Padmini Baruah

Education

B.A.LL.B.(Hons.), National Law School of India University, Bengaluru – 2016
Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Boston, MA – 2021

Profile

Padmini has previously taught at NLSIU as a Visiting Faculty, and at Tufts University, in the Race, Colonialism and Diaspora department and the Anthropology department. As a teaching assistant and co-instructor at Tufts University, they taught courses on “Race and Settler Capitalism”, “Kinship: Living in Relation”, “Introduction to Race, Colonialism and Diaspora”, and “Colonialism in Global Perspective”.

At the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Boston, they were a Robert F. Meagher fellow, where they specialised in Comparative Politics and Gender Studies. They also received the prestigious Honos Civicus award for services rendered to the community at the School. Padmini is currently pursuing their PhD in Modern South Asian history at Tufts University. They focus primarily on the intersection of migration studies and gender, with a special emphasis on the citizenship crisis in Assam.

Their work has been published in numerous journals and platforms such as the Statelessness and Citizenship Review, the Socio-Legal Review, Scroll.in, The Indian Express and the Polis Project. They have previously taught at NLSIU and Tufts University, in the Race, Colonialism and Diaspora department and the Anthropology department.

In their spare time they enjoy singing acapella, reading, writing and theatre.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed journal articles:

• Sabhapandit, Trisha and Baruah, Padmini, “Untrustworthy and Unbelievable:  Women And The Quest For Citizenship In Assam,” The Statelessness and Citizenship  Review 3, no. 1 (2021): 236–58. (Both authors contributed equally)

• Baruah, Padmini, “The Right to Have Rights: Assam and the Legal Politics of  Citizenship,” Socio-Legal Review 16, no. 2 (2020)

Reports: 

• “Marginalised and Impoverished in Assam” (Assam: Right to Nationality and  Citizenship Network, January 2021)

• “You and I Are Not Friends: The Challenges of Ethnographic Study in the Migration  Field,” The Journeys Project, ed. Kimberley Wilson (Medford: The Leir Institute,  2019)

• “Our Destiny Is Written on Our Foreheads,” in The Journeys Project, ed. Kimberley  Wilson (Medford: The Leir Institute, 2019)

• Baruah, Padmini et al., “Paths to Justice: Surveying Judicial and Non-Judicial Dispute  Resolution in India” in Approaches to Justice in India (Bangalore: DAKSH, 2018) (Equal contribution by all  authors)

• Purushothama, Amulya and Baruah, Padmini, “Diversification and Efficiency: A Case  Study of the Karnataka Appellate Tribunal” in Approaches to Justice in India (Bangalore: DAKSH, 2018)

Media articles

• Speaking the Same Language: How Ethnonationalism and Hindutva Seep into the Adjudication of Citizenship in Assam, The Polis Project, May 2024.

• “The Violent Video from a Recent Eviction Drive Should Be a Moment of Reckoning  for Assamese Society,” accessed November 10, 2021,

• Baruah, Padmini and Wadud, Aman, “Government Needs to Act Urgently to  Conclude NRC Process in Assam,” The Indian Express, September 1, 2020

• Baruah, Padmini, “A Paper Trail to Nowhere: Proving Status in Assam and the Crisis  of Citizenship,” The Polis Project, Inc, August 26, 2020,

• Baruah, Padmini, “Assam: Supreme Court Must Do Much More to Save Prisoners in  Detention Centres from Covid-19,” Scroll, April 18, 2020,

• Baruah, Padmini and Sukhtankar, Sandip, “Opinion | Ensuring That #MeToo Doesn’t  Fizzle out,” Mint, November 1, 2018,

Blogs:

• Baruah, Padmini, “The Proof of Guilt: Guest Post: Trapped and Purged – the  Foreigners Tribunal Regime in Assam and the Criminalisation of the Citizen,” The  Proof of Guilt, June 26, 2020, https://theproofofguilt.blogspot.com/2020/06/guest post-trapped-and-purged.html

• Baruah, Padmini, “The Blind Side: India’s Tryst with Citizenship, Deprivation and  Statelessness,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, May 12, 2020, http://  www.fletcherforum.org/the-rostrum/2020/5/11/the-blind-side-indias-tryst-with citizenship-deprivation-and-statelessness

• Baruah, Padmini, “To Be or Not To Be (A Citizen): The Curious Case of Assam,” The  Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, June 3, 2019, http://www.fletcherforum.org/the rostrum/2019/5/8/to-be-or-not-to-be-a-citizen-the-curious-case-of-assam