Inlaks-King’s India Institute Studentship 2021: Rouf Ahmad Dar
Rouf Ahmad Dar is this year’s recipient of the Inlaks-King’s India Institute Studentship. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Kashmir. His thesis is entitled Constitutionalizing Rights: A Study of Constituent Assembly Debates in Jammu & Kashmir.
Rouf Ahmad Dar is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kashmir. His research broadly lies in the intersection of constitutions, constitutionalism and conflict. Currently, his doctoral project employs the hermeneutical approach to trace and interpret the constitutionalization of specific legal-political rights for ‘State Subjects’ in the Constituent Assembly Debates of Jammu and Kashmir (1951–57). This research contextualizes the interactions and engagements between India’s and J&K’s constitution-makers and constitution-making processes that sought to determine the constitutional relationship between these two political entities.
Rouf presented his research at the 2020 South Asia Graduate Students Conference in the University of Chicago. He has also written extensively about the socio-political dimensions of Kashmir conflict for media outlets such as TRT World, The New Arab, and Outlook India. Previously, Rouf worked with Conciliation Resources (UK) on a participatory action-based research project which culminated in a report titled Vision 2020. The report examined the social, political, and economic perceptions and values of youth of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh regions regarding their future.
As a researcher based in a conflict-zone, the studentship provides him an opportunity to be exposed to academic rigour at the King’s India Institute. The vast archival pool accessible in the UK and expertise available at the Institute has the potential to shape his research, and pave the way for further analysis of Kashmir’s constitutional studies. Rouf hopes to experience advanced modes of supervisor-researcher collaboration, critical feedback from related communities and a liberal academic environment to advance his research.
