Research interests

Bearing witness and Kashmir

Focusing on the continuum of impunity in Kashmir, as a site of modern-day exceptionalism, my research contests the scholarship on bearing witness by not limiting it to legal or theoretical fragments alone and instead utilises personal narratives of people exposed to everyday violence to engage with that scholarship. It explores the multiplicities of witnesses and the acts of bearing witness through three figures, namely, the mother of the disappeared, the local medical worker and the gravedigger of the unmarked mass graves in Kashmir, to point out the heterogeneities of bearing witness. 

The three figures suggest a spectrum of witnessing to a body: its absence, its reduction and its final departure, and at the same time, they bear witness to their own conditions of disposability. In so doing, there is a shift from an individual act to the formation of collective forms of witnessing through a connection with the body, subsequent attachments and practices like public grieving. My work on the practices of public grieving by the parents of disappeared people can be read here.

My work offers an understanding of the restricted space of humanitarianism through the stories of local medical workers as witnesses who testify not only on behalf of those whom they treat but to their own condition as actors in a conflict. My article, The (local) medical worker: understanding the act of bearing witness through a reorientation of testis, superstes, demonstrates that the illusion of ‘neutrality’ of hospitals in conflict zones is very much that: an illusion. The local medical worker is thus not a figure who is outside a camp-based existence but is someone who is very much an inmate. They are frequently viewed by the state as a collaborator of the insurgents and are reduced to their immediate local identity of being Kashmiri Muslims.

Finally, my work attempts to understand the techniques of witnessing by the actors in conflict as forms of truth-telling and as a reflexive relationship through which people respond to their belittlement by the state. My book chapter, A Death-Bound Subject: The Gravedigger of the Unmarked Mass Graves in Kashmir, draws on the work of Abdul R JanMohamed on ‘death-bound subject’ and Ranjana Khanna’s work on ‘disposability’ to unpack the figure of the gravedigger of the unmarked mass grave in Kashmir and how he was forced to enter into a death contract with the state. 

Decolonising the Classroom - Experiences from India and the UK (2023): This two-day workshop provided a platform for critical reflections on decolonial pedagogies within academia. The workshop's primary objective was to foreground the voices of educators underrepresented in academia and prioritise the lived experiences of minoritised students. The workshop addressed critical questions surrounding decolonial work, colonial epistemologies, and the intersections of race, caste, indigeneity, gender, and privilege in educational settings. A short film on the workshop can be accessed here

‘Introduction to Decolonisation’ project between University of Jadavpur, Kolkata and University of Exeter, UK: I was the Academic Lead on this collaborative digital learning project funded by the British Council. The project created a resource offering ‘Western and South Asian’ perspectives to explain the concept of decolonisation, thereby supporting staff and students in working towards decolonisation of the curriculum, higher education, and society more generally. This online resource is designed to provide a strong foundation of knowledge for learners from all disciplines and geographical, socioeconomic, and demographic backgrounds.

‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ Review:  I was part of the steering group committee of the ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ project where four students (Asha, Akira, fatuma, and Christian) of African, Carribean, and Asian descent co-authored a pioneering Departmental review in which they examined how the curriculum of the Politics Department could be decolonised and provided detailed recommendations for the institution and the department to deploy strategies for transformational change. I provided guidance to students on the content of the report and contributed to the staff reflections section of the support. In the project, my module ‘Introduction to Postcolonialism’ was considered as one of the model curricula following a decolonial and inclusive approach. My detailed reflection on the importance of foregrounding the category of caste in our teaching for its contiguity and intersections with race, gender, class, and sexuality can be accessed here.

‘Decolonising Social Research’, SWDTP: I was invited to be part of the 'Decolonising Social Research' project, an advanced training programme for doctoral researchers sponsored by the South West Doctoral Training Partnership (SWDTP). The five-part seminars explored theoretical and methodological tools for conducting research that is antiracist and decolonial. It drew on non-dominant and non-dominating ways of knowing, underpinning contemporary research and offered critiques of established western epistemologies, showing how they limit possibilities for research. I co-organised the panels Decolonising Epistemology and Decolonising Methods.

Research supervision

I supervise students (and welcome applications) in the area of postcolonial-decolonial thought, biopolitics, violence, human rights and social justice issues, especially in the context of South Asia, India and Kashmir in particular. 

Doctoral Supervision

Anil Kaan Yildirim (2023) 'On the Walls of Polis: Examining 'Administration of Life and Death' in Afghanistan from the perspectives of Foucault, Agamben and Mbembe'

Mehment S Tatli (2024) 'Transformation of India's Strategic Culture: Expanding Global Influence and the Consequences for the Kashmir Dispute'

Sadhana Babuji (2024 expected) 'The Caged Ambedkar in 2022- Resurgence of Dalit atrocities in Tamil Nadu'

Masters Supervison (External)

Yasmin Takhar (2022) To what extent have Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG) reforms contributed to improving human development levels within Dalit communities in India? (M.Sc Development Studies, Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London)

PhD External Examiner

Aditi Athreya (2023) 'Missionaries in Postcolonial India: Jesuit Education in Jharkhand After 1947’ (Faculty of Arts, Faculteit Letteren, KU Leuven, Belgium)

Other information

Modules taught

• POC1022 - Violence in World Politics
• POC2087 - Security Studies
• POC2103 - Introduction to Postcolonialism
• POC3105 - Negotiating Postcoloniality: History and Politics of Independent India
• POC3106 - Biopolitics of Security