The Land of Lalla-Ded: Politicization of Kashmir and Construction of the Kashmiri Woman (Company Overview‪)‬

Abstract Over the years, tremendous political and social turmoil has been generated in the state of Jammu and Kashmir by the forces of religious fundamentalism and by an exclusionary nationalism that seeks to erode the cultural syncretism that is part of the ethos of Kashmir. Kashmiri women are now suffering from some of the more predictable afflictions of women caught in conflict situations: psychological trauma, destitution, and acute poverty that put them at increased risk of trafficking. The ethnographic field research, which I undertook, was a method of seeking reconnection sans condescension by simultaneously belonging to and resisting the discursive community of traditional Muslim Kashmiri and Gujjar rural women. This contiguity among disparate histories engendered a historical identity formed in a hybrid space as well as a pluralistic vision of the world, not the fixity of a glorified vision of the past in terms of gender roles, societal roles, or cultural identities.