Enforced disappearance in death and criminalization of grief in Kashmir

Abstract

In Indian-administered Kashmir, for decades, the funerals of militants were powerful moments of collective grief and resistance, drawing thousands of mourners. The Indian government had long threatened to ban such gatherings, and the pandemic provided a convenient pretext to limit large crowds. In 2020, the Indian Army stopped returning the bodies of the killed militants to their families. Instead, they were buried in remote, heavily surveilled graveyards with only a few select family members. Such funerals are what I term as incarcerated burials or enforced disappearance in death, which reflects the colonial hegemony in continuing imprisonment of dead bodies and punishing those living the aftermath. This paper explores how the Indian government has systematically criminalized mourning in Kashmir, impacting the memory and resistance. This crackdown highlights how collective mourning in Kashmir functions as a “politics of the subjugated,” representing political dissent and the everyday agency of the Kashmiris.