45 – Agents of Change: Resistance Movements in South Asia

October 2, 2025
11:00 am
H09
Resistance movements in contemporary South Asia have always been significant for their role in addressing pressing social and political issues – from bhakti to Quit India, from the Shaheen Bagh protests to the farmers movement, from Indian student protests against caste discrimination to feminist activism in Pakistan or ethnic agitations in Nepal. Movements like these, along with cultural expressions such as protest music and social media campaigns, play a crucial role in challenging injustices and advocating for a more equitable society. This panel will explore diverse forms of resistance in South Asia, by looking at both historical and contemporary responses to social, political, religious and cultural challenges. We want thus to contribute to an understanding of how individuals and communities have navigated and confronted forms of oppression and injustice or simply expressed their dissent with adverse discourses. What forms of activism are employed? How is resistance framed within certain narratives and how do these narratives feed into general discourses? What methods and tools are used for empowerment, identity formation, and fostering socio-political change? Examples may come from (but are not restricted to) the areas of anti-colonial movements, post-colonial and contemporary movements, feminist an LGBTQ activism, cultural and artistic resistance, or social media and cyber activism.

Convenors

Prof. Johanna Buß
Dr. Ira Sarma

Presentations

A movement in the making? Resistant perspectives from the Indian Himalayas
Werner Hanna - Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
Reclaiming the Vedas: Svāmī Karapātrī’s Critique of European Scholarship
Scarabel Anna - South Asia Institute and Lehrstuhl für Indologie, Heidelberg and Würzburg, Heidelberg, Germany
Resistance in the Gutter: Appupen’s Superhero Satire Rashtraman
Sarma Ira - Institute for South and Central Asian Studies, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
Coloniality and the Muslim Woman in a Hindutva State
Khan Ruhi - London School of Economics & Political Science, LSE, London, United Kingdom
“Changing narrative in Theyyam performance- From resistance to tangles of enslavement”
Harilal Shruthy - IIIT Delhi, IIIT Delhi, Trivandrum, India
Mathews Joel Thomas - IIIT Delhi, IIIT Delhi, Delhi, India
Civil Resistance and Political Change in Bangladesh, 2024: The Perspectives of Student Agency
Haque Md Moynul - Department of Political Science, Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Resisting agrarian privatisation: epigraphs as protest in Govinda Samanta: or the history of a Bengal Raiyat (1874).
Eyre Angela - The Open University, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Implausible Men: Capitalism, Masculinity and Protest in Modern Punjab
Chishti Vanessa - Jindal Global Law School, Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India
Performing vernaculars of Joy: Aurat March Lahore and the politics of feminist resistance.
Campagni Elisabetta - Ca' Foscari, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Hindutva ideology between Orientalism and Postcolonial Critique
Buß Johanna - Lehrstuhl für Indologie, Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
‘Thou art a witch!’: The media-influenced public backlash against Aurat March in Pakistan
Abro Soonha - Iqra University, Gulshan Campus, Iqra University, Gulshan Campus, Karachi, Pakistan