Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps and Images
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 Kashmir: The Idea and its Parts
- 2 Conceptualizing a Borderland Approach to Kashmir
- 3 Urban Areas Near the LoC (I)
- 4 Urban Areas Near the LoC (II): The ‘Kashmir Issue’ in Skardu and Kargil
- 5 The Line… the People
- Conclusion: The Politics of Belonging in the Kashmir Borderland
- Acronyms
- References
- Index
Conclusion: The Politics of Belonging in the Kashmir Borderland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps and Images
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 Kashmir: The Idea and its Parts
- 2 Conceptualizing a Borderland Approach to Kashmir
- 3 Urban Areas Near the LoC (I)
- 4 Urban Areas Near the LoC (II): The ‘Kashmir Issue’ in Skardu and Kargil
- 5 The Line… the People
- Conclusion: The Politics of Belonging in the Kashmir Borderland
- Acronyms
- References
- Index
Summary
Abstract
For those living in the disputed territories, the Kashmir issue is expressed in terms of the impossibility of being part of a political project or taking a decision about their own political future. This sentiment is mainly articulated in terms of belonging: by departing from an experience of dispossession or rootlessness to trace a relationship with a multitude of places and spaces. The literature on belonging developed by feminist and migration studies provides interesting insights for grasping the spatial dimension of conflicts about borders such as the Kashmir dispute. Belonging necessarily embodies a translocal and transnational experience and therefore generates specific knowledge about international reality and the way the world is ordered.
Keywords: Kashmir borderland, belonging, politics of belonging, displacement, cosmopolitanism, world order
In this book I have tackled the question of how the Kashmir dispute is understood on both sides of the LoC by focusing on the space of conflict, that is, what is perceived as contested by those living in the affected territories. This space of conflict coincides with the borderland, and is characterized by differentiation done through bordering processes that set spatial hierarchies which are critical for interpreting international reality. As highlighted in Chapter 2, although not recognized as political entities, borderlands are essential spaces for the inquiry about transformations in the international reality. The adoption of a borderland perspective for examining the Kashmir conflict has underscored the difference between the representation of the dispute as an interstate and intrastate affair, and the manifestation of conflict in everyday life in the disputed territories. In so doing, this perspective has unravelled the problem, caused by territorial fixation, of people's exclusion and marginalization from state belonging, which is contrasted with their experiences of ‘multi-territoriality’ or the possibility of accessing or connecting to diverse territories.
For those living in the disputed territories, the Kashmir issue is essentially about the impossibility of participating in a political project or taking a decision about their own political future. This sentiment is mainly articulated in terms of belonging – that is, by tracing a relationship with a multitude of places and spaces – but also in terms of departing from an experience of dispossession or rootlessness.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Kashmir as a BorderlandThe Politics of Space and Belonging across the Line of Control, pp. 167 - 188Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019