India
Peace & community building
Hijri 1385-Present (AH); Common Era 1965-Present (CE)
Yasmin Saikia is a distinguished international history scholar with a focus on the Muslim experience in the South Asian. She is the first person to hold the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and is a professor of history at Arizona State University. Her work on peace studies considers the layered intersections among religion, culture, and history in women’s peace movements, the project of memory building, and Muslim identity politics. Focusing particularly on Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, her research examines the language of non-violence that is often used in tandem with the practice of violence against women and vulnerable groups.1 Yasmin has published widely and written several books on the subject of marginalized communities in South Asia, such as the Tai-Ahom people. Her first two books, In the Meadows of Gold: Telling Tales of the Swargadeos at the Crossroads of Assam and Fragmented Memories: Struggling to Become Tai-Ahom in India, published in 1997 and 2004 respectively, explore the connections between the Tai-Ahom, a socially and economically marginalized community in the Indian state of Assam, and Indian nationalism.2 These books trace how Tai-Ahom identity draws its political and cultural resonance from the “fragmented memories”3 of the ancient Ahom Kingdom in creating contemporary pan-Tai identity movements. Yasmin discusses the linkages between the Tai-Ahom community in India and Thailand in order to illustrate how the “dead” history of Tai-Ahom serves as a crucial means of claiming rights of citizenship. Her work offers a “landmark history told from the periphery of the Indian nation.”4 Her book, Fragmented Memories, won the Srikant Dutt Memorial Award, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.5 Yasmin has also published numerous other titles including Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971, Assam and India, and They Were Human Women from Bangladesh. [1] “Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies”, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. [2] ibid. [3] “Fragmented Memories: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India,” Duke University Press, New York: 2004. [4] ibid. [5] ibid.