Mona Bhan
Biographic Data
| ID | 81067 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mona Bhan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mona |
| FAMILY NAME | Bhan |
| SIGNATURE | BHAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | DePauw University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8698-7779 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Critical Kashmir Studies and Asian Settler Colonial Critique: A Conversation
Weaponizing Nature, Naturalizing Violence: Anthropologies of Ecofascism
After decades of denial and obstruction, the global Right is increasingly willing to acknowledge that climate change is a threat to lives and lifeways everywhere. Moreover, some seize on the specter of ecological collapse to advance fascistic politics. Mass shootings by White men who propose that eliminating racialized people will ease environmental pressures—including in Christchurch and El Paso—have been the most spectacular manifestations of t…
Mining normalcy: Lithium and its spectral forms
In February 2023, the Geological Survey of India announced the discovery of 5.9 million metric tons of lithium in Kashmir, positioning India as the world's sixth-largest holder of this critical mineral. In this essay, I analyze how India's "green transition" under a fascist Hindu regime, is entangled with settler colonial ambitions and extractive politics in Kashmir
More-than-human supremacy: Himalayan lessons on cosmopolitics
How might our analysis of fascism be enriched if we turn our attention to how contemporary supremacist movements self-fashion themselves as more-than-human formations? How is fascist politics naturalized through claims that it is fueled by the agency and vitality of not just humans but also other-than-humans? How do right-wing supremacists' assertions that theirs is an indigenous more-than-human politics that suffered but endured the violence of …
Planning and Food Sovereignty in Conflict Cities: Insights From Urban Growers in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir
Problem, research strategy, and findings Protracted political conflicts disrupt people's lives, including their ability to feed themselves. Urban planning, operating within the ambit of the state, impacts food systems in conflict cities. We examine the confluence of planning and political misgovernance on food sovereignty in conflict cities. We do so by documenting the experiences of urban growers who cultivate, eat, and distribute indigenous gre…
Researching Kashmir
This roundtable discusses the future of research in critical Kashmir studies through a close consideration of questions of power, ethics, and positionality that have come to the fore in recent years
Weathering the Occupation
This article examines how weather became an important element of India’s imperial project particularly after 2019, while its everyday forecast and management, as well as its seeming predictability, offered the Indian state an illusion of control in Kashmir’s uncertain political terrain. Against this backdrop, the article foregrounds how weathering the occupation offers a critical analytic to track the eco-logics of the Indian occupation in Kashmi…
Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies
Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies
Relating Otherwise: Forging Critical Solidarities Across the Kashmiri Pandit-Muslim Divide
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the Kashmir Valley underwent a radical shift. Grounding our exploration in nine life narratives appended to this article by scholars, artists, poets, and writers, mostly Kashmiri, we seek to retrieve a textured under…
Occupations in context - The cultural logics of occupation, settler violence, and resistance
Canine counterinsurgency in Indian-occupied Kashmir
In this article, we analyze contemporary discourses of counterinsurgency in relation to dogs in Kashmir, the disputed northernmost Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and the site of a prolonged military occupation. We are interested in the widespread presence of street dogs in Kashmir as both embodiments and instruments of military terror. We consider the competing narratives of how canines function variously in Kashmiri perceptions of cou…
Geographies of Occupation in South Asia
Nosheen Ali, Mona Bhan, Sahana Ghosh, Hafsa Kanjwal, Zunaira Komal, Deepti Misri, Shruti Mukherjee, Nishant Upadhyay, Saiba Varma, Ather Zia, Geographies of Occupation in South Asia, Feminist Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2-3, Indigenous Feminisms in Settler Contexts (2019), pp. 574-580
Resisting Occupation in Kashmir
“In Search of the Aryan Seed”: Race, Religion, and Sexuality in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
Introduction: Law containing violence: critical ethnographies of occupation and resistance
This special issue of The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law brings together legal anthropologists and legal scholars who share a common commitment to understanding law's formative and constitutive role in relation to the social, cultural, and political dynamics of occupation. The authors draw upon and extend recent work on the emergence of new forms of military, multilateral, and humanitarian occupations, and their roles in reinforcin…
Fluid landscapes, sovereign nature: Conservation and counterinsurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir
This article analyzes how environmentalism reinscribed violent forms of state sovereignty in the disputed region of Kashmir in the aftermath of a decade-long uprising against Indian rule. After the return of an elected government, six years after its suspension in 1990, environmental restoration legitimized new forms of state and nature making in Kashmir. Nature rather than territory emerged as an arena of citizen activism, which further strength…
Welfare and the Politics and Historicity of the Anthropocene
Ongoing discussions of welfare and human viability that focus on state responsibility to provide care and services rarely consider how new sources of vulnerability are emerging within the context of climate change. Scholars attentive to these processes often use the designation "Anthropocene" to characterize the current period of large-scale anthropogenic environmental changes. This essay argues that although the Anthropocene adds a much-needed c…
Morality and Martyrdom: Dams, Dharma , and the Cultural Politics of Work in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
In this essay, I explore how corporations such as India's National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and the Hindustan Construction Company use corporate humanitarianism to justify their illegitimate control over critical rivers in the Kashmir valley and to quell Kashmiri "subversion" through new labor and employment regimes. Kashmiri workers use death and martyrdom to contest narratives of corporate morality
Refiguring Rights, Redefining Culture: Hill-Councils in Kargil, Jammu and Kashmir
In 2003, an autonomous hill-development council was formed in the border district of Kargil, located in the strife-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir. The council signalled Indian government's continued attempt to grant political autonomy to marginalised communities living on India's frontiers. This paper discusses how Brogpas, a small ethnic community living along the disputed line-of-control, appropriate discourses of cultural distinction to stake…
Disarming Violence: Development, Democracy, and Security on the Borders of India
This article offers a critical analysis of the growing emphasis on security in South Asia through an ethnographic study of Operation Sadbhavna, an Indian military initiative that was launched in 2001 after the Kargil War between India and Pakistan. It demonstrates how a renewed emphasis placed on security requirements through the adoption of the development paradigm and discourses of peace building and human security further legitimizes the milit…
Newsrooms in Conflict: Journalism and the Democratization of Mexico by Sallie Hughes
Border practices: Labour and nationalism among Brogpas of Ladakh
Scholarly writings on Kashmir have primarily discussed state-centred initiatives that are aimed at fostering nationalism among border communities. In this paper, I use the example of Brogpas—a border community living on the contested line-of-control between India and Pakistan—to argue that national identity for Brogpas is the product of fostering their national boundaries through their everyday labour practices. A focus on khral (mandatory labour…
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology
Podcasting Political and Legal Anthropology Christine Hegel‐Cantarella, Jason Cross
Role and Image of Law in India: The Tribal Experience by Vasudha Dhagamwar
More-than-human supremacy: Himalayan lessons on cosmopolitics
How might our analysis of fascism be enriched if we turn our attention to how contemporary supremacist movements self-fashion themselves as more-than-human formations? How is fascist politics naturalized through claims that it is fueled by the agency and vitality of not just humans but also other-than-humans? How do right-wing supremacists' assertions that theirs is an indigenous more-than-human politics that suffered but endured the violence of …
Disarming Violence: Development, Democracy, and Security on the Borders of India
This article offers a critical analysis of the growing emphasis on security in South Asia through an ethnographic study of Operation Sadbhavna, an Indian military initiative that was launched in 2001 after the Kargil War between India and Pakistan. It demonstrates how a renewed emphasis placed on security requirements through the adoption of the development paradigm and discourses of peace building and human security further legitimizes the milit…
Fluid landscapes, sovereign nature: Conservation and counterinsurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir
This article analyzes how environmentalism reinscribed violent forms of state sovereignty in the disputed region of Kashmir in the aftermath of a decade-long uprising against Indian rule. After the return of an elected government, six years after its suspension in 1990, environmental restoration legitimized new forms of state and nature making in Kashmir. Nature rather than territory emerged as an arena of citizen activism, which further strength…
Welfare and the Politics and Historicity of the Anthropocene
Ongoing discussions of welfare and human viability that focus on state responsibility to provide care and services rarely consider how new sources of vulnerability are emerging within the context of climate change. Scholars attentive to these processes often use the designation "Anthropocene" to characterize the current period of large-scale anthropogenic environmental changes. This essay argues that although the Anthropocene adds a much-needed c…
Morality and Martyrdom: Dams, Dharma , and the Cultural Politics of Work in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
In this essay, I explore how corporations such as India's National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and the Hindustan Construction Company use corporate humanitarianism to justify their illegitimate control over critical rivers in the Kashmir valley and to quell Kashmiri "subversion" through new labor and employment regimes. Kashmiri workers use death and martyrdom to contest narratives of corporate morality
Occupations in context - The cultural logics of occupation, settler violence, and resistance
Relating Otherwise: Forging Critical Solidarities Across the Kashmiri Pandit-Muslim Divide
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the Kashmir Valley underwent a radical shift. Grounding our exploration in nine life narratives appended to this article by scholars, artists, poets, and writers, mostly Kashmiri, we seek to retrieve a textured under…
Canine counterinsurgency in Indian-occupied Kashmir
In this article, we analyze contemporary discourses of counterinsurgency in relation to dogs in Kashmir, the disputed northernmost Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and the site of a prolonged military occupation. We are interested in the widespread presence of street dogs in Kashmir as both embodiments and instruments of military terror. We consider the competing narratives of how canines function variously in Kashmiri perceptions of cou…
Refiguring Rights, Redefining Culture: Hill-Councils in Kargil, Jammu and Kashmir
In 2003, an autonomous hill-development council was formed in the border district of Kargil, located in the strife-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir. The council signalled Indian government's continued attempt to grant political autonomy to marginalised communities living on India's frontiers. This paper discusses how Brogpas, a small ethnic community living along the disputed line-of-control, appropriate discourses of cultural distinction to stake…
Border practices: Labour and nationalism among Brogpas of Ladakh
Scholarly writings on Kashmir have primarily discussed state-centred initiatives that are aimed at fostering nationalism among border communities. In this paper, I use the example of Brogpas—a border community living on the contested line-of-control between India and Pakistan—to argue that national identity for Brogpas is the product of fostering their national boundaries through their everyday labour practices. A focus on khral (mandatory labour…
Mining normalcy: Lithium and its spectral forms
In February 2023, the Geological Survey of India announced the discovery of 5.9 million metric tons of lithium in Kashmir, positioning India as the world's sixth-largest holder of this critical mineral. In this essay, I analyze how India's "green transition" under a fascist Hindu regime, is entangled with settler colonial ambitions and extractive politics in Kashmir
Geographies of Occupation in South Asia
Nosheen Ali, Mona Bhan, Sahana Ghosh, Hafsa Kanjwal, Zunaira Komal, Deepti Misri, Shruti Mukherjee, Nishant Upadhyay, Saiba Varma, Ather Zia, Geographies of Occupation in South Asia, Feminist Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2-3, Indigenous Feminisms in Settler Contexts (2019), pp. 574-580
Newsrooms in Conflict: Journalism and the Democratization of Mexico by Sallie Hughes
Border practices: Labour and nationalism among Brogpas of Ladakh
Scholarly writings on Kashmir have primarily discussed state-centred initiatives that are aimed at fostering nationalism among border communities. In this paper, I use the example of Brogpas—a border community living on the contested line-of-control between India and Pakistan—to argue that national identity for Brogpas is the product of fostering their national boundaries through their everyday labour practices. A focus on khral (mandatory labour…
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology
Podcasting Political and Legal Anthropology Christine Hegel‐Cantarella, Jason Cross
Role and Image of Law in India: The Tribal Experience by Vasudha Dhagamwar
Refiguring Rights, Redefining Culture: Hill-Councils in Kargil, Jammu and Kashmir
In 2003, an autonomous hill-development council was formed in the border district of Kargil, located in the strife-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir. The council signalled Indian government's continued attempt to grant political autonomy to marginalised communities living on India's frontiers. This paper discusses how Brogpas, a small ethnic community living along the disputed line-of-control, appropriate discourses of cultural distinction to stake…
Disarming Violence: Development, Democracy, and Security on the Borders of India
This article offers a critical analysis of the growing emphasis on security in South Asia through an ethnographic study of Operation Sadbhavna, an Indian military initiative that was launched in 2001 after the Kargil War between India and Pakistan. It demonstrates how a renewed emphasis placed on security requirements through the adoption of the development paradigm and discourses of peace building and human security further legitimizes the milit…
Morality and Martyrdom: Dams, Dharma , and the Cultural Politics of Work in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
In this essay, I explore how corporations such as India's National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and the Hindustan Construction Company use corporate humanitarianism to justify their illegitimate control over critical rivers in the Kashmir valley and to quell Kashmiri "subversion" through new labor and employment regimes. Kashmiri workers use death and martyrdom to contest narratives of corporate morality
Welfare and the Politics and Historicity of the Anthropocene
Ongoing discussions of welfare and human viability that focus on state responsibility to provide care and services rarely consider how new sources of vulnerability are emerging within the context of climate change. Scholars attentive to these processes often use the designation "Anthropocene" to characterize the current period of large-scale anthropogenic environmental changes. This essay argues that although the Anthropocene adds a much-needed c…
Introduction: Law containing violence: critical ethnographies of occupation and resistance
This special issue of The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law brings together legal anthropologists and legal scholars who share a common commitment to understanding law's formative and constitutive role in relation to the social, cultural, and political dynamics of occupation. The authors draw upon and extend recent work on the emergence of new forms of military, multilateral, and humanitarian occupations, and their roles in reinforcin…
Fluid landscapes, sovereign nature: Conservation and counterinsurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir
This article analyzes how environmentalism reinscribed violent forms of state sovereignty in the disputed region of Kashmir in the aftermath of a decade-long uprising against Indian rule. After the return of an elected government, six years after its suspension in 1990, environmental restoration legitimized new forms of state and nature making in Kashmir. Nature rather than territory emerged as an arena of citizen activism, which further strength…
Resisting Occupation in Kashmir
“In Search of the Aryan Seed”: Race, Religion, and Sexuality in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
Geographies of Occupation in South Asia
Nosheen Ali, Mona Bhan, Sahana Ghosh, Hafsa Kanjwal, Zunaira Komal, Deepti Misri, Shruti Mukherjee, Nishant Upadhyay, Saiba Varma, Ather Zia, Geographies of Occupation in South Asia, Feminist Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2-3, Indigenous Feminisms in Settler Contexts (2019), pp. 574-580
Relating Otherwise: Forging Critical Solidarities Across the Kashmiri Pandit-Muslim Divide
In this paper we reflect on a history of the textured relationships that Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits shared prior to 1989, a date widely framed in Kashmiri popular history and memory as the moment when communitarian relationships in the Kashmir Valley underwent a radical shift. Grounding our exploration in nine life narratives appended to this article by scholars, artists, poets, and writers, mostly Kashmiri, we seek to retrieve a textured under…
Occupations in context - The cultural logics of occupation, settler violence, and resistance
Canine counterinsurgency in Indian-occupied Kashmir
In this article, we analyze contemporary discourses of counterinsurgency in relation to dogs in Kashmir, the disputed northernmost Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and the site of a prolonged military occupation. We are interested in the widespread presence of street dogs in Kashmir as both embodiments and instruments of military terror. We consider the competing narratives of how canines function variously in Kashmiri perceptions of cou…
Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies
Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies
Planning and Food Sovereignty in Conflict Cities: Insights From Urban Growers in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir
Problem, research strategy, and findings Protracted political conflicts disrupt people's lives, including their ability to feed themselves. Urban planning, operating within the ambit of the state, impacts food systems in conflict cities. We examine the confluence of planning and political misgovernance on food sovereignty in conflict cities. We do so by documenting the experiences of urban growers who cultivate, eat, and distribute indigenous gre…
Researching Kashmir
This roundtable discusses the future of research in critical Kashmir studies through a close consideration of questions of power, ethics, and positionality that have come to the fore in recent years
Weathering the Occupation
This article examines how weather became an important element of India’s imperial project particularly after 2019, while its everyday forecast and management, as well as its seeming predictability, offered the Indian state an illusion of control in Kashmir’s uncertain political terrain. Against this backdrop, the article foregrounds how weathering the occupation offers a critical analytic to track the eco-logics of the Indian occupation in Kashmi…
More-than-human supremacy: Himalayan lessons on cosmopolitics
How might our analysis of fascism be enriched if we turn our attention to how contemporary supremacist movements self-fashion themselves as more-than-human formations? How is fascist politics naturalized through claims that it is fueled by the agency and vitality of not just humans but also other-than-humans? How do right-wing supremacists' assertions that theirs is an indigenous more-than-human politics that suffered but endured the violence of …
Critical Kashmir Studies and Asian Settler Colonial Critique: A Conversation
Weaponizing Nature, Naturalizing Violence: Anthropologies of Ecofascism
After decades of denial and obstruction, the global Right is increasingly willing to acknowledge that climate change is a threat to lives and lifeways everywhere. Moreover, some seize on the specter of ecological collapse to advance fascistic politics. Mass shootings by White men who propose that eliminating racialized people will ease environmental pressures—including in Christchurch and El Paso—have been the most spectacular manifestations of t…
Mining normalcy: Lithium and its spectral forms
In February 2023, the Geological Survey of India announced the discovery of 5.9 million metric tons of lithium in Kashmir, positioning India as the world's sixth-largest holder of this critical mineral. In this essay, I analyze how India's "green transition" under a fascist Hindu regime, is entangled with settler colonial ambitions and extractive politics in Kashmir
South Asian Studies and Conflicts (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Law (12 works) · History (10 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Geography (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works)