Table of Contents for Colonizing Kashmir
Introduction
The introduction provides a brief history of the 1953 coup that brought Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad to power in Indian-occupied Kashmir in the aftermath of a contested accession to India. I contend that one of the key mechanisms of effective control by which India's colonial occupation took place was through the installation of local client regimes, such as Bakshi's, as well as the particular forms of state-building and governance that took place under these regimes. I examine the role that Bakshi's government played in securing Kashmir for India, as well as the excesses, contradictions, and consequences of its state-building practices. Challenging the binaries of colonial and postcolonial, I historicize India's colonial occupation through processes of integration, normalization, and empowerment to highlight the new hierarchies of power and domination that emerged in the aftermath of India's "decolonization" from British colonial rule.
1.Genealogies of Colonial Occupation and State-Building: Becoming Khalid-i-Kashmir
The first chapter provides a genealogy of Bakshi's state-building project, rooted in the late Dogra period and Kashmir's anti-monarchical mobilizations. I discuss Bakshi's early life and political philosophy, linking it to socioeconomic conditions under the Dogras. I foreground the Naya Kashmir manifesto as the basis of Bakshi's state-building policies. The chapter discusses the momentous events surrounding the contested accession to India and the contestations surrounding Abdullah's government, as well as Bakshi's rise to power.
2.Narrating Normalization: Media, Propaganda, and Foreign Policy amid Cold War Politics
The second chapter brings attention to the unique set of political compulsions Bakshi's government faced on three primary fronts: within a conflict of narratives and aspirations in Kashmir, with skeptical Indian policy makers and the broader public, and in the international arena in the context of shifting political realignments during the Cold War. I argue that Bakshi's government utilized the power of media as propaganda and maintained strict controls over the flow of information into and out of the state to project normalization, as well as progress, in Kashmir for these multiple audiences. These critical policy interventions came at a time when Kashmir was still being contested in the United Nations. Bakshi's efforts to target Muslim-majority countries and the Soviet Union, in particular, were crucial to unraveling the "disputed" status of the region, securing India's claims over Kashmir, and eroding the calls for a plebiscite on the international front.
3.Producing and Promoting Paradise: Tourism, Cinema, and the Desire for Kashmir
The third chapter examines tourist guides and videos, advertisements, film, and bureaucratic correspondence with Indian film companies to show how they contributed to an affective desire for both the land and its people. This colonial gaze depicted the region as fertile for adventure and at the cusp of modernization as a result of its relationship with India. At the same time, Kashmir's sacred territoriality for Indian Hindus was mobilized through the Amarnath Yatra, which was also extensively promoted by the Kashmir government, paradoxically propagating a land that was both modern and timeless, secular and Hindu. Tourism and cinema served to territorialize India's colonial occupation, in both its secular modernizing and religious avatars, and enabled an unquenchable desire of Indians toward Kashmir (and some Kashmiris) that would continue to undergird India's rule in Kashmir.
4.Developing Dependency: Economic Planning, Financial Integration, and Corruption
The fourth chapter, which deals with five-year plans, administrative and budget reports, political speeches, Indian and international media reports, and state propaganda materials, focuses primarily on the economic policies of the Bakshi government and draws attention to how these developmentalist policies reflected the particular political context in Kashmir. It looks at financial integration with the Indian state, the subsidization of rice, and the creation of the Banihal Tunnel. I argue that Kashmir's political status engendered a form of developmentalism that focused more on short-term strategic interests than on long-term economic growth. As a result, the state's economic goals of self-sufficiency were undermined as the state became increasingly dependent on the Government of India. Also, I highlight how corruption became an intrinsic component to the functioning of developmentalism in Kashmir, leading to the Ayyanger Commission of Inquiry of corruption after Bakshi stepped down from power. This chapter showcases how Bakshi's client regime incorporated Kashmir's economy into the larger economic body of India.
5.Shaping Subjectivities: Education, Secularism, and Its Discontents
The fifth chapter uses education plans and reports, as well as college journals, memoirs, and oral interviews, to examine how the state's education policies sought to incorporate its citizenry into the Indian social and political body. I argue that educational policy was the cornerstone of constructing a modern, secular Kashmiri subject. However, because the government targeted Kashmiri Muslims as its principal beneficiaries, the educational policies of the state, which included specific quotas for various religious communities and language policies, created tensions between and among Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits, leading the latter to bring the government's secular credentials into question. Debates over education reflected the conflicting aims and complex interests of the Kashmir government as well as the fraught nature of intercommunal relations under both secular rule as well as a colonial occupation.
6.Jashn-e-Kashmir: Patronage and the Institutionalization of Kashmiri Culture
The sixth chapter looks at poems, short stories, novels, cultural journals, and bureaucratic correspondence to explore the government's attempts to revitalize Kashmiri culture. It reveals the role of the cultural intelligentsia in Kashmir in buttressing the state-building project and constructing a Kashmiri cultural identity. At the same time, I argue that the bureaucratization of culture produced its own contradictions in eliciting conformity and resistance, highlighting the extent to which dissent is always integral to cultural projects.
7.The State of Emergency: State Repression, Political Dissent, and the Struggle for Self-Determination
The last chapter examines sovereign modes of control and the unraveling of the state-building project as it generated dissent among various groups within Kashmir. By focusing on the workings of dissent and repression, I argue that the local state was at the forefront of repression against those individuals and groups that challenged the government's stance on Kashmir's political status. The state's repressive practices led to an enduring state of emergency well before the armed uprising. It was also under Bakshi that a popular and organized post-Partition indigenous resistance emerged. Groups like the Political Conference and the Plebiscite Front demanded the implementation of the plebiscite. This chapter explores how the state managed to eventually fold the leadership of both organizations into the political mainstream, highlighting once more the strategies of repression and co-option that undergird a colonial occupation.
Conclusion
I conclude with reflections on what the case of Kashmir tells us about the present, one in which processes of settler-colonization and military occupation have brought to the fore the contestations inherent in the liberal, secular, democratic nation-state.