Chakraverti Mahajan, 'Between communalism and coexistence: everyday life in the shadow of armed conflict in Jammu and Kashmir.'

Abstract

How do people belonging to two ‘antagonistic’ faiths live together in a conflict zone? How do they negotiate with each other? How do they make life possible in an 'unliveable' place? This presentation will answer these questions by weaving theory and fieldwork data from Jammu and Kashmir, the world's most densely militarized zone. Differing from the Kashmir valley-centric accounts of the conflict, my work describes conditions and events from the viewpoints of people belonging to political peripheries. Using the ethnographic registers of food, language, sacred spaces and schooling, the paper narrates how conflict has percolated into the everyday lives of the locals in the Doda belt of the Jammu region. Demographically, Doda is the only area in Jammu and Kashmir where Hindus and Muslims live side by side in almost equal numbers.

Moreover, this dynamic shaped the nature of militancy differently in the Kashmir Valley. While Kashmir valley saw a mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, Hindus of Doda negotiated with militancy through 'cultural practices of proximity’. This work stands as a multi-vocal account of radical political and social-cultural changes in the region and argues that there is a complex relationship between everyday socio-cultural realities of inter-community relations, on the one hand, and ideological and political divergence, on the other. While the latter generates tensions among the communities, the former tends to ease the tension and bring resilience into inter-community relations.

Bio

Chakraverti Mahajan teaches Anthropology at Delhi University, India and is Charles Wallace Fellow (2021-22) at the Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. He has done his PhD from Panjab University, Chandigarh and the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. His research has focused on Jammu and Kashmir and has engaged a broad range of ethnographic and theoretical issues. These include communalism and intercommunity relations, psychosocial dimensions of militarization and anthropology of health. His recent publications include journal articles and edited book contributions titled Everyday communalism and shifting food practices in Jammu and Kashmir (2020), Narrating Fear, Tracing Landscape: Memory and Militancy ka Daur in Doda, Jammu and Kashmir (2021), Pastoral Subjectivity: Sedentarisation and healthcare challenges of the Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir (2021) and Militarization and Mental Distress in Jammu and Kashmir (2021). Currently, he is working on an Indian Council for Social Science Research funded project on Social and Mental Health of Border Communities in Jammu and Kashmir and co-investigating a project on Infertility and Psychological well-being funded by the National Commission for Women, India.

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Chakraverti Mahajan, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi, India 

Charles Wallace Fellow, Queen's University Belfast 2022