Rahul Ranjan
@Ranjana_rahul
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Asst Prof in Environmental Justice @EdinburghUni @Geosciences — Author “The Political Life of Memory” @CambridgeUP 2023 — Caffeinated Bihari — Views mine🌈
Edinburgh, Scotland
Joined July 2018
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I feel profoundly excited to share this news. My book “The Political Life of Memory” is now available for order on Amazon India and is shortly in shops. The official book launch is due in February 2023 in Delhi.
What a way to end close to this year
@RanaAnwesha
@qudsiya_Ah
#NewReleasesatCUP
Available on Amazon at
#ThePoliticalLifeofMemory
@Ranjana_rahul
@RanaAnwesha
@qudsiya_Ah
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Proof is here. Life is surprising; I will be an author. I’ve been humbled by the generosity of people who have made this book possible. I couldn’t have written alone — no one does. This book is for the legacy of Birsa Munda, his memory and politics. The book is due in 2023 🌈
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Loitering was education. Walls were texts. People were comrades. Chai was food. Life was easy. JNU was home ❤️
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Flew home to tell Maa that starting January 2024, I will be an Assistant Professor in Environmental Justice at the Geosciences, University of Edinburgh (
@EdinburghUni
). A village of friends, mentors and colleagues has led to this. Search for permanence and precarity can rest.
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Today, I joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Environmental Justice at the Department of Human Geography
@GeosciencesEd
Leaving Norway was difficult. I hope to cultivate more kindness and care in this new journey — to learning, and life 🌈
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The book cover often tells a story; builds a dialogue space for more than text. I am glad this painting, designed by artist Lakhinder Hassa through many conversations on the book, has finally become the cover. The book is due in late January 2023. Grateful to many
@CambridgeUP
✨
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Young women journalists in India are doing groundbreaking work on climate change. Their reports have brought out the nuanced, complex reality of lives enmeshed in this changing climate. Their reporting is often fraught, braided with visceral risk, so please recognise them. Thread
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You don't need a PhD to write about people, their lives. You need kindness and care. You must write from a place of empathy — of a method that is rooted in listening, not simply documenting. Write for more than yourself. It's alright if you're not the story.
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Comrade from Jharkhand working on grassroots mobilisation was refused a publication at South Asia journal on grounds of 'poor English'. Scholars commissioning article in west use these contacts during fieldwork, steal their labour. Commentary on English is colonial and erasure.
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I am indefinitely thankful to Linda Tuhiwai Smith for this book, which has been teaching and guiding us for years.
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Birthday Joy 🍷
I am delighted to share that I have signed a book contract with
@CambridgeUP
(Cambridge University Press) for my doctoral, long term research on “Birsa Munda, Memory and Politics in India”. Thanks to lovely
@qudsiya_Ah
Sohini; an army of people who got me here ❤️
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Every visa application is a visceral reminder of whiteness - in forms and as a material plinth that remains a structuring force. Every application is another humiliation, stripping down coloured bodies of their bare humanity. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Visa is a regime.
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I have received the confirmation for the award of the PhD. I am officially, Dr Rahul Ranjan 💅
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Bhindi is quite underrated. But there are a number of recipes, which makes it worthwhile on your plate.
Spice loaded Bhindi cooked in sarso (mustard) and dahi (yoghurt).
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Shameless publicity. Print is now ready for pre-order. The book is due to publish on 31 March. Massive thanks to
@PKashwan
@DamienShort
@arpithakodiveri
@Shaunnaroder
@ikukreti
@gunjanvwadhwa
@EvaDavids
and Anjana Singh.
Use this link:
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I am thrilled to organise the lecture series "Imagining the Environment: Climate Change, Rivers and Political Ecology in India" at
@OsloMet
. The series consists of academics, journalists and activists. Series runs for 2 months with a book launch. Links are below. Share widely 🙏
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As I wrap up my postdoc in Norway, I’m sharing a thread of recorded lectures on climate change, rivers, political ecology and environmental humanities delivered by kind individuals. Also, it consists of collaboration outputs that feature various academics. I hope it is helpful 🧵
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I defended PhD in March 2020 on first day of Covid on zoom. It took away all joy; trepidation of 20s. After 3 years, I graduates today. So much of life has thickened — doctoral research became book. Many people, their kindness brought me here — much to learn. Thankful to many ✨
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I cannot bring myself to share the detail of suicide by a young queer boy due to continued bullying in school (Delhi). This case evidences the colossal hate, harassment in foreclosed schools spaces, homes in India. You think artilleries kill people, but then you have a society!
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Much of western academia, their scholarship remains oblivious to emotional life of waiting — visa, separate queues for “all other”, seasonal reminder “are you returning home?” Most justice imaginaries of worldmaking is a paper tiger — failing to hear any exhaustion, rage or will.
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The first book of the year has arrived in physical copy 💙
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JNU is an idea, a transient home to many - thriving on imperfection but resolute to grow. It arrests us through experiences of delayed paper trail, tea and camaraderie. Finally took the MPhil degree I defended some six years ago.
JNU is bougainvillaea of our memory in spring 🍁
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32 today 🌸 — to acceptance, kindness and hoping more to learn 🌻
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Proofs have arrived ❤️ Hopefully the volume is out by January, 2022!
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A year ago, a hanging glacier fell onto the surface, creating a wave in Rishiganga at Raini, Uttarakhand. It killed over 200 people at the hydro project. Most of these were precarious migrants from far-flung areas. Their register of loss, pain - all of it is nowhere to be seen.
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Twins, aren't we? Maa is home ❤️
Four flights, mess at Europe’s airport, home quarantine and a lot of anxiety -- all of it worth being back.
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📢
@IyengarShalini
and I are thrilled to organise "Crisis of Imagination: Registers of Loss, Pain, Hope, and Climate Change in India", an Environmental Humanities Lecture Series. Starting on 12th September with stunning speakers - register and RT the thread. Everyone is welcome🌸
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During undergrad at Delhi University, they removed Ramanujan's essay on Ramayanas. Yesterday, Mahasweta's Draupadi was dropped too. Both texts -quite genuinely offer a thin thread of critique to several possibilities of reading. Establishments that remove texts are, at best weak!
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Never tell someone they cannot write. In saying this, you rob a writer of their hopes of being written. You degrade your humanity, too — by giving into narrowly perched lines of imagination where you sit with your loneliness. People always write from their storied life of words.
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“Leave a text as you reach home” is perhaps an intimate expression of friendship in India. Seated in a context of both care and fear, this feeling — as do many phrases of everyday usage dispels the noise that fills hearts in a world of chaos; a sort of unfailing faith is friends.
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Academia is a strange place. You're in a constant state of placelessness - a state of anticipatory loss - of place to think and write. In this transit as a young academic, you learn to hold on to one thing at a time. I hold this place close too. Thankful until this lasts, Oslo 🌸
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Those looking for advice in getting through a PhD should follow great ideas etc. But don’t forget to forge friendships. People who can look for you in this solitary passage; they are refuge when critiques make you feel worthless. Academia is a lonely place. You need care & love.
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Condescendence on pronunciation sits in the backyard of Indian elites. Biharis are continually reminded of their ‘place’ in the echelons of academia — for ‘s’ is not ‘sh’. It is daft, dull and unimpressive that you are tenured, but you cannot learn a thing from your students.
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On this World Indigenous Day, I am reminded of how little we read or get taught by/of/about Adivasi (Indigenous peoples in India). This thread is limited to my research, which I often read to educate myself. It includes non-Adivasi writers too. Feel free to add to this. Thread🧵
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I am delighted to share that Dr Ram Dayal Munda Tribal Welfare Research Institute has organised an official launch for my book “The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India” in Ranchi on 14th Feb at 3 pm.
Immensely grateful to have it in Birsa’s land 🌸
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India has a diaspora problem. People with secured passports elsewhere are cheering up for changes that will not impact their own lives. Sleeping through repressive measures, violence, they emerge only to celebrate deluded nostalgia — never meaning to experience home’s mess. Shame
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Working on a river constantly dissolves the sharp edges of the human worldview. It arrests you for undergoing a process -- a constant state of becoming. This one of such becoming, where Bhagirathi meets Alaknanda to become Ganga 🌸
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An Adivasi CM is arrested, and the opposition is nowhere to be seen. Soren has single-handedly led some of the most progressive initiatives and legal debates. Solidarity is traded in caste, not ideology; of course, this time, an Adivasi will have to wait. It is really concerning.
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Personal News:
Thrilled to share that I have joined
@OsloMet
in Oslo (Norway) as a Postdoc Research Fellow. I will work on Memory and Riverine Rights funded by Norwegian Council.
On another note, after a decade of uneasy silence, I came out to my parents. Feels free 🌈🌈
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Every single day, all long year, scholars with weak passports are chasing appointments, transit, refusal and humiliation. All of this costs emotional labour -- for producing scholarships used at Global North universities. The litany of inequality shapes academia; nothing is done.
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Bagicha research led by Stan Swamy, published a report long ago, showing how young Adivasis spend their prime years in jail as under trial.
President Murmu is perhaps the first leader to point out this grotesque injustice.
Representation matters!
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I had the great pleasure of designing a PhD coursework with Andrea Nightingale. The course brings together anti-colonial/decolonial perspectives to environmental studies. There is no fee. See this link:
Unfortunately, we don't have funds for travel.
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Excited to be organising
@OsloMet
South Asia Seminar Series: "Perceptions of Environment" (Chap 1, India). Excellent line up of speakers (all graduate & ECR). Each tweet has link, name and topic. It will run for a month starting 15 January. All invited. Please retweet. Thanks🙏
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Due to the heat in Bihar, apart from deaths, thousands of people are struggling to breathe, work or simply stay well. Everyone is always dehydrated, young pupils in schools are falling sick. It is unimaginable how this relentless pain will leave people sick in the long term.
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I think and read a lot about grief. I am very pleased to have this paper published, “Ecology of Grief,” which consolidates my upcoming research on the Himalayas.
The editors & 3 reviewers were very generous, kind and helpful.
@envplane
@GeosciencesEd
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I’m gently envious of colleagues who can go home over a short break. They can skip a whole world of assembly lines of blocking dates once a year, transits, borders — of all, a long call always ending: “When will you be home again”? Pain of this is unspeakable in migrant’s life.
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“Does a country fall into fascism the way a person falls in love? Or, more accurately, in hate?”
― Arundhati Roy, Azadi
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Nearly 9% of India's population consists of Indigenous peoples. Adivasis have been continually forced into the material and epistemic disadvantages. Grievances are endless. There are only a few dedicated scholarships that recognise this. Please RT, share!
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My passport was checked a total of 5 points within one airport in Germany, while I was travelling within Schengen. At some point, white scholars and institutions should set up a commission to hear how we bear witness to abuse for otherwise simply being “DEI” in workplace. Argh.
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“We can extend that idea of kinship to the land itself. Reciprocity is an ecological principle.” say Kimmerer:
This idea is beautifully braided in the work of
@r_gov11
when working with intimacies, kinship and non-humans. Such beautiful things to read.
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Lives of labourers, who are Adivasis, Dalits, working class, were put at stake by the abdication of environmental safeguards. Everyone is relieved about rescue, but the appropriation of this tragic event as victory doesn’t absolve culpability — this tunnel was approved as a fact.
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"co-authorship is a feminist practice because it can even the playing field among diverse academics. Writing together means writing as a community and supporting one another."
There's so much beauty and humility in this piece -- collaboration as care🌸
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My ‘dost’ and I, as we call it, in small towns in Bihar/Jharkhand, lived together for a few years, cooking what came in handy. Boys in the hostel, always on budget, had a name: “Aaj Raat, Anda Bhaat”. A decade more later, they scream into my lower drum as I make it. Egg curry!
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I look tired as do most early careers. But excited to share that I signed a contract with
@routledgebooks
for the volume I am editing: “At the crossrodas of Rights”. Consisting of essays by
@ArputhaVinod
@Shaunnaroder
@ikukreti
amongst others, with an extended preface I write.
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To look like your mother is the most beautiful inheritance.
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The disposability of lives in India is appalling. Most trapped in these Himalayan tunnels are Adivasi, Dalits, working-class men from far-flung States of Bihar, Jharkhand, others. It's an absolute criminal case — if the tenders for projects, funders don't follow safety protocol.
So many red flags in the Uttarkashi tunnel construction project.
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I read and hear academics talk about big things, meta imaginaries of world-changing, almost unfailingly, every time. But
@DollyKikon
in her lecture today grounded the most primal sense of being: be kind to yourself and have a community to cry, love, and celebrate. This will stay!
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In retrospect, a PhD is such a “possible time”—to be able to think, read, and write—all that one wants. It is challenging, too. But it's a little hideaway, sidestep, and refuge into what you want endearingly.
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Maa sent the photo of blooming “Raat ki Raani” (jasmine) leaning over to windows. She says the whiff is driven through the room even as humidity arrests everyone to restlessness. Sometimes, photos of places, all of their memories, are in people — travelling through us, quietly.
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My book will be launched in Europe at the University of Oslo on 15th March. I'm immensely grateful to
@K_Bo_Nielsen
.
@PoMoGandhi
(SOAS) and
@RashVarma
(Warwick) have kindly accepted the invitation to be guest discussants in Oslo.
Register below if in Oslo:
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We are having a full-blown summer at the University of Edinburgh!
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Delighted to be giving a talk on “Grief in the Anthropocene” and leading a class on Environmental Justice at
@Vassar
, NY. Especially happy to be with my dear friend
@arpithakodiveri
and to learn from her incredible research here.
Thanks to Arpitha & Vassar for the invitation 🌻
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There is a genuine struggle to find language for things that leaves us stranded in a moment of surprise. Aurora, the northern light, is one of such magical renditions in the sky, really.
#NorthernLights
#narvik
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Mountains are storytellers — of time sedimented underneath the ice as an old character in a play for wisdom. They present an enormous humility that is often lost or buried in a world where things, people, and objects are all knowable.
Hindu Kush enroute to Norway 🌸
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After such a heartwarming book launch last evening in Ranchi, I will speak tomorrow at Jamia’s Political Science department (time:3 pm). This is a public event — everyone is welcome. Thankful to Dr Sucharita Sengupta and Dr Adnan Farooqi for the invite.
See you 🌸
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Unpacking in Oslo after a long spell in Uttarakhand brought out the tender memories folded in sweets. Maa had hidden mango candy under the layer of heavy luggage. It's genuinely difficult to understand what it means to love if not for most simple forms of care. Count blessings ❤️
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As a young adult in Dilli, it was easy to believe in revolution. Songs, poetry and ghazals - especially in DU, JNU as a student formed a space of worldmaking. Nayyara Noor was amongst the first we heard, sang. She passed away today. Thinking of this song:
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📢Finally, I have had the time to edit and upload the lecture series. The thread contains lectures that were held over the past two months on environmental humanities in India via zoom and co-hosted by
@IyengarShalini
and me. I hope you like it; thanks for your support; humbled🌸
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It takes a lifetime to build a house. In India, it's been torn apart and broken down in seconds today. Loveless, full of hate and cracking divides, is ghastly and out on the streets. Any of your indifference to this tyranny will mirror you when they arrive at your door. Tragic!
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Plants have an enormous radiance, a non-verbal utterance to disarm our ways of being in this world — weaving us together into a story of co-living. Often, when I look away from screen to the window, this plant, singularly still and calm, rhyming to the world, eases me at once 🌸
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India's independence day is a reminder of how little we hear about Adivasi anticolonial/zamindar rebellions as a primary anchor for political consciousness and aspirations of freedom. Through my book, I tell the contradictions and ironies of independence.
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Emerging in a far-flung glacier of Tibet, the Indus River (Sengge Zangbo and Gar Tsangpo) meets the Zanskar river. Rivers, as they are, a fluvial rendition of lifeworld meanders across the border -- making the cartographic index invisible. Rivers write themselves on landscape 🌸
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I’ve heard it numerously in the western Himalayas: “paaer nahin sirf paani bhi hai yeh”: it’s not just a tree but also water. Large parts of both indigenous & people dwelling in their local environment offer a way of ecology that is incomprehensible for techno-managerial world.
Watch | On Saturday, the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department authorities cut the bark of an Indian laurel tree in Papikonda National Park to find that the tree stores water in the summer.
This knowledge was shared with the Forest department by the Konda Reddi tribe, a Particularly
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A beehive has left an impression of a whale on our window extension. It's incredible how an afterlife of a non-human settlement stands as a portrait today.
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This is a section of the grocery store in a foreign land where I can fix a tent and live for the rest of my term as a postdoc. Shan masala literally feeds all of the displaced, fraught and tongue-longing homenes if that exists.
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It's lovely to be drawn into photographs of Yamuna flooding from the medieval period as a reminder. But the ensuing “river will always reclaim” absolves the brutality of localised and aggressive anthropogenic change that brought fury. River reclaims because we have changed it.
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Space, however small for a writer, is the only refuge in a whirlpool of events in the world. After months of joining the university, I can suspend into that space — hoping the words give strength as the world grows unfettered with the hope students bring.
Office, Edinburgh 🌻
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Last week was overwhelming at Jamia and CSDS. I have 5 talks due this week. If you're a student at DU, please come by tomorrow at JMC. Information is on the poster.
I'll tweet and share information about others shortly. Very thankful for these opportunity ✨
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It's endless, isn't it? Family asks society; society asks court; court asks parliament, parliament reinstate family norms again. What an enormously hate trap this could be -- to be waiting, indefinitely; all of the joy, sorrow and lives of queer yet again becomes waiting. Shame.
CJI DY Chandrachud : It is for the Parliament to decide whether a change in the regime of the Special Marriage Act is needed.
#SupremeCourt
#SameSexMarriage
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This is such a genuinely honest tweet. Many of us pull through the ropes of academia in the company of and with support from senior academics. Many personal challenges, often not so spoken, are easier in camaraderie with other academics, within and outside our own institutions.
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I'm immensely grateful for the number of prospective PhD students contacting to work with me. But I‘m equally dismayed about the limited resources that would lead to realisation. Between the search for funding and admission, I hope they remain hopeful of their beautiful vision 🌸
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Our students are our hopes.
Encampment at the University of Edinburgh 🇵🇸
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📢Happy to share the publication of my upcoming research. Thanks to kind editors
@LivUniPress
@Environ_History
"A British Military Engineer, the Ganga and the Spectre of Control in Colonial Northern India (1839–1854)"
@GeosciencesEd
@EdinburghUni
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I will deliver the keynote on “Many Facets of Religious Environmentalism” at
@vidhogskole
today in Oslo from my on-going research for
@Riverine_Rights
. It's both humbling and unnerving.
Small steps, big world 🌸
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It's the summer solstice, and we are literally wearing jumpers in Oslo. Am glad at least its
@OsloMet
Pride month, and rainbow is our colour 🌈
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Life of a migrant oscillates between a defiant urge to hold on to memories of home and the cruelty of time — ageing lines on the face of those who are not here, now. Migrant becomes a register to worlds of feelings — passing through lives of unfinished love and friendship.
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Budapest has a pace. All of its cafes appear to be small quiet corners suspended in time so further removed from the city’s bustle. Old trimmed songs, stark use of colours and slow transport give the city a character.
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A public library is a public good. In a city such as New York that is dotted with glaring poverty and the opulence of corporate, the access to sit in the heart of the city for reading is impressive. It requires no registration or id checks. It holds the city together for once.
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This is not surprising at all. Most Indian gain strength by relegating Adivasi to bygone, antique objects of the past. Humiliation of Adivasi is at the heart of everyday Indian modernity. It is gross, inhumane and deeply heart wrenching that we entertain this insult by an MP.
This is the newly nominated 'Youngest Ever' Rajya Sabha member from
@AamAadmiParty
@raghav_chadha
.
'Jo kharab kaam kr rha hai, usko bhejo Tribal Affairs me punishment ke taur pe'.
Ye hai AAP ke Yuva neta. Tribal Affairs pe kaam krne ko punishment maante hai.
++
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"We must not teach them (students) theories, but indeed how to theorize. We must also teach them – and demonstrate this by our own work – how theory emerges from a creative traversal, indeed inhabitation, of empirical materials." notes, Prathama.
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There is something extraordinary about letting go — of things, people and places you don't find for yourself. In a long schema of life, as it is, it deepens you to accept a victory from a battle you were not prepared for. Of all eventful things, you did not imagine for yourself.
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End to a long wait - finally at home.
Bagmati river, Darbhanga (Bihar)
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