19 – The Poiesis of Decolonization in South Asia: Comparative Perspectives

October 3, 2025
8:30 am
Triplex 1017
The history of decolonization in South Asia is one of solidarity and disjunctions. On one hand, decolonization made possible polyvocal exchanges of ideas, texts, and translations registered across international conferences, literary magazines, and political rhetoric across the Global South. On the other, it was characterized by political agitation and resistance movements, fuelled by the dissatisfaction with the postcolonial bourgeois’ uncritical adaptation of the structures of the colonial state. Despite their participation in anticolonial struggles, Adivasis, caste-oppressed, women and minorities were marginalized. Despite these contradictions, decolonization was a visionary project that sought to carve out new ways of imagining the future. In view of the renewed historical, political, and intellectual concerns about decolonization fuelled by postcolonial and decolonial theory, this panel revisits the repertoires of anticolonial thought from South Asia in its various polemical, philosophical, aesthetic, and literary articulations. We invite papers that imagine decolonizing South Asia in comparative ways and highlight new geographies, imaginaries, and intellectual traditions marginalized by nationalisms. Possible topics and questions may include– 1. What did anticolonialism mean in the South Asian context? How radical was it? 1. Anticolonialism through South-South connections: South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa. 2. Responses to the failures of decolonization. 3. Subaltern critiques of mainstream decolonization. 4. Political, intellectual, and aesthetic afterlives of decolonization. 5. Ontologies and lived experiences of anticolonialism

Convenors

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zayed
Prof. Dr. Preeti Singh

Presentations

Face-lifting Colonial Policing Institutions in Newly Independent India
Wani Javed Iqbal - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi, New Delhi, India
(de)colonial cartographies and epistemic reimagining in Francis Itty Cora
Varghese Jonathan Koshy - Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, Delhi, India
Exhuming the Nation: Frantz Fanon & M N Roy on Decolonising (through) Marxism
Saha Dibyangee - Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States
Anticolonialism as Violent Revolution: M.N. Roy on the Right of Self-Determination (1920s-30s)
Narain Srishti - Department of History, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Staging the Law: Pathalgadi Movement as a Decolonial Practice
Mishra Rashi - Theatre and Performance Studies, Stanford university, Stanford, United States
Magazine Manifestoes: The formation of Third World Literary Aesthetics through the Magazine Format.
Ghosal Srimati - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, United States
Malek Bennabi Reading Gandhi: On the Means and Ends of Decolonization
Al-Zayed Mahmoud - Institute of Islamic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany