Aishwary Kumar: Can the Muslim be a Citizen?

“Can the Muslim be a Citizen? Thoughts on Ambedkar’s Thoughts on Pakistan.” Aishwary Kumar is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian History and Modern Intellectual History at Stanford University. He received his M.A. from Jawaharlal Nehru University and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. As an intellectual historian specializing in 19th and 20th century thought, he examines the itinerary of political languages and juridical concepts in South Asia and Europe as they come to be mediated by questions of universality, freedom, and value. Kumar is currently completing a book, titled Sacrifice of Equality: Modern India, Universal History, and the Question of Nonviolence. The manuscript examines equality, sovereignty, and the paradox of representation in the political thought of M. K. Gandhi, B. R. Ambedkar, and their Indian and Euro-American interlocutors. He is also working on a related project, tentatively titled Ambedkar’s Fidelities, on ideas of inheritance and annihilation in 19th and 20th centuries.