ABSTRACT
This chapter draws upon the works of “Tehreek history writers” and reads them against the grain of dominant Indian narratives on Kashmir. It traces the anti-colonial themes in Tehreek history writings as their authors seek to retell Kashmir’s past and present. As activist-writers broadly aligned with the self-determination movement, Tehreek history writers see Indian historiography as an ideological scaffolding for Indian control over Kashmir. Accordingly, they question its foundational claims on Kashmir. Though shaped in varied ways by the experience of living under a regime of military occupation, the chapter argues that the emergence of Tehreek history writers and their work can be fully understood only by reading them as oppositional logics to the “official” Indian historiography, yet in themselves they represent acts of anti-colonial memory and form a reservoir of critical knowledge.
