Contemporary Colonialities: Kurds and Kashmiris, by Kamran Matin – 22 July 2025

Dibyesh Anand and Nitasha Kaul (eds), Contemporary Colonialities: Kurds and Kashmiris (London: University of Westminster Press, 2025), 133 pp.

Mahmood Mamdani has argued that the modern state and modern colonialism are mutually constitutive (Mamdani 2020, 1–2). This co-constitution underpins coercive projects of nation-state building based on political centralisation and cultural homogenisation, which were also central to the European colonialism’s ‘civilising mission’. Indeed, many, if not most, non-Western nation-states rest on the violent assimilation of stateless peoples within them. Yet, this violence is often framed and discussed in the contingent terms of authoritarian breaches of ‘human rights’ or ‘minority rights’. It is rarely analysed as an instance of ‘colonialism’ or ‘coloniality’. In the case of mainstream sociology and political science, this might be partially explained in terms of their continued, albeit increasingly qualified, commitment to ‘methodological nationalism’, which repels intrinsically international phenomena such as colonialism. Even the methodologically internationalist discipline of International Relations (IR) is analytically oblivious to nation-statist colonialism due to its state-centric focus on relations among sovereign nation-states rather than political relations within them. Most curiously perhaps, postcolonialism, the academic field dedicated to the study of colonialism, also tends to elide non-Western colonialisms due to its paradoxically Eurocentric definition of colonialism.

Contemporary Colonialities offers a timely, engaged and lucid response to this triple neglect of non-Western colonialisms through an empirical focus on certain aspects of the paradigmatic cases of Kurdistan and Kashmir under Turkish and Indian rule, respectively. It studies ongoing conflicts in (northern) Kurdistan and (Indian-administered) Kashmir not merely as the products of geopolitical dynamics or a legacy of Western colonialism, but in terms of ‘competing vision of sovereignties between nation-states [of Turkey and India] and stateless nations [of Kurds and Kashmiris]’.

The volume consists of seven chapters bringing together contributions from academics as well as independent researchers and activists. The first two chapters are contextual, followed by four empirical chapters, two on Kurdistan and two on Kashmir, followed by a short concluding chapter. The book’s organising idea is the notion of ‘coloniality’, which it uses to capture both the epistemological and political meanings of the term foregrounded in decolonial theory and postcolonialism, respectively.

In chapters 1 and 2, the volume’s editors, Dibyesh Anand and Nitasha Kaul, set the historical and conceptual stage. They argue that ongoing conflicts in Kurdistan and Kashmir are rooted in the denial of the Kurds’ and the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination by the Turkish and the Indian states, whose colonial domination is based on a ‘sovereignty privilege’ conferred on them by the modern international legal order. They call for a critical appreciation of ‘colonial nation-statism’, sustained through political disenfranchisement, military force, economic dependency, cultural domestication, demographic transformation, and control over knowledge production. Critical scholarship should, they argue, recognise both the colonialities of state power exercised over stateless ethnonational communities and the anticolonial nature of the resistance this power elicits.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the electoral and educational aspects of (anti-)colonial dynamics in Kurdistan. In Chapter 3, Omer Tekdemir deploys the concepts of ‘internal colonialism’ and ‘hegemony’ to recast Kurdish parliamentary politics in Turkey as a counter-hegemonic project. Focusing on the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) (2012–2023), Tekdemir chronicles the evolution of the Kurdish anti-colonial resistance from socialist ethno-nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s into a left-wing political project of populist radical democratic politics in the 2000s and thereafter. The HDP, he argues, rearticulated the Kurdish demand for political rights and recognition as part of a wider project of radical democracy through a pluralistic and inclusive civic identity of ‘Turkeyness’, which broadened the HDP’s social base beyond its Kurdish heartland. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) responded to the HDP’s growing electoral success by intensifying its violent crackdowns, political repression, and delegitimization, especially following the collapse of peace talks between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2015, and a failed coup attempt in 2016. The chapter shows the limits of counter-hegemonic politics in states that integrate colonial domination of a stateless nation into an otherwise republican state based on popular will.

In Chapter 4, Umit Cetin and Celia Jenkins argue that the AKP’s promotion of Sunni Islam-centred nationalism through policies of cultural and religious assimilation functions as a colonial ideology that marginalises the Alevis. The chapter shows how since the formation of the modern Turkish nation-state in the 1920s, Alevis have experienced ‘double discrimination’ as they are neither Sunni Muslims nor fully recognised as Kurds by the state, which promotes a homogenised Turkish-Islamic identity known as the ‘Turkish Islamic Synthesis’ (TIS). This has involved denying legal recognition to the Alevis’ religion and places of worship (cemevis), subjecting them to assimilation and internal colonialism aimed at ‘Sunnifying’ Alevis and ‘Turkifying’ Kurds. These projects have intensified following the failed 2016 coup attempt. The Alevis have demanded recognition of the cemevis as places of worship, removal of compulsory Sunni-based religious education (RE), and reform or abolition of the Diyanet, the state religious affairs directorate, which enforces Sunni hegemony. The chapter illustrates the intersection of the AKP’s religious sectarianism with the Turkish state’s colonial foundations and the impact this has on a particularly vulnerable community such as the Alevis.

Chapters 5 and 6 shift the empirical focus to Kashmir and the colonialist functions of the Indian bureaucracy and the implications of the region’s cultural and political heterogeneity for conflict resolution. In Chapter 5, Edward Walter explores the dual role of the bureaucracy in Indian-administered Kashmir. Rooted in colonial and feudal legacies, the bureaucracy, he argues, serves both as an instrument of repression and a provider of development, aligning with the Indian state’s goals like counterinsurgency and settler-colonialism. After the 1989 insurgency, bureaucratic functions merged with security efforts, using development to reduce alienation. Following the 2019 revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy, state bureaucracies intensified settler-colonial aims by facilitating land transfers favouring military and corporate interests, demonstrating ‘selective efficiency’ by prioritising certain state functions over others. Bureaucratic reforms in recent years have drastically decreased the possibility of using bribes to state officials to alleviate harsh repression by easing bureaucratic hurdles. This has created a sense of ‘longing’ for the past currency of ‘positive corruption’, which, Walter argues, alleviated individual hardship but primarily served venal interests, hence failing to challenge the structure of state violence. The chapter illustrates the operation of the colonial at the nexus of the meso-level of colonial bureaucracy and the granular level of the colonised nation.

In Chapter 6, Amina Mir argues that the Kashmir question involves the distinct regions of the Kashmir Valley, Jammu, and Ladakh, each with unique ethnic and political identities often overlooked in the relevant debates and literatures. India’s 2019 abrogation of Article 370 revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, creating two Union Territories with reduced powers. This move faced opposition in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, amid severe restrictions and human rights concerns, while Jammu and Ladakh initially welcomed it but later grew disillusioned due to the lack of consultation and unfulfilled promises, such as political representation for Ladakh. The chapter criticises the exclusion of regional voices and weak leadership caused by repression from both Pakistan and India and argues that sustainable peace based on the right of self-determination requires inclusive dialogue respecting regional diversity.

The volume concludes with Radha D’Souza’s reflections on the struggles for self-determination of the Kashmiri and Kurdish nations, questioning prevailing legal and political assumptions about statehood and freedom, focusing instead on civil liberties and democratic freedoms. D’Souza contrasts the classical idea of self-determination as independent statehood, embraced by both movements initially, with the Kurdish movement’s more recent shift to the project of ‘democratic confederalism’, which, inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan, seeks to relocate power from the state to the community level. Drawing on the author’s personal experience and activism, the chapter emphasises the challenges of maintaining the integrity of human freedoms within academic and neoliberal contexts. She highlights the local Kashmiris’ resilience despite the harsh realities they face under Indian rule and the complexities involved in their fight for freedom. The chapter raises critical questions on the meaning of freedom, justice, and the role of law on oppressed nations, encouraging solidarity activists to rethink their approaches.

Relatively short but engaging and lucid, Contemporary Colonialities is an original intervention that challenges the academic neglect of stateless nations’ anti-colonial struggles for self-determination and hence contributes to de-securitising them and to paving the way for just political solutions.

Kamran Matin is a scholar of International Relations at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, with a focus on Kurdish politics and history.

This book review first appeared in National Identities (vol. 28, no. 2, 2026, pp. 357–359; published online 22 July 2025).

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).

Except where noted otherwise, original writing and translations produced by the Left Renewal Blog Collective are published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Republished and translated material remains subject to the licence and terms of its original publication.