Who is a minority? The answer to this seemingly innocuous question is not obvious. Colonial constructions of the minority were shaped by racialised assumptions about the cultural other. The minority as the cultural other has seeped into nationalist imaginaries of postcolonial nation-states. Hegemonic constructions of gender, sexuality, and the family by postcolonial nation-states often serve as a cultural edifice for the construction of minorities and minority citizenship. Drawing upon fieldwork with Muslim activist networks in marital dispute resolution forums in India, this talk argues that ethnography can provide useful insights for decolonising dominant discourses of minority citizenship. Methodologically, I reflect upon my own positionality in the field as a queer, gender non-binary researcher and my attempts at friendship and community building with activists. I show how alternative notions of community and kinship come into being as women navigate moments of crisis vis-a-vis gendered roles in the heteronormative family. As a queer ethnographer I was drawn to these moments of 'crisis' and 'failure' in the family. They seemed productive sites of community and kin making. Doing so can help us decolonise knowledge and understanding of minority communities and minority citizenship. Broadly speaking, this talk illustrates how decolonisation of the discipline of Politics and IR can become a meaningful project through engagement with the everyday and ordinary political action of hitherto colonised subjects who continue to be understood in academic knowledge production using colonial epistemic categories.

Dr Sagnik Dutta (they/ them) is Associate Professor at OP Jindal Global University. Their scholarship on religion, secularism, gender, and minority citizenship lies at the intersection of political theory, legal anthropology, postcolonial/ decolonial theory, and gender studies. Their other research interests include global/ postcolonial approaches to counterterrorism, data colonialism, and data justice. Their scholarly contributions also encompass postcolonial, critical, and feminist approaches to IR. Their monograph titled 'In the Shadow of Minority Rights' is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press and their articles have appeared in Feminist Theory, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Journal of Political Ideologies, and Law and Social Inquiry. Their edited volume titled 'Global Counterterrorism: A decolonial approach' is forthcoming with Manchester University Press.

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