Living with the state of exception: visualising homo sacer, bare life, and resistance in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir

In postcolonial India, the people of the Indian-occupied Kashmir have been leading a destitute life due to perpetual surveillance, constant frisking, and imposition of legitimate and illegitimate violence by the government and its agencies. The imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powaers Act (AFSPA) by the Indian government in the place grants the Indian army autonomy to arrest, torture, or kill anyone suspected of having a military connection. Focusing on Malik Sajad’s graphic narrative Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir, this article analyses how the imposition of the AFSPA leads to a similar kind of situation like what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben terms state of exception and consequently the Kashmiris are turned into ‘homo sacer’ and their lives become ‘bare life,’ a life without legal protection. This article further underscores how the Kashmiris adopt different types of resistance and resilience amidst constant violence and survive the death world, including what Judith Butler observes as public acts of grieving.