evidence: The Kashmir ‘women’s army’ – to use the rather grand name given to this self-defence force by some of its members – lingers, like so much of women’s activity, in the shadow of the mainstream historical narrative. It doesn’t figure at all in the broad accounts of the turbulence and trauma that marred the partition of British India in August 1947 and the independence of India and Pakistan. It is barely mentioned in detailed histories of Kashmir, a region still embroiled in a conflict which is sometimes described as the unfinished business of Partition. The women’s militia was small in number, shortlived and never saw active service. Yet its mustering in the streets and parks of the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar, from the closing weeks of 1947 was an emphatic demonstration of far-reaching political change – not so much, in Kashmir’s case, the ending of colonial rule as the eclipse of its own maharaja and the effective transfer of political authority to a radical nationalist movement. [...] Kashmir’s nationalists wanted to protect Kashmiri women and to be seen as women’s defenders. Shanti Swarup Ambardar said Srinagar’s high-caste Hindu minority, known as Pandits, regarded their womenfolk as particularly vulnerable: [...] I am very grateful to Sehar Iqbal and to Rekha Wazir for their comments on a draft of this article. A much briefer version was posted at http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/kashmirs–womens-militia-at-the-end-of-empire/ – all websites accessed 1 July 2020.