Indigeneity and Competing Victimhoods in Post/Colonial Conflict

This paper investigates the complexities of 'indigeneity' as they obtain in multiply colonised contexts by focusing on the relationship between indigeneity and post/coloniality in the case of Kashmir. After a brief canvassing of the Kashmir conflict as typically perceived (simplistic India-Pakistan territorial dispute), I shift focus to Kashmir Valley (epicentre of the conflict in Indian-administered region) and analyse the ways in which identity and indigeneity are set to work in this post/colonial conflict. I argue how the roots of Kashmir conflict are Eurocentric colonial, but its contemporary manifestation demonstrates the colonial exercise of power by post-colonial states. Hence, the Kashmir imbroglio today is post/colonial. There is an overwhelming body of evidence about the ways in which 'native' Kashmiri Valley population -- both Hindu and Muslim -- have suffered multidimensional trauma at the hands of the military and militant forces both, yet these injuries are never comprehended together but are always politically articulated in a segmented manner through what I call "discourse of competing victimhoods" (DCV). DCV operates through Kashmiri Muslims (KMs) referring to their killings, enforced disappearances, rapes by Indian forces in response to the Kashmiri self-determination struggle, and Kashmiri Hindus (Kashmiri Pandits, KPs) referring to their forced displacement, killings, rapes by militants as a strategy of an anti-India Islamist movement. DCV can range from political use of selective histories and memories to denial of the extent of suffering on either side by the other. I demonstrate how this polarisation is linked to complex claims to indigeneity on each side. The KPs are held up as the original indigenous inhabitants of Kashmir Valley going back millennia. Disputing this, KMs refer to the Central Asian originating Afghan and Mughal dynasties that ruled the region at different times prior to the British sale of the territory and its peoples in a 19th century treaty. The Indian state, especially in its 21st century Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) version, sees the KPs as the indigenous Kashmiris whose suffering justifies repression of KMs. In fact, so much so that violent Hindu fundamentalist views and actions in contemporary India are widely justified by the rhetorical question: 'What about Kashmiri Pandits (KPs)?'. Here, the fate of indigenous KPs is a question that answers itself and justifies any colonial manoeuvre of the post/colonial state. On the other hand, KMs refer to the constant repression (curtailed rights, internet and media censorships, intimidation, surveillance, public humiliation, identity erasures) that achieved new proportions with India abrogating autonomy of the region in a constitutional coup in August 2019. In recent years, land and domicile laws have been changed to allow Indians easy access to the region. Here, KM fear of demographic settler-colonial style change with the Indian influx makes for emphasis on KM indigeneity claims as the inhabitants who are being erased. DCV ensures that different ideas of indigeneity are used in parallel in support of varying emancipatory goals. I conclude by reflecting upon what decolonial pathways might mean in such post/colonial conflicts with complex indigeneities.