Governing Afterlives: Politics, Religion and Sovereignty in Kashmir

• In Event: Poster Session: Change and Continuity in Religion and Politics & Public Administration
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Change and Continuity in Religion and Politics

Abstract

In recent years, the Indian government has denied proper burials to people associated with insurgency in Kashmir—from leaders to common people dying in insurgency-related violence. Since April 2020, around 600 insurgents and locals killed in encounters with the Indian army or in police custody have been denied proper burials. The bodies have not been even returned to their families and are buried in far-off mountains. At times, when the family has been allowed to perform rites, it is a closed exercise done under heavy security and elaborate instructions from the police. Families of the dead have repeatedly demanded proper burials according to Islamic tradition. International media has even reported that the graves were dug by earthmovers. This denial of burials and proper last rites is not mere floating of India’s domestic laws or international laws and treatises like Article 130 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions—something that immediately comes to mind—but it is related, I would argue, with the sovereignty of the state, both what it can do and what it does. However, what is more interesting in securing sovereignty through such low ethical practices is the contradictory outcomes it entails. For example, the moment the state denies burial rites to the insurgents, it inadvertently encroaches on the religious space. In Islamic tradition, martyrs are not given the final ablution, and the state, reportedly, does not perform any such rite when it buries insurgents. Does that mean the state affirms that insurgents are martyrs? Or is the dead body of an insurgent so religious that despite the state exercising its power over it, the state cannot overpower its religious sensibilities or upbringing? It is these questions that this paper seeks to think about.

Author

• Iymon Majid, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities