ABSTRACT
A marginalized people, the Kashmiris have never really felt integrated within the larger ‘Indian’ entity. The highly fraught political scenario has had a lasting impact on the culture of the state. Sidelined, marginalized, pushed to the corner, Kashmiri youth, whether Muslim or Hindu, is no longer in a mood to accept authority unquestioningly.
I take the case of writing in English from Kashmir, the border state, the bone of contention between uneasy neighbours, India and Pakistan. Islamic fundamentalism and state reprisals have set in motion an unprecedented ‘dispossession’ by forced physical displacement that has skewered power equations in the state time and again. Internationally renowned texts like Basharat Peer's The Curfewed Night and Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator sensitively take on this feeling of loss and dispossession under which the common Kashmiri is reeling.
The literature from this area thus represents the malaise that results from this marginalization, with the writer trying to wrest authority for the Kashmiri identity through his word, combatively and profoundly engaging with the explosive situation. This complex dynamic, I believe, affords an insight into what I name post-terrorist writing, and it is this that I intend to address and unravel in my chapter.
