This paper offers a critical examination of the contested space between Eurocentric global history and decolonial historiographies emerging from the Global South, with a focus on how these tensions shape the representation of marginalized and minority histories. It traces the evolution from a traditionally Eurocentric, and specifically, Anglocentric lens in global historical scholarship to more regionally centered approaches, acknowledging the inadequacies of earlier narratives that prioritized European powers and their colonial encounters. In response, post-colonial nationalist regimes, particularly in Third World countries, have increasingly integrated global historical frameworks with political imperatives, often through a lens of neo-cultural revivalism that seeks to glorify regional civilizations. This study delves into the rise of "Indocentrism" within India, illustrating how nationalistic and patriotic narratives have begun to inform and reshape the understanding of global history, frequently sidelining more pluralistic and critical approaches. A central focus is placed on the perspectives of historically oppressed minorities—specifically the Dalits (formerly referred to as "Untouchables")—who have been marginalized not only in Eurocentric historiographies but also within nationalist narratives that foreground dominant caste or religious groups. The paper further interrogates the pedagogical and methodological complexities of integrating these marginalized histories into the broader discourse of global history, raising critical questions about the ways in which historiography itself is a site of both inclusion and exclusion.

Global history is called upon to pay attention to its various actors. Here, the long presence of Muslims in the pre-modern Western Mediterranean, in places such as the Iberian Peninsula (11th-17th centuries), gives scholars food for thought. Mudejars and Moriscos, as minorities living among Christians, practised Islam in public until they were forced to convert, expelled and resettled, mostly in North Africa, Northern Europe, the Ottoman Empire and the Americas. Their case highlights multidirectional processes of interreligious encounter and knowledge transmission, challenging the one-sided historical accounts of the period based mainly on Christian sources.This paper will examine these Muslim voices as part of interrelated but distinct histories and systems of knowledge. The perspectives and methodologies of the Mudejars and Moriscos present the historian with a twofold task. One is to situate them within broad processes such as the expansionism of the emerging Spanish empire and its quest for religious territorial homogeneity. Their “Muslimness” served identity discourses that confronted religious difference outside and within the Christian community (for example, with Protestants). On the other hand, the challenge is to address how Mudejars and Moriscos situated themselves in history, linked to the wider Muslim community (umma), while remaining deeply rooted in their immediate contexts. My contribution will reflect on their writings, on the tension between the landscape of their interconnected groups and their position as peripheral minorities who have given local meaning to their history, but who can also be integrated into the expanded frameworks and perspectives that global history offers.

“ਅੱਜ ਆਖਾਂ ਵਾਰਸ ਸ਼ਾਹ ਨੂੰ ਕਿਤੇ ਕਬਰਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਬੋਲ। ਤੇ ਅੱਜ। ਕਿਤਾਬੇ ਇਸ਼ਕ ਦਾ ਕੋਈ ਅਗਲਾ ਵਰਕਾ ਫੋਲ।”
“Today, I call Waris Shah [a popular Sufi poet], ‘Speak from your grave,’And turn to the next page in your book of love.”-Excerpt from the poem ‘Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu’ (Today, I invoke Waris Shah) by Amrita Pritam on the horrors of partition. The Indian struggle for independence culminated in: the end of over 200 years of British colonial rule, the partition of the country along religious lines and the unprecedented mass migration of over 10 million people accompanied by grisly instances of riots in 1947.Much research exists on the ‘political’ and ‘economic’ British colonisation of India. However, the psychological aspect: the voices of those who experienced this forced migration and loss are seldom discussed. This research-based presentation addresses this gap by delving into the Indian partition experience and its impact on ordinary families, employing five in-depth case studies personally conducted by the author. Using unpublished pictures from the private collections of partition survivors and their oral testimonies, this research looks at the efforts made by refugees to remember or forget ‘1947’ and the legacy it has left behind. Crucially, these oral testimonies challenge the oversimplified binary and hostility popularly attributed to the partitioned countries—India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by the global media. Primary sources like partition literature, contemporary newspapers and digital representations have also been used to emphasise the disparity between the "real" and "perceived" experience of partition. In an era when all nation-states strive to strengthen the concept of hardcore nationalism, this research underlines how inextricably are the fates of various nation-states intertwined with each other —not least because of diplomatic dialogue, but through ‘extraordinary stories of ordinary voices’.

In the spring of 2002, Hu Xibai, an engineer from the Ningxia Chemical Plant, published a six-page article in a leading Chinese academic journal in the field of Hui Muslim studies. In his article, Hu Xibai documented the collaborations between a prominent imam and a Muslim warlord during the 1930s as they endeavored to modernize Islamic education in northwestern China. For the most part of his article, Hu followed the general format of an academic publication and spoke in the tone of an objective third-person. However, in his concluding remarks, he revealed his identity as the grandson of the imam and explained his personal investment in commemorating this history. In this paper, I will explore the article of Hu Xibai as a site where the official history of a nation-state meets the collective memory of a religious and ethnic minority. Through a close reading of the narrative structure and the timestamps in this piece, I argue that the conception of time in the collective memory of the Hui Muslims differs from the linear progressive timeline of the Chinese nation. In particular, the collective memory of the Hui Muslims is structured like a nesting Russian doll: a more distant past is nested within a more recent past, and the most recent past is nested within the present. Hence, in this paper, I will attempt to open up this doll and expand the article of Hu into fournested stories about the Hui Muslim community spanning three continents and one-and-a-half centuries.