Inayatullah DIN

Inayatullah DIN is a PhD student in History at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) of Marseille, affiliated to the Centre de recherche sur les circulations, les liens et les échanges (CeRCLEs). Wars have always been a part of human civilizations, and he is particularly interested in how they have been fought in the mountains of the Himalayas. He approaches war as a broad analytical category—not merely as a political activity but as a phenomenon that generates friction, often most visible from the peripheries. His research examines the empire-environment dynamics in the Himalayas, focusing on 19th-century Kashmir and its surrounding regions. He explores the layered and complex processes involved in the making and unmaking of the Jammu and Kashmir state through an ecological lens, drawing on a variety of Persian, Urdu, and colonial documents. Special attention is given to ponies, mules, begār (forced labor), shawls, saints, and frontiers, all of which played pivotal roles in this drama of state formation but are often undervalued in historical scholarship. The study tackles the complex interactions between the state, war, and the natural environment to demonstrate how these elements have interacted with each other, shaping the specific trajectories of Kashmir’s history.