The discussion will be held on 22 February at 4.00 PM IST at Conference Room, CSPS Office – 60, Pocket-2, Jasola, New Delhi.

About the author: Amar Sohal is an Early-Career Research Fellow in Politics and International Studies at University of Cambridge. An intellectual historian of modern India and Pakistan, Amar is interested in those ideas that continue to shape contemporary politics in both countries. His research focuses on anti-colonial nationalism, religious politics, and the secular state.

Amar read History at University College London before going to Balliol College, Oxford for a MSt in South Asian History and Hindi Literature. In 2019, he completed his DPhil in History at Merton College, Oxford under the supervision of Professor Faisal Devji. He has since revised his dissertation for a monograph, The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India’s Partition (OUP, 2023). It examines the political thought of three eminent Indian Muslim nationalists of the twentieth century—Abul Kalam Azad, Sheikh Abdullah, and Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Amar argues for the presence of a distinct Muslim secularity within the grander intellectual family of secular Indian nationalism.

About the Chair: Dr Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He teaches courses in political theory and has interests in multiculturalism, group rights and political Islam. Previously, he has taught at the Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, and was a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, UK. He has written a book on Brexit and Liberal Democracy: Populism, Sovereignty, and the Nation-State (Routledge), his other recent publication includes: South Asian Islam and British Multiculturalism (Routledge).