Abrogating Article 370 and Kashmir's exceptionalism: a critical analysis of India's bodies politic.

In 2019, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took the historic decision of abrogating Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, revoking Kashmir's special status. The contentious move resulted in the emergence of multiple narratives from competing discourse...

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Published in:Critical Discourse Studies Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 167 - 183
Main Author: Bhatia, Aditi
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Mar2025
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2025
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        10.1080/17405904.2023.2282503
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        atl: Abrogating Article 370 and Kashmir's exceptionalism: a critical analysis of India's bodies politic.
      aug:
        au: Bhatia, Aditi
        affil: Department of English and Communication, Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong
      su:
        Categorization (Psychology)
        Social impact
        Political stability
        Political violence
        National character
        Collective memory
        India
      sug:
        subj:
          India
          Categorization (Psychology)
          Social impact
          Political stability
          Political violence
          National character
          Collective memory
      keyword:
        bodies politic
        Discourse of illusion
        India-Article 370
        Kashmir
        metaphor
        national habitus
        national identity
      ab: In 2019, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took the historic decision of abrogating Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, revoking Kashmir's special status. The contentious move resulted in the emergence of multiple narratives from competing discourse clans, with supporters hailing it as liberation from terrorism to opponents labeling it an assault on democracy. This paper analyzes the discursive construction of the abrogation as a key moment, that recontextualizes a region strife with violence and political instability into 'bodies politic' (Graham & Luke [2003]. Militarizing the body politic: New mediations as weapons of mass instruction. Body & Society, 9(4), 149–168. ), legitimizing the decision as a historical event that imbues Kashmir, and thus India, with 'a self-conscious political force ... and a new militaristic bodily habitus' (Graham & Luke [2003]. Militarizing the body politic: New mediations as weapons of mass instruction. Body & Society, 9(4), 149–168. , p. 163). To conduct the analysis, I draw on Bhatia's ([2015]. Discursive illusions in public discourse: Theory and practice. Routledge) Discourse of Illusion (DoI) theoretical framework, which reinforces Phil Graham's mission to illuminate the remnants of militarism in modern societies. Treating nation-states as living organisms with a collective memory, analysis occurs from three aspects: historicity (drawing on the past to make sense of the present or predict the future); linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualizations made apparent through significant metaphorical rhetoric); and degree of social impact (the rise of delineating social categorizations).
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    language: English
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      custom: Copyright of Critical Discourse Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
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