Home
I am an ex-journalist and independent sociologist based in India (M.Sc., D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University). I specialize in the study of violent conflict and Muslim identity.
I have worked as an academic at the universities of Oxford, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, and South Australia and given invited talks at the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Singapore, Kyoto etc. as well as at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (2020). From 2001 to 2007, I worked as a journalist at the Times of India where I covered ethnic riots in Gujarat in 2002, an event that later became the subject of my doctorate (and first book).
My 2019 book, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (Cambridge University Press), employed statistical and ethnographic data to explain the sustenance of peace in some heterogeneous (Hindu-Muslim) towns, villages, and neighbourhoods during one of modern India’s worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. The book has been lauded for its analysis, “the best synthesis in the literature on mass violence anywhere” (Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania); “an important contribution to the understanding of violent conflict and prospects for abating it” (Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University) and its methods, “an extraordinary dataset on killings and peace” (e.g. American Journal of Sociology).
My current book project, Weeping Willows: The Purdah Dilemma, examines the double-edged sword of political stigma and patriarchy that the Islamic veil has come to be for the modern Indian and Iranian Muslim woman. The book is not an academic treatise but an appeal to stop looking for binaries. It, simultaneously, delves into the evolutionary origins of patriarchy 300,000 years ago—veiling being a means to that end—and the demonisation of Muslims in contemporary India to understand how women navigate their choices in the face of their stigmatization and coercive gender norms that predate religion and civilization itself.
Please address publication inquiries about Weeping Willows to Jacaranda Literary Agency.
I am an ex-journalist and independent sociologist based in India (M.Sc., D.Phil. in Sociology; Oxford University). I specialize in the study of violent conflict and Muslim identity.
I have worked as an academic at the universities of Oxford, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, and South Australia and given invited talks at the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Singapore, Kyoto etc. as well as at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (2020). From 2001 to 2007, I worked as a journalist at the Times of India where I covered ethnic riots in Gujarat in 2002, an event that later became the subject of my doctorate (and first book).
My 2019 book, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (Cambridge University Press), employed statistical and ethnographic data to explain the sustenance of peace in some heterogeneous (Hindu-Muslim) towns, villages, and neighbourhoods during one of modern India’s worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. The book has been lauded for its analysis, “the best synthesis in the literature on mass violence anywhere” (Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania); “an important contribution to the understanding of violent conflict and prospects for abating it” (Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University) and its methods, “an extraordinary dataset on killings and peace” (e.g. American Journal of Sociology).
My current book project, Weeping Willows: The Purdah Dilemma, examines the double-edged sword of political stigma and patriarchy that the Islamic veil has come to be for the modern Indian and Iranian Muslim woman. The book is not an academic treatise but an appeal to stop looking for binaries. It, simultaneously, delves into the evolutionary origins of patriarchy 300,000 years ago—veiling being a means to that end—and the demonisation of Muslims in contemporary India to understand how women navigate their choices in the face of their stigmatization and coercive gender norms that predate religion and civilization itself.
Please address publication inquiries about Weeping Willows to Jacaranda Literary Agency.