ABSTRACT
Is the Indian “post” colonial nation-state colonial? This chapter discusses definitions and debates around the concepts of colonialism, imperialism, occupation, and settler colonialism, making an argument for their overlapping applicability in diagnosing the relationship between the Indian state and Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Drawing on Valentin Y. Mudimbe’s (1988) classic definition of colonialism alongside poststructural conceptualizations of sovereignty, biopolitics, and necropolitics, this chapter deploys these concepts to understand events and resistance in Kashmiri history from the inauguration of a particular colonial form of sovereignty in 1846 to the present phase of Indian settler colonialism wrought by the nullification of Article 370.
