Ruhail Andrabi
I’m currently a graduate student interested in intellectual history, Anthropology of Islam, and the Islamic movements in South Asia. My dissertation engages with the questions of translations of Islamic sensibilities corporal, textual and semiotic, and how these inform us the political life of discourses, and the different forms of language which are both embedded within the secular and religious dichotomies. Yet how these connect together to weave the invisible forms of sovergnity that challenge the secular logic that governs the post colonial states. Thus, situating such debates within the post colonial nation states, and modern secular democracies reveals how the multiple sovergnities uses different possibilities, and ethical values to enunciate their authority over the human subjects. I use genealogical approach to interrogate such intellectual inquiry by excavating the itineraries of socio political struggles that produce and shape the languages of orientation that both constrain, and facilitate the human agency in complicated ways. Yet such engagement asks us; to revisit, and question the moralities that define the political rights of people whose indigenity remains unrecognised within such Eurocentric developments. I’m mostly keen in tracking the circulation of secular beyond the western frontiers, particularly under decolonisation in South Asia which provide a leverage to Bourgeoise class to colonise the territories which refused to enter into it’s false promise of empowerment, liberation and freedom. I ask how does the category of secular as a form of political idea were received, challenged by the Muslim intellectuals in South Asia, particularly in places like Kashmir where the Islam is deeply tied to the orientation of socio-political life.
AREA OF INTEREST
GENEALOGY OF SECULARISM IN KASHMIR
ISLAMIC REVIVAL MOVEMENTS AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS OF MODERN NATION STATE
KASHMIR MUSLIM PROBLEM AS A JEWISH POLITICAL PROBLEM OF EUROPE
INTERPRETATIONS OF SECULAR AND EMERGING CONCEPTIONS OF SOVERGNITY AMONG THE MIDDLE CLASS INTELLECTUALS IN KASHMIR
THE PROBLEM AND CONTRADICTIONS IN SECULAR WITHIN CONSTITUTION OF KASHMIR
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Religion, Empire, and secularism, Islamic traditions, political theories, south Asia
