The Settler Colonial Imagination: Hindutva, Neoliberal Interests, and Coming to Grips with Collective Trauma and Genocide in India and Kashmir
Institutional Affiliation
University of North Carolina Greensboro
Start Date
2-11-2023 1:30 PM
End Date
2-11-2023 3:00 PM
Proposal Type
Presentation
Proposal Format
On-campus
Proposal Description
Despite a growing literature on the role of narrative testimony and public storytelling as democratic, legal, and therapeutic resource for survivors of mass political violence and marginalization (see Jovanovic, 2012; Kirmayer, Gone, & Moses, 2014, and; Wexler, 1995, among many others), there is little empirical understanding of the importance of creating socio-legal mechanisms for testimony and storytelling in overcoming the historical legacies of colonialism and collective trauma in the world’s most protracted social conflicts (Azar, 1984). Indian administered Kashmir is a case in point. Stuck in the settler colonial imagination of a country now ruled by Hindutva forces, the December 2021 Russell Tribunal on Kashmir took as one of its four key goals to look at the Kashmir conflict through the lens of settler colonialism. In the context of neoliberal and Hindutva hegemonic forces, is such a reframing of this protracted social conflict even possible? What role can transitional justice mechanisms play in treating decades of collective historical trauma brought on by settler colonial interests and their attenuate dominant assumptions about hierarchy and religiously sanctioned exceptionalism? Combining narrative analysis, transitional justice theories of change, and emerging research on collective trauma, this paper argues a public peace process (Saunders, 1999) is not only welcome, but required for peace in the region. This paper includes arguments not just important for Kashmir but the larger Indian polity.
Exploring Hindutva as a form of religious exceptionalism, neoliberalism as a form of neocolonialism, and centering Kashmir as a decolonial struggle, this paper explores the intersections of systems of power and trauma as important drivers of protracted conflict. Trauma here is not the individual trauma that we often associate with cognitive sequalae after violence, but rather a collective cognitive impasse that infects the body politic of a region or nation for years, decades, and even centuries after violence has ceased. This type of collective historical trauma drives much contemporary conflict (Rinker & Lawler, 2018), and provides an apt description of the Kashmir impasse and Indian underdevelopment in marginalized communities.
The Settler Colonial Imagination: Hindutva, Neoliberal Interests, and Coming to Grips with Collective Trauma and Genocide in India and Kashmir
Despite a growing literature on the role of narrative testimony and public storytelling as democratic, legal, and therapeutic resource for survivors of mass political violence and marginalization (see Jovanovic, 2012; Kirmayer, Gone, & Moses, 2014, and; Wexler, 1995, among many others), there is little empirical understanding of the importance of creating socio-legal mechanisms for testimony and storytelling in overcoming the historical legacies of colonialism and collective trauma in the world’s most protracted social conflicts (Azar, 1984). Indian administered Kashmir is a case in point. Stuck in the settler colonial imagination of a country now ruled by Hindutva forces, the December 2021 Russell Tribunal on Kashmir took as one of its four key goals to look at the Kashmir conflict through the lens of settler colonialism. In the context of neoliberal and Hindutva hegemonic forces, is such a reframing of this protracted social conflict even possible? What role can transitional justice mechanisms play in treating decades of collective historical trauma brought on by settler colonial interests and their attenuate dominant assumptions about hierarchy and religiously sanctioned exceptionalism? Combining narrative analysis, transitional justice theories of change, and emerging research on collective trauma, this paper argues a public peace process (Saunders, 1999) is not only welcome, but required for peace in the region. This paper includes arguments not just important for Kashmir but the larger Indian polity.
Exploring Hindutva as a form of religious exceptionalism, neoliberalism as a form of neocolonialism, and centering Kashmir as a decolonial struggle, this paper explores the intersections of systems of power and trauma as important drivers of protracted conflict. Trauma here is not the individual trauma that we often associate with cognitive sequalae after violence, but rather a collective cognitive impasse that infects the body politic of a region or nation for years, decades, and even centuries after violence has ceased. This type of collective historical trauma drives much contemporary conflict (Rinker & Lawler, 2018), and provides an apt description of the Kashmir impasse and Indian underdevelopment in marginalized communities.
Additional Comments
This is a slightly revised version. of what I planned to present in last year's cancelled PCSJ conference.