Critique of Exclusionary Women's Nationalism in Kashmir, and Reconceptualizing the Relationship Between State and Non-State Women Actors

Abstract

Drawing on my family’s personal experience, this paper narrates the history of Muslim women’s exclusion and persecution in the aftermath of the Hindu–Muslim conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, a contested state in northern India. As usual, the politics are played out on women’s bodies. The ethnic, religious, and linguistic mosaic of Kashmir cannot be reconstructed without seeking new understandings of women’s political subjectivities. To that end, I evaluate a Muslim women’s vigilante group and a Pandit women’s vigilante group in order to recognize the added challenges these pose to the age-old ethos of Jammu and Kashmir. This paper highlights points I have made in my auto/biography The Life of a Kashmiri Woman. Keywords Kashmir, Kashmiri pandits, vigilante groups, political subjectivities