Political Culture in Kashmir: 1930–1990

Summary The 20th century, especially the post-1930s, represents a period of critical transformation in the Kashmir’s political landscape, marked by the rise of political organizations and popular politics that have left their impact on Kashmir’s political culture, especially in the area that came to be identified as Indian-administered Kashmir following the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The term “political culture” suggests how a people practice politics: the sum of beliefs, values, emotions, and attitudes that inform people’s political actions in a particular political system or a society. Kashmir’s political culture may be defined in terms of certain aspects that reveal some of its specificities and distinctiveness. However, those specificities may not be unique to Kashmir. While it has remained a politically volatile place, Kashmir exemplifies more as a case of political sentiment than a political movement, at least until the early 1990s. Political sentiment, even though it has the power to mobilize people, is often a raw emotion that expresses itself intermittently, whereas political movements tend to be more organized and structured. Political movements are facilitated, aside from other avenues, by political writings, which serve as a locomotive for them. At the same time, the role of political leadership, especially in organizing the masses and forging political movements, is equally significant. Thus, in the absence of such leadership and a well-developed political writing tradition, political mobilization in Kashmir remained characterized by an element of immediacy and spontaneity, producing a political resistance that has manifested in the form of protests, uprisings, and insurrections rather than taking the shape of organized movements. A further aspect of these specificities is reflected in the fact that while a powerful anti-India sentiment has frequently united Kashmiri people, their political imagination has remained rather fluid and fragmented. In this context, it is equally important to recognize that “Kashmiri people,” like the “Kashmir region,” is a historically contingent and dynamic category comprising various subjectivities whose political imagination has been variously shaped, a recognition that extends to “other” Kashmiri people as well: those based in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and the diasporic mobilizations in the United Kingdom. However, many of the elements associated with Kashmir’s politics and political culture were profoundly influenced by the authoritarian structures and policies enforced by the Indian state in the region. Thus, in the absence of democratic institutions and suppression of dissent, political sentiment in Kashmir could not be consolidated. Unlike in many parts of colonial India, the space for expressing political opinions in Kashmir, especially through the medium of writing, was minimal. As a result, writers and columnists often turned to satire to evade state surveillance while attempting to give voice to their emotions and viewpoints. The suppression eventually gave rise to an armed resistance in 1989, and with it a new phase in the political culture of Kashmir. In the early 1990s, Kashmir’s print culture witnessed a significant expansion, resulting in a proliferation of writings that brought to the fore a new generation of Kashmiris who gave voice to their political sentiments in a language that was more assertive, marked by a new and politically resonant vocabulary. Alongside this emerged new forms of dissent that were militant in expression, accompanied by a call for aazadi that replaced the earlier slogan of rai-shumari that had shaped political rhetoric in Kashmir during the 1960s and 1970s. Viewed in this context, the period between 1930 and 1990 provides a useful vantage point from which to examine how Kashmir’s political culture was shaped through communicative practices and the articulation and transmission of political ideas. Particularly significant in this regard was the limited development of a political writing tradition, which impacted the consolidation of organized political movements, shaping forms of resistance that were often fragmented and episodic. Nevertheless, the distinctive elements of Kashmir’s political culture cannot be attributed to a singular factor or a specific historical moment. The interventions of the Indian state, particularly after 1947, significantly influenced political processes in the region, constraining the space available for the Kashmiri people to express their political aspirations. At the same time, political culture in Kashmir, like elsewhere in South Asia, reflects the complex entanglements of religion and politics. However, the political imagination of its people, and the nature of their resistance, cannot, despite prevailing scholarly assumptions, be easily subsumed within the emblematic framework of nationalism. On the contrary, Kashmir presents a challenge but also the possibility of moving beyond familiar ways of mapping regions, communities, and political cultures, inviting a critical rethinking of established conceptual categories and analytical frameworks.