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2020, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-8186115…
4 pages
1 file
Introduction to CSSAAME special section on loyalty and critique in resistance movements, with contributions on Kashmir, Western Sahara and Kurdistan
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2020
The Kurdish resistance movement, one often hears in Kurdistan, Turkey, and beyond, has brought momentous change to a deeply patriarchal society and in this way paved the way for the empowerment of Kurdish women. Instead of discussing whether such empowerment has “actually” materialized, this article seeks to investigate what moral expectations, normative standards, and gendered subjectivities this narrative generates. The Kurdish case reveals how narratives of empowerment form a crucial part of the moral and gendered bargains that sustain and legitimate resistance movements. As they tie personal lives to political projects of resistance and liberation through notions like sacrifice, gift, and debt, such narratives shape political belonging and render critique a perilous undertaking. Tracing how Kurdish women seek to reconcile the dilemmas that arise as a result, the article reflects on the ways in which the political comes to be refracted in intimate realms of kinship and family. It contends that familial and personal relationships are crucial sites where expectations of political loyalty and allegiance take on shape and substance but are also negotiated and contested.
CSAAME, 2020
The discourse of loyalty produces tense predicaments for those living under counterinsurgency regimes. The essay explores this theme by analyzing the case of a Kashmiri woman who found herself in a political drama when she accepted “blood money” from the person accused of causing her husband's death. The woman's decision accompanied moral turmoil in her village, and rumors of her “betrayal” circulated. However, the turmoil threatened to go beyond this localized setting. It brought to fore the fraught implications of “loyalty” shaped by India's occupation in Kashmir, its nationalist staging of Kashmiris as the subversive other, and schisms within Kashmir's historical independence movement. By tracing how rumors of individual betrayal were laced onto narratives of political treason in the case, the essay reveals the counterinsurgency as the operative context of broken intimate and intercommunity relations in which the personal is always at the threshold of becoming intensely public.
2016
worn-out, pale white cur tain aside, I stepped in side Hümeyra's beauty sa lon. 1 One side of the room was filled with stan dard coif ure dec o ra tions-the poster of a white blond wom an, cos metic prod ucts, two mir rors, styl ing chairs. The other looked like a liv ing room, with two brown couches and two dingy Vic to ri anstyle arm chairs po si tioned to gether in a cir cle with a small cof ee ta ble in the mid dle. The walls were hung with art that Hümeyra had made her self: a pen cil draw ing of Ayşe Şan, a fa mous dengbej singer later os tra cized be cause of an il licit af air, exiting the walled his tor i cal city cen ter of Diyarbakır from one of its large gates and leav ing the city be hind; 2 and a sketch of a het ero sex ual cou ple mak ing love, the man on top with only the wom an's face vis i ble, wear ing an ex pres sion of plea sure. Both sketches ges tured at im mo ral ity and the ta boos around fe male sex u al i ty. Yet de spite its in ti mate fe male at mo sphere, the place was marked by Kurd ish pol i tics: a Kurd ish busi ness name, a lo ca tion in one of the most po lit i cized neigh bor hoods of the city, an owner who had be come an aes the ti cian as a run away from the po lice. From that first day on, I would be privy to con ver sa tions in which Hümeyra and her custom ers would say quite un pleas ant things about Kurd ish pol i ti cians and their pol i cies. It was in this space, I learned, that ac tiv ist Kurd ish women en gaged in beau ti fi ca tion prac tices and cared for them selves and one an other at the same time as they crafted their po lit i cal po si tion ing in the new Kurd ish po lit i cal or der. In such a highly po lit i cized con text as Diyarbakır, beauty could never re main apo lit i cal. But what this space and those who frequented it made clear was that beauty had be come a way of conducting pol i tics. Hümeyra's sa lon was lo cated in the crowded and cha otic dis trict of Bağlar, unique in that most of its four hundred thou sand res i dents had been forced over the past three de cades to mi grate to the city due to the armed conflict be tween the Partiya Karkerên Kur di stanê (Kur di stan Workers' Party, here aft er PKK) and the Turk ish state. The young res i dents of Bağlar have grown up with the ex pe ri ence of dis place ment and po lit i cal vi o lence and are known to be re bel lious, fre quently block ad ing the neigh bor hood with burn ing tires and en gag ing in con fron ta tions with the po lice. This lo ca tion in Bağlar dis tin guished Hümeyra's sa lon from the oth ers I vis ited in the city cen ter. The ma jor ity of her cus tom ers were women who ei ther lived nearby and had thus been po lit i cized as mi grants or knew Hümeyra through their po lit i cal net works. If it had not been for her sis ter, who worked at a pro-Kurd ish or ga ni zation I frequented dur ing my field work, I would most likely not have dis cov ered the sa lon. Without such in ti mate con nec tion, my best an thro po log i cal ef orts would not have led me there. This fe male sanc tu ary within the cha otic life of the city turned out to be a cru cial field site where I would meet many Kurd ish ac tiv ist women from Bağlar and be yond. A vet eran ac tiv ist of for ty-two, Hümeyra also had a po lit i cal back ground her self-most of her cus tom ers were also her close friends-but she did not like to talk about it. NGO work ers, law yers, pol i ti cians, and grass roots ac tiv ists frequented her sa lon and chat ted back and forth about mat ters both per sonal and po lit i cal. Casual in her black cov er all, car di gan, and slip pers, Hümeyra
This paper aims to interpret construction of the self and struggles of nationhood of some Muslim women in Kashmir's resistance movement against Indian control , focusing on the phase of the armed struggle in the 1980s. It argues that they have been continually refashioning their notions of self and notions of just and free political community, and have cast themselves in religious -cultural terms to suit the needs of the movement. Muslim women with an active role in the armed struggle underwent a process of self-constitution in the processes of engagement with their immediate social and political context. There are women with a Muslim identity, who may or may not be practising Muslims when they intervene in political action. Yet, they were invariably cast in religious -cultural terms, forgetting that they have challenged both the Indian state and its patriarchy of militarism, alongside that within their own community.
2017
This dissertation is an ethnographic and historical study of youth activism in a space of geopolitical conflict. It examines ways in which young activists in Indian-administered Kashmir, caught in chronic conditions of state violence and traversed by transnational discourses of identity, experience precarity while desperately seeking to constitute themselves as political subjects through their involvement in Tehreek, or the movement for independence. Toward a theory of political subjectivity as a process of autopoiesis, understood both as a historically contingent yet critical form of reflexivity and as practices of protest, and precarity as a condition marked by persistent vulnerability to state violence made possible under a legally mandated state of emergency, I analyze youth activism and state violence as necessarily interlinked objects of ethnographic and historical inquiry. Keeping in view the anthropological critique of positions that treat ethnographic subjects as culturally-bound passive objects of violence or as trapped in the logics of state power, and inspired by emergent anthropological attempts to engage with theories of subjection and becoming, I study how youth activists, carrying injuries on their bodies and memories of violence, persistently engage in multiple genres of criticism and contestation. Kashmiri youth activists give counter-narratives to the official histories of Kashmir, reinterpret critical events from the past in the present, scoff at inconsistencies between statemanaged elections and the professed norms of democracy, and highlight contradictions between v the official secularist claims and the state's religious majoritarian tendencies. These activists seek to escape the official categories that make them liable to punitive government control, while, at the same time, aiming to fashion an alternative discourse of emancipation within Tehreek. I examine critical events, like a natural disaster or an election, to show how youth activists navigate the fractured landscape of politics in Kashmir. At the same time, by looking at the fault lines within the movement, I analyze how ideological fissures within Tehreek have remained like an open wound for the activists. Based on fifteen months of fieldwork, my study contributes to the growing body of anthropological scholarship that analyzes how marginal groups come to contest relations of power and articulate alternative political projects that traverse local moral systems as well as the global languages of justice. Taking these projects as "politics on the periphery," I trace how precarity is constructed and overcome at the intersection of postcolonial state violence, political mobilization, and contestations of history, gender, and religion. While this dissertation is a study of activists, it is as much a history of the long-standing Tehreek movement, its roots, dynamics, and internal schisms. I locate this history of Tehreek in the broader politics and history of dislocation and despair among non-dominant nationalities that have been denied political self-determination by postcolonial nation-states. As such, the dissertation expands inquiry into new hierarchies of power and forms of inequality that emerged in the aftermath of decolonization. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have made this dissertation possible. I am deeply thankful to activists and families in Kashmir who invited me into their lives, shared their experiences of life under a violent occupation with incredible dignity and fortitude. They helped me understand why they resist, made me question my assumptions, and challenged me to become a better listener. In listening to their perspectives and spending time with them, my thoughts on Kashmir kept evolving and the dissertation became a process. While I was trying to make sense of their world, their generosity, hospitality, and wisdom were powerfully shaping my own sense of self. From the beginning, my advisor Vincent Crapanzano at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, gave his steadfast support to this project. His commitment and care for the worlds have nourished my thinking throughout my graduate student years. Julie Skurski has always offered a wealth of ideas as well as astute, enriching observations on my project. Murphy Halliburton has been an enthusiastic backer of my work and has always pushed me to reflect deeper. Avram Bornstein greatly helped set up the foundations of this dissertation with his practical advice and thoughtful commentaries. Kamala Visweswaran has lent her keen support to my research and has been a formative influence in my understanding of the spaces of occupation. Her invitation to the workshop on military occupations at Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, in 2013, was the initial spur for several of the ideas in this dissertation. I am deeply thankful to these intellectual mentors.
2008
This thesis focuses on the militarisation of a secessionist movement involving Kashmiri militants and Indian military forces in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The term militarisation in this thesis connotes the militarised state and, more primarily, the growing influence of the military within the state that has profound implications for state and society. In contrast to conventional approaches that distinguish between inter and intra-state military conflict, this thesis analyses India's external and domestic crises of militarisation within a single analytic frame to argue that both dimensions are not mutually exclusive but have common political origins. Kashmir, this thesis further argues, exemplifies the intersection between militarisation's external and domestic dimensions. Focusing on the intersection between both dimensions of militarisation in Kashmir, this thesis illustrates that the greatest and most grievous price of using the military for domestic rep...
Focaal, 2011
In this article, we reflect on the gendered contours of young Kashmiris' dissident practices against the Indian military occupation of the Kashmir Valley. It is largely based on ethnographic research that coincided with the launch of an ongoing, predominantly nonviolent people's movement in which youth have played a prominent role. The article shows how university students' and young professionals' "small activism" is entangled in the gendered dynamics of militarization and dissent, while underlining the threat posed by "security forces" to women's "honor" and "dignity. " In the context of widespread societal anxiety about "dishonor, " young Kashmiris' urge to reclaim dignity at once motivates them to practice dissent and narrows the scope for female dissidents' capacity to act upon this drive overtly. The present case suggests that recent anthropological interest in global youth cultural practices may be supplemented with a recognition of local constraints on young people's public opposition that arise in circumstances of (gendered) state oppression.
In this article, we reflect on the gendered contours of young Kashmiris' dissident practices against the Indian military occupation of the Kashmir Valley. It is largely based on ethnographic research that coincided with the launch of an ongoing, predominantly nonviolent people's movement in which youth have played a prominent role. The article shows how university students' and young professionals' "small activism" is entangled in the gendered dynamics of militarization and dissent, while underlining the threat posed by "security forces" to women's "honor" and "dignity. " In the context of widespread societal anxiety about "dishonor, " young Kashmiris' urge to reclaim dignity at once motivates them to practice dissent and narrows the scope for female dissidents' capacity to act upon this drive overtly. The present case suggests that recent anthropological interest in global youth cultural practices may be supplemented with a recognition of local constraints on young people's public opposition that arise in circumstances of (gendered) state oppression.
Essay, 2021
Women are frequently stereotyped in histories of armed conflict; an emphasis on their vulnerability gives them visibility mainly as the victims of violence, and does not acknowledge their agency. Though the victimization of women is a reality in any conflict, the one-sided emphasis on this portrays women in a severely limited way. This is true in the case of literature regarding the conflict in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir; women have repeatedly been represented as victims of conflict, but seldom recognized as political agents. As a result, women’s agency in the resistance politics of Kashmir has been historically overlooked by the majority of scholarship on the conflict as well as by the parties to the conflict. By contrast, the three books under review here provide a refreshing and even-handed assessment of Kashmiri women’s multifaceted roles in resistance politics, collectively arguing that women in Kashmir have not been merely accidental victims of violence, but have historically resisted the Indian occupation in a range of different ways. It is precisely in this respect that the books are a valuable addition to the existing literature on the history of conflict in this region, as together they show both the depth and breadth of women’s contributions to the cause of azadi (the demand for the right to self-determination).
Pakistan covertly supported a number of militant outfits in the Kashmir conflict throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Some of them stayed loyal to Pakistan, while others turned against their sponsor. This paper asks why two prominent and most similar miliant movements, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, adopted different behavior toward Pakistan. Whereas Jaish turned its guns against the Pakistani government and military, Lashkar remained loyal to its supporter. The paper argues that the explanation rests with different command and control structures of the two outfits.
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