A fire burning in the distance with black smoke rising, surrounded by leafless trees and residential houses, and birds flying in the foreground during an overcast day.

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

The Logics of Counterinsurgency Education and Resistance in Thirdspace Palgrave Macmillan press.
A vintage document in Urdu with handwritten text, a circled note indicating December 1962, and a table with columns and rows.

WORKING PAPERS

“God’s moral Property, Self Determination Movement, and The Question of Translation in Kashmiri’s sovergnity under review. 

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

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    SURAJ ISRANI CINEMATIC FELLOWSHIP

    Ruhail  Andrabi is currently a Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation examines the Islamic revival movements in South Asia, and how these movements have responded to secular empires in the aftermath of decolonization. His genealogical approach excavates the unique orientation of vernacular imagination, largely shaped by Islamic traditions that problematized secularism and its false promise of liberation in the post colonial states such as Kashmir. He connects these conversations at the intersection of Anthropology of Religion, Political theory and Intellectual History.

    He is going to use this fellowship to reconceptualize the “time-space problem" by identifying, and collecting the ignored digital archives that have animated a distinct political imagination against India's secular empire in Kashmir.  

    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO
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    INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FIELDWORK DISSERATATION TRAVEL GRANT

    Genealogies of the Postcolonial State: Indigenous Sovereignty, Kashmiri Muslim Question, Making and Remaking of Indian Empire in Kashmir

    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO
  • A colorful illustration of a traditional building with a tower, showing a man speaking to a group of people outside, and a person on a balcony reading a book. The scene includes details like windows, a tree, and people in traditional clothing.

    CENTER FOR GLOBAL INQUIRY AND INNOVATION

    This fellowship will examine the tensions between secularism, modernity, and sovereignty in Indian-administered Kashmir. In particular, it will explore how modern secular political rationalities define the ethical boundaries of religion.

    UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
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    JUNIOR RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

    From 2019 to 2021, I was a UGC scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, researching youth politics and representation in South Asia. The project resulted in a co-authored publication with collaborators from UCL and Ambedkar University.

    JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA NEW DELHI
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    W. NATHANIEL HOWELL RESEARCH GRANT

    This grant would allow me to conduct research in British library, examining materials related to Islamic revival movements in Kashmir and the ways these movements have articulated conceptions of divine sovereignty through distinctive modes of Islamic ethics, politics, and critique of the modern nation-state. I am particularly interested in understanding how Islam became the primary conceptual site through which Muslim thinkers, clerics, and poets imagined community rooted in vernacular grammars and indigenous languages of belonging.

    University Of Virginia
FUNDERS :ISLAMIC WORLD INITIATIVE, CENTER FOR INQUIRY AND INNOVATION, CENTER FOR SURAJ ISRANI CINEMATIC ARTS, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE , ARTS AND SCIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.