ABSTRACT
The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir goes back to the partition of the subcontinent when Kashmir expressed its desire to remain independent. The chain of events that followed made Kashmir a political battleground between India and Pakistan, with both countries controlling parts of Kashmir and aspiring for complete control. The battle between the two states co-exists with a nationalist movement by Kashmiris for an independent Kashmir. This chapter explores the xenophobic nationalism of the Indian state that strives to dismiss the Kashmiri nationalist movement by focusing on how the state manufactures consent among the non-Jammu and Kashmiri Indians for state violence in Jammu and Kashmir. The chapter investigates the knowledge construction and its circulation through national curriculum and media in the legitimisation of state violence. The chapter argues that the Indian state invisibilises its violence by narratives that focus entirely on the violence of the “other” or seeks a consent whenever state-sponsored violence is made visible through hyper-nationalist and xenophobic sentiments.
