POETRY AS DISSENT AND PLACEMAKING IN INDIAN-OCCUPIED KASHMIR

Abstract

This article pivots around poetry as a category of analysis; and the figure of a poet as a humanistic optic to look at how forms of resistance are shaped in public and private domains in the Indian occupied Kashmir. The analysis considers poets writing in Kashmiri, other vernacular languages as well as English, and Urdu. In an occupied zone, where a war stands at all corners of the homes and streets, poetry ceases to be mere words. Poetry becomes Ehtijaj (meaning “protest” or “dissent”, both in Urdu and Kashmiri). Poetry as Ehtijaj is a “situated” act, a deeply political gesture; written, embodied, commemorative and sometimes unsaid. It is a form of “placemaking” in the face of erasure and occupation. As a situated act of dissent, of placemaking, poetry emerges also as a “right to a remembered presence” (see Said, E. W. Invention, Memory, and Place. Critical Inquiry, 26 (2), (2000) 175–192). It becomes a way to history, and commemoration, however feeble the effort might seem in face of the hegemony of the occupying power of the Indian nation.