Against Muslimness: Islamophobia in Indian-occupied Kashmir

Abstract

In India, both secular liberal and Hindu nationalist ideology converge in processes of Islamophobia. This presentation examines how secular liberal and Hindu nationalist ideologies operate in the case of Indian-occupied Kashmir. Having been colonized by India for over seventy-five years, Kashmir is a site of both Indian secular liberal—which achieved its apex during the Nehruvian period—and Hindu nationalist claims; therefore, Kashmir allows us to see the convergences and divergences of both ideologies.  While Indian secular liberalism seeks to mediate Muslim identities through forcible inclusion which emphasize a secular, depoliticized, Muslim identity for the subcontinent, Hindu nationalism is more exclusive in how it views the place of Muslims in India as being subordinate to India’s Hindu identity. Yet the same ideas towards Muslim indigeneity, self-determination, and solidarity, as well as India’s essential character as Hindu, animate both ideologies. And, so, while the rise of right-wing Hindu nationalism in India has contributed to increasing violence against both Indian Muslims and Kashmiri Muslims, this presentation also argues that the essential character of Indian nationalism—as well as the post-Partition Indian nation-state—is Hindu-majoritarian and Islamophobic. In doing so, it makes the case that Islamophobia must be recognized as a denial and management of “Muslimness,” and should be seen not only in sites where public markers of Muslim difference are erased, or violence and bigotry towards Muslims in normalized.