Scholar · Folklorist · Educator
Exploring memory, violence, and resistance through Punjab's oral traditions
I am a researcher and educator working at the intersection of folkloristics, memory studies, and cultural trauma. My doctoral work investigates how vernacular oral forms — dhadi var, qissa, kavishri — carry the memory of Punjab's turbulent past, offering counter-narratives to official histories. I believe in the power of oral tradition as living archive, and in the classroom as a space where literature and critical thought meet.
University of Delhi — Department of Indian Languages and Literary Studies
Folklore and Politics: A Study of the Khalistan Movement in the Oral Traditions of Punjab
University of Delhi — Department of Indian Languages and Literary Studies
Examined Punjabi fiction from the insurgency era as an archive of alternative epistemology and counter-memory.
Amity University — Amity Institute of English Studies and Research
University of Delhi — Mata Sundri College of Women
Journal of Advanced Studies in English and Education, 4(4) · 2019
ADR Journals, 2(2), pp. 7-11 · 2017
Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan, New Delhi
School of Open Learning, University of Delhi · 2023
Makrand, Naad Pargaas, USA & Amritsar · Jan 2025
Makrand, Naad Pargaas, USA & Amritsar · Jul 2025
Dublin City University, Ireland
IIT Madras, Chennai
University of Delhi
ICPR, Banasthali Vidyapith & South Asian University, Rajasthan
Panjab University, Chandigarh
Guru Tegh Bahadur Institute of Technology, GGSIPU
English Language and Communication Skills
College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi
English Language through Literature, English Fluency, Indian Classical Literature, Creative Writing
School of Open Learning, University of Delhi
English Literature and Communication
Beyond the Academy
Ankita presented an exposition on the Ashtavakra Gita — a classical Advaita Vedanta scripture structured as a dialogue between the sage Ashtavakra and King Janaka. She traced the progressive arc of the text across its 20 chapters: from Janaka's initial question about reality, through Ashtavakra's patient deconstruction of ego and attachment, to the final dissolution into non-duality. She highlighted how the text's literary structure — its metaphors of ocean and wave, rope and snake, dream and waking — makes abstract philosophy tangible.
Sikh Women Book Club, Naad Pargaas USA
“To be free, shun the experiences of the senses like poison. Turn your attention to forgiveness, sincerity, kindness, simplicity, truth.”
Ashtavakra's opening counsel to King Janaka — Chapter 1
“You are not earth, water, fire or air, nor are you empty space. Liberation is to know yourself as awareness alone — the witness of these.”
On the nature of the Self — Chapter 1
“As waves, foam and bubbles are not different from water, so the universe emanating from the self is not different from the self.”
Janaka's realization — Chapter 2
“The universe arises from you like foam from the sea. Know yourself as one. Enter the peace of dissolution.”
Ashtavakra on impermanence — Chapter 5
“When the mind does not desire or grieve, accept or reject, become pleased or displeased — liberation is at hand.”
On the subtlety of attachment — Chapter 8
“Where is existence or non-existence, where is unity or duality? Nothing emanates from me. No more can be said.”
Janaka's final words — the closing verse of the Ashtavakra Gita
Sikh Hermeneutics
Ankita interrogates the tendency to read Sakhi merely as hagiography or historical biography — a reduction that re-inscribes onto-theological assumptions of fixed origins and doctrinal closure. She proposes a fourfold hermeneutic for reading the Sakhi of Guru Ladhore (the discovery of Guru Tegh Bahadur as the ninth Sikh Guru by Bhai Makhan Shah Lubana). The framework moves through history, episteme, ontology, and Hukam — arguing that Sakhi is not a closed event but a semantically open, cosmologically driven phenomenon where Shabad, Nam, and Hukam form a triadic movement of activation.
Academic Paper Presentation
“The Sakhi's surplus of meaning — its ability to signify beyond factual narration — is compromised when approached solely as a historical or sociological artifact, abstracted from its wider cosmology.”
On the hermeneutical problem in prevailing interpretations
“Prayer functions as the purest form of transcendental gesture — an orientation of consciousness towards the divine that signifies interior alignment rather than outward claim.”
On the symbolic resonance of the Sakhi — epistemic layer
“The gold mohar represents the purified domain of materiality — not wealth as possession, but matter rendered meaningful through intention, responsibility, and ethical participation in the world.”
On the convergence that discloses the Guru
“Shabad performs this transformative work — it carves raw experience into revelation, enabling realization. In the Sakhi, transcendental meaning enters the immanent world, demanding disclosure.”
On the ontic movement — the stone and the statue
“Hukam is not understood here as a command imposed from the outside, but an immanent principle that structures reality through rhythm, relationality, and openness.”
Drawing on Jaspreet Kaur's deconstructive reading of Hukam
“The cry of Guru Ladhore marks this ontological shift. The event becomes a meta-event — a disclosure that journeys through cosmology and opens into ontological resonance.”
On Sakhi as meta-event — the concluding insight