Kashmiris call India's rule settler-colonialism - and we should listen to them

Kashmiris call India's rule settler-colonialism - and we should listen to them

Submitted by
Sanaa Alimia
on
Fri, 06/26/2026 - 16:03

Such analysis reflects their lived realities, amid ongoing shifts in the region's land, law and demography

Indian paramilitary troopers stand deployed as Kashmiri Muslims take part in a ceremonial Ashura procession in Srinagar on 24 June 2026 (Tauseef Mustafa/AFP)

On

A rich body of journalism, creative writing and scholarship lays bare the violence of Indian military occupation and human rights abuses in Kashmir. It is quite a feat that Kashmiris themselves, facing state surveillance and the threat of detention and violence, are producing much of this work. 

Both within the country and in the diaspora, Kashmiris are seeking to write their own histories. By explaining the structures of power and their effects in Kashmir, they are producing some of the most precise analyses of the situation. 

They teach those of us who do not live under occupation not only what is happening, but why, including the historical forces and material conditions that sustain it.

Kashmiri voices are not just soundbites of suffering. They analyse, theorise and teach.

In recent years, both Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri thinkers have been unflinching in explaining India’s grip over Kashmir - not simply through tired debates around constitutional integration or the India-Pakistan territorial dispute, but through a rethinking of power and control. 

They ask a fundamental question: how should we understand the form of rule exercised over Kashmir?

For some, the answer lies in the framework of settler-colonialism. In Colonizing Kashmir, author Hafsa Kanjwal traces the long-term colonial logic of India’s occupation, while anthropologist Ather Zia’s scholarship documents the lived experiences of militarisation, disappearance and everyday governance under occupation, contributing to an emerging body of scholarship that interprets these dynamics through a colonial lens. 

In addition, journalist Azad Essa’s book Hostile Homelands situates Kashmir within a broader geopolitical framework, showing how deepening India-Israel ties are underpinned by shared Islamophobia, racialised ideologies, and alignment on ever-more explicit settler-colonial policies.

Transformations on the ground

These framings of India’s colonial logic in Kashmir are not simply theoretical. They emerge from documenting and understanding material conditions and transformations on the ground.

Kashmiri calls for liberation have deep roots. Collective memory recalls the tyranny of the Mughal Empire. But it was in the 1930s, under Hindu Dogra rule within the framework of British colonialism, that a modern mass movement for Kashmiri liberation began to take shape.

The partition of British India in 1947 reconfigured this struggle. Competing claims by India and Pakistan led to war, and in 1949, the United Nations brokered a ceasefire and established a de facto partition of Kashmir. India occupied the lion’s share of the Kashmir Valley, the heart of the struggle for Kashmiri self-determination, along with Jammu and Ladakh. Pakistan occupied smaller parts of the Kashmir Valley and Gilgit Baltistan. 

The analytical work being produced by Kashmiris is not peripheral. It is central to understanding emancipatory futures in South Asia and beyond

The UN called for a referendum to let people decide their future. It was never held. 

Shortly after the 1949 ceasefire, India granted Jammu and Kashmir a form of autonomy under Article 370, allowing for its own constitution, flag and residency protections. But key domains - defence, foreign affairs, finance and communications - remained under Delhi’s control, and reliant on local collaborating elites.

The facade of autonomy could not conceal a deeper reality: Kashmiris did not want symbolic autonomy in return for material inclusion within India. They wanted freedom.

These demands would explode in 1989 and continue through the 1990s in the form of a mass uprising. Dubbed the “Kashmiri intifada” in international media, having broken out at around the same time as the first Palestinian intifada, Kashmiri demands for freedom have persisted ever since. 

While resistance has taken on an armed dimension, often with the interference of the Pakistani state, these demands for liberation remain rooted in popular will, which has an agency of its own.

Since the 1990s, Indian state forces have tortured, disappeared and killed tens of thousands of Kashmiris.  Dreams have been torn asunder, with families split across borders and exiled. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act grants India sweeping control, including the use of lethal force - and it has been widely deployed.

Rapid reconfiguration 

It is within this longer history that recent developments must be understood.

In 2019, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370, and reorganised the region into two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir in the west, and Ladakh in the east. This marked a decisive shift in the legal and political structure of rule. 

Journalists and scholars - as well as the Kashmiri people themselves - interpreted this moment not as a beginning, but as an intensification: a move towards a more formalised and explicit settler-colonial project.

The significance of 2019 lies in how it has rapidly reconfigured the relationships among land, sovereignty and population. Article 370 restricted land ownership and residency to Kashmiris; its removal has opened the doors to Indian settlement, which is being taken up at speed. 

Legal changes now enable land acquisition, evictions and property confiscations from Kashmiris. These policies are designed to alter the facts on the ground by reshaping the demographic balances in the territories.

These transformations have unfolded alongside intensified repression: the detention of journalists, communications blackouts, passport confiscations, digital surveillance, and restrictions on movement. Together, these measures point to a restructuring of rule that is not adequately captured by older frameworks of integration, autonomy or even occupation.

Yet the language of settler-colonialism remains largely ignored, often dismissed in ham-fisted ways without serious engagement.

Voices marginalised

In May 2025, for example, a brief armed conflict broke out between India and Pakistan after an attack in Kashmir killed two dozen Indian tourists. India conducted air strikes in Pakistan, claiming it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure”, and Pakistan retaliated. Nationalistic fervour in India and Pakistan reached a peak. 

Once again, Kashmiris were sidelined - reduced to instruments within competing national narratives, if they were mentioned at all. Their voices were marginalised not only in India and Pakistan, but across international media, even as they faced the brunt of the violence.

Even among segments of the South Asian left, the reluctance to centre Kashmiri voices and take seriously their analysis is, as Essa details, indicative of the political limits of solidarity, with the “Kashmir issue” constrained by inherited commitments to postcolonial state sovereignty.

How India is implementing the 'Israel model' in Kashmir

Read More »

Such approaches fail to confront how postcolonial states themselves can exercise forms of domination - through internal colonisation, sub-imperial regional power, or, in some cases, settler-colonial practices. 

Formal independence did not produce emancipation for all. Instead, hierarchies of class, caste and religion, alongside regimes of legal exception and incomplete projects of self-determination, have structured differentiated forms of citizenship and belonging.

In this context, the analytical work being produced by Kashmiris is not peripheral. It is central to understanding emancipatory futures in South Asia and beyond.

Listening, in this sense, is not an ethical gesture, but a political one. To engage seriously with Kashmir, and to be a genuine ally, means recognising Kashmiris not as objects of empathy, but as producers of knowledge about their own condition. 

Sidelining their analysis reproduces the very structures of domination that many analysts seek to critique, and this needs to be acknowledged. Only then can meaningful solidarity emerge. 

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Kashmir

Opinion

Post Date Override

0

Update Date

Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29

Update Date Override

0 ...