ABSTRACT
Religious figures of Kashmir’s past continue to be invoked by politicians in the present in order to bolster their claims over Kashmir’s political belonging. Why do these saintly religious figures like Lal Ded, Nund Rishi, ‘Ali Hamadani, and Hamza Makhdum continue to hold such potent relevance in the political present? This chapter analyzes two notable speeches in the recent past that re-appropriate local Kashmiri saints to serve others’ imperialist agendas: Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq’s 1987 memorialization of ‘Ali Hamadani to justify his regime’s Islamization programs and Pakistan’s political claims over Kashmir, and Indian Prime Minister Modi’s 2015 speech that invoked Lal Ded, Nund Rishi, and Kashmiriyat to claim Kashmir rightfully belongs to India. Deployment of such “hagiopolitics of repression” to hegemonically dominate Kashmiris can be insidiously effective. However, tying the state’s agenda to the popular memory of these saints also opens the possibility for Kashmiris to redefine and redeploy those saints in ways that render saints an alternative geography of resistance, exploiting the state’s insidious methods to instead serve resistance to state oppression.
