Counter-maps of the ordinary: occupation, subjectivity, and walking under curfew in Kashmir

ABSTRACT

This article examines practices of resistance that thwart Indian state’s control over everyday life in Kashmir. The state frequently uses ‘curfew’ to dominate public space, shut down ordinary mobility, and suppress pro-independence politics. Curfews are enforced through punitive prohibitions and by activating the militarised infrastructure built to reinforce Indian rule over the region since 1947. Yet, Kashmiris are not passive objects of this control. Through overt and hidden practices of resistance and disobedience, like sangbāzi and, what I call, counter-mapping, they keep their aspirations for independence alive, while rebuilding a semblance of everydayness under the occupation. Desire to walk freely becomes the key metaphor for freedom from military control. Based on ethnographic and theoretical material, the article makes a case that in spaces under long-term military occupations political subjectivity is primarily expressed and enacted as a bodily demand to become visible in public space.

KEYWORDS:

• Political subjectivity
• military occupation
• curfew
• counter-mapping
• walking
• Kashmir

Acknowledgments

For discussion and comments on earlier versions of this article, I want to thank Goldie Osuri, Christopher Annear, Hafsa Kanjwal and Suvaid Yaseen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.