Talk:Hindutash Pass

To User:John Hill First of all, let me thank you for retaining the information that I added in the article on Sanju Pass. Your action is refreshingly different from the modus operandi of Regent's Park (Rose Garden) and User:Fowler&fowler who have been reverting my edit in toto and spurning my endeavour for arriving at a consensus, or the conduct of User:Rayshade in making the sweeping statement, “rv vandalism, removed previously 25 June 2009” as though my edits amount to vandalism. The fact that he has not refuted my message to him in the Sanju pass discussion Page Talk:Sanju Pass compounded with the fact that after you did not delete the information that I added to the article, he has also in his edit dated 25 July 2009 with the edit summary (The present situation: Typo fix) not deleted the information that I added which he had earlier termed as “Vandalism” , ipso facto suffices to prove that he has unscrupulously and recklessly made sweeping unwarranted allegations against me and that he owes me an apology. Do you agree that he owes me an apology? I have been prevented from corresponding with you because of the unjust block that was imposed by me by User:RegentsPark and his coterie.

Now coming to your edits of the Sanju Pass article and Hindutash, I regret that you have reverted my whole edit of the Hindutash in toto with out retaining any of the the information that I added; which contradicts the manner you dealt with the article on the Sanju Pass. Certainly not a way to “try to settle this silly dispute now”.

Now further Coming to you edit of the Sanju Pass , Your statements that , “Since the reconquest of the whole region by China in 1878, it has been considered part of Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Province and has remained so ever since”, or “while India (Kashmir) may have had a rather tenuous claim (and one disputed by the Chinese) at some point in the 19th century when Chinese control was weak due to uprisings in Xinjiang or Chinese Turkestan” or “Additionally, the region of these passes is well north of any claims that are made by either Pakistan or India” , cannot be any thing but your point of view. While the Chinese holding the restive state of East Turkistan by sheer means of brute Military force has been in de facto control of East Turkistan and adjacent areas of Kashmir in the Kuen Lun area including inter alia Sanju La and Hindutash parvat, the area continues to be de jure a part of Kashmir. Chinese control of East Turkistan had been always been resisted by the East Turkistani nationals simply because the Chinese had absolutely no valid claim over East Turkistan and its authority over East Turkistan was simply that of an occupier. When Kashmir acceded to the new dominion of India in its entirety , Kashmir admittedly had a territorial extent. That territorial extent has been explicitly described in both the Constitution of India and the Constitution of Kashmir ( in that respect, luckily Kashmir has a Constitution) . Section (4) of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir states, “The territory of the State shall comprise all the territories which on the fifteenth day of August, 1947, were under the sovereignty or suzerainty of the Ruler of the State" , and what constitutes the territory of Kashmir is stipulated in the Constitution of India. The territorial extent of the State of Kashmir is as stipulated in Entry 15 in the First Schedule of the Constitution of India, read with Article 1 of the Constitution of India. Entry 15 reads “The territory which immediately before the commencement of this Constitution was comprised in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir”. The Legal position is that the territorial extent by no means can be legally altered with out amending the Constitution of India and the Constitution of Kashmir, and that is irrespective of the fact that the present Government of India allegedly or purportedly does not claim Hindutash and Sanju. More over, there has never been any border agreement, even one which is ab initio illegal and null and void, under duress and coercion, ceding an area of Kashmir to the Chinese and demarcating or delineating the northern border of Kashmir. As stated by Emma Nicholson, in her letter dated 22, May 2007 to the Ambassador, Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the European Union the accession of the princely state of Kashmir to the new Dominion of India” on October 26, 1947 was “in its entirety" The report on Kashmir of Baroness Emma Nicholson, as a matter of fact inter alia relies on an official 1909 map of Kashmir which inter alia depicts the Taghdumbash Pamir in Kanjut as Part of Kashmir as well as the correspondence of the Maharaja of Kashmir dated October 26 , 1947 with Lord Mountbatten , Governor General of India which states that the state of Kashmir has a common boundary with the “Soviet Republic”, to determine the fact that inter alia Gilgit and Kanjut (which includes the Raskam , Hunza valley and Taghdumbash) are integral parts of Kashmir, and does not rely on the post 1954 maps published by the Survey of India at the behest of Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru had also made a similar statement that "as you are aware, run in common with those of three countries, Afghanistan, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and 'China'". Apropos your statement that, “while India (Kashmir) may have had a rather tenuous claim (and one disputed by the Chinese) at some point in the 19th century when Chinese control was weak due to uprisings in Xinjiang or Chinese Turkestan”, I would like to inform you that by no stretch of imagination was Kashmir’s “claim” over the Kuen lun range on the edge of the highlands of Kashmir, “tenuous”, simply because inter alia the area in question was part of the highlands of Kashmir, and there was simply no disputants at all till a disputant was artificially inducted at the end of the 19th century by the English only to serve their perverted purpose. In the words of Dorothy Woodman author of Himalayan Frontiers Pg.55 and 56, published inter alia by London Barrie and Rockliff The Cresset Press 1969, “The simple fact was the inaccessible and practicably uninhabited area between the Karakoram and Kuenlun ranges was of interest to the (English colonial )Indian Government only in terms of the Russian threat.” And that the alleged so-called “no man’s land” under the control of the Chinese was useful, in the words of Lansdowne, “to us as an obstacle to Russian advance along this line”. So when Chinese control over East Turkistan seemed to be on the verge of very eminent and inevitable collapse, it suited the English geostrategists to talk of the so called “Ardagh Line” as though the so- called “Ardagh Line” was an artificial and invented concept, ignoring the fact that there was plethora of evidence and no dearth in the availability of evidence that the Kuen lun area had always been part of the principalities in the highlands of Kashmir notably Kanjut and Ladakh. Their (the Chinese ) practical authority, as Ney Elias British Joint Commissioner in Leh from the end of the 1870s to 1885, and Younghusband consistently maintained, "had never extended south of their outposts at Sanju and Kilian along the northern foothills of the Kuenlun range. Nor did they establish a known presence to the south of the line of outposts in the twelve years immediately following their return". Ney Elias who had been Joint Commissioner in Ladakh for several years noted on 21 September 1889 that he had met the Chinese in 1879 and 1880 when he visited Kashgar. “they told me that they considered their line of ‘chatze’, or posts, as their frontier – viz. , Kugiar, Kilian, Sanju, Kiria, etc.- and that they had no concern with what lay beyond the mountains” i.e. the Kuen Lun range in northern Kashmir wherein the Hindutash pass is situate. So lets be very clear about that. I hope that you can understand the English language when you read! My statements are supported by verifiability and corroborative evidence, so if you insist on stating that “India (Kashmir) may have had a rather tenuous claim (and one disputed by the Chinese) at some point in the 19th century”, you will necessarily have to adduce verifiable evidence and corroborative evidence, or concede that you were wrong and I am right, which I hope you will have the dignity to gracefully do. Right?

Apropos your statement, “let us not go on any further making claims for territory which is not in dispute between India, Pakistan or China” just what do you mean by “us”. This is an issue concerning the territorial integrity of India in particular Kashmir. Europeans or people residing further west have no locus standi to decide where the frontiers of India will be! Just why should India give away her territory to the Chinese who do not even share an International border with India. They have crossed their true and natural border along the Great Wall of China and occupied all the adjoining alien and foreign territories including Tibet and East Turkistan with out an iota of authority or using just brute military force[]. Historically South Asia or the Sub-continent of India was India and China was in distant East Asia and were never neighbours, but now India is not the whole of the Sub-continent of India, and the Chinese have trespassed and encroached into Central Asia and Tibet with out an iota of right using brute military power.

Apropos your statement about the so-called “19th century Kashmiri claim” , the so called “19th century” “claim” continued unabated even after the nineteenth century, after the accession of Kashmir in its entirety. After Hindutash was listed as a place in Kashmir in the Gazetteer of Kashmir and Ladak as early as in 1890, we have the confession of user:Fowler&fowler that the “renowned” “ Times Atlas (1900), shows the Hindutash Pass in Kashmir”. This depiction by the Times Atlas in the year 1900 is significant in view of the fact that it is very recent in the light of the fact that the accession of the princely state of Kashmir to the new Dominion of India” was on October 26, 1947 “in its entirety” and more over subsequently, there has never been any border agreement, even one which is ab initio illegal and null and void, under duress and coercion, ceding an area of Kashmir to the Chinese and demarcating or delineating the northern border of Kashmir. A perusal of Joe Schwartzberg's Historical Atlas of South Asia at DSAL in Chicago, would confirm that the so called so-called “19th century Kashmiri” “claim” was recognised by western cartographers even in the 20th Century and they deliberately chose not to give any credence to the maps arbitrarily and illegally published by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954. so your statement is simply just not true! I remind you of your reply, “However, I totally agree with your position that it is best in disputes like this to leave the matter open - an encyclopedia article is not a good place to try to settle nationalist arguments. I have wasted many, many hours trying to argue such matters over claimed historically-based Chinese rights to Tibet and Xinjiang”.

So I suggest that you do a work in the Hindutash article similar to the work done in the Sanju Pass article which I will be editing myself in due course, with out reverting my edit in toto so that I am not also constrained to revert in toto and we can arrive at a consensus. Please peruse my statements on the modalities for a consensus made here earlier, which were spurned by Regent's Park (Rose Garden) and User:Fowler&fowler, which still subsist.But, I will not succumb to their intimidations! Hope you will respond positively.Hindutashravi (talk) 18:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi! First of all, I don't want you to think I am trying to promote either China's or India's present perceived interests, or the right of either country to lay claim to these regions (or the right of other contenders - such as the Uighurs, Kazakhs, etc). They have always been borderlands ripe to be argued over, depending on the see-sawing fortunes of the powers and peoples in these regions. What ever the rights and wrongs, ins and outs, legal agreements, diplomatic agreements or disagreements, legalities, ownership of land and resources, etc., the Chinese have been active, off and on, and to a greater or lesser degree, in these mountains for over two thousand years. Since at least the late 1st century CE these mountain regions fell under Chinese control (after taking them over from the Xiongnu), but they didn't control them for long. Now, over the past 2,000 years India in the wider sense (including Kashmir) has only made a very brief, tenuous and contended claim over the region with only a minimal degree of control or military presence. I could go on and on arguing with you about the more recent history but I feel I could never convince you. Also, I am going to be too busy in the weeks ahead to spend much time on it as my first book on the early development of the "Silk Routes" in the 1st-2nd centuries CE (based on 30 years of research which I began in India in 1979) is due to be published within a couple of weeks (Advertisement: Its short title is Through the Jade Gate to Rome and should be available through Amazon.com and a range of other companies within 2 weeks. Retail price in the U.S. is, apparently, going to be US $39.99) - I am going to have to email hundreds if not thousands of people, libraries and bookstores.

So, please may I ask you to please write these articles up in as accurate, fair and neutral a manner as possible? Heavily supporting one side at the expense of the other may only add to tensions that are already increasing very uncomfortable international situation between these two countries (think of the tense situation at the moment around Tawang). Accuracy and balance could make these really excellent contributions to the Wikipedia - and who knows the good that could come from this? (This note was written by myself on 22 October 2009 - I apologise for forgetting to sign it at that time. John Hill (talk) 22:06, 15 December 2009 (UTC))

Based on my reading of references, this pass appears to be a footpath, as in difficult to traverse with full caravan. Quote "Trotter" cite from Kangxiwar:

On the Kárákásh River, above Fotásh, is a camping-ground called Sumgal, from which Robert Schlagintweit crossed the Kuen Luen Range by the Hindu-tágh Pass, estimated by him at 17,379 feet high. ... The road by the Hindu-tágh Pass can only be used by foot-passengers.

Another cite also mentioned caravans would use Sanju without going into details (I didn't quote that cite to readily remember which one). --Voidvector (talk) 23:04, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I was made aware of this only a few weeks ago via OSM, because someone drew the path already. The guys showed me this website. I believe the blue house in the middle is the south side tunnel entrance, the north side entrance is around the pond of water. --Voidvector (talk) 02:27, 8 January 2020 (UTC)