Politics of Muslim Representation: Ideas and Trajectories

CASI Seminar

in partnership with the South Asia Center & Political Science Dept

Hilal Ahmed
Associate Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS); CASI Fall 2024 Visiting Scholar
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street, Suite 230
Philadelphia PA 19104-6215



About the Speaker:
Hilal Ahmed is an Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi and a CASI Fall 2024 Visiting Scholar. He works on political Islam, Indian democracy, and politics of symbols in South Asia. He is also a faculty member of the Lokniti program at CSDS. His first book, Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation (Routledge 2014), explores these thematic concerns to evolve an interdisciplinary approach to study Muslim politics. His recent books, A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India (Penguin-Random House 2024), Allah Naam ki Siyasat (Hindi, Setu Prakashan, 2023), Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islam in India (Penguin-Random House, New Delhi, 2019), and Democratic Accommodations: Minorities in Contemporary India (with Peter R. deSouza & Sanjeer Alam, Bloomsbury, 2019) further elaborate these themes and make a modest attempt to explain the discursively constituted nature of contemporary Muslim political discourse in India. Ahmed is the Associate Editor of South Asian Studies, the journal of the British Association of South Asian Studies. He is also part of the editorial team of CSDS’s Hindi journal Pratiman. He has produced two documentaries, Encountering the Political Jama Masjid (English, 2006) and Qutub: Ek Adhura Afsana (Qutub: An Unfinished Story, Hindi with English subtitles, 2016). The film Beacons of Hope (English, 2008) documents Ahmed’s life story.

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The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.