Towards Liberation: Resistances From Kashmir
The tenacity and vibrance of Kashmiri resistance carries countless lessons for struggles around the world.
August 2024 marks five years since the Indian state deployed tens of thousands of additional troops to the Himalayan region as the Modi-Shah juggernaut unilaterally stripped Kashmir of its remaining autonomy and broke the state into multiple “union territories”. The impacts of this staggering move were felt across the subcontinent as the latest move on the march towards a Hindu rashtra and “Akhand Bharat”. Delhi’s strategy of neutralizing any political opposition through a mix of psychological operations and internet shutdowns has become a characteristic tool in its repressive arsenal.
Globally acknowledged as one of the most highly militarized zones in the world, Kashmir represents one of the clearest examples of Indian imperialism and state violence. Beyond this limited picture however, the tenacity and vibrance of Kashmiri resistance carries countless lessons for struggles around the world.
In this March 2021 discussion, we speak with Ather Zia, a Kashmiri political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist, to understand the occupation of Kashmir as well as mass resistance to Indian imperialism. We focus on exploring the possibilities of building intersectional solidarity across the region to move towards the collective liberation of the subcontinent.
Ather Zia, Ph.D., is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019) and co-editor of Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak (Women Unlimited 2020), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (Upenn 2018) and A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection “The Frame” (1999) and another collection is forthcoming in 2021. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region.