School of Social and Political Science

Description

Pashtuns in Kashmir (Kashmiri Pathans) have settled in Kashmir Valley since the 1930s after immigrating from the Khybar Pakhtunkhwa region of present-day Pakistan. However, strict adherence to the basic tenets of Pashtunwali made this minority group culturally and linguistically distinct vis-a-vis the majority Kashmiri population; the Pashtuns, as a collective, experience social and spatial marginalisation. Subjected to forces of modernity, state legal institutions and pressures of assimilation, Pashtuns are experiencing disruption in traditional social, cultural and economic practices. Terming their traditional institutions, such as ‘Jirga’, as primordial, state institutions declare their customary practices as null and void. Sharing the spaces and everyday business transactions with the Kashmiri-speaking populace and political discourse of self-determination pressurises the Pashto community to identify with a more significant ‘Kashmiri Muslim identity’, which in turn prey upon their ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage. To resist the cultural assimilation, the Pashtun community uses intergenerational identity by transferring the rich history, folklore, linguistic traditions and traditional knowledge of medicinal herbs to the younger generation. While negotiating with modernity, Pashtuns in Kashmir have managed to preserve their linguistic and cultural traditions by redefining and reinventing their cultural institutions.  

Most of the existing literature on identity politics in Kashmir treat the 'Muslim identity’ as a monolith, thus neglecting the everyday struggles of ethnic and linguistic minorities such as Pashtuns. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the process of exclusion and everyday struggles of this minority community in Kashmir needs to be foregrounded with critical engagement with the 'theory of marginalisation and subaltern' in the South Asian context. Through the ethnography of a small settlement in the Pashto community in Gutlibag village of Ganderbal district, this paper examines how the community retained ‘Pashto cultural habits’ such as language, dress and food while negotiating social spaces and everyday economic activities with the Kashmiri-speaking population. Ultimately, this paper argues that despite pressures of cultural assimilation, which endangers their cultural and linguistic heritage, the Pashtun of Kashmir are resilient in preserving their traditions by reinventing cultural institutions. 

Speaker: Dr Khalid Wasim, Central University Kashmir & IASH Fellow

Chair: Prof. Wilfried Swenden, UoE