My broader theoretical interest is in historical changes in forms of conduct and governmentality in colonial, monarchical and postcolonial South Asia. These include diverse ways of conducting self and others and their effects or consequences in allowing for the possibility of certain forms of subjects, conducts, social relations, experiences and affect.

My research interest is driven by first hand experience and my efforts to understand the enormous historical political and economic changes brought about by the end of British colonialism, the abolition of the Jammu and Kashmir’s monarchical system, and subsequent emergence of nation-states, and popular politics in Ladakh, a region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In my dissertation research, I am examining the historical political-economic ways of conducting others, subjects, citizens, and/or population and their effects on Ladakhis from the late nineteenth century to the present. Within this historical period, I am theorizing the notion of conduct to include not only the historical construction/imagination/invention of certain subjects and their conduct by others and by themselves, but also how certain historical governmentalities or ways of conducting allow for the possibility of certain subjects, bodies, populations, conducts, dispositions, affect, and social relations, which are impossible in other historical configurations of governmentalities. 

Governmentality (Historical forms of Mechanisms of Power; Sovereignty; Discipline; Colonialism; Post-colonialism; Political Economy; Nation-State; Liberalism; Socialism; Neoliberalism); Anthropology/History of Subject; Bodies/Population; Conduct/Habitus; Emotions/Affect; Thoughts; Qualitative Methodologies; Genealogical Method; Poststructuralism; Anthropology/History of Religion; Buddhist-Muslim Relations; Historiography; Genealogical Method; Postcolonial South Asian History; Modern History of Ladakh; Buddhist Philosophy (Madhyamika, Nagarjuna, Emptiness, Dependent-arising, and Karma); History of Buddhism; and History of Islam.

South Asia, India, Pakistan, J&K, Ladakh