Abdul Kalam Azad

India, CAHR, Autumn 2021

Abdul Kalam Azad is a human rights researcher, writer, and community mobilizer from the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. Abdul is working on his PhD thesis “Understanding Statelessness and Resilience in Assam, India” at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and is based at the Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, UK, as a visiting fellow from October 2021 to January 2022.

Abdul has previously worked as a research fellow for two years with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Guwahati. At TISS, he undertook research and action interventions with communities affected by the ethnic violence in western Assam. He worked extensively with inter-community youth groups to bring peace into the region.

Abdul is also a member of the Miya Poetry Movement, a new genre of poetry, where poets from the Miya community portray the stories of human rights violation, segregation, and dehumanization as well as hopes and aspirations of their fellow community members. Though the literal meaning of the term ‘Miya’ is someone respectable but it was used in a pejorative manner to abuse the people from the community Abdul belongs. The Miya Poetry Movement reclaimed the term through poetry. Abdul was performing the crucial role of an organizer and supported the poets in coordinating, collaborating, networking, and disseminating their poems. The Miya Poetry Movement rose to prominence in the academic as well as socio-political space. His writing and activism rattled some of the powerful elites and as a result several criminal cases were filed against Abdul and his fellow poets and activists.

In 2019, during the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updating process, which excluded more than 1.9 million people and put them on the verge of statelessness, Abdul led a large group of cross-cultural community workers to support the historically marginalized communities who were at the risk of losing their citizenship. Abdul and his fellow community workers supported illiterate and semi-illiterate people, especially those from the geographically isolated char (river island) areas, to fill out their citizenship application forms, facilitating hearing and verification, and facilitating legal representation in the foreigners’ tribunal.

In 2018, Abdul was one of the researchers in the National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC) mission, headed by Dr. Harsh Mander, to study the conditions of detention camps in Assam. The report prepared by the mission generated huge debate and discussion on the human rights abuses inside detention camps and finally resulted in the release of a large of number of detainees through court intervention.

Abdul is an excellent researcher and has conducted a wealth of deeply engaged community-based research using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Together with his friends he established the Miya Community Research Collective, a community-based grassroots research collective in Assam. The collective is committed to a critical social justice agenda, and works to understand and address oppression and inequalities that Miya communities in Assam have been subjected to over the ages. Abdul has been a true thought leader in helping shape the collective’s visions and activities from the very beginning.

Abdul is also the founder and convener of the School for Epistemic Justice, a community forum created to address epistemic violence against Miya communities. Abdul runs and/or facilitates these weekly sessions.

Abdul integrates his interdisciplinary and well-rounded theoretical knowledge along with in-depth grassroots experience in the collaborative projects with various universities and institutions across the globe, including one with University of York where he is one of the co-investigators.

Abdul has written extensively on the issues of statelessness and human rights abuses in the state of Assam for national and international media platforms. His features and opinion pieces have appeared on Al Jazeera, Caravan Magazine, The Wire, Indian Express, and Outlook Magazine among others. Abdul is the founding editor of a community media platform called Ango Khabar, where video stories of people from historically marginalized communities are published.

Abdul has given public lectures and talks at various universities including, University of Edinburgh (UK) University of Warwick (UK), University of York (UK), OP Jindal Global University (India), and Tezpur University (India) among others.

In January 2022, Abdul will join as a postdoctoral lecturer at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.