Books

“This Is a Troubled Place” — An Excerpt from "Kashmir's Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts" (Lexington Books, 2023) — by Amrita Ghosh

This excerpt from Amrita Ghosh’s interdisciplinary book Kashmir’s Necropolis: New Literature and Visual Texts applies the concept of “epicolonialism” to an orientalizing lineage of literary texts and films produced by non-native (western) creators in relation to the east, and in particular to Kashmi

Chapter 4 (Excerpt)
"This Is a Troubled Place"
The Kashmir Shawl and the Violence of "Epicolonialism"

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The Kashmir Shawl is a mammoth intergenerational text that is set across a time period of seventy years, first set in colonial Kashmir when the last vestiges of the British empire was struggling with the independence movement growing strong in India in the backdrop of World War II. The novel then shifts to the present time with glimpses of Kashmir’s conflict seen through the narrative of the central protagonist Mair Ellis. Alternating between the two time periods, readers also encounter a Kashmir in which British colonial memsahibs and missionary wives form benevolent relationships “saving” local Kashmiris. While the novel uses usual colonial tropes depicting Kashmir in its stunning beauty and shimmering lake, there are some strands in the narrative that are of particular interest. This is a rare occasion when a Western novel narrativizes the current conflict in Kashmir.

I frame the text’s hermeneutics through the concept of epicolonialism, a neologism that speaks of a different kind of violence. As mentioned earlier, Thomas’s novel casts a wide frame that spans colonial Kashmir to the present moment and the latter sections on the conflict lead to the protagonist Mair’s exclamation—“This is a troubled space” (The Kashmir Shawl 84). I use this utterance and a reading of the Kashmiri characters in the novel to show how it produces a textual violence. The text thus posits a precarious epistemological formation of Kashmir that echoes the dominant narrative of Kashmir coming out of statist discourses.

The Kashmir Shawl begins in contemporary Wales, as the protagonist Mair Ellis sorts objects and old heirlooms in her parents’ house with her two siblings after the death of their father. Among her grandmother Nerys Watkins’s old collected things, Mair finds a stunning shawl that opens a trail of mysterious connections to India ultimately leading her to Kashmir. After finding her grandmother’s Kashmiri shawl, she decides to travel to India to track the shawl’s origins because “uncovering some family history might help her to feel her place again” (The Kashmir Shawl 9). Later when she meets another traveler Karen Becker in Ladakh, their response to India is that “one never encountered such spirituality and divinity in Europe or USA” (Thomas 33). So far, in the early stages of the novel, there is little different from the Hollywoodian staple of “Eat Pray Love” kind of orientalized discourse with the Western female protagonist traveling East in search for meaning and a sense of self. Beyond the clichéd simplistic narratives, the parts of the text that depict stories of Buddhist Leh and Christian missionary history of Kashmir are perhaps the most exciting and complex sections of the text. Parts of the novel also focus on the half-English, half-Kashmiri young woman Zahra, whose mother is Caroline Bowen, a colonial missionary wife, who had a clandestine affair with the Kashmiri royalty, Ravi Singh, nephew to the Maharaja of Kashmir in 1940. The rest of the text becomes a search for Zahra and to return the Kashmiri shawl to its rightful owner, even if she herself does not remember the exact origin of the shawl nor her complicated identity and lineage. Zahra’s only identity is that of an orphan found in Kashmir.

Subramanian Shankar coins the term “epicolonialism” in a different context to analyze colonial law and the discourse on Thugees and states the term “convey[s] the persistence with postcolonial social formations of colonial structures which often lie dormant until activation” (Shankar 98). Epicolonial conditions, according to Shankar, emerge a way to understand an “epicolonial state,” not necessarily under the direct colonial state, but one in which the same structures of stereotypes, prejudices, governance, and ideas of criminality of certain social groups are extended in the same way that the postcolonial state holds certain figures, communities or factors threatening to the national imaginary (Shankar 98). But why is the term “epicolonial” necessary to understand the novel, rather than the neocolonial or postcolonial state? Shankar clarifies that “epicolonialism is caught between disjuncture and continuity . . . that accompanies the historical and ongoing (non)transcendence of the colonial” (115). He argues epicolonial becomes a sharper tool in this larger postcolonial condition to bring into focus the particular aspects of the non-transcendence of the colonial. It serves as “a secondary elaboration of the colonial” in which it persists in a kind of a “half-life” and thus epicolonial becomes the way “to direct attention of the disjunctive continuities between the colonial and the postcolonial” (Shankar 115). The Kashmir Shawl, thus, operates as an epicolonial text, which has significant ramifications presenting Kashmir in a global literary market.

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Missionaries often found themselves within contradictory frames of being an imperialist, or a sympathetic figure to natives, often attempting to find a dialogue and mutual connection, and yet that relationship had underlying asymmetrical power relations that cannot be denied. Sajad Ahmad Mir in his exploration of missionaries in Kashmir titled, “Organizing Missions into Distant Lands: Medical Missionaries and the Politics of Health in Kashmir,” explains that the first Christian missionary set foot in Srinagar in 1854. Mir’s work is focused on investigating the medical missionary work in Kashmir and its repercussions, and he states that they had the same framework of Christian mission in Kashmir—in “perpetuating Christianity” and “civilizing the uncivilized” (Mir 41). Mir gives an insight into the time span when Christian Missionary Society (CMS) was established in Kashmir by the British Empire, a time that intersects the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the same historical setting that the novel is situated in. According to Mir, the Dogra state shared a hostile relationship with the Europeans in Kashmir and treated them with suspicion. On the other hand, the missionary workers, whether medical or Christian, improvised some health care changes in Kashmir but had a larger and more significant interest in the “hegemonisation of the natives” (44). Mir also points out, “These colonial travelers who came into Kashmir at different periods of time have praised its scenic beauty but were highly cynical of Kashmiri people” (47). Eventually, the Dogras submitted to the British government, and the Empire slowly brought forth large socio-political-economic shifts in Kashmir (Mir 47).

Nerys is a complex figure in the novel. She shows a fractured and complex response to the missionary work and the empire. As the narrator points out, she did not share the same ideals as Evan Watkins to bring the “Word” to the natives: “But Nerys didn’t share her husband’s absolute conviction that the Word was the only truth, and bringing it to the heathen the only thing that really mattered” (The Kashmir Shawl 51). Perhaps one of the most revealing moments in the text about Nerys’s relationship with the subaltern natives is when she is ready to travel from Leh to Srinagar with Myrtle McMinn, another missionary wife. Diskit, her personal helper and housecook, stands at the gate in tears and the only parting note Nerys has for her is a reminder of the reified social order. Nerys’s last words stress on Diskit’s identity and role of serving her and Evan—“Nerys put her arm round her shoulders, inhaling the ripe smell of her hair. ‘Don’t forget your scarf. Always when you are working. Look after Sahib for me’” (The Kashmir Shawl 85). Elsewhere too, when the Watkins begin their mission in Leh and Diskit becomes their household server, Nerys reminds her that her hair must always be covered when she was working (The Kashmir Shawl 65). Here, the same reminder reinstates what Diskit means for her. The boundary is clear: the “ripe smell” of the help’s hair becomes a space of otherness, and Diskit’s subjectivity is locked as a servant and does not inhabit a space of equality. She remains in the shadow silently serving her “memsahib.”

Every other subaltern character in the novel: Sethi the caravan in-charge who helps Nerys and Evan make their journey from Manali to Leh, the cook-boy who cooks meals diligently to keep the missionary couple well fed on their caravan journey to Leh; Hari, the rest house caretaker for Archie McMinn at Lamayuru, who never forgets to make cocoa for Nerys every night; Majid, the caretaker of the Srinagar houseboat, Garden of Eden, who never fails to note when Nerys needs masala chai or breakfast in bed and also learns to wait patiently, “silent in the shadow at the far end of the room” to replenish their drinks or serve “their” Christmas cakes and alcohol for parties (The Kashmir Shawl 148, 259); Farooq, the “baroquely obstructive manager” of Nerys’s granddaughter Mair’s shikara boat named Solomon and Sheba in Srinagar knows when to retire to the kitchen boat connected to the main houseboat (188); Mehraan the “karkandar,” or the manager of the wool factory in Srinagar who provides information on the history of shawl-weaving and disparages Kashmir’s own turmoil and the concept of azadi, and the shikara men—all exist as subaltern figures in the shadows of the central characters of the text. Subaltern labor becomes crucial for running the everyday lives of the European subjects smoothly. A novel centered on Kashmir and an iconic shawl symbolizing the land and its people has all Kashmiri and Ladakhi characters as shadowy figures receding in the background, cooking, cleaning, aiding, begging, abetting the smoothness of English lives, or children needing “saving,” and yet not one of them is worthy of having a mutual relationship. The only time a relationship is established in the text, it is through Caroline Bowen and the Kashmiri royalty Ravi Singh, nephew to the king. Ironically, it is one of deceit, illegitimacy, and one where the Kashmiri subject is the villain, ready to harm his own child and possibly Caroline until she escapes from his power.

Colonial Kashmir in Thomas’s novel is a bifurcated space—one couched in the safety of barricaded colonizer’s residency clubs, bars, and residences where life carries on with sports, shooting parties, cricket, occasional evening gatherings, magic shows with exoticized natives, or a native “other” dancing in native costumes. The other Kashmir is impoverished, on the “other side” of the line that divides the colonizer’s space and the local subjects. This Kashmir is represented with dirt, disease, hunger, violence, and suspect native figures. The two worlds only meet when the native subaltern figures, both Muslim and Hindu subjects wait on the colonizers, as aforementioned in their readily available servant roles.

The Kashmiri body, the local subject, is largely ignored or often erased in the larger focus on the exotic landscape. Yet, even as the Kashmiri body does return to the landscape in the text, the relationship is a problematic one in excess to the landscape, often threatening to the European subjectivity. For instance, Nerys takes a walk beyond the boundaries of the Raj to the local spaces in Kashmir. She sees a “veiled women brush[ing] past her” (

The Kashmir Shawl

151), and “a file of bearded men in red skullcaps march[ing] towards her and she flatten[s] herself against the wall to let them by” (

The Kashmir Shawl

153). The local subjects stare blankly at the lone European woman who is lost from the secure spaces and in unease (153). Here, the pristine landscape of Kashmir with its nature and lakes is almost jarred with the Kashmiri presence.

This kind of “epistemic violence” brings the larger question of the title of the text—The Kashmir Shawl, which linguistically conceals an error. The inaccuracy reveals the larger problem of erasures. Ideally the correct phrase is the “Kashmiri shawl”—the extra i acts as the possessive, a marker of people and belonging to the space. The Kashmir Shawl locates the shawl to the place, but the possessive is absent. But why is this significant? It becomes a misnomer that emphasizes consumption and commodity fetishism of Kashmiri artifacts and cultural productions. The Kashmiri shawl, a central symbol, is an object of desire, not only for Mair to find the missing link of her grandmother and family who left a trail in India, but interestingly, the shawl also functions as a reminder of how Kashmiri commodities become linked and appropriated in an exploitative and reductive way producing a certain symbolic violence. I want to pause here briefly to focus on the shawl itself and what it means in the narrative structure and the larger goal of understanding Kashmir in the text.

[et_pb_divider divider_style="dotted" divider_weight="7px" _builder_version="4.27.4" _module_preset="default" max_width="100px" module_alignment="center" custom_margin="||70px|||" global_colors_info="{}" theme_builder_area="post_content"][/et_pb_divider] [et_pb_heading title="Relevant Links" _builder_version="4.27.4" _module_preset="default" title_text_align="center" title_font_size="35px" border_width_top="1px" border_width_bottom="1px" global_colors_info="{}" theme_builder_area="post_content"][/et_pb_heading] [et_pb_blurb title="Kashmir— A Neocolony Within a Postcolony" image="https://inverse.azan-n.com/content/images/2026/04/apdp-amritaghosh-muhammad-nadeem-review.webp" _builder_version="4.27.4" _module_preset="default" link_option_url="https://thecontrapuntal.com/kashmir-a-neocolony-within-a-postcolony/" link_option_url_new_window="on" global_colors_info="{}" theme_builder_area="post_content"]

Muhammad Nadeem
The Contrapuntal

[/et_pb_blurb] [et_pb_blurb title="Book Review: Kashmir’s Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts " image="https://inverse.azan-n.com/content/images/2026/04/amrita-necropolis-review-02.jpg" _builder_version="4.27.4" _module_preset="default" link_option_url="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02759527.2024.2373667" link_option_url_new_window="on" global_colors_info="{}" theme_builder_area="post_content"]

Shabeeh Rahat
South Asian Review

[/et_pb_blurb] [et_pb_blurb title="Book Excerpt: Reading Kashmir Through Literature, Film and Text" image="https://inverse.azan-n.com/content/images/2026/04/amrita-necropolis-excerpt.jpg" _builder_version="4.27.4" _module_preset="default" link_option_url="https://thewire.in/books/reading-kashmir-through-literature-film-and-text" link_option_url_new_window="on" global_colors_info="{}" theme_builder_area="post_content"]

Amrita Ghosh
The Wire

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Hosted by Arnab Dutta Roy
New Books Network

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Amrita Ghosh
amritaghosh.net

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Amrita Ghosh
Inverse Journal

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“This Is a Troubled Place” — An Excerpt from "Kashmir's Necropolis: Literary, Cultural, and Visual Texts" (Lexington Books, 2023) — by Amrita Ghosh

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