Please join us for a screening of the Pulitzer Center-supported film Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines (2024, 25 min) and a discussion about fostering and engaging cross-border, Southasian publics with producer Beena Sarwar, SAPAN, and Ronojoy Sen, National University of Singapore, moderated by Hadia Khan, Jamhoor.
Watch the trailer here.

Reception to follow the discussion

This session is part of the Cornell-QMUL Global Hubs workshop: Majority-Minority Politics and Democracy in South Asia, supported by Cornell-QMUL Global Hubs, Center on Global Democracy - Cornell Brooks Public Policy, Cornell South Asia Program, Religious Studies Program, Institute of Comparative Modernities, Department of Anthropology, and the Department of Government.

The global decline in democracy has increasingly been shaped by ethnic and religious majoritarianism, which serves as a core mechanism for authoritarian politics. Across South Asia, governments are working to further entrench permanent majorities and minorities through exclusionary legal, political, and economic structures. At the same time, electoral shifts, protest movements, and new forms of collective action highlight the contested nature of these projects and the possibilities for resistance. This workshop aims to examine majoritarianism in South Asia through historical, legal, and anthropological perspectives and to explore strategies to counter these developments. In bringing together scholars working across the areas that comprise Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, we hope to foster cross-disciplinary and cross-border analyses that move beyond nation-specific accounts.

Workshop Participants

• Hana Shams Ahmed, Anthropology, York University, Toronto, Canada
• Mohsin Alam Bhat, Law, Queen Mary University London, London, UK
• Mona Bhan, Anthropology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA
• Natasha Raheja, Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA
• Radhika Mongia, Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada
• Sadia Mahmood, Religious Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan 
• Salah Punathil, Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India
• Salman Hussain, Anthropology, York University, Toronto, Canada
• Sana Batool, Journalism, Falmouth University, Falmouth, UK
• Tashi Ghale, Anthropology, Washington University Saint Louis, Saint Louis, USA

Drawing by Rohait Bhagwant