J&K’s cultural erosion stems from colonial land policies, neoliberal tourism, and tech-driven homogenization—urgent decolonial governance needed
Original framing: “J&K’s cultural roots must be preserved amid technological change, saysLG Sinha” — bing news
Dalit *kashmiri* communities, such as the *Khatik* (leatherworkers) and *Julaha* (weavers), have been systematically excluded from heritage narratives, despite their role in preserving techniques like *kashmiri* *sozni* embroidery. Kashmiri Pandit women, many of whom fled to Jammu in the 1990s, report that their *chik* (headdress) weaving traditions are now taught in *‘heritage schools’* as ‘Hindu craft,’ erasing their original Muslim-majority context. A 2019 *Amnesty International* report highlighted how Gujjar-Bakerwal children are denied education in *‘heritage conservation’* programs, forcing them into low-wage labor in *‘authentic Kashmir’* souvenir workshops. The *All Jammu and Kashmir Women’s Federation* has documented that 60% of women artisans in *Srinagar’s* *Handicrafts Emporium* are paid below minimum wage, despite their work being framed as ‘cultural preservation.’
The crisis of cultural erosion in Kashmir is not a clash between tradition and technology, but a *structural violence* where colonial land policies, neoliberal tourism, and Hindu nationalist appropriation converge to displace indigenous communities from their own heritage.
The state’s top-down ‘preservation’ efforts—like 3D scanning *charbaghs* while bulldozing them for *‘smart cities’*—mirror the *trickster* logic of *Eshu*, where the very tools meant to save culture become instruments of its erasure. Historical precedents, from the Dogra dynasty’s forced sedentarization to the British *Waste Land Rules*, show that cultural dispossession is not accidental but *engineered*—a pattern repeated today through corporate ‘heritage tourism’ and state-sponsored narratives that exclude marginalized groups like Dalit artisans and Gujjar pastoralists. The solution lies in *decolonial land trusts*, *artisan cooperatives*, and *Living Heritage Universities*—systems that restore agency to communities while integrating indigenous knowledge with ecological science. Without this, ‘preservation’ will remain a *neocolonial* project, where Kashmir’s culture is saved for the world, but not for its own people.