Desis on a Spectrum: South Asian Americans & Assumptions of Ethno-racial Solidarity

“Desis on a Spectrum” uses ethnography and interviews to examine how South Asian (Desi) American and immigrant groups in the Northeast U.S. engaged in political activism prior to and after 9/11. Existing literature on Desi Americans homogenizes their social and political agendas under broader Desi and racial identity frameworks, resulting in the omission of working-class, undocumented, and Muslim, Bengali, and Dalit immigrant issues.

My findings debunk flattened assumptions of ethnoracial solidarity. I show that organizations representing working-class, immigrants, and Muslim Desis who faced systemic profiling in the form of entrapment, mass detention, and surveillance after 9/11 were more likely to engage in mass politics, protest, and alliance-building alongside Black and Latinx communities. By contrast, groups representing elite Desis with U.S. citizenship felt that hate crimes and representation were the most pressing issues affecting South Asians and opted for electoral, assimilatory strategies by lobbying for hate crimes policies, establishing internship programs in D.C, and allying with affluent ethnic groups. I argue that an “assimilation-to- racialization continuum” demonstrates how systemic Islamophobia, migration status, and socioeconomic class shape the political agendas of Desi communities and other racial minorities.

Omwashing to Decolonization: The Weaponized and Liberatory Potential of Yoga

This project brings a critical anti-imperial lens to the global popularity of yoga and new age spirituality. “Omwashing Yoga: Self-care and State Violence among the Global Far-Right” considers how yoga and mindfulness programs are routinely and increasingly used in and by police academies, militaries and veterans, and far-right vigilante groups to advance their cultural and political agendas. Similar to Frantz Fanon’s observation of French colonizers perpetuating their own trauma by enacting violence against the colonized, I explore whether these operatives use yoga as a form of “spiritual bypassing” — using spirituality to address their trauma without confronting the violence they committed under oppressive regimes. Similar to governments and companies that engage in “greenwashing” and “pinkwashing” to falsely appear environmentally friendly or supportive of LGBTQ and feminist issues, I argue that these militarized institutions engage in “omwashing.” This involves deploying yoga as a colonial and ethno-nationalist tool to portray their societies as free and peaceful, while concealing their structurally violent and supremacist agendas, and diverting the public gaze from their oppressive policies. By using spirituality to soften public criticism of imperial warfare, these repressive state apparatuses show us how far-right forces use yoga for “soft power” diplomatic gains.