Abstract

Trust-based informal credit forms an important basis for capital and commodity circulation in the bazaars of South Asia, comprising promissory payments settled according to vernacular timelines and practices. These systems are also regarded with acute suspicion outside their networks of circulation. In Indian-administered Kashmir, this suspicion acquires another layer due to associations of informal credit with putatively illegal hawala transactions, viewed by the state as channels for ‘black money’ that fund anti-state protests and militant activities. I set trust-based credit practices alongside national controversies around hawala in India to examine how and when such informal credit transgresses boundaries between licit and illicit domains. By studying legal pronouncements, national ‘scandals’, the rhetoric around demonetization and the experience of traders operating amid political violence in Kashmir, I trace how hawala becomes criminalized and how the indeterminacies of informal credit are exploited by the state to enforce spatio-political rather than financial boundaries.

摘要

基于信任的非正式信贷是南亚集市中资本和商品流通的重要基础，包括根据当地时间表和惯例结算的期票。这些系统在其流通网络之外也受到严重怀疑。在印控克什米尔，由于非正式信贷与推定的非法哈瓦拉交易相关联，这种怀疑获得了另一个层面，被国家视为资助反国家抗议和激进活动的“黑钱”渠道。我将基于信任的信贷实践与围绕哈瓦拉的全国性争议一起设置在印度，研究这种非正式信贷如何以及何时跨越合法和非法领域之间的界限。通过研究法律声明、国家“丑闻”、围绕去货币化的言论以及在克什米尔政治暴力中经营的商人的经历，我追溯了哈瓦拉是如何被定为犯罪的，以及国家如何利用非正式信贷的不确定性来执行空间政治而不是政治超过财务界限。