Talk by Kelsey Jane Utne

This talk explores the disrupted burial of convicted murderer Abdul Rashid in 1927 in order to understand how urban expansion altered and constrained commemorative praxis in late colonial India. Because of the subsequent criminal prosecutions for corpse theft and official inquiry, we have access to an incredibly detailed account of the movements of the police, the so-called “mob,” and Rashid’s body through space. In turn, the case study reveals an alternative necrogeography imagined by Delhi’s Muslim community – one closed off by the built infrastructure of the colonial city.

Kelsey J. Utne is a prison educator, digital humanities scholar, and 2021-22 ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow in Modern South Asian History at Cornell University. She is finishing her dissertation, Corpse Politics: Disposal and Commemoration of the Indian Interwar Dead.