Colonizing Kashmir (South Asia in Motion) by Hafsa Kanjwal

Author:Hafsa Kanjwal [Kanjwal, Hafsa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2023-07-24T18:30:00+00:00

The Kashmir government was also interested in cultivating a secular Kashmiri identity, what many have referred to as kashmiriyat, or a shared secular syncretic Kashmiri culture. Interestingly, while the Naya Kashmir manifesto called for the encouragement of our “common culture, which includes the culture of all nationalities living in the state,” it does not use the term kashmiriyat.86 It appears that the term gained traction only after Sheikh Abdullah returned to power in the 1970s.87

The concept of kashmiriyat has been discussed by a number of scholars, including the multiple meanings of the term, its origins, and its varying political trajectories.88 But how did the Kashmir government construct this secular, composite identity, especially since thus far, rights had been granted or denied based on one’s religious identity? As we will see, this context placed the desire for the “secular” in tension with actual state policy that was hyper-cognizant of religious enumeration, especially in educational institutions.

In their reports, inspectors from the Department of Education would regularly categorize the number of students and teachers in schools or the scholarships provided for a given year based on their religious affiliation. In one report, the principal of the Amar Singh College proudly informed the government that all Muslims who had applied to the college that year had been accepted, revealing that the same had not been the case for Hindus and Sikhs.89 This attention to enumeration, as we will see—not unlike the days of the British or the Dogras—led to increased communal polarization. Furthermore, the government’s “disavowal of religion in its political calculus and its simultaneous reliance on religious categories to structure and regulate social life” linked the public and the private that the secular state was intended to separate.90

Here, I am interested in two primary points. First, the government’s construction of a secular Kashmiri subject sought to bring Kashmir in line with the purported secular ideals of the Government of India and away from the two-nation policy upheld by the creation of Pakistan. Yet, the secular ideals of the Government of India were themselves in question at this time.91 Second, and perhaps more importantly, the emphasis on promoting an existing secular identity in fact obscured the state’s fears of continued discord between religious communities, a very real possibility given the very structures within the state that enabled perceived or actual religious inequality. In that sense, the government didn’t promote a secular identity to reflect reality. It did so to inculcate the attachments and dispositions that would make it a reality.

While there were no overt acts of violence between Muslims and Hindus during the Partition in the Valley, an ethnic cleansing of Muslims had taken place in Jammu under Dogra and right-wing Hindu nationalist auspices. At the same time, tensions arose in the immediate aftermath of the Partition as various Hindu groups contested the Abdullah government’s policies, especially land reform, which they saw as an attempt to marginalize them. The government was also concerned about any outwardly Muslim assertions in the public sphere and any rise in the popularity of the Muslim Conference or other pro-Pakistan groups within the state.

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