"An’ You will Fight, Till the Death of It…": Past and Present in the Challenge of Kashmir

In the first section of this paper I analyze the colonial origins of Jammu and Kashmir, in order to suggest that tehreeki politics, and such collective suffering, derive from a longer history of imperial expansion and feudal rule. Then, in the third section, I discuss the enormous violence that accompanied partition, whose afterlife continues to haunt the political imagination in India and Pakistan, and thus to limit discussions of Kashmiri self-determination within the narrow confines of self-righteous nationalisms. In the concluding section, I return to the present moment in Kashmir, and leave the final word with another young Kashmiri poet.