This is not a spectacle unfolding but a rightful mourning!
—Parveena Ahangar
Resisting Disappearance unravels a politics of mourning of women whose kin were forcefully disappeared in the wake of the Indian counterinsurgency that was initiated to tackle a popular armed struggle in Kashmir in 1989. The politics of mourning begun and sustained by women, often referenced as apolitical in the milieu of heightened politics, challenged the Indian state's imperial dispensation sustained through a military-state administrative complex.
The gradual and almost sudden invisibilization of the Kashmiri polity after the Indian state's recent annexation of Jammu and Kashmir state has further intensified the militarization of social-political life since August 5, 2019.1 However, the militarization of Kashmir now is charged with an overt Hindutva cultural imperialism that is adamant about dislocating this culture of mourning/protest with a culture of disciplined obedience or extinction. Therefore, this book offers a certain precision in...
