India’s settler colonialism in Kashmir is not starting now, eliminating the natives is a process long underway
From controlling space to regulating movement, from land holdings to resource extraction, from neoliberal policies converging with colonial aims to memory erasures and intensive surveillance, the Indian state has been at it for long. The recent developments are only a continuation of the historical dispossession and violence intrinsic to its control of Kashmir.
The practice of destroying homes has been especially common in the hinterlands. However, it is only in the recent years that news reports have covered this widespread punitive action. In picture, a Kashmiri woman stands on the rubble of her house, destroyed in police action during a gunfight with militants. File photo by ABID BHAT Strange pictures emerged last month in Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir. Police personnel were seen distributing roses amongst doctors and paramedics. This was apparently a damage-control exercise after the department came under fire for harassing people, including the medical staff fighting at the frontlines of the pandemic response, during the Covid-19 lockdown announced by the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. The images presented a sharp contrast of guns held tightly in one hand and roses in the other, much like India’s claims of development and empowerment in Kashmir amidst continued violence. Barely days after the guns-and-roses…
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