Cambridge University Press Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan's Northern Frontier

"Delusional States argues that Gilgit-Baltistan’s image within Pakistan as an idyllic paradise elides how the region is governed as a suspect security zone, and dispossessed through multiple processes of state-making including representation, militarization, sectarianized education, and biodiversity conservation. The book charts this rule of state and empire as delusion, demonstrating how the region’s inhabitants nevertheless struggle to promote a progressive vision of ethics and politics. From political activists and preachers to poets and pastoralists, citizen-subjects in the region are demanding inclusion not just in terms of political rights — an aspect that over-determines the discourse on Kashmir – but also through struggles for religious recognition and ecological sovereignty which they feel as integral to a meaningful life of dignity. A powerful contribution to studies of citizenship, development and Muslim sociality in South Asia, the book additionally offers distinct theoretical insights in the fields of social movements, education, cultural studies, and political ecology. ""Delusional States is a theoretically sophisticated book written with courage and conviction. It covers an underwritten and under-analysed part of Pakistan, the Gilgit-Baltistan region. The text brings forward the lives, struggles, and histories of the people of the region and moves away from its folkloric and touristic representations. Beautifully written, at times in poetic prose, through a discussion of love, loyalty, betrayal, and terror, this book emphasizes the resolve of the people who have stood up to the subjugating policies of the post-colonial Pakistani state linked to the expansionist politics of the Empire."" Kamran Asdar Ali, University of Texas, Austin ""Nosheen Ali's book is a bold and provocative ethnography of Gilgit-Baltistan's complex relationship with Pakistan, and the region's centrality to the politics in Kashmir. She foregrounds people's stories and their persistent struggles for love, rights, and belonging, and challenges us to rethink the dominant frames through which Gilgit-Baltistan is imagined and represented. A brilliant rebuttal to dominant claims that glorify Indian and Pakistani nationalisms and hold Kashmir hostage to toxic patriotisms, Ali describes how nation-states can become delusional in their quest for power and territory."" Mona Bhan, DePauw University, Indiana ""Nosheen Ali has made a unique contribution to the study of Pakistan in this powerful book. Using ethnographic data concerning the everyday experience of the Kashmir conflict by the peoples of the country’s sensitive Gilgit-Baltistan region, Ali provides fresh insights into the intersections between ethics and politics in Pakistan today. The author’s exploration of the importance of the environmental concerns to regional politics and protest is one among many aspects of this remarkable book that will ensure it will be a standard text for years to come."" Magnus Marsden, University of Sussex, Brighton "