Soheb Niazi
Soheb Niazi is a historian of modern India who specializes in the social and economic history of Muslims. His research focuses on non-elite, subaltern Muslim actors in South Asia. His current research project investigates the entangled networks of meat, hides and leather industry in colonial India. His further research interests include the history of science and technology as well as Urdu literature and poetry.
He has been a Doctoral Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures where he defended his PhD on social stratification and hierarchy among Muslims in colonial India, from the Department of History and Culture Studies at the Freie Universität, Berlin. Following his doctoral studies, he has held prestigious fellowships from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi and the WB Kolleg at the University of Bern. He is also a co-editor of the project Tazkira-e Jamia: Retrieving Past Lives from Jamia, a collaborative initiative of the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies and the Centre de Sciences Humaines in New Delhi.
Research Project
From Slaughter to Skin: Entangled Networks and Social Organization of Meat Ecologies in Colonial India (1860-1945)
Project Abstract
While ecological concerns and contemporary livestock practices have generated criticism in Western societies, the production of animal flesh for human consumption continues to expand persistently (Weis, 2021). This expansion is underpinned by the quest for converting nature and its resources into commodities of trade and profit, a characteristic feature of global capitalism. This project offers a critical historical analysis of contemporary concerns regarding livestock practices by examining the entangled networks of meat and its allied commodities of livestock, hides and skins in colonial India, serving as a case study from the Global South. These commodities circulate unevenly across transimperial colonial and national economies through entangled networks which reinforce and reproduce social hierarchies which are embedded in the infrastructures of production and consumption. Building on recent scholarly discussions in global history on global dis:connections and commodity frontiers in the history of capitalism, this project examines how commercialization and technological changes transformed skills, work status and social hierarchies. The project aims to trace the lifehistories of social actors involved in the production and trade of these commodities, such as butchers, livestock traders, tanners, agents and merchants to develop an understanding of the social organisation of these commodities, and in the process reflect on the associational forms of economic activity in South Asia, namely caste, community and their relation to artisanal and mercantile endogamous guilds.
Research Foci
Colonial India | South Asian Islam | Global History | Social and economic history | history of capitalism in South Asia
List of Publications
Peer reviewed Journal Articles:
Niazi, Soheb (2024). “Towards a history of non-Ashraf Muslims: Notes on Muslim Occupational Castes in Late Colonial India,” Economic and Political Weekly, 59: 33. (Winner of D.N. Ghosh Prize)
Levesque, Julien & Niazi, Soheb. (2023). “Introduction: Caste politics, minority representation, and social mobility: the associational life of Muslim caste in India,” Contemporary South Asia, 31(3): pp. 413-425 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2023.2240258) (Open Access)
Niazi, Soheb (2022). “Local History in the Making: Tārīkh Nigārī at Qasbah Amroha (1878- 1934)”, Urdu Studies (4), pp. 25-45. (Open Access)
Niazi, Soheb (2020). “Sayyids and Social Stratification of Muslims in Colonial India: Genealogy and Narration of the Past in Amroha,” as part of Special Issue on “Historicizing Sayyid-ness: Social Status and Muslim Identity in South Asia”, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 30: 3.
pp. 467- 487. (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186320000358) (Open Access)
Editor of Special Issue:
Levesque, Julien & Niazi, Soheb ed. (2023). Caste Politics, minority representation, and social mobility: the associational life of Muslim caste in India, Contemporary South Asia, 31: 3 (Open Access)
Chapters in Edited Volume:
Niazi, Soheb (2025). “Practising Skills, Processing Skins: Urdu Manuals on Developing Chrome Tanning as a Rural Trade” in Crafting India's Skill Ecology - Reproductions, Recalibrations, and Reimaginations, ed. Sebastian Schwecke, Saikat Maitra and Srabani Maitra. Routledge: ICAS MP series. (Accepted for publication, Forthcoming, 2025) (Open Access)
Niazi, Soheb (2026). “Reforming Qaṣṣābs into Quraishīs: Qaumī Tārīkhs in the Urdu public sphere” in Other Histories, Other Pasts, ed. Neeladri Bhattacharya and Indra Sengupta. Routledge: ICAS MP Series. (Accepted for publication, Forthcoming, 2027) (Open Access).
Book Reviews:
Niazi, Soheb (2022). Making a Muslim: Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in Nineteenth- Century North India by S. Akbar Zaidi, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. LVII, No. 22, May 2022.
Niazi, Soheb (2021). Defending Muhammad in Modernity by Sherali Tareen, The Book Review, September 2021.
Niazi, Soheb (2020). The Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan edited by Yasmin Saikia and M. Raisur Rahman", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, No.11, 14 March, 2020.
Niazi, Soheb (2013). Makers of Islamic Civilization: IBN Khaldun by Syed Farid Alatas in the South Asia Special Issue (XXII) on Islam, The Book Review, Vol, XXXVII, No. 10, October 2013.
Podcasts and Public Scholarship:
Niazi, Soheb (September 27, 2024). Podcast: Muslim Universities in Post-Partition India With Laurence Gautier. Tazkira-e Jamia. Retrieved September 8, 2026 from https://tazkirajamia.hypotheses.org/599
Niazi, Soheb and Levesque, Julien. Podcast: Muslim Caste Associations in India. The Channel:IIAS Leiden, Podcast Series, 21 December, 2023. https://www.iias.asia/the-channel/muslim-occupational-castes
Niazi, Soheb. “Revisiting Sir Syed’s Early Religious Writings” in Café Dissensus, Special Issue
(40) on Remembering Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in Bicentenary Year (1817-2017), November 2017.
Niazi, Soheb. “Reclaiming “Manliness”: Reflections on growing up in Delhi” in Café Dissensus, Special Issue (35) on Masculinities in Urban India, May 2017.
Niazi, Soheb. “The Politics of Imagining (in) Urdu in Contemporary India”, in Café Dissensus, Special Issue (33) on Urdu In Contemporary India: Predicaments and Promises, March 2017.
