# Nitasha Kaul

Nitasha Kaul is a British-Indian academic, writer and poet based in London. In addition to fiction, she writes and speaks about topics that cover the political economy, Bhutan, Kashmir, nationalism in India, gender and identity.

## Early life and education

Nitasha Kaul was born in November 1976 in Gorakhpur, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, into a Kashmiri Pandit family that had migrated from the Downtown Mohalla of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.
Kaul was raised in New Delhi had her schooling at St. Thomas' School. Kaul graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the Sri Ram College of Commerce, affiliated with the University of Delhi.
Kaul moved to England from India in 1997, at the age of 21, for pursuing her post-graduate degree from University of Hull. Kaul went on to earn her Doctorate in Economics and Philosophy from Hull in 2003. Her doctoral thesis was Interrogating the Subject-World of Economic Epistemology: Re-Imagining Theory and Difference.

## Career

Kaul is a professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Westminster in the UK.https://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/directory/kaul-nitasha In addition to her chair, she is also the Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD).https://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/groups-and-centres/centre-for-the-study-of-democracy Kaul served as a lecturer of economics at University of Bath and as an assistant professor of economics at the Bristol Business School from 2002 to 2007 before being made associate professor in Creative Writing at the Royal Thimphu College in Bhutan (2010). Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster. She has published widely on themes relating to democracy, political economy, Hindutva/Indian politics, misogyny, technology/Artificial Intelligence, identity, rise of right-wing nationalism, feminist and postcolonial critiques, small states in geopolitics, regions of Bhutan, Kerala, and Kashmir. Having received multiple research grants and awards for her research, writing, and activism, she is the author of over 150 publications, including 7 single-authored or edited scholarly and literary books, book chapters in numerous critical and ground-breaking edited collections, plus peer-reviewed original research articles in numerous journals across humanities and social science disciplines.https://westminster.academia.edu/NitashaKaul/CurriculumVitae
On October 22, 2019, Kaul served as one of the key witnesses at a United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing about the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir, following the revocation of special status within India. Kaul outlined extensive UNHCHR reports about the violations of human rights (and democratic principles) in both Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir along with the clampdown on communication facilities and mass-detention in the Indian territory at the time.

### Books

Her first book Imagining Economics Otherwise: encounters with Identity/Difference (2007), was a monograph on economics and philosophy and was subject to mixed reception.
In 2009 she wrote Residue, which was the first novel in English by a Kashmiri woman and was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize.

## Controversies

In February 2024, Kaul was invited by the Congress-ruled Karnataka State Government to participate as a speaker in a two-day convention on constitutional values, but she was denied entry to India at Kempegowda International Airport, in Bengaluru, Karnataka, even though she carried valid Overseas Citizen of India credentials. https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/report/2024-02-23-university-of-westminster/ There has been no official statement from the Government of India on why she was denied entry. Kaul has been a longstanding advocate of democracy, human rights, and rule of law, and a critic of extremist right-wing political projects including that of Hindutva in India, and particularly on matters of gender and economy.{https://westminster.academia.edu/NitashaKaul/CurriculumVitae, https://www.nitashakaul.com/uploads/Kaul-2017-Journal_of_Labor_and_Society.pdf, https://academic.oup.com/isr/article/23/4/1619/6303451. A wide range of professional and academic organisations, including academic bodies such as BISA (British International Studies Association) https://x.com/MYBISA/status/1772951085403037923, International studies Association (ISA)https://www.isanet.org/News/ID/6389, Human Rights Watch https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/17/india-authorities-revoke-visa-privileges-diaspora-critics, Amnesty Internationalhttps://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/india-authorities-must-end-repression-of-dissent-in-jammu-and-kashmir/, and others publicly expressed outrage at her treatment and showed support for her work. Her case was also referred to in the 2024 Freedom House Report on authoritarian controls on freedom of movement https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/2024/no-way-or-out-authoritarian-controls-freedom-movement.