Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir

Description

Moves beyond traditional analysis to understand the conflict over Kashmir A result of territorial disputes between India and Pakistan since 1947, exacerbated by armed freedom movements since 1989, the ongoing conflict over Kashmir is consistently in the news. Taking a unique multidisciplinary approach, Territory of Desire asks how, and why, Kashmir came to be so intensely desired within Indian, Pakistani, and Kashmiri nationalistic imaginations. Literary historian Ananya Jahanara Kabir finds an answer to this question in the Valley of Kashmir’s repeated portrayal as a “special” place and the missing piece of Pakistan and India. Analyzing the conversion of natural beauty into collective desire—through photography, literature, cinema, art, and souvenir production—Kabir exposes the links between colonialism, modernity, and conflict within the postcolonial nation. Representations of Kashmir as a space of desire emerge in contemporary film, colonial “taming” of the valley through nineteenth-century colonialist travelogues, the fetishization of traditional Kashmiri handicrafts like papier maché, and Pandit and Muslim religious revivalisms in the region. Linking a violent modernity to the fantasies of nationhood, Kabir proposes nonmilitaristic ways in which such desire may be overcome. In doing so she offers an innovative approach to complex and protracted conflict and, ultimately, its resolution. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: The Valley And The Nation......Page 14 Part I: The Making of Paradise......Page 42 1. Masks of Desire......Page 44 2. Framing Fantasy......Page 67 3. Modern Nation, Antique Land......Page 93 Hinge Toward Unmaking......Page 118 Fetish of Paradise......Page 120 Part II: Poetics of Dispossession......Page 146 4. Conscripting Silence......Page 148 5. The Other Possibility......Page 172 6. New Maps of Longing......Page 198 Notes......Page 224 Bibliography......Page 256 D......Page 272 K......Page 273 N......Page 274 T......Page 275 Z......Page 276