Destruction and resurrection after Nepal's 2015 earthquake – Southasia Weekly #63
This week at Himal
This week, Eileen McDougall writes about how residents of Langtang Valley in Nepal rebuilt after an earthquake in 2015, with residents coming together to reconstruct their homeplace in the face of government inefficiency and inadequate funds and infrastructure.
For the next episode of the State of Southasia podcast, host Nayantara Narayanan speaks with social anthropologist Alpa Shah about the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case and how it has come to represent India’s democratic decline.
For the May edition of Screen Southasia, our monthly online documentary screening in collaboration with Film Southasia, we’re screening Fireflies in the Abyss directed by Chandrasekhar Reddy, following the lives of boys and men working in coal mines in Northeast India. Sign up here to receive the screening link!
This week in Southasia
India-Pakistan tensions escalate in the wake of attack in India-administered Kashmir
On 24 April, at least 26 people were killed and 17 others wounded after gunmen opened fire on a group of tourists in Pahalgam, in India-administered Kashmir. The Resistance Front, an offshoot militant group of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba has claimed responsibility for the attack. Eyewitnesses described ‘scenes of chaos’. Several major newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir printed their front pages black to condemn the attacks.
Tensions have escalated between India and Pakistan in the wake of the attack, with India closing the main border-crossing, suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, and expelling Pakistani diplomats and some Pakistani visa-holders. In response, Pakistan has suspended visas to Indians, asked Indian defence, naval and air advisers to leave the country, reduced the number of diplomats in the Indian High Commission, suspended the Simla agreement, closed its airspace and suspended trade with India.
Residents in Pahalgam raised concerns about the impact of the attack on tourism — the main driver of economic growth and source of income in Kashmir. The attack shatters India’s claims of ‘normalcy’ in Kashmir after it revoked Article 370 in 2019, with Jammu and Kashmir becoming a Union Territory governed by a New Delhi-appointed Lieutenant Governor. In response, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi vowed to pursue the militants ‘to the end of the earth’, while over 1500 Kashmir residents have been arrested by Indian forces. Criticism has been levelled against the inflammatory language being used in Indian mainstream media in response to the attack, reminiscent of the aftermath of the Pulwama attack in 2019, indicating that tensions are likely to persist in the coming days.