1. Colonizing Kashmir: An interview with Hafsa Kanjwal
- Author:
- Mahia Bashir and Hafsa Kanjwal
- Publication Date:
- 10-2024
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- Joining a new wave of critical scholarship on global decolonization, Hafsa Kanjwal’s 2023 monograph Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation(Stanford University Press) offers a compelling and provocative account of Indian state-building in Kashmir in the aftermath of the British withdrawal and argues that independent India’s attempts at state-building in Kashmir were fundamentally colonial. In recasting the Indian national project in Kashmir as a colonial enterprise and highlighting the role of Kashmir’s client regimes in this process, Kanjwal lays bare the “politics of life” that was central to bringing Kashmir within the Indian national orbit without the popular consent of its people. Ultimately, this account offers a critique of the liberatory character of narratives around decolonization and offers an alternative lens to understand national consolidation in the aftermath of the second World War.
- Topic:
- History, Decolonization, Interview, and Colonization
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and Kashmir