Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir

by Chitralekha Zutshi
Save 28% Save 28%
Current price ₹499.00
Original price ₹695.00
Original price ₹695.00
Original price ₹695.00
(-28%)
₹499.00
Current price ₹499.00

Ships in 7-10 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9788178243344
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd
  • Publisher Imprint: Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 366
  • Original Price: INR 695.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 359 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): N/A

Despite its centrality to the political life of India and Pakistan, Kashmir has met with rather perfunctory treatment from historians of South Asia. The few works of history and politics that have appeared on this region, moreover, insist on defining Kashmiri culture, history and identity in terms of the ahistorical concept of Kashmiriyat, or a uniquely Kashmiri cultural identity. 

This book, in contrast, questions the notion of any transcendent cultural uniqueness and Kashmiriyat by returning Kashmir to the mainstream of South Asian historiography. It examines the hundred-year impact of indirect colonial rule on Kashmir's class formation. It looks at the responses of Kashmir's society to social and economic restructuring. It studies the uses made of Kashmir's political elites by the state.  It analyses the effect of Islamic discourse on Kashmir's political culture. It shows that while all these historical changes had a profound impact on the political culture of the Kashmir Valley, there is nothing either very inevitable or quite definite about the 'political regionalism' and 'Islamic particularism' of this area. 

To read this book is to see the changing relationship between, on the one hand, the actual needs and demands of Kashmiris, and, on the other, their religious affiliations and regional identities.  The emergence of a political discourse among the region's Muslims—by which they now define and locate a coherent Kashmiri Muslim community within the larger framework of Islam, Kashmir, India and Pakistan—has never been made clearer.

Using local language sources and every important archive, this is a major history of the formation of Kashmir as we know it today.  It shows us precisely how the Kashmir Valley was transformed over a hundred years and assumed the position it has come to occupy in contemporary South Asia.

Chitralekha Zutshi has a Ph.D. in South Asian History from Tufts University, Boston. She has been Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, and Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Alabama. She is currently Associate Professor of History at the College of William and Mary, USA.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us