Description
Kashmir, the world’s largest militarised zone, lies in India, the world’s largest democracy. Due to militarisation, students from Kashmir are migrating to various Indian states for higher education. Literature
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on Kashmir essentially investigates the Kashmiri experiences within Kashmir but has recently shifted towards discussing the Kashmiri diaspora in India.
The need to understand diaspora within a nation-state and link it with identity formation and the tensions that arise due to ethnic, religious, and national lines is also important, especially from a postcolonial lens. Based on this argument, my study intends to explore peripheral and Centre identities based on the socio-political history of Kashmir and postcolonial India. Utilizing qualitative methods, the proposed study understands how Kashmiri students based on their lived experiences in Kashmir and Indian states, along with mainstream Indian media enabling stereotypes of Kashmiri youth impact their sense of identity, identification, and sense of belonging. Such an understanding of identities and belonging would present how complex identities can be when contextualizing diaspora within postcolonial nations, and the relationship with internal states, especially those states with a history of militarization.