Current Research

I’m currently working on two book projects.

The first, A People’s History of Kashmir, is currently under contract with Oneworld Publications in the UK, and provides a decolonial lens into the history of modern Kashmir, building on anti-occupation and anti-colonial interventions in Kashmir scholarship. It is geared towards a general audience that is interested in learning about the Kashmiri freedom struggle, as well as contemporary developments.

The second book project, Islam, Decolonization and the Question of Kashmir,  brings together theoretical contributions from decolonial studies as well as Critical Secularism Studies and contemporary Muslim thought to situate the history of the Kashmir issue as one centered on tensions between the quest for Muslim political sovereignty in the modern world and the hegemony of the secular, liberal international order.

It highlights the centrality of Kashmir to the making of the international order, while also examining modes of Indian (settler) colonial control and Kashmiri resistance.

This book engages with Kashmiri political thinkers and their ideas on Islam, nationalism, secularism, and anti-colonialism. It also engages with indigenous, decolonial, and Muslim scholars to envision political aspirations beyond the nation-state, and how that might be relevant to the context of Kashmir.

In addition, I am interested in the ethics and methods of conducting research in conditions of occupation, militarization, and settler colonialism, especially given the immense amount of repression that academics who work on Kashmir face. In collaboration with other Kashmir scholars, some thoughts on this can be found here.

For those interested in further collaborations or workshops on this topic, please do get in touch.