Join us for a book conversation with Nidhi Mahajan on Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (UAE time) at the Auditorium, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah (location map).
She will discuss her latest book, Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean, exploring the lives of Muslim seafarers from the Gulf of Kachchh in India and their transoceanic voyages, and share insights into ethnographic research, historical analysis, and writing across maritime worlds. The session will include a Q&A and a book signing.
Nidhi Mahajan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute (2020–2022). She is the author of Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean, developed during her residency at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University. Her research examines maritime trade, labor, and social worlds across the Indian Ocean, with a focus on historically marginalized communities.
Moorings follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the Indian Ocean on mechanized wooden vessels known as vahans, or dhows. These voyages generate capital through moorings that are spatial, moral, material, and conceptual. From the perspective of the dhow, the book examines the social worlds of Muslim seafarers navigating multiple regulatory regimes, colonial legacies, neoliberal economies, and the rise of Hindutva, insurgencies, climate change, and border regimes.
Based on historical and ethnographic research aboard ships, at ports, and in religious shrines and homes, Moorings shows how capitalism derives value from historically sedimented practices grounded in caste, gender, and transregional community-based forms of regulation. Read more.
“This is a brilliant book. It sensitively tells the stories of seafarers on dhows traversing the Indian Ocean. We hear about their struggles with caste and class prejudice, racism and Islamophobia. The seafarers aboard dhows who navigate multiple sovereignties at sea and complex border regimes on land are rendered lovingly here, in three dimensions and with all the requisite appreciation of complexity and respect for their trajectories.”—Laleh Khalili, author of The Corporeal Life of Seafaring
“A stunning multisited ethnography of the ships and smugglers that underpin the global economy. Nidhi Mahajan’s incisive scholarship shows us how borders, shrines, and meals are the moorings that enable mobilities across the Indian Ocean.”—Johan Mathew, author of Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea
“Draws from rich, intimate, and challenging fieldwork and emphasizes how seafarers from Western India contest and challenge their marginality by turning to the sea—in ways that follow in the footsteps of generations before them—seeking out possibilities amidst perilous circumstances.”—Jatin Dua, author of Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean
Join us for a book conversation with Nidhi Mahajan on Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (UAE time) at the Auditorium, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah (location map).
Join us for a book conversation with Nidhi Mahajan on Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (UAE time) at the Auditorium, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah (location map).
She will discuss her latest book, Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean, exploring the lives of Muslim seafarers from the Gulf of Kachchh in India and their transoceanic voyages, and share insights into ethnographic research, historical analysis, and writing across maritime worlds. The session will include a Q&A and a book signing.
Nidhi Mahajan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute (2020–2022). She is the author of Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean, developed during her residency at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University. Her research examines maritime trade, labor, and social worlds across the Indian Ocean, with a focus on historically marginalized communities.
Moorings follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the Indian Ocean on mechanized wooden vessels known as vahans, or dhows. These voyages generate capital through moorings that are spatial, moral, material, and conceptual. From the perspective of the dhow, the book examines the social worlds of Muslim seafarers navigating multiple regulatory regimes, colonial legacies, neoliberal economies, and the rise of Hindutva, insurgencies, climate change, and border regimes.
Based on historical and ethnographic research aboard ships, at ports, and in religious shrines and homes, Moorings shows how capitalism derives value from historically sedimented practices grounded in caste, gender, and transregional community-based forms of regulation. Read more.
“This is a brilliant book. It sensitively tells the stories of seafarers on dhows traversing the Indian Ocean. We hear about their struggles with caste and class prejudice, racism and Islamophobia. The seafarers aboard dhows who navigate multiple sovereignties at sea and complex border regimes on land are rendered lovingly here, in three dimensions and with all the requisite appreciation of complexity and respect for their trajectories.”—Laleh Khalili, author of The Corporeal Life of Seafaring
“A stunning multisited ethnography of the ships and smugglers that underpin the global economy. Nidhi Mahajan’s incisive scholarship shows us how borders, shrines, and meals are the moorings that enable mobilities across the Indian Ocean.”—Johan Mathew, author of Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea
“Draws from rich, intimate, and challenging fieldwork and emphasizes how seafarers from Western India contest and challenge their marginality by turning to the sea—in ways that follow in the footsteps of generations before them—seeking out possibilities amidst perilous circumstances.”—Jatin Dua, author of Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean
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