My book, Provincial Metropolis: Intellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India (Cambridge, 2025), tells the story of Patna, in the north Indian region of Bihar, in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A century and more earlier, Patna
had been an important and populous city, but it came to be seen by many—and
is still seen today—as merely part of the mofussil, the provincial hinterland.
Despite Patna’s real decline, it continued to nurture a vibrant intellectual culture
that linked it with cities and towns across northern India and beyond. Urdu
literary gatherings and other Islamicate traditions inherited from Mughal times
helped animate the networks sustaining institutions like scholarly libraries and
satirical newspapers. Meanwhile, English-educated lawyers sought to bring new
prominence to their city and region by making Patna the capital of a new province.
They succeeded, but as Patna’s political influence grew, its distinctive character
was diminished. Ultimately, Provincial Metropolis shows, Patna’s intellectual and
cultural life thrived not despite its provinciality but because of it.
I am also the author, with Daniel Majchrowicz, of Zer o Zabar: An Introduction to the Urdu Script, an interactive, open-access textbook.
Currently, I am working on translations of stories by Sa‘adat Hasan Manto and (also with Daniel Majchrowicz) stories by Qazi ‘Abdul Ghaffar.
My scholarly publications include:
“Fatima Begum: An Indian Haji Observes Her Fellow Pilgrims” and “Mehr al-Nisa: An Indian Nurse in Ohio,” in Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma, eds., Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (Indiana University Press, 2022)
“Nationality and Fashionality: Hats, Lawyers and Other Important Things to Remember,” South Asia 43, no. 5 (October 2020), reprinted in Literary Sentiments in the Vernacular: Gender and Genre in Modern South Asia, ed. Charu Gupta et al. (Routledge, 2021)
“Bound for Home: Books and Community in a Bihari Qasba,” South Asia 43, no. 3 (June 2020)
“Unpacking the Library” (coauthored with Andrew Amstutz and C. Ryan Perkins), South Asia 43, no. 3 (June 2020)
“Collaborative Wit: Provincial Publics in Colonial North India,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, no. 1 (May 2018)
My writing for the public includes:
“अंजुमनुल इस्लाह: जब एक क़स्बे में उर्दू को सहेजने की कोशिश हुई,” The Wire Hindi, July 2, 2020
“قصہ 1899 کے ایک مشرقی کتب خانہ کا,” The Wire Urdu, June 25, 2020
“Home in the Hinterland,” The Los Angeles Review of Books, October 2014
“A Lettered Life,” The Caravan, August 2012
“Calcutta in 20 Hours,” Kosovo 2.0, May 2012