Nayanika Mathur
@NayanikaM
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Professor of Anthropology & South Asian Studies @UniofOxford | Author 'Paper Tiger' & 'Crooked Cats' | Currently writing on anthro, the state & climate crisis
Oxford, UK
Joined January 2013
.@tarangini_s and my expanded essay in @TheIndiaForum on the on-going revision of electoral rolls in Bihar and what it says about documents, identification, belonging, and the contemporary Indian state. #SIR
theindiaforum.in
Exercises like the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls presage a state of affairs where documents and IDs can never prove sound identification and where citizenship of the ordinary resident...
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After anti-corruption #GenZprotests and a deadly uprising forced the prime minister and government to resign, #Nepal searches for a new politics that can jettison its failed establishment. Himal editor @romangautam writes from #Kathmandu
https://t.co/UtRD9Jsjlw
himalmag.com
Nepalis don’t often pay attention to the politics of their Southasian neighbours beyond India. But when Sri Lankans rose up in 2022 to boot out the Rajapaksa re
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New, open access article in Development and Change, interrogating the convergence of renewables capital and pol authoritarianism in large Asian coal economies attempting green transition. 'Authority as a Spatial Hook for Renewables Capital' https://t.co/lCsqoudeKM
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.@NayanikaM and I present rare historical narratives to argue against the SIR: We dig into 1940s/50s archives on election process, letters around the original NRC, but also recent radical EC proposals including remote migrant voting!
theindiaforum.in
Exercises like the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls presage a state of affairs where documents and IDs can never prove sound identification and where citizenship of the ordinary resident...
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Finally, a word of caution to all those who consider themselves secure "extraordinary citizens" of New India and cannot imagine these punishing bureaucratic demands ever touching them. The historical and ethnographic record would argue otherwise.
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A new paradox is emerging at the heart of the state relating to who can belong and who cannot in India; who is a 'true' Indian and who isn't. Even as more and more proof is demanded of one, it still doesn't appear to ever be quite enough. It is an impossible identification.
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Extraordinary citizens stand apart from those who become suspect not because they don't hold the correct documents - they may in fact hold them - but due to embodied socio-economic markers that inhibit them from ticking politically expedient boxes of suitability & respectability.
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*But* an exclusive focus on "document-scarcity" can come to function as a red herring. It takes attention away from a never-before-seen bureaucratic narrowing which is in line with the majoritarian politics of 'New India' and is creating a new category of "extraordinary citizens"
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A narrative that is becoming hegemonic in reporting on SIR is one of "document-scarcity": people just don't possess the documents that are being suddenly demanded of them by the ECI. Important surveys, jansunwais, op-eds, and grounded reports have shown why SIR is so dangerous.
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What does a sociologist have to say about potholes?! :) 🛺🏍️🕳️ Delighted to share my latest writing, out in @IJURResearch, in which I write about pesky potholes and bumpy rides in Hyderabad, India. Long in the works, this article is open access, yay: https://t.co/BXgAjMFzq5
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Not much is left to say about Gaza. Words are no good. But we write as though they are, like a struggle without assurances. I gathered these thoughts as I read the posts of a journalist in Gaza (see epigraph). But they are meant as a way to think with those of us on the outside.
"Our protest might still touch the future, but not the days before. We call this politics." -- Samera Esmeir (@JustAttuned), "The Days Before." Available now on the Critical Times blog: https://t.co/sUVqEuNIYt
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@NayanikaM and I wrote this piece about the making of the 'extraordinary citizen' in the light of the SIR exercise, going against various precedents of the EC upholding norms of the ordinary residents. We use some of their own literature to argue this.
scroll.in
With processes like the revision of electoral rolls and the NRC, the state is going further down the path of sorting out who can and cannot belong in New India.
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.@tarangini_s and I write on the separation of “extraordinary citizens” from “ordinary residents” in India today via documents and bureaucratic processes that are making identification an impossibility for many.
scroll.in
With processes like the revision of electoral rolls and the NRC, the state is going further down the path of sorting out who can and cannot belong in New India.
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Ravish on Delhi's dog lovers and, mercifully, going beyond the simplistic debate on value of human vs nonhuman lives
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Most fascinating thing about the #VoteChori claim is the use of ECI data itself: "lakhs of paper," 7 feet of paper when stacked up. A reminder that sarkari kaghaz can be doctored and/or suppressed but there are always traces left behind that can be surprisingly revelatory.
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“This landscape of destruction looks otherworldly. Yet it’s not. It is this world. And what is happening may yet come to define one of its darkest eras. One that casts a stain on humanity that will endure for generations.” https://t.co/XjHA2PwvsT
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Our Call for Abstracts is now open! In this hybrid symposium to be held on 28 May, 2025 at @Cambridge_Uni, we aim to bring together scholars who engage in the ethnographic method for a collective conversation around movement and method. #CFA
https://t.co/zsq0ftoe7B
thesociologicalreview.org
The Movement and Method Symposium (28 May 2025, University of Cambridge) brings together ethnographers to explore how movement shapes research methods, space, time, and theory. Organised by Damni...
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