This dissertation examines the ‘failed’ forced migration of the Kashmiri Sikh community after they became targets of an attack carried out by unknown perpetrators on March 20th, 2000, in Chittisinghpora, a quiet Sikh village hidden away in the mountains of South Kashmir. Claiming the lives of thirty-five Sikh men from the village, the attack was a first for Sikhs who by all accounts had been ‘spared’ the violence of the Kashmir conflict and had been living peacefully in Kashmir Valley for generations. Although no one knows who perpetrated the attack or why, speculation runs rife that its foremost purpose was to trigger a mass displacement of Sikhs from the region. Yet, after days of contemplating whether they should move, the Sikhs stayed. If indeed the aim of the violence was to trigger a mass displacement, then what explains why the Kashmiri Sikhs were not displaced? Using Chittisinghpora as an entry point, my dissertation aims to interrogate displacement as a response to violence. I use the term ‘rootedness’, which Myron Weiner describes as a sort of territorial ethnicity with which people make claims to a space, to describe the Sikh decision to stay and argue the ability (and desire) of people to continue living in a place of violence may be construed as an act of resistance not only to the intended consequence of violence, in this case displacement, but to the violence itself. Examining a failed forced migration, therefore, allows us to understand not only the circumstances under which a community resists getting displaced despite experiencing violence but also how people continue to live in the place of violence. To understand Sikh rootedness in Kashmir, I conducted ethnographic research in Kashmir over a period of eight months in 2018 and follow up visits in March 2019 and 2021, during which I collected over 100 interviews with Sikhs and Muslims in North, South and central Kashmir, and completed several hours of observation every week. Additionally, I collected data from newspaper archives located in Punjab and historical archives located in New Delhi. I explain Sikh rootedness as a function of two main factors: 1) the precarity that comes with being a group that is neither considered the ally of the Indian state nor of the Muslims, which allows Sikhs to negotiate safety and 2) the landedness of Kashmiri Sikhs, and to a lesser extent, their employment in government which are economic anchors. Together, both factors allow Sikhs to assert social and economic agency and maintain a peaceful ‘coexistence’ with Muslims, enough to justify remaining rooted. Although the focus on displacement in migration studies is certainly warranted given the massive numbers of people displaced due to conflict, the fact is that not everyone can, or wants to, leave. Given this, a focus on what keeps people rooted is urgently needed. In the scholarship on Kashmir, displacement has been a predominant theme, given the large-scale exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus (Pandits) following an escalation of violence in the state in the 1990s. This has led to an unfortunate communalization of much of the discourse that comes out of Kashmir, and also sometimes reduced it to a ‘Hindu-Muslim’ or ‘India-Pakistan’ conflict. Sikhs are predominantly absent from this scholarship. Even in the discipline of Critical Kashmir Studies which has sought to focus on the people’s experiences of conflict rather than a religious or statist narratives, Sikhs experiences in and of conflict, remain missing. Understanding their lived experience in Kashmir, therefore, attempts to correct this erasure and also disrupts binary discourses. / Geography

O objetivo desta dissertação é efetivar um estudo de casos acerca da atuação das três principais organizações terroristas islamitas atuantes na região da Caxemira, uma região disputada por Paquistão e Índia, no período que vai de 1989 a 2009. O conflito pela Caxemira persiste há pouco mais de seis décadas e pelo seu domínio foram travadas duas grandes guerras, em 1947-1948 e em 1965, alguns conflitos efêmeros e embates recorrentes. Como resultado prático dos conflitos, o território da Caxemira foi dividido entre os contendores, tendo por referência limítrofe uma Linha de Controle reconhecida bilateralmente em 1972. A hipótese que orienta a dissertação defende que, seguindo as diretrizes de uma estratégia de política externa do Paquistão, de Guerra por Procuração, em finais dos anos oitenta atores privados religiosos fundamentalistas islâmicos passaram a atuar no conflito utilizando técnicas de ataque terrorista contra autoridades e população civil habitantes da porção caxemir administrada pela Índia. Ademais, estas organizações receberam o patrocínio e foram controladas pelo principal Serviço Secreto militar paquistanês, o ISID – Diretoria de Serviços de Inteligência Interligados. Assim, contando com o respaldo de setores do Estado paquistanês, como o referido Serviço Secreto, estas organizações terroristas aumentaram seu poder relativo dentro do Paquistão e no contexto regional da Ásia Meridional, trazendo problemas relacionados ao incremento da ingovernabilidade do poder central e das disputas sectárias no Paquistão, bem como, a disseminação da ação terrorista transnacional no subcontinente indiano e no Oriente Médio. / This dissertation presents a case study on the performance of three major Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the region of Kashmir, a region disputed by Pakistan and India from 1989 to 2009. The conflict over Kashmir lasts for more than six decades now and two major wars were fought over its control, in 1947-1948 besides other ephemeral conflicts and clashes. As a practical result of conflict, the territory of Kashmir has been divided between the contenders, the 1972 Line of Control being a reference frontier acknowledged bilaterally. The hypothesis that guides the dissertation argues that, following the guidelines of a Pakistani foreign policy strategy, the “war by proxy”, civil religious Islamic fundamentalists started, in the late eighties, to launch terrorist attacks against authorities and the civilian population of the territory under Indian control. These organizations received the patronage and were controlled by the main military Secret Service of Pakistan, the ISID - Inter-Services Intelligence Directorade. With the support of sectors of the Pakistani state, such as the Secret Service, these terrorist organizations have increased their relative power within Pakistan and in the regional context of Southern Asia, bringing problems related to a growing crisis of governability and sectarian disputes in Pakistan, as well as the spread of transnational terrorist action in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

O objetivo desta dissertação é efetivar um estudo de casos acerca da atuação das três principais organizações terroristas islamitas atuantes na região da Caxemira, uma região disputada por Paquistão e Índia, no período que vai de 1989 a 2009. O conflito pela Caxemira persiste há pouco mais de seis décadas e pelo seu domínio foram travadas duas grandes guerras, em 1947-1948 e em 1965, alguns conflitos efêmeros e embates recorrentes. Como resultado prático dos conflitos, o território da Caxemira foi dividido entre os contendores, tendo por referência limítrofe uma Linha de Controle reconhecida bilateralmente em 1972. A hipótese que orienta a dissertação defende que, seguindo as diretrizes de uma estratégia de política externa do Paquistão, de Guerra por Procuração, em finais dos anos oitenta atores privados religiosos fundamentalistas islâmicos passaram a atuar no conflito utilizando técnicas de ataque terrorista contra autoridades e população civil habitantes da porção caxemir administrada pela Índia. Ademais, estas organizações receberam o patrocínio e foram controladas pelo principal Serviço Secreto militar paquistanês, o ISID – Diretoria de Serviços de Inteligência Interligados. Assim, contando com o respaldo de setores do Estado paquistanês, como o referido Serviço Secreto, estas organizações terroristas aumentaram seu poder relativo dentro do Paquistão e no contexto regional da Ásia Meridional, trazendo problemas relacionados ao incremento da ingovernabilidade do poder central e das disputas sectárias no Paquistão, bem como, a disseminação da ação terrorista transnacional no subcontinente indiano e no Oriente Médio. / This dissertation presents a case study on the performance of three major Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the region of Kashmir, a region disputed by Pakistan and India from 1989 to 2009. The conflict over Kashmir lasts for more than six decades now and two major wars were fought over its control, in 1947-1948 besides other ephemeral conflicts and clashes. As a practical result of conflict, the territory of Kashmir has been divided between the contenders, the 1972 Line of Control being a reference frontier acknowledged bilaterally. The hypothesis that guides the dissertation argues that, following the guidelines of a Pakistani foreign policy strategy, the “war by proxy”, civil religious Islamic fundamentalists started, in the late eighties, to launch terrorist attacks against authorities and the civilian population of the territory under Indian control. These organizations received the patronage and were controlled by the main military Secret Service of Pakistan, the ISID - Inter-Services Intelligence Directorade. With the support of sectors of the Pakistani state, such as the Secret Service, these terrorist organizations have increased their relative power within Pakistan and in the regional context of Southern Asia, bringing problems related to a growing crisis of governability and sectarian disputes in Pakistan, as well as the spread of transnational terrorist action in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

O objetivo desta dissertação é efetivar um estudo de casos acerca da atuação das três principais organizações terroristas islamitas atuantes na região da Caxemira, uma região disputada por Paquistão e Índia, no período que vai de 1989 a 2009. O conflito pela Caxemira persiste há pouco mais de seis décadas e pelo seu domínio foram travadas duas grandes guerras, em 1947-1948 e em 1965, alguns conflitos efêmeros e embates recorrentes. Como resultado prático dos conflitos, o território da Caxemira foi dividido entre os contendores, tendo por referência limítrofe uma Linha de Controle reconhecida bilateralmente em 1972. A hipótese que orienta a dissertação defende que, seguindo as diretrizes de uma estratégia de política externa do Paquistão, de Guerra por Procuração, em finais dos anos oitenta atores privados religiosos fundamentalistas islâmicos passaram a atuar no conflito utilizando técnicas de ataque terrorista contra autoridades e população civil habitantes da porção caxemir administrada pela Índia. Ademais, estas organizações receberam o patrocínio e foram controladas pelo principal Serviço Secreto militar paquistanês, o ISID – Diretoria de Serviços de Inteligência Interligados. Assim, contando com o respaldo de setores do Estado paquistanês, como o referido Serviço Secreto, estas organizações terroristas aumentaram seu poder relativo dentro do Paquistão e no contexto regional da Ásia Meridional, trazendo problemas relacionados ao incremento da ingovernabilidade do poder central e das disputas sectárias no Paquistão, bem como, a disseminação da ação terrorista transnacional no subcontinente indiano e no Oriente Médio. / This dissertation presents a case study on the performance of three major Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the region of Kashmir, a region disputed by Pakistan and India from 1989 to 2009. The conflict over Kashmir lasts for more than six decades now and two major wars were fought over its control, in 1947-1948 besides other ephemeral conflicts and clashes. As a practical result of conflict, the territory of Kashmir has been divided between the contenders, the 1972 Line of Control being a reference frontier acknowledged bilaterally. The hypothesis that guides the dissertation argues that, following the guidelines of a Pakistani foreign policy strategy, the “war by proxy”, civil religious Islamic fundamentalists started, in the late eighties, to launch terrorist attacks against authorities and the civilian population of the territory under Indian control. These organizations received the patronage and were controlled by the main military Secret Service of Pakistan, the ISID - Inter-Services Intelligence Directorade. With the support of sectors of the Pakistani state, such as the Secret Service, these terrorist organizations have increased their relative power within Pakistan and in the regional context of Southern Asia, bringing problems related to a growing crisis of governability and sectarian disputes in Pakistan, as well as the spread of transnational terrorist action in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.