Introduction

I am currently working on a monograph documenting the Indian Farmers Protest, 2020-21, my research and talks on this topic can be found in the tab above (Kisaan-Morcha). I am also currently a Major Leverhulme Fellow (2022-25) working on a project to highlight the vernacular voices of migrants to the UK from South Asia, through their own writings (see Desi Writing tab above). This research is a culmination of my long-standing contribution to the field of diaspora studies.

The co-authored book Diaspora and Hybridity is a critical intervention in debates in cultural studies in relation to conceptualizing two key ways of understanding identity and migration. This theoretical perspective has been most effectively utilized in pioneering work I carried out on British Asian musical cultures. This interest in the performative aspect of cultural identity is also central to my latest book looking at music and religion (Sacred and Secular Musics, Bloomsbury Press). In this text I engage a postcolonial analysis with the field of ethnomusicology, forwarding the role of the native musician as the interpreter and conveyor of religious texts. This inverts the normative accounts of musicians in South Asia which place them at the bottom of the social hierarchy and also of religious hierarchy in which texts are given a superordinate role. The wide range of my academic work is underpinned by an account of processes of resistance through the gambit of cultural and political organising. Adopting a Gramscian framework that takes the imbrications of culture and politics as point of departure, the multiple sites that I have researched on share a concern for people’s organising in the context of social cleavages along the lines of race, gender, class, caste and nation.

Recent Publications

Kalra, V., Hyde, M. and Rehman, S. (2019) Unseen and Unknown: The issues and needs of Kashmiris in Rochdale, University of Warwick

Kalra, V. (2017) Poetic Politics From Ghadar to the Indian Workers Association, in Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora Link opens in a new window

Books

Kalra, V, and Purewal, N. (2019) Beyond Religion in India and Pakistan: Gender and Caste, Borders and BoundariesLink opens in a new window

(Bloomsbury, London)

Kalra, V. and Shalini, S. (eds.) (2016) State of Subversion: Politics in Twentieth Century Punjab, Routledge: New DelhiLink opens in a new window

Kalra, V. (2015) <em>Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach</em>, Bloomsbury: London (Being translated into Urdu and Punjabi)

Reviews: South Asian Popular Culture Link opens in a new window

Popular MusicLink opens in a new window

Kalra, V. Rhodes, J. and Kapoor, N (eds.) (2013) The State of Race Palgrave Macmillan, London

Kalra, V. (ed) (2009) Pakistani Diasporas: Culture, Conflict and Change Oxford University Press: KarachiLink opens in a new window

Ali, N. Kalra, V. and Sayyid, S., (eds.) (2006) A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain, Hurst: London

Kalra, Virinder (2000), From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Experience of Migration, Labour and Social Change.Ashgate: Aldershot

Book Reviews

Kalra, Virinder S.. Rupturing the Religious Past in the Postcolonial Present . Religions of South Asia, [S.l.], v. 4, n. 2, p. 181-187, jan. 2012.Link opens in a new window