Photo by Adam Atkinson
In her latest research, Hafsa Kanjwal, associate professor of history, delves into the limits and possibilities of constructions of indigeneity in South and Central Asia, especially in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir. As the keynote speaker delivering the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Tuesday, April 1, Kanjwal will highlight how strategic claims of indigeneity serve to justify military occupation, land grabs, and displacement.
“I am excited to be given the opportunity to present some of my preliminary research,” says Kanjwal, who will begin her sabbatical this year to work on the research and writing for her new book, Islam, Decolonization, and the Question of Kashmir. “I’m also looking forward to getting feedback from colleagues at Lafayette, a number of whom work on similar themes across different contexts.”
Despite Kashmir being a Muslim-majority region, Kanjwal explains, its Muslims are seen as “foreigners” or “invaders,” and Hindus are presented as being the land’s original inhabitants. Kanjwal argues that “British colonial and orientalist narratives about exclusive Hindu indigeneity informed India’s anti-colonial nationalist leadership—including the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and he too reinscribed these narratives.” In the case of Kashmir, she explains, this construction helped facilitate India’s settler-colonial ambitions in Kashmir in a global moment of decolonization. The weaponization of indigeneity has worked to undermine calls for Kashmiri self-determination.
Through her research and lecture, Kanjwal aims to encourage her audience to consider the ways in which constructions of indigeneity beyond the “classic” cases of settler-colonialism in the Americas and Australia help facilitate—not counter—settler colonial logics. Instead, she offers her thoughts on how alternate frameworks of indigeneity can still be useful for a context like Kashmir.
All are welcome to the lecture, especially anyone who is interested in different parts of the world. “Across the globe, a number of right-wing, ethnonationalist movements are deploying discourses of indigeneity or decolonization to further their agendas and commit grave atrocities,” Kanjwal says, adding that colonial constructions of who is indigenous and who isn’t is not just relevant to South Asia. “I hope attendees can see the violent, disastrous implications of such narratives in our world today, and connect it to these longer histories and discourses.”
Kanjwal was recently awarded the 2025 Bernard S. Cohn Prize for First Book on South Asia, awarded by the Association for Asian Studies for her first book, Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building Under Indian Occupation, published by Stanford University Press in 2023. “Scholarship on Kashmir has often been at the margins of South Asian studies, but I am hoping this acknowledgment will make it clear how the study of regions that are often deemed marginal or at the frontiers of area studies or nationalist histories can reveal a lot about the intertwined processes of colonialism and state-formation,” she says.
The talk is sponsored by the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture and Awards Fund, established in 1966 to recognize superior teaching and scholarship at Lafayette.
“Over the decades, our Jones faculty lecturers have shared research critical to the contemporary and historical global world we inhabit,” says Provost Laura McGrane. “Prof. Kanjawal has described her classroom as ‘a radical space of possibility,’ and our students regularly benefit from her expertise. We are honored to have this award-winning scholar as a vital member of our intellectual campus community.”
