IRR seminar: Being Muslim, becoming Indian—self and society in South Asia

Dr Nawaz’s work sits at the intersection of global intellectual history, literary studies, and the study of religion. Her research examines how questions of constitutional morality, minority rights, and modern information cultures emerged in South Asia through intellectual and literary exchanges with neighbouring Muslim empires.

The conversation will engage with these themes and with Dr Nawaz’s doctoral research on the role of Turkish literature as a source of “modernity” for Indian Muslims in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside her ongoing collaborative work on representations of Hindu–Muslim relations in South Asian literature. Together, these strands contribute to a broader monograph project undertaken jointly with Dr Barua (working title: The Entangled Other: Representations of the Muslim in Indian Literature).

Through a series of guiding questions, Dr Barua and Dr Nawaz will reflect together on the value of literary sources for understanding interreligious relations, the historical dynamics of majoritarian and minoritarian identities, and the comparative insights that South Asian contexts offer for wider global debates. The discussion will range across topics including constitutional thought, cross-border literary exchange, and the representation of minority voices in modern fiction.

This dialogue will be followed by an open Q&A, inviting participants to engage directly with these urgent questions about religion, identity, and society in South Asia and beyond.

About the speakers

Dr Sumaira Nawaz is an independent scholar, previously at the National Law School of India University (Bengaluru). She received her PhD from McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies, with a focus on global intellectual history and South–South relations. Her work explores how questions of constitutional morality, treatment of minorities, and modern information culture rose in South Asia in response to literary traffics moving through its neighboring Muslim Empires. In doing so, Nawaz foregrounds the study of Persian and Urdu periodicals to offer a fresh perspective on how South Asian Muslim publics perceived and intervened in political upheavals transpiring across the Ottoman Empire, Qajar Iran, and Afghanistan.

Dr Ankur Barua is University Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, where he specialises in Hindu traditions, especially Vedānta, as well as comparative theology and interreligious studies. His research ranges across classical and modern Hindu thought, with particular interests in philosophical theology, scriptural hermeneutics, and the dynamics of religious identity and pluralism. Barua’s work often explores how religious communities understand themselves and others, bringing South Asian materials into conversation with wider questions in philosophy of religion and global intellectual history. Alongside his teaching and research, Dr Barua is actively involved in interdisciplinary and interfaith initiatives in Cambridge, contributing to conversations that bridge textual scholarship, lived religion, and contemporary social debates.

Practicalities

Seminar regulars are asked to note the different day and time.

All are welcome. Please register to receive a reminder.