Biography

I grew up in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir which is the most militarised zone in the world. It is a region of territorial conflict between India, Pakistan and China, all of whom claim it to be an integral part of their nation, a situation which has led to several full-blown wars between the three countries. I will not go into the easily available list of heinous crimes that the people of this region have been subject because of the “national” integration struggles on part of each of the three governments here, I laid this background only to say that research projects on Kashmir promise to present invigorating and timely studies on the nature of settler colonialism and nationalisms; as well as provide a critique of nation state and modern democracies.

In my PhD, I hope to look at the notorious process of landscaping Kashmir. Long known as a paradise on earth, foreigners have used landscape as a tool to establish a national symbology concurrent with their rule. My research interests, that I will be carrying out in the University of Cambridge, will focus on the vocabulary of landscapes as it is emerges in the cultural production emanating from the region, or in the words, produced by Kashmiri creators themselves. Keeping in mind the tendency of all nationalisms to homogenise marginalities and invisibilise hierarchies in the parent society, I will try to delineate the visual vocabularies of the resisting nationalism in Kashmir - what are the urban and rural landscapes they tend to show, and what are the various political struggles associated with it.

I want to make deeper enquiries into how the dynamics of caste, class, religion, ethnicities, and sexual orientation plays out in the articulation of a resisting nationalism in Kashmir. And probe for the possibilities for its broader, affective, non-uniform possibilities.

Previous Education

Jamia Millia Islamia English 2023
University of Dehli (Lady Shri Ram College) English 2020