I am writing about Kashmir in the 1860's, and I have run into some difficulty finding primary sources that were not written by the british (Especially because I don't have access to a sweet university library anymore). Because of my particular focus I have read a couple hunting/travel diaries written by british soldiers, and I am hoping to find a less imperial perspective on what was going on in north India and Pakistan at the time.
Even in historical accounts I have read about the the East India Company and the British Raj seem pretty heavy with pro-imperialist interpretations of events. I have several books that I have not read yet but it seems like every book on the subject has the same footnotes and sources so I was hoping to get some recommendations.
This is almost certainly too specific a request. This is basically asking if there are perfect sources. Any 19th century history or primary source written by Kashmiri or Punjabi authors would be extremely helpful though. I would love to find more folktales or lore even. In any case, thanks for help!
Here are the books that I have found but have yet to read: The Jammu Fox, India's Struggle for Independence, Demystifying Kashmir, Kashmir in the Crosssfire, and The Sikhs of the Punjab
I would suggest look up works that deal with Kashmir and the North-west provinces and check the kind of material they have accessed. One such book would be Chitralekha Zutshi's Kashmir's Contested Pasts. Her work treads through multiple sources in Persian and reads it alongside the reception and history of other languages in Kashmir, namely Sanskrit, Kashmiri, Urdu and English.
The work emerged, I would proffer, at a time when many South Asian cultural historians were engaging with questions of history-writing (and making) in specific regional and linguistic contexts. There is a great emphasis on a close reading of vernacular texts to challenge European notions of historicity and of what it means to be writing "history". Textures of Time and Creative Pasts being other examples of a re-reading of what constitutes historical imagination in a linguistically variegated region like the Indian subcontinent.
I would suggest look up this book as an entry point perhaps? Another resource that is worth exploring is the Kashmiri langauge section of the [Digital Library of India] (http://www.dli.ernet.in/browse?value=Kashmiri&type=language). The DLI servers tend to be erratic, so I hope you are able to access it. It really is a fantastic repository that I have repeatedly utilized in the last few months.