Kashmiri Secularism: Religious Politics in the Age of Democracy

Abstract

Recovering the political thought of the leading twentieth-century Kashmiri nationalist from a cynical empirical historiography, this article argues that Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah engaged creatively with questions of minoritisation. Casting the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as an autonomous Islamic territory allowed Abdullah to, somewhat counterintuitively, secure the Indian secular from the subject position of Muslim minority. This, however, inadvertently complicated local problems of Hindu and Sikh minoritisation. This article explores three arguments by which Abdullah sought to square these almost irreconcilable anxieties for a democratic future. Firstly, he engaged with temporality and teleology to elevate his demand for Kashmiri democracy above Muslim parochialism to the level of universal principle. Secondly, through a transference of his parallel experience of Muslim minoritisation at an Indian centre, Abdullah conceived of reserved minority representation in Jammu and Kashmir to aid the transition from a confessional to secular polity. And thirdly, in the still smaller sphere of his native Kashmir Valley, Abdullah historicised an ethno-linguistic identity premised on the equal socio-cultural significance of Muslim and Hindu. But since he insisted on their fraternal loyalty, Abdullah was conceptually unable to allay their history of betrayal and inadvertently left the door open to fratricide.