Kashmir: Contested Identity, Closed Systems, Open Choices

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The book unfolds the subjectivity of estrangement in the consensus social history of Kashmir. In a derivative discourse, it traces the origins of its contemporary cultural assemblage, its rupture and then loss of nativity with the history of subjugations. The Quit Kashmir Movement, prompted by the National Movement, was an assertion to regain the nativity after centuries in a secular, democratic India. Since independence came with the fragmentation of culture, it turned into a binary hostility with Pakistan. The Cold War polemics mystified Kashmir with illusions and mythical referents that did not allow institutions to strike roots. The wash off effects of development produced a new rich class, which sought legitimacy in power and share in resources through disempowerment of politics. Prompted by the process of excessive democratization, it set its agenda on confessional referent. And, with the demise of the Cold War, Kashmir got linked with the Counter World Order Project bringing enormous loss of human lives, exodus of minority community and further fragmentation of its society. In post-September 11 world order, the disillusionments in flawed leadership have brought ailment to its society with fractured nativity. The author treats Kashmir ailment beyond politics of identity and a political dispute between India and Pakistan. Its estrangement is historical in nature and needs remedies not in compartmentalization of confessional religion but evolutionary cultural capital resurgence through empowerment of politics in a holistic paradigm.

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Ashok Kumar Kaul is Professor of Sociology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He has over thirty years of teaching and research experience at a number of universities in India and abroad. Prof. Kaul was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria (1991-92), and the Department of Sociology University of Alberta, Edmonton (1993-94), and has been Visiting Faculty at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi (2002), CSS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2005) and also at the University of Jammu. He is actively involved in academic assignments and is from time to time invited for special lectures and public discourse both in India and abroad. His specialization includes Social Theory and Modernization. He has published two books and produced more than fifty papers.