Kashmir's Contested Pasts

Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination

Second Edition

Author Dr. Chitralekha Zutshi

Oxford India Paperbacks

Kashmir's Contested Pasts explores the idea of Kashmir and the idea of history, and their articulation in tandem within Kashmir's multilingual historical tradition. It illuminates the multiple definitions of Kashmir as a sacred space and polity, and history as a tradition and a set of facts. It reflects on the historical memories and practices that have informed imaginings of Kashmir and its past, and the challenges posed to these ideas in Kashmiri political culture today.

Kashmir's Contested Pasts

Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination

Second Edition

Author Dr. Chitralekha Zutshi

Oxford India Paperbacks

Description

Kashmir's Contested Pasts is a long history of the historical imagination in Kashmir. It explores the articulation, within Kashmir's multilingual historical tradition, of the idea of Kashmir and the idea of history in conversation with each other. Contrary to the notion that the Indian Subcontinent did not produce histories, the book uncovers the production, circulation, and consumption of a vibrant regional tradition of historical composition in its textual, oral, and performance forms from the late sixteenth century to the present. It reveals the deep linkages amongst Sanskrit, Persian, and Kashmiri narratives as they drew on and informed each other to define Kashmir as a sacred landscape and polity. It argues that within this interconnected narrative tradition, Kashmir was, and continues to be, imagined as far more than simply an embattled territory or a tourist paradise. History and history writing too, the book further illustrates, were defined in multiple ways-as tradition, facts, memories, stories, common sense, and spiritual practice. The book thus offers a historically grounded reflection on the historical memories, narrative practices, and institutional contexts that have informed imaginings of Kashmir and its past, and explores the challenges posed to these ideas in Kashmiri political culture today.

Kashmir's Contested Pasts

Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination

Second Edition

Author Dr. Chitralekha Zutshi

Oxford India Paperbacks

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction - Paradise on Earth: The Past and Present of History Writing in Kashmir 1. Garden of Solomon: Landscape and Sacred Pasts in Kashmir's Sixteenth-Century Persian Narratives 2. A Literary Paradise: The Tarikh Tradition in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Kashmir 3. Vernacular Histories: Narration and Practice in Kashmir's Nineteenth-Century Historiographical Tradition 4. The Multiple Lives of Rajatarangini: Orientalist and Nationalist Knowledge Production in Kashmir and Colonial India 5. The Kashmiri Narrative Public: Textuality, Orality, and Performance 6. The Divided Public: Battles over History and Territory in Contemporary Kashmir Conclusion Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author