The territorial extent of Kanjut

No one seems to be quiet sure how the Kanjutis started to cultivating the Raskam valley.^[6] The river is known by the glittering name of Zafarshan, the gold scatterer. According to Kanjuti traditions, as related by McMahon , the Mir’s eighth ancestor, Shah Salim Khan pursued the nomadic Kherghiz thieves upto Tash Khurghan and defeated them.^[7]

“to celebrate this victory, Shah Salim Khan erected a stone cairn at Dafdar and sent a trophy of a Khirghiz head to the Chinese with a message that Hunza territory extended as far as Dafdar”. The Kanjutis were already in effective possession of the Raskam and no question had been raised about It. The Mir’s claims went a good deal beyond a mere right of cultivation. He “asserts that forts were built by the Hunza people with out any objection or interference from the Chinese at Dafdar, Qurghan, Ujadhbhai, Azar on the Yarkand river and at three or four other places in Raskam.” 

McMahon was able to prima facie roughly define the territorial limits of Kanjut. “The boundaries of Taghdumbash, Khunjerab and Raskam, as claimed by the Kanjuts, are the following: the northern watershed of the Taghdumbash Pamir from the Wakhijrui pass through the Baiyik peak to Dafdar, thence across the river to the Zankan nullah; thence through Mazar and over the range to Urok, a point on the Yarkand river between Sibjaida and Itakturuk. Thence it runs along the northern watershed of the Raskam valley to the junction of the Bazar Dara river and the Yarkand river. From thence southwards over the mountains to the Mustagh river leaving the Aghil Dewan and Aghil pass within Hunza limits.^[8]

McMahon’s information was substantially corroborated in^[9] "Seven locations in the Raskam were involved. Azgar and Ursur on the right bank, and five others on the left, that is on the Mustagh-Karakoram side-Kukbash, Kirajilga, Ophrang, Uroklok, and Oitughrak, extending from Sarakamish, north of Kunjerab pass to Bazar Dara, north of the Arghil pass , comprising an area of about 3000 acres.”

1898 by Captain H.P.P.Deasy who threw up a commission to devote himself to Trans Himalayan exploration. An item of special interest was Deasy’s description of the limits of Raskam. Starting from Aghil Dewan or pass, in the Karakoram range, the dividing line ran north-east to Bazar Dara, where it met the Yarkand river. He found an out post built of earth at Bazar Dara, surmounted by a Chinese flag, (by 1898 the Chinese had for the first time in history intruded to the area south of the Kuen Lun mountains) with a few unarmed Kirghiz in occupation. This was obviously intended as a Chinese boundary marker. From there the line ran “along the northern watershed of the Raskam valley to Dafdar in the Taghdumbash Pamir, to the north of the mills at that place, and thence to the Baiyik peak. Deasy also came upon clear evidence of what could only have been Kanjuti occupation. South of Azgar “many ruins of houses, old irrigation channels and fields now no longer tilted , testify to Raskam having formerly been inhabited and cultivated”. Anyone familiar with the care with which the Kanjuts cultivate every available strip of land in their own Hunza would have no hesitation in regarding this as proof of long standing Kanjuti occupation. The remains could not have been attributed to the Kirghiz; they were unfamiliar with the state of art.

The Chinese completed the reconquest of eastern Turkistan in 1878. Before they lost it in 1863, their practical authority, as Ney Elias 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.^[10] 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.^[11]

In 1927, the Indian Government, according to a report in the Times, March 6, 1963 “decided that a claim of the Mir of Kashmir that his dominions were bound on the north by the northern watershed of the Kuenlun ranges was insupportable”.^[12]