Yasmin Saikia
Biographic Data
| ID | 1245978 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yasmin Saikia |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yasmin |
| FAMILY NAME | Saikia |
| SIGNATURE | SAIKIA Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4321-1188 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Muslim experiences of exclusion in democratic India and the United States: Revealing the architecture of graduated citizenship
On Othering: Processes and Politics of Unpeace
Muslim Belonging in Assam: History, Politics and the Future
How did the Muslims of Assam become outsiders in Assam? This essay attempts to answer this question by probing the colonial and post-colonial history of categorising people that has located Muslims outside the category of ‘Assamese’. The political effort to make the Assamese into a homogenous Hindu group undoes the xanmiholi or blended humanity of Assam. By focusing on two Muslim communities—the Goriyas or Assamese Muslims and the Miyas or Muslim…
The Muslim Precariat of Assam: Contagion, Migrants, and Covid-19
This article examines the plight of migrant Muslim garbage pickers during the COVID-19 lockdown in India and their struggles to return home to Assam. Their financial hardships were exacerbated by social, political, and religious prejudices. Belonging to the Bengali-speaking miya community, deemed “Bangladeshi,” government authorities neglected them. The lockdown’s hyped-up anti-Muslim propaganda also reduced them to “corona jihadis.” The author r…
Northeast India: A Place of Relations
Hijrat and Azadi in Indian Muslim Imagination and Practice
The connections among anticolonial nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism in the early twentieth century expand our understanding of the Indian freedom movement in new directions, beyond the activities and leadership of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. This essay continues the conversation on the connections between people, networks, and the internationalist outlook of revolutionary politics in the early twentieth c…
Perpetrators' Humanity: War, Violence, and Memory After 1971
How does love for home/nation become the site for intolerance and provoke violence against others? What precipitates the expression of this hate? Is shared humanity possible among erstwhile perpetrators and victims? Through the method of oral history, in this article I probe these questions by investigating the memories of perpetrators of the 1971 war of Bangladesh. A common and shared memory of perpetrators was the humbling experience of fightin…
Uncolonizable: Freedom in the Muslim mind in colonial British India
Does Islam offer a vision of freedom? What did freedom’s imagination look like to the colonized Muslims of the Indian subcontinent? In this article, I engage the imagination of freedom of two revolutionary middle actors – Fazal Illahi, a mullah, and Iqbal Shedai, a self-styled middle-class rebel. Drawing upon the Islamic concept of the free human, these men developed a concept of azadi (freedom) making the colonized subjects of British India awar…
Destroyed by Love: Nation, memory, and humanity in South Asia
Remembered experiences of violence, humiliation, and loss suffered in the 1971 war of Bangladesh offer a site for writing a new contemporary history in South Asia. Love, not for humanity but for nation, in survivors' memories was the site of violence in the war. The state's history-writing project cultivated hate against neighbors deemed enemies and encouraged violence against them. More than four decades later, the awareness of intersubjective r…
Ayub Khan and Modern Islam: Transforming Citizens and the Nation in Pakistan
Pakistan is viewed today as a haven for fundamentalist Islamists. This essay probes the genealogy of Pakistan's Islamisation by focusing on the rule of President Ayub Khan (1958–69) and extends to the war of 1971 and the dismembering of Pakistan during Yahya Khan's presidency. I trace Ayub Khan's project of ‘modernising Islam and the nation’ by probing three sites: the transformation of the Pakistani military into a jihadic army; the re-writing o…
Insāniyat for peace: Survivors' narrative of the 1971 war of Bangladesh
The scholarship on post-conflict resolution is growing and new light continues to be shed on the larger field of peacemaking from multiple non-Western perspectives. Although the earlier focus of scholarship on the usefulness of truth and reconciliation commission, war criminals tribunal, implementation of human rights and international monitoring remains relevant, there is also a need to move beyond these existing models to explore new ways of em…
Religion, Nostalgia, and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai-Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Beyond the Archive of Silence: Narratives of Violence of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh
In 1971, two wars broke out in East Pakistan. One was a civil war between East and West Pakistan, and, the other, an international war fought between India and Pakistan. In the wars soldiers and civilians - Punjabi, Bengali, Bihari and Indians - who served as state and non-state/community actors violated, brutalized and terrorized women in East Pakistan in an attempt to instil fear and force enemy groups into submission. After the war the traumat…
Landscape of identity: Transacting the labels 'Indian', 'Assamese' and 'Tai-Ahom' in contemporary Assam
By examining the connections between identity and memory, I explore the emergence of a new community known as Tai-Ahom in the heterogeneously fluid northeastern Indian state of Assam. My focus is on the community's struggle to unravel the past; particularly their attempts to memorialize a new history that is represented as authentically and uniquely Tai-Ahom. The paper also examines the Tai-Ahoms' often competing and contradictory claims of seeki…
Landscape of identity: Transacting the labels 'Indian', 'Assamese' and 'Tai-Ahom' in contemporary Assam
By examining the connections between identity and memory, I explore the emergence of a new community known as Tai-Ahom in the heterogeneously fluid northeastern Indian state of Assam. My focus is on the community's struggle to unravel the past; particularly their attempts to memorialize a new history that is represented as authentically and uniquely Tai-Ahom. The paper also examines the Tai-Ahoms' often competing and contradictory claims of seeki…
Beyond the Archive of Silence: Narratives of Violence of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh
In 1971, two wars broke out in East Pakistan. One was a civil war between East and West Pakistan, and, the other, an international war fought between India and Pakistan. In the wars soldiers and civilians - Punjabi, Bengali, Bihari and Indians - who served as state and non-state/community actors violated, brutalized and terrorized women in East Pakistan in an attempt to instil fear and force enemy groups into submission. After the war the traumat…
Muslim Belonging in Assam: History, Politics and the Future
How did the Muslims of Assam become outsiders in Assam? This essay attempts to answer this question by probing the colonial and post-colonial history of categorising people that has located Muslims outside the category of ‘Assamese’. The political effort to make the Assamese into a homogenous Hindu group undoes the xanmiholi or blended humanity of Assam. By focusing on two Muslim communities—the Goriyas or Assamese Muslims and the Miyas or Muslim…
Hijrat and Azadi in Indian Muslim Imagination and Practice
The connections among anticolonial nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism in the early twentieth century expand our understanding of the Indian freedom movement in new directions, beyond the activities and leadership of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. This essay continues the conversation on the connections between people, networks, and the internationalist outlook of revolutionary politics in the early twentieth c…
Religion, Nostalgia, and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai-Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Muslim Precariat of Assam: Contagion, Migrants, and Covid-19
This article examines the plight of migrant Muslim garbage pickers during the COVID-19 lockdown in India and their struggles to return home to Assam. Their financial hardships were exacerbated by social, political, and religious prejudices. Belonging to the Bengali-speaking miya community, deemed “Bangladeshi,” government authorities neglected them. The lockdown’s hyped-up anti-Muslim propaganda also reduced them to “corona jihadis.” The author r…
Insāniyat for peace: Survivors' narrative of the 1971 war of Bangladesh
The scholarship on post-conflict resolution is growing and new light continues to be shed on the larger field of peacemaking from multiple non-Western perspectives. Although the earlier focus of scholarship on the usefulness of truth and reconciliation commission, war criminals tribunal, implementation of human rights and international monitoring remains relevant, there is also a need to move beyond these existing models to explore new ways of em…
Landscape of identity: Transacting the labels 'Indian', 'Assamese' and 'Tai-Ahom' in contemporary Assam
By examining the connections between identity and memory, I explore the emergence of a new community known as Tai-Ahom in the heterogeneously fluid northeastern Indian state of Assam. My focus is on the community's struggle to unravel the past; particularly their attempts to memorialize a new history that is represented as authentically and uniquely Tai-Ahom. The paper also examines the Tai-Ahoms' often competing and contradictory claims of seeki…
Landscape of identity: Transacting the labels 'Indian', 'Assamese' and 'Tai-Ahom' in contemporary Assam
By examining the connections between identity and memory, I explore the emergence of a new community known as Tai-Ahom in the heterogeneously fluid northeastern Indian state of Assam. My focus is on the community's struggle to unravel the past; particularly their attempts to memorialize a new history that is represented as authentically and uniquely Tai-Ahom. The paper also examines the Tai-Ahoms' often competing and contradictory claims of seeki…
Beyond the Archive of Silence: Narratives of Violence of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh
In 1971, two wars broke out in East Pakistan. One was a civil war between East and West Pakistan, and, the other, an international war fought between India and Pakistan. In the wars soldiers and civilians - Punjabi, Bengali, Bihari and Indians - who served as state and non-state/community actors violated, brutalized and terrorized women in East Pakistan in an attempt to instil fear and force enemy groups into submission. After the war the traumat…
Religion, Nostalgia, and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai-Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Insāniyat for peace: Survivors' narrative of the 1971 war of Bangladesh
The scholarship on post-conflict resolution is growing and new light continues to be shed on the larger field of peacemaking from multiple non-Western perspectives. Although the earlier focus of scholarship on the usefulness of truth and reconciliation commission, war criminals tribunal, implementation of human rights and international monitoring remains relevant, there is also a need to move beyond these existing models to explore new ways of em…
Ayub Khan and Modern Islam: Transforming Citizens and the Nation in Pakistan
Pakistan is viewed today as a haven for fundamentalist Islamists. This essay probes the genealogy of Pakistan's Islamisation by focusing on the rule of President Ayub Khan (1958–69) and extends to the war of 1971 and the dismembering of Pakistan during Yahya Khan's presidency. I trace Ayub Khan's project of ‘modernising Islam and the nation’ by probing three sites: the transformation of the Pakistani military into a jihadic army; the re-writing o…
Perpetrators' Humanity: War, Violence, and Memory After 1971
How does love for home/nation become the site for intolerance and provoke violence against others? What precipitates the expression of this hate? Is shared humanity possible among erstwhile perpetrators and victims? Through the method of oral history, in this article I probe these questions by investigating the memories of perpetrators of the 1971 war of Bangladesh. A common and shared memory of perpetrators was the humbling experience of fightin…
Uncolonizable: Freedom in the Muslim mind in colonial British India
Does Islam offer a vision of freedom? What did freedom’s imagination look like to the colonized Muslims of the Indian subcontinent? In this article, I engage the imagination of freedom of two revolutionary middle actors – Fazal Illahi, a mullah, and Iqbal Shedai, a self-styled middle-class rebel. Drawing upon the Islamic concept of the free human, these men developed a concept of azadi (freedom) making the colonized subjects of British India awar…
Destroyed by Love: Nation, memory, and humanity in South Asia
Remembered experiences of violence, humiliation, and loss suffered in the 1971 war of Bangladesh offer a site for writing a new contemporary history in South Asia. Love, not for humanity but for nation, in survivors' memories was the site of violence in the war. The state's history-writing project cultivated hate against neighbors deemed enemies and encouraged violence against them. More than four decades later, the awareness of intersubjective r…
Northeast India: A Place of Relations
Hijrat and Azadi in Indian Muslim Imagination and Practice
The connections among anticolonial nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism in the early twentieth century expand our understanding of the Indian freedom movement in new directions, beyond the activities and leadership of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. This essay continues the conversation on the connections between people, networks, and the internationalist outlook of revolutionary politics in the early twentieth c…
Muslim Belonging in Assam: History, Politics and the Future
How did the Muslims of Assam become outsiders in Assam? This essay attempts to answer this question by probing the colonial and post-colonial history of categorising people that has located Muslims outside the category of ‘Assamese’. The political effort to make the Assamese into a homogenous Hindu group undoes the xanmiholi or blended humanity of Assam. By focusing on two Muslim communities—the Goriyas or Assamese Muslims and the Miyas or Muslim…
The Muslim Precariat of Assam: Contagion, Migrants, and Covid-19
This article examines the plight of migrant Muslim garbage pickers during the COVID-19 lockdown in India and their struggles to return home to Assam. Their financial hardships were exacerbated by social, political, and religious prejudices. Belonging to the Bengali-speaking miya community, deemed “Bangladeshi,” government authorities neglected them. The lockdown’s hyped-up anti-Muslim propaganda also reduced them to “corona jihadis.” The author r…
On Othering: Processes and Politics of Unpeace
Muslim experiences of exclusion in democratic India and the United States: Revealing the architecture of graduated citizenship
South Asian Studies and Conflicts (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · History (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works)