ARTICLE 370 OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION

Kaul, Nitasha. 2021. "Coloniality and/as Development in Kashmir: Econonationalism". Feminist Review 128 (1): 114-131. doi:10.1177/01417789211016490

This article identifies the colonial imperative of 'we must develop them, with or without their consent', which is used by the Indian state in order to dominate Kashmiri Muslims, and argues that this notion of development combines patriarchal silencing of the subjugated as well as a gendered fantasy of liberating oppressed Kashmiri women and minorities. While the colonial nature of Indian rule over Kashmir has been a long-term phenomenon, the focus in this article will primarily be on a specific political transformation imposed by the Indian state since August 2019, when even the pretence of autonomy and recognition was given up, and all phenomena constituting coloniality became conspicuous and acute. Adopting a feminist lens, I highlight nine features of contemporary Indian coloniality in Kashmir: denial of consent, paternalism, violence, enforced silencing, lack of accountability, arbitrariness, divide and rule, humiliation and a specious idea of development. I further argue that such a notion of coloniality as development is better understood as 'econonationalism' (akin to homonationalism and femonationalism), where the supposed liberatory ideas are rhetorically deployed to mask a dehumanising subjugation.

In August 2019, the populist Modi government, after getting re-elected in a massive landslide, rescinded the semi-autonomous status (constitutionally guaranteed under Article 370) of the disputed Muslim-majority region of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) by putting its 12 million residents under an unprecedented lockdown. This article will examine the ramifications of this decision, which earned praise in mainland India but generated anger and fear among the people of J&K, especially in the Kashmir Valley, the epicenter of the Kashmiri self-determination movement? It situates the prior measures Indian government took to impose its decision on the population which strongly opposed it and assesses the human cost of this imposition. It looks at the international community's response to the political and human rights crisis obtained due to the siege imposed on the people of the contested Himalayan region. And, finally, the article indicates that the political future of Kashmir, which has been the main source of intense geopolitical rivalry between two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors (India and Pakistan), and a site of protracted armed conflict and unarmed anti-India resistance, is likely to remain caught in a cycle of relative calm and unrest that has marked its modern history.

In this article, I analyze social media responses by Hindu men to the Indian government's August 2019 revocation of Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution that codified Jammu & Kashmir's special status. Kashmir has been under Indian military occupation since 1947 and it is now the most militarized place in the world. Hindu men reacted to the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A with glee, declaring on social media that this latest abrogation of Kashmiri sovereignty entitled them to "fair Kashmiri wives." My article contextualizes these responses in Partition era violence against girls and women. In addition, I argue that this representation of Kashmiri women resonates with colonial era martial race theory. My larger point is that the construction of race in India is part of a complex discursive formation that includes colonial attitudes, Partition violence, regional rivalries between India and Pakistan, and the rise of Hindu nationalism.