Refashioning Paradise on Earth: Mughal Governance in Kashmir

Abstract This article unravels the complex political, economic, and narrative relationship between the Mughal Empire and its Kashmir province. Contrary to scholarly and popular opinion regarding the devastating and exploitative nature of Mughal rule on Kashmir, in which Kashmiris had little say, the article illustrates that Kashmiris at various levels of society worked with the Mughals to bring the empire and Kashmir closer together through matrimonial, administrative, trade, and literary links. At the same time, Kashmiris resisted the Mughal incorporation of Kashmir into the imperial imagination—through the celebration of its natural beauty, complemented by the building activities of the Mughal rulers on its landscape—as paradise on earth. By drawing on local and more universal historical and literary ideas, Kashmir’s narrative tradition went beyond the confines of the Mughal imagination to reclaim Kashmir’s individuality and autonomy within the empire.