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Kashmir after Partition

Book Launch and Discussion of Shahla Hussain, Kashmir in the Aftermath of Partition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. (Available online in the Cambridge Core)

Presentations by Shahla Hussain, Ayesha Jalal, and Mona Bhan, and open discussion.

Kashmir remains one of the world’s most militarized areas of dispute, having been in the grips of an armed insurgency against India since the late 1980s. In existing scholarship, ideas of territoriality, state sovereignty, and national security have dominated the discourses on the Kashmir conflict. This book, in contrast, places Kashmir and Kashmiris at the center of historical debate and investigates a broad range of sources to illuminate a century of political players and social structures on both sides of divided Kashmir and in the wider Kashmiri diaspora. In the process, it broadens the contours of Kashmir’s postcolonial and resistance history, complicates the meaning of Kashmiri identity, and reveals Kashmiris’ myriad imaginings of freedom. It asserts that “Kashmir” has emerged as a political imaginary in postcolonial era, a vision that grounds Kashmiris in their negotiations for rights not only in India and Pakistan, but also in global cultural and political spaces. This book further contends that the idea of territorial nationalism has failed to bring peace to the South Asian subcontinent. Instead, the trauma of partition continues to unfold in Kashmir, while Kashmiris struggle for dignity and rights.

 February 12, 2021 

Time: 11:00 am

Presenter: Shahla Hussain, Ayesha Jalal, and Mona Bhan

Global Asia Program