Driven by the belief that any form of political activism calling for a resolution of the Kashmir issue or a plebiscite was a threat to the “security of the state,” the Kashmir government developed a series of legal and extralegal practices of surveillance and control. An enduring state of emergency belied what was otherwise being promoted as a democratic order. This indefinite state of emergency was an exercise in colonial control, aimed at suppressing people’s political aspirations as well as their agency by marking all dissent as being sponsored by Pakistan. Meanwhile, political dissidents were constrained not only by the repression meted out by the Kashmir government but also the ambiguities inherent in their leadership’s demand for self-determination in the context of the UN resolutions and shifting political developments. In addition to a lack of ideological coherence amongst dissidents, one of the primary reasons why the dissident groups were…

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