THIRD WORLD IMPERIALISM AND KASHMIR’S SOVEREIGNTY TRAP

This chapter uses the framework of third world imperialism to examine how Kashmir’s forced annexation to India since 1947 has proceeded through legal, political, and economic interventions across time. Since the late 1940s, India’s nationalist political program has advanced its (post)colonial project of settler domination in Kashmir gradually, through processes of domestication and annexation from the 1950s onward, culminating in its abrogation of Kashmir’s special semi-autonomous status in August 2019. We consider a series of historical moments that demonstrate the codification and solidification of the Kashmiri freedom struggle in accordance with international legal concepts, categories, and norms. We explore how the work of international law has operated as a sovereignty trap, both expanding and foreclosing possibilities of self-determination, perpetuating violence and injustice in the process. In the conclusion, we briefly reflect on what it might mean to center Kashmir in the pursuit of alternative approaches to international law, and the role of human rights activists, legal practitioners and scholars in that process.