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This roundtable showcases how different Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities in Colorado are fighting for sovereignty of their homelands. It reorients the question of “homelands” to highlight the experiences of communities... more
This roundtable showcases how different Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities in Colorado are fighting for sovereignty of their homelands. It reorients the question of “homelands” to highlight the experiences of communities whose homelands remain occupied by settler-colonial and imperial nation-states, like the United States, India, Israel, and China. Participants speak to the struggles of sovereignty of their communities and communities they work with, unsettling epistemological frameworks to disrupt normative understandings of home, migration, and diaspora.
This is a review essay on Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists by Cabeiri Debergh Robinson and Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare?... more
This is a review essay on Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists by Cabeiri Debergh Robinson and Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare? by Mona Bhan. This review contains a succinct overview of the two books, followed by a discussion of the emergent subjectivities and incorporation of humanitarianism into militarism and jihad in the region of Kashmir.
He raised his arm, and threw something at her. She ducked. It fell into the corner without a sound. Moving swiftly, she picked the soft sweaty ball of paper, crushed around a piece of clay. She opened it, trembling. It said—“Be laghey... more
He raised his arm, and threw something at her. She ducked. It fell into the corner without a sound. Moving swiftly, she picked the soft sweaty ball of paper, crushed around a piece of clay. She opened it, trembling. It said—“Be laghey tche balai” “I will die for you.” … She tried to write back. Nothing seemed adequate. In the end, she repeated his dear words—“Be tih lagai tche balai” (I will also die for you).
POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR In Indian occupied Kashmir, writing of any kind – be it journalistic, fiction, prose, or poetry or even a clerical memo – that speaks truth to the occupying power is fatal,... more
POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR In Indian occupied Kashmir, writing of any kind – be it journalistic, fiction, prose, or poetry or even a clerical memo – that speaks truth to the occupying power is fatal, censured, and surveilled. Every word of dissent is excoriated, and every cog in the occupying military machinery ensures the silence of Kashmiri people. How does one write in a place where words are banned? What happens to those who are writers in such a place? The evidence of their predicament is not hidden nor a surprise. Yet, one question does loom large: why do people continue to write even when it is fatal? How does one behold these ‘death-defying’ writers – not just their work but also as human beings? In Kashmir the “act of reading poetry is seen as a means of incorporating resistance in the everyday of people when overt resistance is unsafe and subject to surveillance by the authorities.”1 Thus, in a place where reading is resist- ance how do we contextualize “writing” poetry or to exist as a poet even simply? These questions are not mere indulgences in academic the- ories, but they are urgent to understanding everyday life, meaning and modes of resistance in today’s Kashmir; the Palestine that no one knows about. © 2022 The Royal Society for Asian Affairs Asian Affairs, 2022 Vol. LIII, no. II, 416–429, https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2022.2096782
Since July 2016, Indian-administered Kashmir has again raged with mass protests favouring self-determination and freedom from India. In the protests more than ninety-eight people have been killed, over eleven thousand wounded, and more... more
Since July 2016, Indian-administered Kashmir has again raged with mass protests favouring self-determination and freedom from India. In the protests more than ninety-eight people have been killed, over eleven thousand wounded, and more than eight hundred Kashmiris injured in the eyes or blinded by Indian troops using force against protestors and non-protestors alike. Since 1947, when the region was temporarily bifurcated between India and Pakistan, Indian-administered Kashmir has clamoured for a plebiscite, which the United Nations mandated so that the Kashmiri people could choose their own fate. The original options in the plebiscite were mergers with either of the two countries, but Kashmiris have increasingly demanded that a third option for an independent Kashmiri nation-state be added. While the majority of the Kashmiris seek independence, a small faction favours merger with Pakistan. Despite continuing demands for an independent nationhood – one that preceded the creation of India and Pakistan – Kashmir continues to be perceived simplistically as a bilateral dispute between the two nation-states. Using the analytic of “right to maim,” this essay illustrates how the Indian state “blinds” Kashmiri subjects by perfecting a technology of punishment that produces bodies incapable of physical resistance and as a representational threat to the rest of society. By making maiming as a punishment central, this essay will examine India's control of the Kashmir valley as a de facto military occupation.
ABSTRACT Both Palestine and the Indian held Kashmir have become hallmarks of a postcolonial siege manifest in heavy militarisation, illegal occupation, human rights violations, and an excruciating love born from and for people’s... more
ABSTRACT Both Palestine and the Indian held Kashmir have become hallmarks of a postcolonial siege manifest in heavy militarisation, illegal occupation, human rights violations, and an excruciating love born from and for people’s resistance and solidarity. While different, strong overlaps exist between the two conflicts in having been midwifed by the waning British Empire in 1947; subsequent internationalisation and fighting against a type of contemporary international politics that subsumes them under so-called ‘Islamic terrorism.’ Also noticeable is the motif of ‘suffering’ that makes the tragedy of Kashmir resonate with the pathos of Palestine.  This paper focuses on the vantage from Kashmir, where people herald the Palestinian struggle as pioneering and a beacon of just struggle. I illustrate how Kashmiris, have come to harbour for the Palestinians an ‘affective solidarity’ which is evident in their modes of resistance to lend support for the liberation of Palestine and credibility to the Kashmir’s own resistance movement.
POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR In Indian occupied Kashmir, writing of any kind – be it journalistic, fiction, prose, or poetry or even a clerical memo – that speaks truth to the occupying power is fatal,... more
POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR In Indian occupied Kashmir, writing of any kind – be it journalistic, fiction, prose, or poetry or even a clerical memo – that speaks truth to the occupying power is fatal, censured, and surveilled. Every word of dissent is excoriated, and every cog in the occupying military machinery ensures the silence of Kashmiri people. How does one write in a place where words are banned? What happens to those who are writers in such a place? The evidence of their predicament is not hidden nor a surprise. Yet, one question does loom large: why do people continue to write even when it is fatal? How does one behold these ‘death-defying’ writers – not just their work but also as human beings? In Kashmir the “act of reading poetry is seen as a means of incorporating resistance in the everyday of people when overt resistance is unsafe and subject to surveillance by the authorities.”1 Thus, in a place where reading is resist- ance how do we contextualize “writing” poetry or to exist as a poet even simply? These questions are not mere indulgences in academic the- ories, but they are urgent to understanding everyday life, meaning and modes of resistance in today’s Kashmir; the Palestine that no one knows about. © 2022 The Royal Society for Asian Affairs Asian Affairs, 2022 Vol. LIII, no. II, 416–429, https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2022.2096782
POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR In Indian occupied Kashmir, writing of any kind – be it journalistic, fiction, prose, or poetry or even a clerical memo – that speaks truth to the occupying power is fatal,... more
POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR
In Indian occupied Kashmir, writing of any kind – be it journalistic,
fiction, prose, or poetry or even a clerical memo – that speaks truth to
the occupying power is fatal, censured, and surveilled. Every word of
dissent is excoriated, and every cog in the occupying military machinery
ensures the silence of Kashmiri people. How does one write in a place
where words are banned? What happens to those who are writers in
such a place? The evidence of their predicament is not hidden nor a
surprise.
Yet, one question does loom large: why do people continue to write
even when it is fatal? How does one behold these ‘death-defying’
writers – not just their work but also as human beings? In Kashmir
the “act of reading poetry is seen as a means of incorporating resistance
in the everyday of people when overt resistance is unsafe and subject to
surveillance by the authorities.”1 Thus, in a place where reading is resist-
ance how do we contextualize “writing” poetry or to exist as a poet
even simply? These questions are not mere indulgences in academic the-
ories, but they are urgent to understanding everyday life, meaning and
modes of resistance in today’s Kashmir; the Palestine that no one
knows about.
© 2022 The Royal Society for Asian Affairs
Asian Affairs, 2022
Vol. LIII, no. II, 416–429, https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2022.2096782
He raised his arm, and threw something at her. She ducked. It fell into the corner without a sound. Moving swiftly, she picked the soft sweaty ball of paper, crushed around a piece of clay. She opened it, trembling. It said—“Be laghey... more
He raised his arm, and threw something at her. She ducked. It fell into the corner without a sound. Moving swiftly, she picked the soft sweaty ball of paper, crushed around a piece of clay. She opened it, trembling. It said—“Be laghey tche balai” “I will die for you.” … She tried to write back. Nothing seemed adequate. In the end, she repeated his dear words—“Be tih lagai tche balai” (I will also die for you).
This is the second episode in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series. In it Dr. Darcy Alexandra and Dr. Ather Zia join contributing editor and producer, Cory-Alice André-Johnson, to discuss ethnographic poetry. As the primary focus... more
This is the second episode in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series. In it Dr. Darcy Alexandra and Dr. Ather Zia join contributing editor and producer, Cory-Alice André-Johnson, to discuss ethnographic poetry. As the primary focus of the series is to showcase the various forms anthropology takes, in addition to answering a few questions about style and method, both guest also share examples of the ethnographic poetry they've written. Dr. Alexandra will discuss three poems that were awarded first place in ethnographic poetry by the Society of Humanistic Anthropology in 2018 based on her experiences in El Salvador and the U.S.-Mexico border. Dr. Zia will share poems from her new book, Resisting Disappearances, based on her work in Kashmir
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the... more
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the Kashmir Valley underwent a radical shift. Grounding our exploration in nine life narratives appended to this article by scholars, artists, poets, and writers, mostly Kashmiri, we seek to retrieve a textured understanding of the past, and envision alternative futures for inclusive community building. We complicate the romanticized discourse of Kashmiriyat—the ethos of shared cultural understanding in which cross-community relations between Pandits and Muslims are often cast—and instead propose that intersubjective understanding across the two communities can only emerge from the building of critical solidarities that engage histories of caste, class, gender, and militarization in Kashmir.
Since 1989 in the Indian controlled Kashmir more than 10,000 men have been subjected to enforced disappeared in the counter-insurgency actions by the Indian army. Kashmiri women mainly Muslim mothers and wives have organized under the... more
Since 1989 in the Indian controlled Kashmir more than 10,000 men have been subjected to enforced disappeared in the counter-insurgency actions by the Indian army. Kashmiri women mainly Muslim mothers and wives have organized under the banner of Association of the Parents of the Disappeared (APDP) to search for their disappeared men. In this paper I trace how these APDP activists propagate and sustain their struggle and operate under the rubric of international human rights framework to make a case for their search. This paper will shed light on how the under state violence the political activism of Muslim women evolves through the use of international human rights rubric and its relation with the Islamic injunctions that is stereotypically known for curtailing female public role. I will illustrate how the language of human rights proliferates collectively within the APDP as an organization and in the individual lives of the women. By providing ethnographic evidence of how the human ...
Author(s): Zia, Ather | Advisor(s): Bernal, Victoria | Abstract: Contemporary Kashmir valley is seen in a terminal colonial situation within India. Since the armed movement broke out in 1989, the Indian government has deployed massive... more
Author(s): Zia, Ather | Advisor(s): Bernal, Victoria | Abstract: Contemporary Kashmir valley is seen in a terminal colonial situation within India. Since the armed movement broke out in 1989, the Indian government has deployed massive number of armed troops and implemented lethal counter-insurgency laws. Human rights groups claim that over 70,000 people have been killed and more than 8000 men have been forcibly disappeared in custody by the Indian army. This study focuses on the women activists of the Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons who organized in 1994 to search for the disappeared men. The everyday gendered politics of mourning emerges as, what I conceptualize as "affective law" which reveals a fine-grained understanding of women's agency that does not appear as only stereotypically confrontational but as nuancedly cultural. I trace the genesis of affective law within the paradigm of hauntology; a spectral space, of departure and return of the ...
ABSTRACT Both Palestine and the Indian held Kashmir have become hallmarks of a postcolonial siege manifest in heavy militarisation, illegal occupation, human rights violations, and an excruciating love born from and for people’s... more
ABSTRACT Both Palestine and the Indian held Kashmir have become hallmarks of a postcolonial siege manifest in heavy militarisation, illegal occupation, human rights violations, and an excruciating love born from and for people’s resistance and solidarity. While different, strong overlaps exist between the two conflicts in having been midwifed by the waning British Empire in 1947; subsequent internationalisation and fighting against a type of contemporary international politics that subsumes them under so-called ‘Islamic terrorism.’ Also noticeable is the motif of ‘suffering’ that makes the tragedy of Kashmir resonate with the pathos of Palestine.  This paper focuses on the vantage from Kashmir, where people herald the Palestinian struggle as pioneering and a beacon of just struggle. I illustrate how Kashmiris, have come to harbour for the Palestinians an ‘affective solidarity’ which is evident in their modes of resistance to lend support for the liberation of Palestine and credibility to the Kashmir’s own resistance movement.
Special issue on "Indigenous Feminisms in Settler Contexts"
This is a review essay on Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists by Cabeiri Debergh Robinson and Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare?... more
This is a review essay on Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists by Cabeiri Debergh Robinson and Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare? by Mona Bhan. This review contains a succinct overview of the two books, followed by a discussion of the emergent subjectivities and incorporation of humanitarianism into militarism and jihad in the region of Kashmir.
... Women like Zainab ji, who came from a political family was an educa-tionist and a social worker; as was Mahmuda Ali Shah, a progressive leftist and the first ... cfm/dyn/aid/3031/context/cover/ Nazir, Shaikh (June 23 2007).“CRPF men... more
... Women like Zainab ji, who came from a political family was an educa-tionist and a social worker; as was Mahmuda Ali Shah, a progressive leftist and the first ... cfm/dyn/aid/3031/context/cover/ Nazir, Shaikh (June 23 2007).“CRPF men molest disable girl”, Greater Kash-mir. ...
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the... more
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the Kashmir Valley underwent a radical shift. Grounding our exploration in nine life narratives appended to this article by scholars, artists, poets, and writers, mostly Kashmiri, we seek to retrieve a textured understanding of the past, and envision alternative futures for inclusive community building. We complicate the romanticized discourse of Kashmiriyat—the ethos of shared cultural understanding in which cross-community relations between Pandits and Muslims are often cast—and instead propose that intersubjective understanding across the two communities can only emerge from the building of critical solidarities that engage histories of caste, class, gender, and militarization in Kashmir.
Interview Ather Zia, Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir (New Texts Out Now)... more
Interview
Ather Zia, Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir (New Texts Out Now)
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/40735/Ather-Zia,-Resisting-Disappearance-Military-Occupation-and-Womens-Activism-in-Kashmir-New-Texts-Out-Now
Both Palestine and the Indian held Kashmir have become hallmarks of a postcolonial siege manifest in heavy militarisation, illegal occupation, human rights violations, and an excruciating love born from and for people’s resistance and... more
Both Palestine and the Indian held Kashmir have become hallmarks of a postcolonial siege manifest in heavy militarisation, illegal occupation, human rights violations, and an excruciating love born from and for people’s resistance and solidarity. While different, strong overlaps exist between the two conflicts in having been midwifed by the waning British Empire in 1947; subsequent internationalisation and fighting against a type of contemporary international politics that subsumes them under so-called ‘Islamic terrorism.’ Also noticeable is the motif of ‘suffering’ that makes the tragedy of Kashmir resonate with the pathos of Palestine.  This paper focuses on the vantage from Kashmir, where people herald the Palestinian struggle as pioneering and a beacon of just struggle. I illustrate how Kashmiris, have come to harbour for the Palestinians an ‘affective solidarity’ which is evident in their modes of resistance to lend support for the liberation of Palestine and credibility to the Kashmir’s own resistance movement.

And 51 more

We would like to thank the guest editors Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia, and the members of the editorial advisory group of the Review of Women's Studies Mary E John, J Devika, Kalpana Kannabiran, Samita Sen, and Padmini Swaminathan for... more
We would like to thank the guest editors Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia, and the members of the editorial advisory group of the Review of Women's Studies Mary E John, J Devika, Kalpana Kannabiran, Samita Sen, and Padmini Swaminathan for putting together this issue on " Women and Kashmir.

A new addition to critical Kashmir studies resources: ‘Women and Kashmir: Knowing in Our Own Ways, ‘ published in Review of Women’s Studies, Economic and Political Weekly. An all Kashmiri women-scholars team: Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia as guest co-editors, authors include Mona Bhan, Hafsa Kanjwal , Inshah Malik, Mir Fatimah Kanth, Samreen Mushtaq, Uzma Falak, Essar Batool and Aaliya Anjum.
'What serious scholar of Kashmir could deny the simultaneous existence of human rights abuses and a political problem that needs a political resolution which must involve the Kashmiris themselves? Yet, even something as basic as this is... more
'What serious scholar of Kashmir could deny the simultaneous existence of human rights abuses and a political problem that needs a political resolution which must involve the Kashmiris themselves? Yet, even something as basic as this is hard to find being reflected in the Indian mainstream media, through which most Indians form their opinions on Kashmir.
We urge the readers of this review issue to move beyond the comfort zone of merely acknowledging the vulnerabilities of the marginalised Kashmiris, by equalising the illicitness of the military and the militants, by thinking past the self-serv- ing machinations of the Indian power brokers at the centre and Kashmiri mainstream politicians at the periphery, and by asking the difficult question: How long must ordinary Kashmiris suffer their traumatic history as endless memory before their calls for freedom and justice are taken seriously enough to warrant a political resolution?
The Kashmiri women herein speak of myriad things: of spectacles and street protests; women’s companionships and female alliances; women’s movements and imaginaries of resistance; the links between militarisation, militarism, and the creation of impunity by the law; competing patriarchies and sexual violence as they seek to break Kashmiri communities; the infrastructures of control that limit their mobilities, bodies, and experiences; public grief at funerals as a challenge to Indian sovereignty over Kashmir; and autobiographies, oral histories, and the textures of political memories.
In the powerful idiom of postcolonial criticality, the ques- tion we should ask is not “Can the Kashmiri women speak?” but rather “Can you hear them?”'

[We would like to thank the guest editors Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia, and the members of the editorial advisory group of the Review of Women's Studies Mary E John, J Devika, Kalpana Kannabiran, Samita Sen, and Padmini Swaminathan for putting together this issue on " Women and Kashmir."]
A collection of essays re-locates historical rupture of 1989 that affected Kashmir’s political trajectory