Srinagar: A new book on Kashmir titled Resisting Occupation in Kashmir has been released in America.

The book analyses the social and legal logic of “India’s occupation of Kashmir in relation to colonialism, militarization, power, democracy, and sovereignty,” according to its publisher University of Pennsylvania Press.

“It also traces how Kashmiri youth are drawing on the region’s long history of armed rebellion against Indian domination to reimagine the freedom struggle in the twenty-first century. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir presents new ways of thinking and writing about Kashmir that cross conventional boundaries and point toward alternative ways of conceptualizing the past, present, and future of the region.”

Edited by US-based scholars Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhan, Ather Zia, and Cynthia Mahmood, the volume brings together junior and senior scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds who have conducted extensive fieldwork during the past decade in various regions of Kashmir.

The contributors, many of whom were born and raised during the peak of the conflict in the 1990s, offer ethnographically grounded perspectives on contemporary social, legal, and political life in ways that demonstrate the multiplicity of experiences of Kashmiri communities.

The essays highlight the ways in which this scholarly orientation-built through collaboration and dialogue across different kinds of borders-offers a new critical approach to Kashmir studies at this transformative and generative moment.

Table of Contents

Introduction. “Rebels of the Streets”: Violence, Protest, and Freedom in Kashmir
—Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski, and Ather Zia

Chapter 1. Contesting the Law, Contesting the State: Jurisdictional Authority of the Majlis-e-Mushawarat in Kashmir
—Haley Duschinski and Bruce Hoffman
Chapter 2. “In Search of the Aryan Seed”: Race, Religion, and Sexuality in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
—Mona Bhan
Chapter 3. The Killable Kashmiri Body: The Life and Execution of Afzal Guru
—Ather Zia
Chapter 4. From “Terrorist” to “Terrorized”: How Trauma Became the Language of Suffering in Kashmir
—Saiba Varma
Chapter 5. Sexual Crimes and the Struggle for Justice in Kashmir
—Seema Kazi
Chapter 6. Police Subjectivity in Occupied Kashmir: Reflections on an Account of a Police Officer
—Gowhar Fazili
Chapter 7. The Contingencies of Everyday Life in Azad Jammu and Kashmir
—Ershad Mahmud
Chapter 8. Interrogating the Ordinary: Everyday Politics and the Struggle for Azadi in Kashmir
—Farrukh Faheem
Chapter 9. Epitaphs as Counterhistories: Martyrdom, Commemoration, and the Work of Graveyards in Kashmir
—Mohamad Junaid
Chapter 10. Perturbations of Violence in Kashmir
—Cynthia Mahmood