Popular Writing
Linguistics in the Media
I strongly believe that, in addition to writing for specialized journals, scholars should also make their research accessible to a broader audience. I have contributed my scholarly views on sociolinguistic issues to many popular platforms. Many of them are based of my ongoing or completed research.
Popular Articles
2026 (Sep 18). Bushra Bano’s language is India’s strength, her attackers’ that of weakness. Maktoob Media. India.
2026 (April 28) ‘Broken Arabic’ between Mockery and Commercialization’. Language on the Move. (with Salma Dhailia, and Mahla Almeraikhi)
2024 (Aug 7). Semantic journeys: How some communities turned words used as slurs as an assertion of pride. (with Manish Thakur). Scroll, India.
2024 (April 23). Sacred Font, Profane Purpose. Language on the Move. (with Yasser S Khan).
2024 (January 16). Why Are Uzbek Youth Learning Arabic? Language on the Move. (with Mehrinigor Akhmedova, Bukhara State University, Uzbekistan).
2023 (December 10). Is Arabic under threat on the Arabian peninsula?. Language on the Move (with Shaikha Al-Hemaidi)
2022 (Nov 17). Qatar World Cup 2022: A global competition rooted in local Arab culture. Middle East Eye.
2022 (June 21). How Urdu scholar Gopi Chand Narang (1931-2022) advocated for the language as a ‘civilisational gain’. Scroll.In
2022 (May 26).Inqilab in Court: What does Urdu word really mean?. MaktoobIndia.
2021 (October 31) Yeh Kafir cricket: How sport is turned into Islamophobic weapon. MaktoobIndia.
2021 (April 11) BJP’s use of ‘begum’ and ‘shahzada’ to attack its opponents conceals a larger attack on Muslims. Scroll.in.
2021 (January 3) Nai Duniya’: Why Shamshur Rahman Faruqi strove to build a new world for literature and language. Scroll.In
2020 (December) Fighting the Current Pandemic: Deploying Linguistic Resources is the Key. In Together Apart: A collection of human experiences. Pp 29-32. Doha, HBKU Press. (Reprint of the newspaper article).
2020 (August 25) How Qatar overcome language and culture barriers in its fight against Covid-19. The Gulf Times, Doha Qatar.
2020 (June 24) “I regret having named him Sahil”: Urdu names in India. Language on the Move.com
2020 (June 14) Gulzar Dehlvi (1926-2020) defended the metaphor of Urdu with the subtle weapon of his poetry. Scroll.in
2020 (April 12) Media watch: How vocabulary was weaponised to target Indian Muslims after the Tablighi Jamat event. Scroll.in. India
2020. (April 14) Multilingual resources key to fighting COVID-19. Language on the Move.
2020 (February 13) Why Must the Uttarakhand Govt Undermine Urdu to Promote Sanskrit? The Wire. India.
2019 (August 8) The Dilli debate: Why should a city be known by only one name anyway? Scroll.in. India.
2019 (May 8). Everyone has got it wrong in the Ramadan-Ramzan debate. And no, it’s not about Wahhabism. The Print.
2019 (February 16). Not about numbers: Why Abu Dhabi labour court chose Hindi over Malayalam. The Print. India.
2018 (December 23). As We Celebrate Urdu, Let’s Not Ignore the Signs of Its Decline in India. The Wire. India.
2018 (December 2). Waqt, chaawal and Bollywood — the deep relationship between Indians and Arabs. The Print, India.
2018. Urdu translation of ‘Renaming India: Saffronization of Public Spaces'(ناموں کی تبدیلی: عوامی مقامات کا بھگوا کرن). Mazameen.com
2018 (October 12). Renaming India: Saffronisation of public spaces. Al-Jazeera.
2018 (September 30). Urdu sounds are disappearing from Bollywood songs. The Print. India
2018 (October 2). The Urdu sounds that are disappearing from Bollywood songs. Reprinted in the Dawn.
2010. Persian or Arabian Gulf?: Symbolic meanings of names. Al-Watan Daily/ International Herald Tribune. Kuwait. March 12.
2008. Trading words: Understanding contact between nations. The Kuwait Times. June 24.
2006. Old Delhi: A linguistic tapestry. The Milli Gazette. June 1-15, Delhi.
1997. Ghalib’s Delhi. The Pioneer. 14 March 1997 Delhi.
1996. Politics of Poetics. The Hindustan Times. 25 August, New Delhi.
1996. Linguistic Authoritarianism. The Indian Express. 10 February, Delhi.