Amar Sohal

Amar Sohal is a Lecturer in the History of Political Thought at King's College London's Department of History, within the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. He specializes in modern South Asian intellectual history, focusing on anti-colonial nationalism, religious politics, and the secular state. His research examines how political ideas shape contemporary India and Pakistan, particularly through the lens of Indian Muslim nationalists like Abul Kalam Azad, Sheikh Abdullah, and Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

• Education: DPhil and MSt from University of Oxford; BA from University College London
• Previous Role: Early-Career Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

His monograph The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India’s Partition (2023) argues for a distinct Muslim secularity within secular Indian nationalism. His research has been published in Modern Intellectual History, Global Intellectual History, and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. He co-edited special issue Refusing Minority, Recasting Islam (2022) and edited India in Miniature: Kashmir and the History of Political Thought, 1931–1965 (2025).

Amar’s work bridges academic and public spheres, including a documentary Azad and Jinnah: A Political Rivalry in Late Colonial India (2016) and contributions to global media. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and supervises PhD students in South Asian political thought.

Current research explores Hindu nationalist experiments with conservatism and non-violence. His teaching covers Indian/global anti-colonial thought and European intellectual history.