Abstract: The disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir represents the unfinished business of the Partition of India and Pakistan. This essay examines how claims to Kashmir by India, Pakistan, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and the Kashmiri Pandits influence usage of the term ‘Kashmiriyat’ (i.e. the ethos of being Kashmiri). The term is frequently invoked with inconsistent meaning. Kashmiriyat is analysed, through linguistic and semiotic theories of the ‘empty signifier’, to identify which groups are present and absent within sociopolitical discourses.

Abstract: This essay is based on my engagement with the Sindhi-speaking Hindu minority of Sindh that migrated to India in and around 1947, when the province of Sindh became a part of Pakistan. It privileges therefore a specific religious group and its response and negotiation to a specific moment. My current research on Sindhi-speaking Muslims along the border interrogates the classification of ‘Sindhis’ as a spatially fixed identity, and revisits the state-endorsed premises of irrevocability and border-formation.