Tradition and Modernity in India

by J-T.M. · Published April 22, 2020 · Updated March 9, 2025

Synopsis

In this course we will explore ideas of Indian culture, history and civilization, with civilization defined as varying expressions of collective vitality, and the emergence of creative rather than destructive forms of contestation and cohabitation within structures of hierarchy and social possibilities. Rather than a sharp break between tradition and modernity, we will seek to understand the ways in which old and new civilizational, social and theological questions and realities endure and are transfigured across three domains: politics, aesthetics and ethics.

In each of these domains we examine the birth of ideas, moving across religious and secular formations, such as, in politics, M.K. Gandhi’s (1869–1948) idea of how brute force may (or may not) be transformed into soul force, as well as B.R. Ambedkar’s (1891–1956) embrace of Buddhism; in aesthetics, we examine popular culture as conflicting political tradition, which have had a critical task of teaching a society defined primarily by caste (in marriage and social structures of interaction), how to express love and forms of friendship and intimacy with others; in ethics we examine the ways in which potentially hostile neighboring groups have found ways of living together, amidst older and newer contestations of ideas of high and low, or self and other.

Through these and other examples of the birth of ideas within politics, aesthetics and ethics, moving across disciplines, theologies, texts, films, and images, this course aims to teach students to think creatively about key concepts in Indian collective and intimate life such as caste, tribe, religion, sexuality, and gender, and about civilization as forms of collective vitality that may also wane, or be replenished. The grading for the course is described in detail below.

Welcome to what we hope will be an adventure of thought and learning!

Course Validation

This course will be based on several complementary pedagogical approaches:

A 15 minutes group presentation presentation that each student is expected to make starting from the second course (30%).
Class attendance, participation in our class activities, discussion and the digital annotation of one compulsory readings per teaching week (20%). You can either choose to annotate a primary reading (marked with the symbol †) or an academic piece (marked with the symbol ⋆).
A written essay (6,000-8,000 words). Students will choose the topic with the advice and consent of the Professor (40%). The essay is written in two stages: a first draft that receives feedback and a final draft. Students who do not meet the deadline for the first version will lose the right to receive feedback or submit a first draft; only the final draft will be accepted.

Prerequisites & Practicalities

There are no prerequisites. The class will be of most immediate interest to students majoring in any field of knowledge.
The schedule is tentative and subject to change. I will introduce the tool used to annotate readings in the course of the first class.

Course material

Readings

No documents found.

Library

For a quick access to the course material at large:

Course Objectives

Successful students:

grasp the foundational components of the Indian/South Asian cultual, political and economic landscape across various historical periods;
understand how different actors, processes and institutions shape Indian culture;
critically engage with ethnographic and statistical methods of inquiry;
draw meaningful comparisons between societies inside and outside South Asia;
capture the multifaceted nature of political representation in South Asia

Source: Pinney, Christopher. 2011. “The Tiger’s Nature, but Not the Tiger: Bal Gangadhar Tilak as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Counter-Guru.” Public Culture 23(2):395–416. doi: 10.1215/08992363-1161967.
Author’s caption: Paradoxes of nonviolence: Photographic montage of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi embodying figures of political potency, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bhagat Singh, and Adolf Hitler. Ca. mid- 1940s, central India. Private collection.

Submission and deadlines

Sessions

Week 01. A gentle introduction to the question of this course.

Lecture [TMI_01_S1]

⋆ Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2005. ‘An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity’. European Journal of Sociology 46(3):497–526. doi: 10.1017/S0003975605000196. ✍︎ / ⇒
† ‘Tradition’ (pp.174–77) and ‘Modernity’ (pp.124–25) entries in Jeffrey, Craig, and John Harriss. 2014. Keywords for Modern India. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_01_S2]

✄ Kurtha, Akbar, dir. 2012. In Search of Meluhha: The Story of Mohenjodaro. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_01-FR]

Bate, Bernard. 2021. Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern: Political Oratory and the Social Imaginary in South Asia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Witsoe, Jeffrey. 2013. Democracy against Development: Lower-Caste Politics and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Arnold, David John. 2021. Burning the Dead: Hindu Nationhood and the Global Construction of Indian Tradition. Oakland (Calif.): University of California Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Chhibber, Pradeep, Susan L. Ostermann, and Rahul Verma. 2018. ‘The State as Guardian of the Social Order: Conservatism in Indian Political Thought and Its Modern Manifestations’. Studies in Indian Politics 6(1):27–43. doi: 10.1177/2321023018762674. ✍︎ / ⇒
Dodson, Michael S., and Brian A. Hatcher. 2012. Trans-Colonial Modernities in South Asia. London New York: Routledge. ✍︎ / ⇒
Ewing, Katherine Pratt, and Rosemary R. Corbett. 2020. Modern Sufis and the State: The Politics of Islam in South Asia and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2000. ‘Modernity and Politics in India’. Deadalus 129(1):137–62. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2005. ‘On the Enchantment of the State: Indian Thought on the Role of the State in the Narrative of Modernity’. European Journal of Sociology 46(2):263–96. doi: 10.1017/S0003975605000093. ✍︎ / ⇒
Liecthy, Mark. 2006. ‘Learning to Be Modern: Mass Media and Identity in Kathmandu’. Studies in Nepali History and Society 11(1):3–29. ✍︎ / ⇒
Lucia, Amanda. 2014. ‘Innovative Gurus: Tradition and Change in Contemporary Hinduism’. International Journal of Hindu Studies 18(2):221–63. doi: 10.1007/s11407-014-9159-5. ✍︎ / ⇒
Hay, Stephen, ed. 1988. Sources of Indian Tradition. 2: Modern India and Pakistan / Ed. and Rev. by Stephen Hay. 2. ed. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Herzfeld, Michael. 2021. Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Nanda, Meera. 2006. Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodernism, Science, and Hindu Nationalism. Paperback ed. Delhi: Permanent Black. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mosse, David. 2020. ‘The Modernity of Caste and the Market Economy’. Modern Asian Studies 54(4):1225–71. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X19000039. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mirnig, Nina, Péter-Dániel Szántó, and Michael Williams. 2013. Puṣpikā: Tracing Ancient India through Texts and Traditions Contributions to Current Research in Indology. Oxford Havertown: Oxbow Books. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mount, Liz. 2017. ‘Saris and Contemporary Indian Womanhood: How Middle-Class Women Navigate the Tradition/Modernity Split’. Contemporary South Asia 25(2):167–81. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2017.1321617. ✍︎ / ⇒
Nandy, Ashis, ed. 1999. Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity. Tokyo: United Nations University. ✍︎ / ⇒
Pathak, Avijit. 2024. Indian Modernity: Contradictions, Paradoxes and Possibilities. New York (N.Y.): Routledge. ✍︎ / ⇒
Piliavsky, Anastasia. 2024. ‘India’s Little Political Tradition’. Political Theology 25(2):130–36. doi: 10.1080/1462317X.2022.2101828. ✍︎ / ⇒
Ray, Raka, and Seemin Qayum. 2009. Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity, and Class in India. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Rogers, Martyn. 2008. ‘Modernity, “Authenticity”, and Ambivalence: Subaltern Masculinities on a South Indian College Campus’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14(1):79–95. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00479.x. ✍︎ / ⇒
Srivastava, Sanjay. 2015. ‘Modi-Masculinity: Media, Manhood, and “Traditions” in a Time of Consumerism’. Television & New Media 16(4):331–38. doi: 10.1177/1527476415575498. ✍︎ / ⇒
Sundaram, Ravi. 2009. Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism. London ; New York: Routledge. ✍︎ / ⇒
Talwalker, Clare. 2009. ‘Kindred Publics: The Modernity of Kin Fetishism in Western India’. Postcolonial Studies 12(1):69–88. doi: 10.1080/13688790802616233. ✍︎ / ⇒

Week 02. Origins: “India is not simply a large population, but rather a mosaic of small populations.”

Lecture [TMI_02_S1]

⋆ Chapter 6 (pp.122–153), ‘The Collision That Formed India’ in Reich, David. 2018. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
† ‘Who is a Hindu?’ (pp.50–56) in Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. 2021. Essentials of Hindutva. New Delhi, India: Global Vision Publishing House. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_02_S2]

✄ Namit, Arora. 2024. ‘Episode 2: The Aryans and the Vedic Age, A Brief History of a Civilization’ (url: https://youtu.be/rrBoZrhv3Y4?si=58e0Lq6alCC_I1WI). ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_02-FR]

Anthony, David. 2023. ‘Ancient DNA and Migrations: New Understandings and Misunderstandings’. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 70:101508. doi: 10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101508. ✍︎ / ⇒
Bakhle, Janaki. 2024. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Bryant, Edwin. 2010. ‘Myth of Origin: Europe and the Aryan Homeland Quest’. Pp.20–58 in The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, edited by Bryant, Edwin. 2000. New York: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Davis, Richard H. 2024. Religions of Early India: A Cultural History. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Goswami, Manu. 2010. ‘6. India as Bharat: A Territorial Nativist Vision of Nationhood, 1860 –1880’. Pp. 165–208 in Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. University of Chicago Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Iliescu, Florin Mircea, George Chaplin, Niraj Rai, Guy S. Jacobs, Chandana Basu Mallick, Anshuman Mishra, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, and Nina G. Jablonski. 2018. ‘The Influences of Genes, the Environment, and Social Factors on the Evolution of Skin Color Diversity in India’. American Journal of Human Biology 30(5):e23170. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.23170. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2017. ‘From Holy Sites to Web Sites: Hindu Nationalism, from Sacred Territory to Diasporic Ethnicity’. Pp. 153–74 in Religions, Nations, and Transnationalism in Multiple Modernities, edited by P. Michel, A. Possamai, and B. S. Turner. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jamison, Stéphanie, and Joël Brereton. 2014. The Rigveda. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Majumder, Partha P. 2010. ‘The Human Genetic History of South Asia’. Current Biology 20(4):R184–87. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.053. ✍︎ / ⇒
Michael Witzel, ‘Vedas and Upaniṣads’. Pp.83–118 in G. Flood, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. London: Wiley-Blackwell. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mishra, Anshuman, Kumarasamy Thangaraj et al. 2017. ‘Genotype-Phenotype Study of the Middle Gangetic Plain in India Shows Association of Rs2470102 with Skin Pigmentation’. Journal of Investigative Dermatology 137(3):670–77. doi: 10.1016/j.jid.2016.10.043. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mcelreavey, K., and L. Quintana-Murci. 2005. ‘A Population Genetics Perspective of the Indus Valley through Uniparentally-Inherited Markers’. Annals of Human Biology 32(2):154–62. doi: 10.1080/03014460500076223. ✍︎ / ⇒
Narasimhan, Vagheesh, David Reich et al. 2019. ‘The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia’. Science 365(6457):eaat7487. doi: 10.1126/science.aat7487. ✍︎ / ⇒
Quintana-Murci, Lluís, Csilla Krausz, Tatiana Zerjal, S. Hamid Sayar, Michael F. Hammer, S. Qasim Mehdi, Qasim Ayub, Raheel Qamar, Aisha Mohyuddin, Uppala Radhakrishna, Mark A. Jobling, Chris Tyler-Smith, and Ken McElreavey. 2001. ‘Y-Chromosome Lineages Trace Diffusion of People and Languages in Southwestern Asia’. The American Journal of Human Genetics 68(2):537–42. doi: 10.1086/318200. ✍︎ / ⇒
Reich, David, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Nick Patterson, Alkes L. Price, and Lalji Singh. 2009. ‘Reconstructing Indian Population History’. Nature 461(7263):489–94. doi: 10.1038/nature08365. ✍︎ / ⇒
Shrinivasan, Rukmini. 2021. Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us about Modern India. Chennai: Context. ✍︎ / ⇒
Singh, Kundan. 2021. ‘Colonial Roots of the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory and the Contemporary Archaeological Evidence in Western Sources’. Indian Historical Review 48(2):251–72. doi: 10.1177/03769836211052101. ✍︎ / ⇒
Pathak, Ajai Kumar et al. 2024. ‘Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup L1-M22 Traces Neolithic Expansion in West Asia and Supports the Elamite and Dravidian Connection’. iScience 27(6):110016. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110016. ✍︎ / ⇒
Thapar, Romila. 1989. ‘Epic and History: Tradition, Dissent and Politics in India’. Past and Present 125(1):3–26. doi: 10.1093/past/125.1.3. ✍︎ / ⇒
Thapar, Romila. 1996. ‘The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics’. Social Scientist 24(1/3):3. doi: 10.2307/3520116. ✍︎ / ⇒
Witas, Henryk W., Jacek Tomczyk, Krystyna Jędrychowska-Dańska, Gyaneshwer Chaubey, and Tomasz Płoszaj. 2013. ‘mtDNA from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman Period Suggests a Genetic Link between the Indian Subcontinent and Mesopotamian Cradle of Civilization’ edited by T. Gilbert. PLoS ONE 8(9):e73682. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073682. ✍︎ / ⇒
Zerjal, Tatiana, Arpita Pandya, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Edmund Y. S. Ling, Jennifer Kearley, Stefania Bertoneri, Silvia Paracchini, Lalji Singh, and Chris Tyler-Smith. 2007. ‘Y-Chromosomal Insights into the Genetic Impact of the Caste System in India’. Human Genetics 121(1):137–44. doi: 10.1007/s00439-006-0282-2. ✍︎ / ⇒

Links

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/brahmin-genes-whats-the-controversy-that-divided-social-media-101724724473738.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/qwmso1/ancient_harappan_genome_lacks_ancestry_from/

Week 03. The sociality of caste: “from the shadows to the stars”

Lecture [TMI_03_S1]

⋆ Chapter 5 (pp.172–192), ‘The Laws of Manu’ in Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, ed. 1989. A Source Book in Indian Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. ✍︎ / ⇒
† Vemula, Rohit. 2016. ‘Dalit Scholar Rohit Vemula’s Suicide Note’. The Times of India. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_03_S2]

✄ Vachani, Lalit, dir. 2019. Recasting Selves. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_03-FR]

Blom Hansen, Thomas. 2023. ‘Real Abstractions: Markets, Moralities, and Social Segmentation in Modern India’. Modern Asian Studies 57(5):1684–89. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X23000045. ✍︎ / ⇒
Gill, Navyug. 2019. ‘Limits of Conversion: Caste, Labor, and the Question of Emancipation in Colonial Panjab’. The Journal of Asian Studies 78(1):3–22. doi: 10.1017/S0021911818000918. ✍︎ / ⇒
Guru, Gopal, and Sundar Sarukkai. 2015. The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2000. ‘Sanskritization vs. Ethnicization in India: Changing Indentities and Caste Politics before Mandal’. Asian Survey 40(5):756–66. doi: 10.2307/3021175. ✍︎ / ⇒
Figueira, Dorothy Matilda. 2002. Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity. Albany: State University of New York Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kikon, Dolly. 2022. ‘Dirty Food: Racism and Casteism in India’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 45(2):278–97. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2021.1964558. ✍︎ / ⇒
Lorenzen, David N. 1999. ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(4):630–59. doi: 10.1017/S0010417599003084.
Narayan, Badri. 2009. Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation. Los Angeles: Sage. ✍︎ / ⇒
Olivelle, Patrick, and Suman Olivelle, eds. 2005. Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Olivelle, Patrick, ed. 2017. A Dharma Reader: Classical Indian Law. New York: Columbia University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Prashad, Vijay. 2000. Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of Dalit Community. New Delhi ; New York: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Rao, Anupama. 2009. The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Robertson Alexander. 1938. The Religious Life Of India: The Mahar Folk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Srinivas, M.N. 1976. The Remembered Village. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Teltumbde, Anand. 2017. Dalits: Past, Present and Future. London New York (N.Y.): Routledge, Taylor & Francis group. ✍︎ / ⇒
Thapar, Romila. 1989. ‘Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity’. Modern Asian Studies 23(2):209–31. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X00001049. ✍︎ / ⇒
Viswanath, Rupa. 2014. The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India. New York: Columbia University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Waghmore, Suryakant. 2021. Civility against Caste: Dalit Politics and Citizenship in Western India. Los Angeles: SAGE. ✍︎ / ⇒
Witkowski, Nicholas. 2025. ‘Rethinking “Brahmanization” and Caste Politics in Late Ancient South Asia’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 11707023. doi: 10.1215/1089201X-11707023. ✍︎ / ⇒

Links

https://www.audible.co.uk/podcast/Episode-14-Unpacking-Indias-Caste-System-Origins-Evolution-and-Impact/B0DQ26B52L

Week 04. Mahabharata and the world: “the creed of the Aryan fighter”

Lecture [TMI_04_S1]

⋆ Sartori, Andrew. 2010. ‘The Transfiguration of Duty in Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita’. Modern Intellectual History 7(2):319–34. doi: 10.1017/S1479244310000090. ✍︎ / ⇒
† ‘The Core of the Teaching’ (pp.4, pp.29–38) or ‘The Creed of the Aryan Fighter’ (ch.7, pp.57–67) or ‘The Gist of the Karmayoga’ (ch.24, pp.247–258) in Ghose, Aurobindo. 1996. Essays on the Gita. 9th ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_04_S2]

✄ Episode 47, ‘Vastraharan’ in Chopra, B.R., dir. 1988. Mahabharat. New Delhi: Doordarshan. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mankekar, Purnima. 1999. ‘Television Tales, National Narratives, and a Woman’s Rage: Multiple Interpretations of Draupadi’s “Disrobing”’. Pp. 224–56 in Screening Culture, Viewing Politics. Duke University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_04-FR]

Alter, Joseph. 2021. ‘Pahalwan Baba Ramdev: Wrestling with Yoga and Middle-Class Masculinity in India’. Modern Asian Studies 55(4):1359–81. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X20000219. ✍︎ / ⇒
Appadurai, Arjun. 1981. ‘Gastro‐politics in Hindu South Asia’. American Ethnologist 8(3):494–511. doi: 10.1525/ae.1981.8.3.02a00050. ✍︎ / ⇒
Bayly, Christopher. 2010. ‘India, the Bhagavad Gita and the World’. Modern Intellectual History 7(2):275–95. doi: 10.1017/S1479244310000077. ✍︎ / ⇒
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, and Rochona Majumdar. 2010. ‘Gandhi’s Gita and Politics as Such’. Modern Intellectual History 7(2):335–53. doi: 10.1017/S1479244310000107. ✍︎ / ⇒
Chandra, Bipan, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, K. N. Panikkar, and Sucheta Mahajan. 2016. India’s Struggle for Independence. S.l.: Penguin Random House India Private Limited. ✍︎ / ⇒
Chaturvedi, Vinayak. 2010. ‘Rethinking Knowledge with Action: V.D. Savarkar, the Bhagavad Gita, and Histories of Warfare’. Modern Intellectual History 7(2):417–35. doi: 10.1017/S1479244310000144. ✍︎ / ⇒
Figueira, Dorothy M. 2023. The Afterlives of the Bhagavad Gītā: Readings in Translation. Chapter 8, ‘The Nazi Kṣatriya Ethos. New York: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Flood, Gavin Dennis. 2020. Hindu Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Gold, Daniel. 2015. Provincial Hinduism: Religion and Community in Gwalior City. New York: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Gupta, Bhuvi, and Jacob Copeman. 2019. ‘Awakening Hindu Nationalism through Yoga: Swami Ramdev and the Bharat Swabhiman Movement’. Contemporary South Asia 27(3):313–29. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2019.1587386. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (chapter 1). New York: Columbia University Press.
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2009. ‘The Hindu Nationalist Reinterpretation of Pilgrimage in India: The Limits of Yatra Politics’. Nations and Nationalism 15(1):1–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8129.2009.00364.x. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jha, Avishek. 2024. ‘Religiosity, Space-Making, Exclusion: “Kanwar Yatra” Celebrations in a North Indian City’. Studies in Indian Politics 12(1):20–32. doi: 10.1177/23210230241235368. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kapila, Shruti, and Faisal Devji. 2010. ‘The Bhagavad Gita and Modern Thought: Introduction’. Modern Intellectual History 7(2):269–73. doi: 10.1017/S1479244310000065. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kapila, Shruti, and Faisal Devji. 2013. Political Thought in Action: The Bhagavad Gita and Modern India. Cambridge New York: Cambridge university press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kumar, Krishna. 1990. ‘Hindu Revivalism and Education in North-Central India’. Social Scientist 18(10):4. doi: 10.2307/3517376.
Pechilis, Karen. 2023. Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ✍︎ / ⇒
Martin, Nancy. 2023. Mirabai: The Making of a Saint. New York (N.Y.): Oxford university press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Meyer, Birgit, and Annelies Moors. 2006. Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington (Ind.): Indiana university press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, ed. 1949. The Bhagavadgītā. Second edition. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mankekar, Purnima. 1999. ‘Television Tales, National Narratives, and a Woman’s Rage: Multiple Interpretations of Draupadi’s “Disrobing”’. Pp. 224–56 in Screening Culture, Viewing Politics. Duke University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mallinson, James. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London: Penguin Books Ltd. ✍︎ / ⇒
Michaels, Axel. 2016. Homo Ritualis: Hindu Ritual and Its Significance for Ritual Theory. New York: Oxford University press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Pechilis, Karen. 2023. Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ✍︎ / ⇒
Shalom, Naama. 2017. Re-Ending the Mahabharata: The Rejection of Dharma in the Sanskrit Epic. Albany (N.Y.): SUNY, State University of New York Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Thapar, Romila. 1989. ‘Epic and History: Tradition, Dissent and Politics in India’. Past and Present 125(1):3–26. doi: 10.1093/past/125.1.3. ✍︎ / ⇒
Venkatkrishnan, Anand. 2024. Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhāgavata Purāna in Indian Intellectual History. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Verghese, Ajay. 2023. ‘Religion, Politics, and the Case of Hinduism’. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.4506904. ✍︎ / ⇒
Weiss, Richard S. 2019. The Emergence of Modern Hinduism: Religion on the Margins of Colonialism. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Wolfers, Alex. 2016. ‘Born Like Krishna in the Prison-House: Revolutionary Asceticism in the Political Ashram of Aurobindo Ghose’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 39(3):525–45. doi: 10.1080/00856401.2016.1199253. ✍︎ / ⇒
Zavos, John. 1999. ‘The Ārya Samāj and the Antecedents of Hindu Nationalism’. International Journal of Hindu Studies 3(1):57–81. doi: 10.1007/s11407-999-0008-x. ✍︎ / ⇒
Zúquete, José Pedro. 2013. ‘Missionary Politics – A Contribution to the Study of Populism’. Religion Compass 7(7):263–71. doi: 10.1111/rec3.12048. ✍︎ / ⇒

Links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db_KtiEwwJs

Week 05. Ram and mythopolitics: “Hindu hriday samrat”?

Lecture [TMI_05_S1]

⋆ Pollock, Sheldon. 1993. ‘Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination in India’. The Journal of Asian Studies 52(2):261–97. doi: 10.2307/2059648. ✍︎ / ⇒
† Tushar, Abhijeet and Isha Anupriya. 2018. Snippets of Supreme Court Judgment (Ayodhya Verdict). Ranchi: Judicial Academy Jharkhand. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_05_S2]

✄ Pai, Anant. 2000. Valmiki’s Ramayana: The Great Indian Epic. New Delhi: Amar Chitra Katha. ✍︎ / ⇒
✄ Appupen. 2018. Rashtrayana: Trouble in Paradesh by Appupen. Halahala Comics. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_05-FR]

Basu, Anustup. 2020. Hindutva as Political Monotheism. Durham: Duke University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2001. ‘Clothing the Political Man: A Reading of the Use of Khadi/White in Indian Public Life’. Postcolonial Studies 4(1):27–38. doi: 10.1080/13688790120046852. ✍︎ / ⇒
Copeman, Jacob, and Aya Ikegame. 2012. ‘Guru Logics’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(1):289–336. doi: 10.14318/hau2.1.014. ✍︎ / ⇒
Copeman, Jacob, Arkotong Longkumer, and Koonal Duggal, eds. 2023. Gurus and Media: Sound, Image, Machine, Text and the Digital. London: UCL Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Khurshid, Salman. 2021. Sunrise over Ayodhya : Nationhood in Our Times. S.l.: Penguin Random House India Private Limited. ✍︎ / ⇒
Lucia, Amanda. 2022. ‘The Contemporary Guru Field’. Religion Compass 16(2):e12427. doi: 10.1111/rec3.12427. ✍︎ / ⇒
Ludden, David, ed. 2010. Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India. 2. ed., 4. impression. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Mantena, Karuna. 2012. ‘Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence’. American Political Science Review 106(2):455–70. doi: 10.1017/S000305541200010X. ✍︎ / ⇒
Pradhan, Rajesh. 2014. ‘When the Saints Go Marching in’: The Curious Ambivalence of Religious Sadhus in Recent Politics in India. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. ✍︎ / ⇒
Pinney, Christopher. 2011. ‘The Tiger’s Nature, but Not the Tiger: Bal Gangadhar Tilak as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Counter-Guru’. Public Culture 23(2):395–416. doi: 10.1215/08992363-1161967. ✍︎ / ⇒
Rai, Swapnil. 2024. ‘Between the Divine and Digital: Parsing Modi’s Charismatic Avatar’. Media, Culture & Society 46(4):834–50. doi: 10.1177/01634437231214200. ✍︎ / ⇒
Sen, Moumita. 2023. ‘Hindu Festivals in Small Town India: Patronage, Play, Piety’. Religion 53(3):406–30. doi: 10.1080/0048721X.2023.2211397. ✍︎ / ⇒
Sen, Moumita, and Kenneth Bo Nielsen. 2022. ‘Gods in the Public Sphere: Political Deification in South Asia’. Religion 52(4):497–512. doi: 10.1080/0048721X.2022.2094780. ✍︎ / ⇒
Thapar, Romila. 1989. ‘Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity’. Modern Asian Studies 23(2):209–31. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X00001049. ✍︎ / ⇒
Howard, Veena R. 2013. Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action. Albany: State University of New York Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Veer, Peter van der. 2010. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley: Oxford Univ. Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Veer, Peter van der, and Hartmut Lehmann, eds. 1999. Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒

Links

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68003095
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_J-EuDI7Ew (from minute 20, then from minute 42) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6pU2LXR3to
https://kafila.online/2018/10/03/the-babrimasjid-ayodhya-judgement-of-2010-some-questions-for-today/

Week 06. Gandhi vs Nehru: “a tryst with destiny,” but which one?

Lecture [TMI_06_S1]

⋆ The Convergence of Distinct Worlds: Nehru and Gandhi (chapter 1, pp.19–40) in Coward, Harold, ed. 2003. Indian Critiques of Gandhi. Albany: State University of New York Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
† Letter to Mahatma Gandhi, 11 January 1928, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru Vol. 3, Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation,
1988. p. 14. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_06_S2]

✄ Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917–1947 (2019) [board game, I have included a scanned copy of the rulebook and playbook, inclunding the “historical background” section]
✄ Roberts, Stuart. n.d. ‘A Tryst with Destiny – 70 Years of Indian Independence’. Retrieved 5 March 2025 (http://www.cam.ac.uk/a-tryst-with-destiny). url: https://www.cam.ac.uk/files/a-tryst-with-destiny/index.html.
Nair, Deepa. 2010. ‘Textbook Conflicts in South Asia’. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2(2):29–45. doi: 10.3167/jemms.2010.020203. ✍︎ / ⇒

Week 07. Rabindranath Tagore and the fetish of nationalism

Lecture [TMI_07_S1]

⋆ Lamba, Rinku. 2023. ‘Revisiting Rabindranath Tagore’s Critique of Nationalism’. Modern Asian Studies 57(3):740–75. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X22000051.. ✍︎ / ⇒
† Tagore, Rabindranath. 2010. Nationalism, pp.8 & 23 & 36 & 47-48. London: Penguin. Also Tagore, Rabindranath. 2012. Reply to the welcome by the Emperor of Iran. In S. K. Das (Ed.), The English writings of Rabindranath Tagore, pp. 656–657. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi [excerpts provided] ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_07_S2]

✄ Creative writing atelier: poetry and patriotism in India/Global South. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_07-FR]

Bharucha, Rustom. 2006. Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin. New Delhi ; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi. 2011. Rabindranath Tagore: An Interpretation. 1. publ. New Delhi: Penguin Viking.
Bonnett, Alastair. 2005. ‘Occidentalism and Plural Modernities: Or How Fukuzawa and Tagore Invented the West’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23(4):505–25. doi: 10.1068/d366t.
Chatterjee, Partha. 2011. ‘Tagore, China and the Critique of Nationalism’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 12(2):271–83. doi: 10.1080/14649373.2011.554654.
Collins, Michael, and Tapan Raychaudhuri. 2012. Empire, Nationalism and the Postcolonial World: Rabindranath Tagore’s Writings on History, Politics and Society. Abingdon, Oxon New York: Routledge.
Duara, Prasenjit. 2001. ‘The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism’. Journal of World History 12(1):99–130. doi: 10.1353/jwh.2001.0009.
Freud, Sigmund, and Peter Gay. 1989. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, Rabindranath Tagore, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, eds. 1997. The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915-1941. 1. ed. New Delhi: National Book Trust, India.
Hallengren, Andres. 2005. Nobel Laureates in Search of Identity and Integrity: Voices of Different Cultures. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd.
Hay, Stephen N. 1970. Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press.
Hotta, E. 2016. Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War 1931-1945. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Khilnani, Sunil. 2017. Incarnations: A History of India in 50 Lives. Noida, Uttar Pradesh: Penguin.
Lewis, Martin W., and Kären Wigen. 2004. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Repr. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press.
Magpantay, Andre. 2024. ‘“Asia for Asians”: Revisiting Pan-Asianism through the Propaganda Arts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities 26(1):1–20. doi: 10.1163/26659077-26010015.
Mizutani, Satoshi. 2015. ‘Anti-Colonialism and the Contested Politics of Comparison: Rabindranath Tagore, Rash Behari Bose and Japanese Colonialism in Korea in the Inter-War Period’. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 16(1). doi: 10.1353/cch.2015.0005.
Mizutani, Satoshi. 2022. ‘Indians and Koreans in Crosscolonial Solidarity’. Transimperial History Blog. Retrieved 5 March 2025 (https://www.transimperialhistory.com/indians-and-koreans-in-crosscolonial-solidarity-part-2/).
Mylonas, Harris. 2023. Varieties of Nationalism. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nandy, Ashis. 2000. The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self. 4. impr. Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.
Quayum, Mohammad A., ed. 2020. Tagore, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: Perceptions, Contestations and Contemporary Relevance. London New York, NY: Routledge.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. 2015. The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. New Delhi, India: Niyogi Books.
Roshwald, Aviel. 2015. ‘Civic and Ethnic Nationalism’. Pp. 1–4 in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, edited by A.D. Smith, X. Hou, J. Stone, R. Dennis, and P. Rizova. Wiley.
Panikkar, Kandiyur Narayana. 2002. Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India. London: Anthem Press.
Saaler, Sven, and J. Victor Koschmann. 2007. Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders. London: Routledge.
Sen, Tansen, and Brian Tsui, eds. 2021. Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India: 1840s-1960s. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sengupta, Kalyan Kumar, David E. Cooper, Kathleen Higgins, Robert C. Solomon, and Purushottama Bilimoria. 2016. The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. 1st ed. Florence: Taylor and Francis.
Shaikh, Farzana. 2011. Review of Review of Secularizing Islamists? Jama’at-e-Islami and Jama’at- Ud-Da’wa in Urban Pakistan, by Humeira Iqtidar. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 87 (6): 1557–59
Singh, Mohinder. 2017. ‘Tagore on Modernity, Nationalism and “the Surplus in Man” | Economic and Political Weekly’. Economic and Political Weekly 52(19):46–56.
Tuteja, K. L., and Kaustav Chakraborty, eds. 2017. Tagore and Nationalism. New Delhi: Springer.
Tankha, Brij. 2009. Okakura Tenshin and Pan-Asianism: Shadows of the Past. Folkestone: Global oriental.
Tanwir, Farooq. 2002. ‘Religious Parties and Politics in Pakistan’. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 43(3–5):250–68. doi: 10.1177/002071520204300303.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 2017. Delphi Collected Works of Rabindranath Tagore. [S.l.]: Delphi Classics.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 2011. The Essential Tagore. edited by F. Alam. Cambridge, Mass. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press.
Tagore, Rabindranath, Krishna Dutta, and Andrew Robinson. 1997. Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, L. B. 2007. ‘Overcoming the “Contagion of Mimicry”: The Cosmopolitan Nationalism and Modernist History of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats’. The American Historical Review 112(1):69–100. doi: 10.1086/ahr.112.1.69.

Links

Week 08. The “question of Islam”: Muslim majorities/minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India

Lecture [TMI_08_S1]

⋆ Qasmi, Ali Usman. 2010. ‘God’s Kingdom on Earth? Politics of Islam in Pakistan, 1947–1969’. Modern Asian Studies 44 (6): 1197–1253. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X09000134. ✍︎ / ⇒
† The Objectives Resolution, as voted by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on March 12, 1949.

Activities [TMI_08_S2]

✄ Debating official reports on the status of minorities:
- Munir Commission Report;
- Sachar Committee Report;
- OHCHR Fact-Finding Report.

Further readings [TMI_08-FR]

Abbas, Amber H. 2021. Partition’s First Generation: Space, Place, and Identity in Muslim South Asia. London New York (N.Y.): I.B. Tauris.
Ahmad, Irfan. 2009. Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton university press.
Afsar, Mohammad. 2023. Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Alam, Asiya. 2021. Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia. Leiden: Brill.
Amanullah, Arshad, Arif Hussain Nadaf, and Taberez Ahmed Neyazi. 2024. ‘Constructing the Muslim “Other”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Indian News Coverage of the Tablighi Jamaat Congregation during the COVID-19 Pandemic’. Journalism 25(8):1773–91. doi: 10.1177/14648849231188260.
Asad, Talad. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford (Calif.): Stanford University press.
Aziz, Sahar. 2022. The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom. Oakland, California: University of California Press.
Bajpai, Rochana, and Adnan Farooqui. 2018. ‘Non-Extremist Outbidding: Muslim Leadership in Majoritarian India’. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 24(3):276–98. doi: 10.1080/13537113.2018.1489487.
Bayly, Susan. 2009. Saints, Goddesses, and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berenschot, Ward. 2013. Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State. New Delhi: Rainlight/Rupa Publications India.
Bhargav, Vanya Vaidehi. 2022. ‘A Hindu Champion of Pan-Islamism: Lajpat Rai and the Khilafat Movement’. The Journal of Asian Studies 81(4):689–705. doi: 10.1017/S0021911822000511.
Bhatia, Kiran Vinod, and Payal Arora. 2024. ‘Discursive Toolkits of Anti-Muslim Disinformation on Twitter’. The International Journal of Press/Politics 29(1):253–72. doi: 10.1177/19401612221084633.
Browers, Michaelle. 2014. ‘Minorities in Islam/Muslims as Minorities’. Contemporary Islam 8(3):211–15. doi: 10.1007/s11562-014-0299-6.
Chatterjee, Partha. 2002. A Princely Impostor? The Kumar of Bhawal and the Secret History of Indian Nationalism. 1. publ. in India. Delhi: Permanent Black. ✍︎ / ⇒.
Cherian, Divya. 2023. Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia. Oakland: University of California Press.
Datla, Kavita. 2013. The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Devji, Faisal. 2018. ‘Secular Islam’. Political Theology 19(8):704–18. doi: 10.1080/1462317X.2018.1493974.
Dhulipala, Venkat. 2015. Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
Esposito, John L., and Emad Eldin Shahin. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics. Oxford: Oxford university press.
Farooqui, Adnan. 2020. ‘Political Representation of a Minority: Muslim Representation in Contemporary India’. India Review 19(2):153–75. doi: 10.1080/14736489.2020.1744996.
Gautier, Laurence. 2024. Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition. Cambridge, United Kingdom New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Gayer, Laurent, and Christophe Jaffrelot, eds. 2012. Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation. London: Hurst.
Gilmartin, David, and Bruce B. Lawrence. 2000. Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia. Gainesville: University press of Florida.
Haque Khondker, Habibul. 2010. ‘The Curious Case of Secularism in Bangladesh: What Is the Relevance For The Muslim Majority Democracies?’ Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 11(2):185–201. doi: 10.1080/14690764.2010.512743.
Hasan, Mushirul. 2019. Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims from Independence to Ayodhya. Milton: Routledge.
Hirschkind, Charles. 2009. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. Paper ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2014. ‘Transnational Learning Networks Amongst Asian Muslims: An Introduction’. Modern Asian Studies 48(2):331–39. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X14000134.
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2015. The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience. Oxford University Press
Jaffrelot, Christophe, and Hilal Ahmed. 2024. ‘Indian Muslims: (Self-)Perceptions and Voting Trends in 2024’. Studies in Indian Politics 12(2):289–302. doi: 10.1177/23210230241296356.
Jalal, Ayesha. 1985. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Demand for Pakistan. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jamil, Ghazala. 2017. Accumulation by Segregation. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Khan, Naveeda Ahmed. 2012. Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan. Durham: Duke University Press.
Lanzillo, Amanda. 2023. Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India. Oakland, California: University of California Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2012. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Paperback reissue. Princeton, NJ, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Mahmudabad, Ali Khan. 2020. Poetry of Belonging: Muslim Imaginings of India 1850-1950. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Metcalf, Barbara Daly. 2009. Islam in South Asia in Practice. Princeton (N. J.): Princeton university press.
Mostofa, Shafi Md. 2025. ‘Electoral Failure of Political Islam: The Case of Jamaat-E-Islami in Bangladesh’. South Asia Research 45(1):7–26. doi: 10.1177/02627280241303045.
Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. 1994. The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaʻat-i Islami of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Osella, Filippo. 2013. Islamic Reform in South Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shah, Arpit, Anish Sugathan, Naveen Bharathi, Andaleeb Rahman, Amit Garg, and Deepak Malghan. 2024. ‘On Measuring Muslim Segregation in Urban India’. Urban Studies 00420980241296998. doi: 10.1177/00420980241296998.
Tanwir, Farooq. 2002. ‘Religious Parties and Politics in Pakistan’. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 43 (3–5): 250–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/002071520204300303
Uddin, Layli. 2023. ‘Red Maulanas: Revisiting Islam and the Left in Twentieth‐century South Asia’. History Compass 21(11):e12787. doi: 10.1111/hic3.12787.
Panda, Ahona. 2017. ‘Kazi Nazrul Islam and the Partition of Bengal: A Language of Unity, a Language of Loss | COSAS’. Retrieved 5 March 2025 (https://southernasia.uchicago.edu/calendar_event/kazi-nazrul-islam-and-the-partition-of-bengal-a-language-of-unity-a-language-of-loss/).
Pal, Felix. 2020. ‘Why Muslims Join the Muslim Wing of the RSS’. Contemporary South Asia 28(3):275–87. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2020.1776219.
Pandit, Aishwarya. 2021. Claiming Citizenship and Nation: Muslim Politics and State Building in North India, 1947–1986. Routledge.
Pernau, Margrit. 2017. ‘Love and Compassion for the Community: Emotions and Practices among North Indian Muslims, c. 1870–1930’. The Indian Economic & Social History Review 54(1):21–42. doi: 10.1177/0019464616683480.
Qasmi, Ali Usman, and Megan Eaton Robb. 2017. Muslims against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shakil, Kainat, and Ihsan Yilmaz. 2021. ‘Religion and Populism in the Global South: Islamist Civilisationism of Pakistan’s Imran Khan’. Religions 12(9):777. doi: 10.3390/rel12090777.
Stephens, Julia Anne. 2018. ‘Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia’. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Susewind, Raphael. 2017. ‘Muslims in Indian Cities: Degrees of Segregation and the Elusive Ghetto’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 49(6):1286–1307. doi: 10.1177/0308518X17696071.
Varshney, Ashutosh. 2002. Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. 2007. The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change. Paperback ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Ziya Us Salam. 2023. Being Muslim in Hindu India: A Critical View. Gurugram, Haryana: HarperCollins Publishers India.

Week 09. “Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari”: Naxalism, eco-incarceration and socialism in India

Lecture [TMI_09_S1]

⋆ TBA. ✍︎ / ⇒
† TBA. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_09_S2]

✄ TBA. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_09-FR]

TBA. ✍︎ / ⇒

Week 10. The politics of caste: “chamchas no more”

Lecture [TMI_10_S1]

⋆ Ambedkar, Bhim Rao. 2018. Buddha or Karl Marx. New Delhi: Samyak Prakashan. ✍︎ / ⇒
† Jaoul, Nicolas. 2016. ‘Citizenship in Religious Clothing?’ Focaal 2016(76):46–68. doi: 10.3167/fcl.2016.760104. ✍︎ / ⇒

Activities [TMI_10_S2]

✄ TBA. ✍︎ / ⇒

Further readings [TMI_10-FR]

Abraham, Janaki, and Dhivya Janarthanan. 2024. ‘Anti-Caste Movements, Resistance, and Caste: An Introduction’. Social Change 54(2):163–78. doi: 10.1177/00490857241255228. ✍︎ / ⇒
Ambedkar, Bhim Rao. 2017. The Buddha and His Dhamma. Delhi: Kalpaz. ✍︎ / ⇒
Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji, and Arundhati Roy. 2014. Annihilation of Caste. Annotated critical edition. edited by S. Anand. London New York: Verso.
Chowdhry, Prem. 2009. ‘“First Our Jobs Then Our Girls”: The Dominant Caste Perceptions on the “Rising” Dalits’. Modern Asian Studies 43(2):437–79. doi: 10.1017/S0026749X07003010. ✍︎ / ⇒
Deshpande, Ashwini. 2013. Affirmative Action in India. New Delhi Oxford: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Gorringe, Hugo. 2017. Panthers in Parliament: Dalits, Caste, and Political Power in South India. First edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Gould, Harold. 1986. ‘The Hindu Jajmani System: A Case of Economic Particularism’. Journal of Anthropological Research 42(3):269–78. doi: 10.1086/jar.42.3.3630033.
Gupta, Dipankar. 2005. ‘Caste and Politics: Identity Over System’. Annual Review of Anthropology 34(1):409–27. doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120649.
Harikrishnan, S. 2022. ‘Making Space: Towards a Spatial History of Modernity in Caste-Societies’. Social History 47(3):315–40. doi: 10.1080/03071022.2022.2077521. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jaffrelot, Christophe, and Sanjay Kumar. 2012. Rise of the Plebeians?: The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies. New Delhi: Routledge India. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jeffrey, Craig, Patricia Jeffery, and Roger Jeffery. 2008. ‘Dalit Revolution? New Politicians in Uttar Pradesh, India’. The Journal of Asian Studies 67(04):1365. doi: 10.1017/S0021911808001812. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jha, Priyanka, and Christian Olaf Christiansen. 2024. ‘Organic Intellectuals from Modern India: B. R. Ambedkar and R. M. Lohia on Inequality, Intersectionality, and Justice’. Intellectual History Review 1–29. doi: 10.1080/17496977.2024.2365023. ✍︎ / ⇒
Jodhka, Surinder. 2016. ‘Ascriptive Hierarchies: Caste and Its Reproduction in Contemporary India’. Current Sociology 64(2):228–43. doi: 10.1177/0011392115614784. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kalyani, Kalyani. 2022. ‘Emergence of Dalit Art Entrepreneurs: Exploring Anti-Caste Songs as the New-Creative Industry in North India’. Local Development & Society 3(1):59–73. doi: 10.1080/26883597.2022.2045087. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kamath, Anant. 2018. ‘“Untouchable” Cellphones? Old Caste Exclusions and New Digital Divides in Peri-Urban Bangalore’. Critical Asian Studies 50(3):375–94. doi: 10.1080/14672715.2018.1479192. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kapur, Devesh, Shyam Babu, and Chandra Bhan Prasad. 2014. Defying the Odds : The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs. S.l.: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. ✍︎ / ⇒
Kumar, Satendra. 2023. Popular Democracy and the Politics of Caste: Rise of the Other Backward Classes in India. London: Routledge. ✍︎ / ⇒
Lee, Alexander. 2020. From Hierarchy to Ethnicity: The Politics of Caste in Twentieth-Century India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Lee, Joel. 2021. Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion. Cambridge New York (N.Y.): Cambridge University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Lee, Joel. 2023. ‘Afterword: Questions for the Study of Muslim Castes and Anti-Caste Islam’. Contemporary South Asia 31(3):498–503. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2023.2240714. ✍︎ / ⇒
Nayar, Pramod K. 2020. ‘Desecration and the Politics of “Image Pollution”: Ambedkar Statues and the “Sculptural Encounter” in India’. Celebrity Studies 11(1):116–24. doi: 10.1080/19392397.2020.1704389.
Paliwal, Ankur. 2023. ‘How India’s Caste System Limits Diversity in Science — in Six Charts’. Nature 613(7943):230–34. doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-00015-2. ✍︎ / ⇒
Paik, Shailaja. 2022. The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ✍︎ / ⇒
Ram, Kanshi. 1982. The Chamcha Age: An Era of the Stooges. Delhi: Siddarth Books. ✍︎ / ⇒
Shourie, Arun. 2012. Worshipping False Gods: Ambedkar, and the Facts Which Have Been Erased. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India a Joint Venture with India Today Group. ✍︎ / ⇒
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