Situating Anglophone Kashmiri Literature within Indian Writing in English: Interrogating Nation, Narration and Dissent

Abstract

Kashmiri Anglophone literature written in the aftermath of armed conflict in Kashmir valley has evolved as a significant corpus since 2002. Owing to Kashmir valley’s status as a ‘disputed integral’, literary narratives from Kashmir contest/challenge the dominant ideological and discursive practices of the Indian nation state. Most of the Anglophone Kashmiri literary narratives, barring a few written by Kashmiri Pandit authors, are politically/ideologically supportive of the formation of a distinct ‘Kashmiri’ nation. Their accommodation within the larger rubric of Indian writing in English is possible only by accommodating dissent as a salient feature of the genre. This paper charts the trajectory of development of Anglophone Kashmiri literature and situates them within the broader rubric of Indian writing in English. It engages with seminal questions such as, what constitutes Kashmiri Anglophone literature or how contesting identity/ nationalist discourses constitute distinct genres of national/regional literatures. Though Anglophone Kashmiri literature emerged in the twenty-first century, they accord considerable narrative space to the foundational moment of cartographic reorganization of the Indian sub-continent. This paper critically engages with the representation of political events of 1947 as narrated in recent Anglophone Kashmiri literary narratives like Curfewed Night (2008) by Basharat Peer, The Collaborator (2011) by Mirza Waheed, Our Moon has Blood Clots (2013) by Rahul Pandita and The Half-Mother (2014) by Shahnaz Bashir. The paper dissects the narration of the ‘Kashmiri’ nation contra Indian nation in these literary narratives. The paper endeavours to cull out a ‘Kashmiri’ perspective on discourses foregrounding Indian nationhood within these literary narratives, thereby exploring the possibilities of accommodating dissent within the ambit of Indian writing in English.