‘We will memorise our home’: exploring settler colonialism as an interpretive framework for Kashmir

The Distinct Dispossessions of Indian Settler Colonialism in Kashmir: Land, Narrative and Indigeneity

“…This settler colonial desire manifested itself in the Indian army's occupation of land in Kashmir prior to 2019. Both Mushtaq and Amin (2021) and Kanji (2021) suggest that India governed an 'autonomous' Kashmir through settler colonial desire and logics, enacting certain techniques identifiable as settler colonialism. Yet, it is important to note that Indian settler colonialism in Kashmir is now characterized by a full-scale settler colonialism enabled by the loss of Kashmir's nominal autonomy and exclusive Kashmiri ownership of land and resident status, coupled with neoliberal agrarian reform.…”

“…With a focus on the historical and material context of Kashmir, Critical Kashmir Studies scholars have discussed the applicability of the settler colonial analytic in Kashmir (Bhan et al., 2022: 9). Samreen Mushtaq and Mudasir Amin's use of the settler colonial analytic is an early instance of the argument that settler colonial logics need to be understood through a longer history of the context of military occupation and its intersection with settler colonialism (Mushtaq and Amin, 2021: 3013). Challenging the binary between colonialism and settler colonialism for the context of Kashmir — a challenge that makes sense given the prior mapping of intersections of occupation and colonialism within Critical Kashmir Studies — Mushtaq and Amin have usefully identified some of the logics of settler colonialism in Kashmir.…”

“…Centring Kashmiri perspectives to focus the debate on Indian‐administered Kashmir as one of the world's longest‐running bilateral ‘territorial disputes’ between India and Pakistan, Critical Kashmir Scholars had been theorizing India's relationship to Kashmir as one of occupation and a form of (post‐)colonialism (Bhan et al., 2018; Junaid, 2013; Osuri, 2017). Since August 2019, scholars have turned to the settler colonial analytic to explain the Indian state's colonial techniques in Kashmir (Bhan et al., 2022; Kanji, 2021; Mushtaq and Amin, 2021; Veracini, 2022). This perspective aligns with the views expressed by locals and pro‐resistance political groups such as Hurriyat, who have repeatedly argued that India has been seeking to engineer a demographic change as a means of eliminating dissent (Hussain, 2010; Nawaz, 2017).…”

In/secure childhoods: Children and conflict in Kashmir

“…Long-term conflict has been the setting for several generations of children in Indian-administered Kashmir 1 . While the Indian settler-colonial project 2 and the resistance towards it can be traced to the early 20th Century (Mushtaq and Amin, 2021; Osuri and Zia, 2020; Zia, 2020), there has now been more than 30 years of state-organised suppression of the popular movement for self-determination. This crackdown has involved multiple strategies to oppress and control the population in the name of eradicating militant groups, such as killings, enforced disappearances, fake encounters, mass rapes and sexual violence, torture, and other forms of excessive force and surveillance (see for instance Bhan and Duschinski, 2020; Kaul, 2021).…”

“…2.For a detailed examination of the tensions regarding naming the Indian activities in Kashmir as settler-colonialism, see Mushtaq and Amin (2021).…”