On the frontlines of the law: Legal advocacy and political protest by lawyers in contested Kashmir (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of Kashmiri lawyers working in a context of conflict, militarization and political resistance in Kashmir Valley, India. It finds that the Kashmir Bar Association, operating under conditions of state control that are maintained and legitimized through the law, constitutes an authoritative normative community and powerful institutional actor, working within the parameters of the Indian legal system while simultaneously supporting and maintaining solidarity with the movement for self‐determination, and contesting the legitimacy of Indian state rule. The association's decidedly moral vision of the law offers an alternative form of legal imagination that draws on transnational normative frameworks and practices to challenge the legal provisions and legal failures that function to legitimize human‐rights violations taking place under conditions of militarization. As we show in this article, the recent crisis period in Kashmir has posed challenges to KBA lawyers, as they negotiate and assess their relationship to the state, their place in the struggle for self‐determination, and the promise and potency of law as a strategy for social change.