Description
In this paper, I investigate the complexities of 'indigeneity' as they obtain in multiply colonised contexts by focusing on the relationship between indigeneity and post/coloniality in the case of Kashmir. After a brief canvassing of the Kashmir conflict as it is typically perceived (simplistic terms of India-Pakistan territorial dispute), I shift focus to Kashmir Valley (the epicentre of the conflict in Indian administered region) and analyse the ways in which identity and indigeneity are set to work in this post/colonial conflict. I argue how the roots of Kashmir conflict are Eurocentric colonial, but its contemporary manifestation demonstrates the colonial exercise of power by post-colonial states. There is an overwhelming body of evidence about the ways in which the 'native' Kashmiri Valley population -- both Hindu and Muslim -- have suffered multidimensional trauma in the last few decades at the hands of the military and militant forces both, yet these injuries are never comprehended together but are always politically articulated in a segmented manner through what I call "discourse of competing victimhoods" (DCV). DCV operates through the Kashmiri Muslims (KMs) referring to their killings, enforced disappearances, rapes by Indian forces in response to the Kashmiri self-determination struggle, and Kashmiri Hindus (Kashmiri Pandits, KPs) referring to their forced displacement, killings, rapes by militants as a strategy of an anti-India Islamist movement. DCV can range from political use of selective histories and memories to denial of the extent of suffering on either side by the other. I demonstrate how this polarisation links to complex claims to indigeneity on each side. DCV ensures that different ideas of indigeneity are used in parallel in support of varying emancipatory goals. I conclude by reflecting upon what decolonial pathways might mean in such post/colonial conflicts with complex indigeneities.
