Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies

Fathima Nizaruddin

Fathima Nizaruddin is an academic and documentary filmmaker. Her last film, Nuclear Hallucinations (2016), which emerged out of her practice-based PhD at the University of Westminster, has been screened at various festivals and academic spaces across the world. She is an assistant professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is a recipient of studentship for doctoral research from University of Westminster, Film Fellowship from Public Service Broadcasting Trust (India), and All Roads Seed Grant from National Geographic. Fathima is currently working as a post-doc researcher at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in New Delhi, India.

“Bura Na Milya Koi” (I Didn’t Find Anyone Evil): The Philosophy of Kabir and Possibilities for Transmedia Interventions within Right-Wing WhatsApp Circulations 

The right-wing populisms currently surging around the world are able to form spaces of interaction in which the anger and frustration arising because of neoliberalization are channelled against the most vulnerable sections of society. Media circulation and infrastructures play an important role in forming such spaces. In contemporary India, WhatsApp is a key platform through which right-wing groups spread narratives of hate. My project will use practice-based artistic research methodology to understand the ways in which transmedial work drawing inspiration from the philosophy of the South Asian saint-poet Kabir can contribute to the creation of safer WhatsApp ecosystems. Kabir’s work stresses the absurdity of divisions and invokes love as a framing principle for social interactions.

Publications

Nizaruddin, Fathima. „My Mother’s Daughter.“ Dastavezi: The Audio-Visual South Asia 1 (2019). https://crossasia-journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dasta/article/view/4633

Nizaruddin, Fathima. „Peaceful Nuclear Tests, Eco-friendly Reactors, and the Vantage Point of Tamasha.“ BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 8, no. 2 (2017): 204-223. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0974927617728133

Nizaruddin, Fathima. „Nuclear hallucinations: creating the vantage point of tamasha through the use of comic modes and irony in order to destabilise the authoritarian knowledge claims of Indian pro-nuclear documentaries.“ PhD diss., University of Westminster, 2017. https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/eda56db8d714ba934a1f67c0b79ab10180776716a3363523a422c51f130eba02/1133291/Nizaruddin_Fathima_thesis.pdf

All Publications from Fathima Nizaruddin:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic and the infrastructure of hate in India

    In May 2020, while the world continued to grapple with ways of dealing with the pandemic, UN Secretary General António Guterres spoke about the “tsunami of hate” targeting specific communities in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. One such maelstrom, targeting the Muslim community, was seen taking place in India, with allegations of ‘corona jihad’ becoming widespread during the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown in the country.

  • Possibilities for Creating Thinking Spaces to Resist Right-Wing Digital Circulations

    An exploration about the ways in which right-wing digital circulations can be challenged by creating thinking spaces within communities through the use of arts-based research