Dark Ages and Bright Futures: Youth, Disability, and Time in Kashmir

This article examines the shape of time for those living in Indian-occupied Kashmir, focusing particularly on two calendars that became embroiled in a “calendar war” in Indian-occupied Kashmir in the year 2017. The first was the annual calendar of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, which proudly featured twelve “talented youth[s]” of the state. The second was a “countercalendar” circulated online by the anonymously run pro-azadi (self-determination) Facebook group Aalaw, featuring a rather different image of Kashmiri youth. Situating these calendars against a larger backdrop of visual representations of time in occupied Kashmir, this article examines how each calendar mobilized narratives about the past, present, and future in Kashmir, narratives that were negotiated through competing gendered images of youth via rhetorics of ability and disability. The article takes up the tensions between two strands of disability studies: liberal approaches that emphasize the celebration of disability and biopolitical critiques that foreground the violent production of debilitation, to consider how Kashmiri visual production suggests a vision of crip futures for those now living with disabilities in Kashmir.