Understandings of Military Power, Intoxication and Love in Kashmir, India

In her essay, Harkit considers how patients at the Drug De-addiction Centre in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir reconfigure their relationship to substance abuse through the performance of alternate narratives that are embedded with understandings of romantic love, Sufi thought and nasha (intoxication) to resist the clinic’s ‘recovery’ techniques linked to the structures of military rule. This paper was written for the Making Sense of a Changing World: Anthropology Today (SAP/ANTH 1120) course and was awarded the 2019 Undergraduate Asia Essay Award.