Narrating the Past in Kashmir Place, Genealogy, and Tradition

<strong>Centre for Historical Studies School of Social Sciences</strong> a Lecture <strong>Narrating the Past in Kashmir Place, Genealogy, and Tradition</strong> <strong>Chitralekha Zutshi</strong> Associate Professor of History, The College of William and Mary, Virginia, USA <strong>21st April 2015</strong> This talk details the characteristics of the long tradition of historical writing in Kashmir. Focusing on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tazkiras and tarikhs, it outlines their relationship to Sanskrit texts, and discusses their articulation of place and the ways in which they defined tradition and religiosity. It also looks at the circulation of tropes and stories from these narratives in the Kashmiri oral and performative domains. The talk ends with the state of Kashmir's historical tradition in the contemporary period and the changes wrought on it in the context of contestation and conflict. Chitralekha Zutshi is Associate Professor of History at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), and the author of Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, and Kashmir's Contested Pasts: Narratives, Sacred Geographies, and the Historical Imagination.