Indian-occupied Kashmir Research Articles

The Doctrine of Responsibility to protect in the case of Indian occupied Kashmir

The Doctrine of Responsibility to protect in the case of Indian occupied Kashmir

A Subject's Mobile Phone

It has become a new normal in Indian-occupied Kashmir that the Indian army forcibly grabs the mobile phones of young boys and rummages for God knows what. Here in this poem, the speaker (who is pressured by an army trooper to surrender his mobile phone) shows courage to speak up and resist this unacceptable breach of privacy.

Women used as Weapons of War in Conflict Zones: A Case Study of Indian Held Kashmir Post 1990

This Qualitative in-depth study aimed to explore whether women are treated as a weapon of war in conflict zones. Women are exploited, and their feminity is used against them as a weapon, and Indian Army troops deployed in Indian occupied Kashmir are leaving no stone unturned to harm and disgrace the Kashmiri Community by raping and harassing their women. Women living in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir are the main consideration. 11 in-depth interviews were conducted with the native Kashmiris living in Indian held Jammu and Kashmir. Ethno National Conflict theory was employed to further understand the entire scenario. Findings of the research study suggest that Kashmiris are suffering under the tranny and illegal oppression of the Indian army and the brutal policies. Women are indeed treated and ill-treated as a weapon of war in conflict zones like Kashmir, and ethnic cleansing has been a major goal of the India army in Indian held Kashmir.

Dark Ages and Bright Futures

This article examines the shape of time for those living in Indian-occupied Kashmir, focusing particularly on two calendars that became embroiled in a “calendar war” in Indian-occupied Kashmir in the year 2017. The first was the annual calendar of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, which proudly featured twelve “talented youth[s]” of the state. The second was a “countercalendar” circulated online by the anonymously run pro-azadi (self-determination) Facebook group Aalaw, featuring a rather different image of Kashmiri youth. Situating these calendars against a larger backdrop of visual representations of time in occupied Kashmir, this article examines how each calendar mobilized narratives about the past, present, and future in Kashmir, narratives that were negotiated through competing gendered images of youth via rhetorics of ability and disability. The article takes up the tensions between two strands of disability studies: liberal approaches that emphasize the celebration of disability and biopolitical critiques that foreground the violent production of debilitation, to consider how Kashmiri visual production suggests a vision of crip futures for those now living with disabilities in Kashmir.

TRAJECTORIES OF RSS IDEOLOGICAL DOMINATION IN THE INDIAN POLICY MAKING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOUTH ASIA

It is argued by policymakers and practitioners that instability in South Asia has exacerbated since Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) coming into power in India. Its policymaking is impacted by the influence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). BJP is known as the political brand-name of RSS. There is a perceptible increase in RSS expansion and dominance of Hindutva ideology in domestic, foreign, and security policies of India. RSS is following the grand policy of greater India with the establishment of Hindu hegemony in India and Hindustan’s (India’s) hegemony in South Asia. Empirical evidence suggests that a well-choreographed use of communal violence and Pakistan bashing have been employed by BJP for the attainment of its objectives. BJP’s revoking of Articles 370 and 35-A to forcibly absorb Indian Occupied Kashmir and enactment of Citizen Amendment Act are the most recent manifestation of RSS long-term design. Following the mixed research method, this paper will be developed around the central argument that the rise of RSS influence on Indian policymaking has impacted its domestic and external policies which bear implications for South Asia. Bibliography Entry Islam, Muhammad Javed, and Zulfqar Khan. 2020. "Trajectories of RSS Ideological Domination in the Indian Policy Making: Implications for South Asia." Margalla Papers 24 (1): 1-15.

Canine counterinsurgency in Indian-occupied Kashmir

In this article, we analyze contemporary discourses of counterinsurgency in relation to dogs in Kashmir, the disputed northernmost Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and the site of a prolonged military occupation. We are interested in the widespread presence of street dogs in Kashmir as both embodiments and instruments of military terror. We consider the competing narratives of how canines function variously in Kashmiri perceptions of counterinsurgency and in Indian nationalist discourses. Through ethnographic and cultural analyses, we track how street dogs appear in various cultural and public narratives as the Indian military’s “first line of defense,” and the ways in which their overwhelming presence produces deep anxieties about the nature and extent of the military occupation of Kashmir.

The Haunting Specter of Hindu Ethnonationalist-Neocolonial Development in the Indian Occupied Kashmir

The Indian government says that the removal of Kashmir’s autonomy is for development, but it should be seen as embedded in a structure of neocolonialism based on fundamentalist Hindu ethnonationalism or Hindutva and fueled by neoliberalism in which even Muslims living in India are cast as invaders and foreigners. Kashmiri, doubly marked as the Other: first as Muslims and second as seekers of self-determination, fear their loss of territorial sovereignty will pave way for settler colonialism, dispossession of indigenous people and rampant exploitation of resources resulting in neocolonial maldevelopment.

Revisting Indus Water Treaty

This conflict of access to water resources exaggerated with the growing political tussle of territorial hegemony. Thus the symbol of sovereignty for both newly built nations as independent nation-state after the end of British rule in 1947 was triggered with the access of water resources. The poor treatment of the partition and the vicious relocation of assets exacerbated the pressures between the two, prompting many years of contention. Moreover, the depicted limits set the phase for strains over water. The headwaters of the Indus were situated in Indian occupied Kashmir, and the lower bowl was in Pakistan. This set India at an undeniable favorable position, with the capacity to control the wellspring of water streaming into Pakistan. This investigation resulted into clash on water asset amongst Pakistan and India in the past and with evolving conditions, inspect the topographical stream of upstream - downstream water strife in regards to Indus Water Treaty definition, decide Indus water settlement understandings in light of the need for change, dissect the ramifications of Indus water arrangement utilizing systematic strategy procedure.

Camera as weapon: ways of seeing in Kashmir

ABSTRACTThis article considers amateur images that came out of Indian occupied Kashmir during the summer of 2016. These pictures, circulated on Facebook and Twitter, documented the human cost of India’s use of pellet guns for anti-protest crowd dispersal, a decision that led to the gruesome blindings and wounding of Kashmiris. Pictures of pellet gun victims sparked outrage online as they spread across a social media already saturated with several competing visions of Kashmir’s past, present, and future. Countless images of maimed Kashmiris entered a visual field structured by the Indian state’s pervasive surveillance of Kashmiri aspirations for azaadi. Writing in the wake of Third Cinema’s vision of the camera as a weapon, this piece considers the relationship between the insurgent’s right to look and right to maim summoned by the liberal state. Reflecting on the significance of particular networks of circulation, registers of representation, and forms of enunciation, I offer a rethinking of documentation, documentary images, and ways of seeing in Kashmir.

Showing humanity: violence and visuality in Kashmir

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the burst of visual production that emerged from and around Indian-occupied Kashmir in July 2016, when the Indian paramilitary and police began to implement for the first time a tactic of mass blinding as a way of quelling surging protests against the Indian state. I consider a selection of visual texts that intervene in the optical regime undergirding the Indian occupation, one that has arguably elicited Indian support in part via a systematic erasure of the humanity of Kashmiris who favour self-determination (or ‘azadi’). In the face of this optical regime, I examine the visual and narrative tactics through which pro-azadi Kashmiris stake claims to humanity – by putting wounded Kashmiri bodies on spectacular display, graphically foregrounding Kashmiri bodily vulnerability in acts of public grieving, and seeking to interpellate a global political community through an appeal to a shared humanity. As these urgent claims to a larger human community are voiced, this paper asks what it means for Kashmiris to take on the burden of ‘performing humanity’ in these ways, especially given the explicit cautions in visual studies and human rights scholarship around spectacular exhibitions of vulnerability. Rather than assume that showcasing vulnerability can never incite transformation, I closely examine the possibilities of particular visual forms—photojournalism and digital activism—in relaying vulnerability and attempting to claim and recraft humanity.

Contentious memories. Territorial control and the creation of heritage in Indian-occupied Kashmir

Contentious memories. Territorial control and the creation of heritage in Indian-occupied Kashmir

LoC: The Line "out" of Control in the Region of Kashmir

LoC:The Line "out" of Control in the Region of Kashmir Ather Zia (bio) In 2013 Reshma Bi, a seventy-year-old Kashmiri woman, was pining for her sons in her native village of Charonda, in the Uri sector of the Indian-administered area of Kashmir. A few years earlier, Reshma's sons had fled to the Pakistan-administered side of Kashmir to escape police persecution because of their alleged role in cross-LOC trafficking. Uri is a garrison town near the Line of Control that separates the two regions of Kashmir under separate Indian and Pakistani control. The erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, now divided and under Indian military occupation, stands as a testament to the fraught postcolonial aftermath of the partitioning of India and Pakistan in 1947, which is manifested in the landmark divide, the Line of Control. The LoC is a formal ceasefire line, arbitrated between the newly independent states of India and Pakistan by the UN in 1949,1 which partitions Kashmir into the Pakistan-occupied region, or Azad (Free) Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and the Indian-occupied territory, known as the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). This was meant to be a temporary bifurcation till a plebiscite took place in the region, but instead, India and Pakistan have waged three full-scale wars over Kashmir. Low-intensity warfare remains ongoing at the LoC, which has been called the most dangerous place on earth.2 Currently, in Indian-occupied Kashmir there are about 700,000 Indian troops; with a Kashmiri population of about 5.5 million, that is 1 soldier for every 8 Kashmiris, making Kashmir one of the world's most militarized regions. More than 70,000 people have been reported killed in counterinsurgency operations, more than 8,000 forcibly disappeared, and more than 60,000 subjected to custodial torture.3 In the Indian mainstream discourse particularly, the lack of attention to the unceasing contestations of the bifurcation of Kashmir, its layered history and the complexities of Kashmiri subjectivities, has been a symptom of the shortsighted political analysis of the region.4 The division of Kashmir continues to animate the politics of Kashmiri Muslims as well as the significant Kashmiri minority populations, and it shapes their politics of survival and hopes for independence, as well as fueling the policies of the two adversarial nation-states.5 [End Page 1037] However, in the mainstream Indian discourse, and to a lesser extent in the Pakistani mainstream one, the Kashmir issue generally is framed as a black-and-white one. In India, Kashmir is generally framed through the lens of Pakistan's proxy war, religious terrorism, or a domestic dispute. The poignant details of lives such as Reshma's and other Kashmiris across the contested divide where the LoC stands illuminate the ways it is not a final partition but a symbol of a political promise. Reshma was agonized by separation from her children and one day decided to just walk across the LoC and join her sons permanently, as it would be impossible for her to return the way she had left. For Reshma, this act of crossing the LoC was a personal decision, but it brought the two nuclear nations, India and Pakistan, to the brink of war in 2013. The tenuous ceasefire agreement in 2004 between the Indian and Pakistani armies could not withstand what should have just been a grandmother's routine family visit to her erstwhile-undivided village. Within one week of Reshma's crossing the LoC, the Indian soldiers erected new bunkers to obstruct mobility across the LoC. The Pakistani troops objected to Indian constructions, which violated the ceasefire, and tensions escalated, resulting in killings of soldiers and civilians on both sides. Epistemic Violence of "Border" Talk? In response to this incident, a leading Indian newspaper claimed, "Tit-for-tat actions over a case of border crossing."6 It is significant that the report used the word border for LoC with ease, and even the allegation against Reshma's son was categorized as "cross-border" trafficking rather than a "cross-LOC" issue. The interchangeability of LoC with border is not new but is symbolic of the routine erasure...

Spectral Ties: Hospital Hauntings Across the Line of Control

ABSTRACT In this article, we trace encounters between humans and phantasmic entities in hospitals in Indian-occupied and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. In Pakistan, the presence of spectral beings (jinni) in hospitals is linked to state and sectarian violence, which precipitates ruptures between jinni and human worlds. Such breaches permit jinni to manifest in the medical present, where insecure actors harness them to ventriloquize unspoken anxieties. In Indian-occupied Kashmir, jinn-like, chronically mentally ill patients haunt psychiatric modernization projects. In embracing a jinneaological approach to medical crises, we theorize hospitals as multi-temporal and multi-dimensional spaces called “tesseracts,” in which human-nonhuman encounters serve existential and political purposes.

Violation of the UN Resolutions on Kashmir: India’s Quest for UNSC Permanent Membership

India’s bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to achieve the organisational power play remains unfulfilled. It is more to gain supremacy to refute the UNSC resolutions and gloss the continuing atrocities in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) completely. The Resolution 48 is the oldest of the UNSC resolutions waiting for its implementation since1948. It called for a plebiscite in the IOK to determine its sovereign status according to the will of its people. The reassertion of the Indian External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, in her address to the UN in November 2016, declaring the IOK as an “integral part of India” is a barefaced non-compliance to the global institutional framework meant to harmonise, supplement and enforce the peace efforts in the world according to the UN Charter. Swaraj’s reference to the insurgency in Balochistan, in her address to the UN, is yet another blatant antithesis of the principles enshrined in the Charter to respect the mutual sovereignty and coexistence. In 2017, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), has also urged India to implement the resolutions of the UNSC.1 A country, in violation of the human rights, UNSC resolutions and international norms, does not qualify to be a member of the crisis-management body. India has certainly failed to set an example.

Sovereignty, vulnerability, and a gendered resistance in Indian-occupied Kashmir

ABSTRACT Drawing on Iffat Fatima’s documentary film, Khoon Diy Baarav or Blood Leaves its Trail (2015), this paper explores how a gendered Kashmiri activism against human rights violations allows for reenvisioning the concept of an authoritarian and violent Westphalian sovereignty concerned with exclusive political authority and territory. Previous studies of gendered resistance are examined as are reformulations of sovereignty through feminist and Indigenous critiques. Through these examinations, the paper offers a way to rethink sovereignty through the theoretical concept of vulnerability. Such a rethinking of sovereignty may point to an interrelational model of sovereignty where the vulnerability of gendered bodies and the environment may be emphasised. In the context of human rights violations in Kashmir, this reenvisioning of sovereignty may be a necessary counter to the repetitious cycles of necropolitical sovereign power.

Modi’s Kashmir Policy: The Probable Consequence for the Security of South Asia

India’s decision to pursue an aggressive foreign policy to subdue Pakistan and its tactic to implement such policy entails a perilous course of action. The dangerous brinksmanship between the states since the last two years along the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary could lead to disastrous consequences. The US’s ever increasing cooperation with India and its lukewarm response to Islamabad’s call, is yet another factor, which encourages New Delhi to adopt an offensive behaviour towards Pakistan. Modi’s Kashmir policy has resulted in failure, causing despondency among the people of the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). Modi’s rigid approach towards Pakistan and the people of IOK continues to irk the Indo-Pak relations. India’s absurd policy towards Pakistan has rather compelled Islamabad to resist, which faded the flexibility and goodwill towards New Delhi shown by it during the past ten years. An unresolved Kashmir issue is a historical fact, which cannot be sidelined and ignored for too long. Even a minor miscalculation by India, in pursuit of its foreign policy objectives for undermining Islamabad’s will to resist, could put the entire region in trouble. India and the international community should, therefore, realise that none of the strategies other than ‘dialogue’ involving all the stakeholders would succeed in resolving the long pending issues including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Indian Efforts to Change the Demography of IOK

The Federal Home Minister of the government of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mr. Rajnath Singh, unveiled a plan in April 2015, to settle tens of thousands of non-Kashmiri Hindus in the Muslim dominated disputed territory of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). BJP has long vowed to settle 200,000 to 300,000 Hindus in IOK. The three disclosed and two undisclosed composite Hindu townships for the non-Kashmiris, to be made on the acquired lands of the farmers would be self-contained and heavily guarded. IOK enjoys an independent constitutional status. Article 370 does not allow non-Kashmiris to own land in Kashmir. Modi is well aware that demographics can reshape politics by redrawing the boundaries of population. The decision is akin with the Israeli style settlements in Palestine. It perpetuates the cycle of vicious and unlawful politics. In an ideologically polarised society, the identity-based animus would further gratify the Indian policy of human rights violations and denial to the right of self-determination. Muslims, by far, are a majority with 68.3 per cent of the total population followed by Hindus and Buddhists in IOK. The power of numbers entrenched in democracy would clearly enjoy alliance with prevalent black laws and gradual erosion of Article 370, if settlements are encouraged. Consequently, it would generate more instability in an effort to incorporate IOK politically, ideologically and territorially. With demographics as a crucial factor in any peace building effort, Indo-Pak peace would face uphill struggle even further.

Morality and Martyrdom: Dams, Dharma , and the Cultural Politics of Work in Indian-Occupied Kashmir

In this essay, I explore how corporations such as India’s National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and the Hindustan Construction Company use corporate humanitarianism to justify their illegitimate control over critical rivers in the Kashmir valley and to quell Kashmiri “subversion” through new labor and employment regimes. Kashmiri workers use death and martyrdom to contest narratives of corporate morality.

ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT WITHIN A CONTESTED LAND: THE CASE OF KASHMIR

This paper considers the case of Kashmir to examine the relation between the people of the contested land (Indian-occupied Kashmir) and one of the nation states claiming it (India, in this case) in a game-theoretic framework. The motivation for this paper was whether it was possible to rationalize the lack of democratic space in Kashmir, relative to other states in India (especially since the founding fathers of the country had announced such democratic practices to be the guiding principles of the new nation) and at the same time, a highly rigid stance of the Indian Government on the Kashmir issue. An otherwise standard political economic model is used to capture how the way in which citizens determine their allegiance to one or the other nation state (India or Pakistan) can, in turn, affect the nation state's (India's) policies towards the contested land. I conclude that if the Indian Government perceives allegiance of the citizens to be determined primarily by partisan preferences of the citizens, not so much by their preferences for policies, then the government rationally concentrates on minimizing its disutility due to deviations from its ‘most-favorite' policy. This understanding rationalizes the policies of the Indian Government towards Kashmir. More importantly, it points towards areas that need consideration for any peace-making process to take-off.

The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir

Why did democracy in Jammu and give way to armed struggle? What looked like the democratization of India's northernmost state in the late 1970s had become a small-scale civil war by the end of the 1980s. Since then, the conflict has brought indescribable suffering and resulted in possibly 25,000 casualties or more.' What gave rise to violent separatism in Jammu and Kashmir, and could it have been avoided? Indian, Kashmiri, and Pakistani nationalists have portrayed this tragedy as the inevitable result of trying to merge incompatible identities. In India, Pakistan is frequently denounced as the orchestrator of the insurgency movement, while the Pakistani side describes the uprising in Indian-occupied Kashmir (10K) as a reaction against the suppression of the Kashmiri's wish to join Pakistan. In the West the conflict is often vaguely described as a part of the spread of ethnic conflict around the globe. However, I argue here that the emergence of incompatible identities should be regarded as an outcome of a prior and distinctly political conflict in Jammu and Kashmir-a struggle for power between state and central government elites. Viewing events from this perspective involves looking beyond ethnicity as an explanatory factor and focusing more closely on the development of political institutions and the decisions made by the political elite in Jammu and and New Delhi