remember tilling fields in Kashmir under the reign of the Dogra kings.

Others in Singhpora, a quiet village in the Pattan area of Kashmir’s Baramulla district, have had stories handed down to them. Stories of humiliation and want, and then of fortunes slowly brightening after the king left Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and the former princely state acquired special status under Article 370 of the Constitution.