I am a historian of media and modern South Asia, committed to interdisciplinary research. My research is inspired by and engages sound studies, cultural studies, literary analysis, and oral history, among others. Broadly, I am interested in how media has shaped the twentieth century and its role in the making (and unmaking) of national borders and linguistic communities. I also am interested in questions about historical sources and in how we might better contest hierarchies of knowledge that conventional ideas of historical evidence reproduce and disciplinary divisions reinforce.
My first book Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders (Columbia University Press, 2023) is a transnational history of radio broadcasting in Hindi and Urdu from the late colonial period through the early post-independence era (1920-1980). The book argues that radio created affective links that defied state agendas, policies, and borders and forged an enduring transnational soundscape, even after the 1947 Partition made a united India a political impossibility. Drawing on a rich collection of sources, including newly recovered recordings, listeners’ letters to radio stations, and original oral history interviews with broadcasters, Radio for the Millions rethinks assumptions about how the medium connects with audiences. ( Past Imperfect hosted a podcast about the book, and the The Wire aired a video interview in Hindi and English. Also some of the recordings analyzed in the book are available here.)
The book received three awards: 1) the 2024 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award, 2) the 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies (Modern Language Association) and 3) the 2023 American Institute of Pakistan Studies Book Award. It was also a finalist for the 2023 Richard Wall Memorial Award (Theatre Library Association.) Radio for the Millions expands on my dissertation (2015, University of Texas at Austin, Department of History), which won the American Institute of Indian Studies award for the best dissertation on modern India.
In 2023, I co-edited with Andrew Amstutz a special journal issue “Rethinking the Second World War in South Asia: Between theaters and beyond battles“, for Modern Asian Studies. The issue analyzes World War II’s influence on the subcontinent from an interdisciplinary perspective (including literature, film studies, and history) and argues for the centrality of the war to the region and for South Asia’s crucial role in the global war.
My second monograph project, tentatively titled, ‘The Light Has Gone Out’: A Media History of Gandhi’s Death, studies M.K. Gandhi’s assassination, one of the 20th century’s most influential mediated events. Focusing on a single event across different media (radio, print, photography, and fundraising appeals) and paying attention to the role of memorialization as well, the book reconsiders ideas about democracy and secularism in 1950s South Asia as well as Muslim minoritization and exclusion in early independent India.
I regularly contribute to popular magazines and translation projects in the hopes of making academic research more accessible. I translated an excerpt of Raza Ali Abidi’s popular 1986 BBC Urdu-language radio travelogue on the Grand Trunk Road, Jarnali Sadak. I am currently translating the entire radio program, and I plan to publish it as a multi-media book. Finally, I am invested in issues of positionality and representation in academia and co-wrote with Hoda Bandeh-Ahmadi an essay titled, “Who is a South Asianist?”
Generous fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2015 and 2021), the Institute for Historical Studies at University of Texas at Austin (2016), and the American Institutes of Indian and Pakistan Studies (2011 and 2012) have funded my research.
At Columbia, I teach courses on South Asian history from an interdisciplinary perspective and on sound studies and media history in addition to Contemporary Civilization in the core curriculum. I am affiliated and have cross-listed courses with the Center for Comparative Media and the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race.
(For complete list of publications and projects you can visit my personal website)
COURSES
Modern South Asia at the Crossroads of Empires: WWII, Decolonization, and Partition
Sound and Listening Cultures of the Indian Subcontinent
Democracy and Majoritarianism: India after 1947
Contemporary Civilization I
Contemporary Civilization II
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders (Columbia University Press, 2023)
Special Issues
“Rethinking the Second World War in South Asia: Between theaters and beyond battles”: Modern Asian Studies, Volume 57, Issue 5, September 2023.
Selected Essays
“‘Geeton-Bhari-Kahani (Story-Full-of-Songs)’ Hindi Film-Song Fanfiction on the Radio Airwaves, 1960-1979.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 64, issue 5, 2025
(co-authored with Har Mandir Singh) “‘I Am a Listener’: A Conversation with Har Mandir Singh ‘Hamraaz.’” Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 15, issue 1, 2024.
(co-authored with Andrew Amstutz) “Rethinking the Second World War in South Asia: Between theaters and beyond battles:, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 57, Issue 5,2023
“Broadcasting the ‘(anti)colonial sublime’: Radio SEAC, Congress Radio, and the Second World War in South Asia” Modern Asian Studies, Volume 57, Issue 5, 2023.
“Songs by Ballot: Binaca Geetmala and the Making of a Hindi Film Radio Audience, 1952-1994. ”, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2022.
( co-authored with Hoda Bandeh-Ahmadi) “Who is a South Asianist? A Conversation on Positionality” in Who Is the Asianist?: The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies. Edited by Will Bridges, Keisha A. Brown, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling, Columbia University Press, 2022.
(co-translated with Timsal Masud) “Shams ur-Raḥmān Fārūqī” by Nayyar Masʿūd (translation from Urdu), Journal of Urdu Studies, Vol 2 Iss. 1, Spring 2021.
“Radio, Citizenship and the ‘Sound Standards’ of a Newly Independent India” Public Culture. Vol. 31 Iss. 1, January 2019.
“M.N. Roy and the Mexican Revolution: How a Militant Indian Nationalist Became an International Communist,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 40 Iss. 3, 2017.
“Jernali Sarak (The Grand Trunk Road): Excerpts from a Radio Show by Raza Ali Abidi,” (translation from Urdu) SAGAR, A South Asia Research Journal, Vol. 21 (special issue on translation), Fall 2013.
Selected Journalistic Works/Video/ Podcasts
Watch The Wire’s video interview about Radio for the Millions in Hindi-Urdu and English
Listen to an interview about Radio for the Millions on the Past Imperfect podcast
“The Voice of Freedom: Congress Radio’s Challenge to British Rule.” The India Forum, July, 2024
“Finding the Timeless and the Universal in Naiyer Masud’s Short Stories,” The Caravan (online), August 2017.
“What can the Spread of German Propaganda in India During WWII Tell Us about Fake News Today?” Scroll, December 2016.
“The Voice Next Door: When Indian Listeners Got their Filmi Music Fix from Radio Ceylon,” The Caravan, December 2012.