Description
The Indian government abrogated Articles 370 and 35 of the constitution on August 5th, 2019. This unilateral act of nullification executed through a constitutionally questionable procedure led to the inauguration of a new phase of protracted tensions underlying India’s relationship with Kashmir. Drawing on Jasbir Puar’s work on the sovereign ‘power to maim’ this article seeks to explore the changing metrics of imperialism/colonialism in context of occupation by post-colonial nation-states by analysing the disputed territory of Kashmir. Post 2016, ushered the use of pellet guns leading to demonstrable concomitant injuries which has led many civilians perpetually blinded. The paper develops on the complementary logic to the presence of Indian forces and the manifestation of settler colonialism which thrives on creating and maintaining the population of Kashmir as ‘permanently impaired’ yet simultaneously ‘living’ for exercising state control. The blinded body is used as an ‘analytical tool’ to trace the socio-political construction of the Kashmiri body within the nationalist imaginary and demonstrate how the visual instantiates the political. The paper concludes by offering a provocation into de-colonising the recent ‘visual turn’ in International Relations by inquiring into the visceral ways of seeing affected by the use of pellet guns and how the blinded body serves both as a sight and site of politics.
