Arshad Amanullah

M. Arshad Amanullah is Fellow at Prime Ministers Museum and Library, New Delhi, India, where he is working on “The Pasmanda Factor in the Indian Political Communication: Documenting and Decoding Bharatiya Janata Party’s Outreach to the Pasmanda Muslims of India”. He is also an Affiliated Fellow at Max Weber Forum, New Delhi.

Arshad is the recipient of the SICCI Prize for South Asian Studies (2021-2022) for the best Ph.D. thesis in the South Asian Studies Programme.

Arshad's doctoral project (National University of Singapore, 2022) focuses on the Muslim involvement in the Indian news media. He worked as a media researcher with Centre for Culture, Media & Governance of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi from August 2012 to June 2017. Before 2012, he was working in the media sector. His research interests include digital media, democracy and Muslim Public Sphere in South Asia.

Arshad’s doctoral project is a study of Muslim journalists and Muslim media institutions in four Indian cities: Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Lucknow, cities with perhaps the largest Muslim population in urban India. The study focuses on news media to explore the communicative processes that constitute the relationship of Muslims and democracy.

The study draws on the data collected during preparatory fieldwork in 2018 and an extended eight-month ethnographic fieldwork in 2019 and 2020. It also makes use of in-depth interviews with Muslim journalists who worked with English, Hindi, Telugu, and Marathi-language news media outlets.

Associate Prof. Gyanesh Kudaisya was his main supervisor and Assistant Prof. Taberez Ahmed Neyazi co-supervisor. Prof. Robin Jeffrey, Prof. Janet Steele and Associate Prof. Per Stahlberg examined his doctoral thesis.

Arshad is a member of the International Communication Association.