Research Fellowships for Senior Scholars in the Humanities to Conduct their Projects in India

FAIN: RA-50091-10

American Institute of Indian Studies (Chicago, IL 60637-1539)
Ralph W. Nicholas (Project Director: August 2009 to July 2010)
Philip Lutgendorf (Project Director: July 2010 to January 2015)

The equivalent of one twelve-month and one eight-month fellowship a year for three years.

This proposal seeks support for the award of fellowships to post-doctoral scholars in all fields of the humanities to enable them to undertake their research projects in India for up to nine months.

Associated Products

The Khalsa Heritage Complex by Moshie Safdie (Book Section)
Title: The Khalsa Heritage Complex by Moshie Safdie
Author: Will Glover
Editor: Louis Fenech
Editor: Pashaura Singh
Abstract: This handbook combines the ways in which scholars in diverse fields (including philosophy, psychology, literary studies, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics) have integrated the study of Sikhism within critical and postcolonial perspectives on the nature of religion. (book description)
Year: 2014
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies
ISBN: 9780199699308

Gender and Education in South Asia (Book Section)
Title: Gender and Education in South Asia
Author: Sangeeta Kamat
Editor: Leela Fernandes
Abstract: Focusing on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, this overview of gender, women, and sexuality covers historical formations of gender and the significance of colonialism and nationalism; law, citizenship and the nation; representations of culture, place, identity; labor and the economy; and inequality, activism and the state. (book description)
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/routledge-handbook-of-gender-in-south-asia/oclc/855491720&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: The Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia
ISBN: 9780415523530

Crafting a Feminist Dalit Consciousness in Translation (Article)
Title: Crafting a Feminist Dalit Consciousness in Translation
Author: Cristi Merrill
Abstract: abstract not available
Year: 2014
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: World Literature Today
Publisher: University of Oklahoma

Soldier, God, and the State: Religion in the Armies of India and Pakistan" (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Soldier, God, and the State: Religion in the Armies of India and Pakistan"
Abstract: abstract not available
Author: Amit Ahuja
Date: 2/24/2015
Location: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies

T. Krichnamacharya, 'Father of Modern Yoga' (Book Section)
Title: T. Krichnamacharya, 'Father of Modern Yoga'
Author: Tara Fraser
Author: Mark Singleton
Editor: Mark Singleton
Editor: Ellen Goldberg
Abstract: Gurus of Modern Yoga explores the contributions that individual gurus have made to the formation of the practices and discourses of yoga in today's world. The focus is not limited to India, but also extends to the teachings of yoga gurus in the modern, transnational world, and within the Hindu diaspora. Each of the sections deals with a different aspect of the guru within modern yoga. Included are extensive considerations of the transnational tantric guru; the teachings of modern yoga's best-known guru, T. Krishnamacharya, and those of his principal disciples; the place of technology, business, and politics in the work of global yoga gurus; and the role of science and medicine. Although the principal emphasis is on the current situation, some of the essays demonstrate the continuing influence of gurus from generations past. As a whole, the book represents an extensive and diverse picture of the place of the guru in contemporary yoga practice. (book description)
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/gurus-of-modern-yoga/oclc/857664324&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Title: Gurus of Modern Yoga
ISBN: 9780199938704

Bringing the Eccentricities of Translation Center-stage (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Bringing the Eccentricities of Translation Center-stage
Author: Christi Merrill
Abstract: paper given in panel: In panel: Translating Dalit Writing from Hindi as "World Literature"
Date: 10/13/2018
Primary URL: https://confsouthasia.wiscweb.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/48/2018/10/2018-Annual-Conference-on-South-Asia-Program-Book-FINAL.pdf
Primary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Madison South Asia Conference

“Marking Boundaries and Building Bridges: Persian Scholarly Networks in Mughal Punjab,” (Book Section)
Title: “Marking Boundaries and Building Bridges: Persian Scholarly Networks in Mughal Punjab,”
Author: Purnima Dhavan
Editor: Nile Green
Abstract: This essay explores the careers of four Indian-born Mughal scholars who used Persian literary skills to achieve great professional success in the seventeenth century. Examining their relationship to provincial, imperial, and emigre literary networks in Lahore reveals the varied ways in which self-fashioning, professional rivalries, and self-promotion animated the acquisition and perpetuation of Persian scholarship in the Mughal Empire. The shift of this literary collective towards prose and pedagogical works in Persian indicates the ways in which professional success in literary domains depended crucially on access to specific social networks, and an awareness of the new opportunities available to scholars in provincial networks.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300927/the-persianate-world
Primary URL Description: University of California Press web site
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Title: The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca
ISBN: 9780520300927

Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties Without Ethnic Movements (Book)
Title: Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties Without Ethnic Movements
Author: Amit Ahuja
Abstract: India's over 200 million Dalits, once called "untouchables," have been mobilized by social movements and political parties, but the outcomes of this mobilization are puzzling. Dalits' ethnic parties have performed poorly in elections in states where movements demanding social equality have been strong while they have succeeded in states where such movements have been entirely absent or weak. In Mobilizing the Marginalized, Amit Ahuja demonstrates that the collective action of marginalized groups--those that are historically stigmatized and disproportionately poor — is distinct. Drawing on extensive original research conducted across four of India's largest states, he shows, for the marginalized, social mobilization undermines the bloc voting their ethnic parties' rely on for electoral triumph and increases multi-ethnic political parties' competition for marginalized votes. He presents evidence showing that a marginalized group gains more from participating in a social movement and dividing support among parties than from voting as a bloc for an ethnic party.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190916428.001.0001/oso-9780190916428
Primary URL Description: Oxford University Press web site
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190916435
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Bedil’s Ghosts: Emotive Memoryscapes and the Spectral Presence in Tazkirah Writing (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Bedil’s Ghosts: Emotive Memoryscapes and the Spectral Presence in Tazkirah Writing
Author: Purnima Dhavan
Abstract: This paper takes a fresh look at one example of the class of collective biography (tazkirah) in Persian and Urdu, seeing it as an effort at making durable webs of memory, shaped by emotion and not merely by knowledge.
Date: 10/18/2019
Primary URL: https://register.southasiaconference.wisc.edu/schedule
Primary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Madison South Asia Conference 2019

Warriors and Zamindars in Mughal Punjab (Book Section)
Title: Warriors and Zamindars in Mughal Punjab
Author: Purnima Dhavan
Editor: Richard M. Eaton and Ramya Sreenivasan
Abstract: This chapter will build on recent insights into the social history of peasant-soldiers in the Mughal province of Punjab to examine why Punjab became a center for military entrepreneurship by the mid-eighteenth century. Although Sikhs and Afghans were the most visible and enduring of these new warrior groups in Punjab, the presence of other clusters suggests that relationships forged in rural revenue collection, access to kinship networks, and the vast demand for military talent throughout the Mughal period created a nexus of opportunities for military entrepreneurs in eighteenth-century Punjab. This chapter will show why factors such as the embrace of new martial skills or ideologies cannot explain by themselves, the efflorescence of warrior groups that emerged in eighteenth-century Punjab. The dramatic changes wrought on rural Punjabi society by an expanding economy in the seventeenth century, along with the emerging cross-caste and cross-regional alliances that nourished political collaborations between groups, fostered new forms of military entrepreneurship.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190222642.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190222642-e-13
Primary URL Description: Oxford Handbooks site
Access Model: online handbook
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks Online
Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of the Mughal World

Networks and fault lines in eighteenth-century Deccani literary communities: Lachmī Narāyan ‘Shafīq’ and his circle (Article)
Title: Networks and fault lines in eighteenth-century Deccani literary communities: Lachmī Narāyan ‘Shafīq’ and his circle
Author: Purnima Dhavan
Abstract: By the end of the eighteenth century, emerging states in South Asia drew on successive waves of migration to staff their institutions. Scholars, poets and bureaucrats in these new states were entrusted with the crafting and maintenance of new bureaucratic systems and cultural spaces. The attempts to create shared bonds in these new spaces, however, also created tensions between those who were recent arrivals in these communities and those whose families had settled there earlier. In the fiercely competitive world of late Mughal literary culture, the task of uniting these groups by creating new networks was complicated by divergent goals. I examine how the writing and dissemination of new histories, memoirs and literary works with a literary network connected with one author, Lachmī Narāyan ‘Shafīq,’ built a shared history in the eighteenth-century Deccan, but also created moments of acute conflict and dissent through its literary production. The competing needs for individual self-presentation and success in the competitive climate of the period undercut the desire to forge collaborative networks. The conflicting record of these collaborations and fault lines in the archival records of this period invite us to revisit the ways in which both collective and individual identities were forged in this period.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019464620948702
Primary URL Description: Journal web site
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Indian Economic & Social History Review
Publisher: Sage

Justice in Translation (Article)
Title: Justice in Translation
Author: Christi Merrill
Abstract: The story of Kausalya Baisantry’s life of anti-caste activism is featured in Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon’s Amhihi Itihasa Ghadavala (We Also Made History) in Marathi, and in her own book-length work of ‘autobiography literature’ written in Hindi as Dohra Abhishap (Doubly Cursed), but it is a speech Baisantry delivered in English as a college student activist that Pawar and Moon discuss as an example of ‘Sahityatun Prabodhan (Enlightenment through Literature)’. I trace connections between Pawar and Baisantry to show how multilingual these activist networks of ‘Sahityatun Prabodhan’ are, focusing specifically on Baisantry’s translation from Marathi of Pawar’s short story ‘Nyay (Justice)’, published in the leading Hindi literary journal Hans in 1991.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2020.1802901
Primary URL Description: journal web site
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of South Asian Studies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River (Book)
Title: Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River
Author: Sudipta Sen
Abstract: Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India’s most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to the merchants that navigated its waters, and the way it came to occupy center stage in the history and culture of the subcontinent. Sen begins his chronicle in prehistoric India, tracing the river’s first settlers, its myths of origin in the Hindu tradition, and its significance during the ascendancy of popular Buddhism. In the following centuries, Indian empires, Central Asian regimes, European merchants, the British Empire, and the Indian nation-state all shaped the identity and ecology of the river. Weaving together geography, environmental politics, and religious history, Sen offers in this lavishly illustrated volume a remarkable portrait of one of the world’s largest and most densely populated river basins.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300119169/ganges
Primary URL Description: Yale University Press web site
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780300119169

Internal Security in India: Violence, Order and the State (Book)
Title: Internal Security in India: Violence, Order and the State
Editor: Devesh Kapur
Editor: Amit Ahuja
Abstract: An overarching exploration of the Indian state's approaches, laws, and organizations that maintain order and contain violence. Maintaining order and containing violence-the core constituents of internal security-are fundamental responsibilities of any government. Yet, developing countries find this task especially challenging. In Internal Security in India, Amit Ahuja, Devesh Kapur, and a cast of leading scholars on the subject focus on India's security and the threats it faces. Since Independence, the Indian state has grappled with a variety of internal security challenges, including insurgencies, terrorist attacks, caste and communal violence, riots, and electoral violence. Their toll has claimed more lives than all of India's five external wars put together. As the contributors in this volume analyze how the Indian State has managed the core concern of internal security over time, they address three broad questions: How well has India contained violence and preserved order? How have the approaches and capacity of the State evolved to attain these twin objectives? And what implications do the State's approach towards internal security have for civil liberties and the quality of democracy? A major reinterpretation of order and internal security in India, this book sheds light on an underanalyzed issue of global import given the changing nature of threats that states face.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/internal-security-in-india-9780197660348?q=ahuja%20kapur&lang=en&cc=us#
Primary URL Description: publisher site
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780197660348
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Earth, Water, Salt: Amphibious Pasts of the Lower Gangetic Delta (Book Section)
Title: Earth, Water, Salt: Amphibious Pasts of the Lower Gangetic Delta
Author: Sudipta Sen
Editor: May Joseph
Editor: Sudipta Sen
Abstract: The chapter studies the settlers of the aqueous terrain of the drainage basins of the Brahmaputra and the Ganga debouching into the Bay of Bengal and charts the deep ecology of the delta as a shifting and volatile geo-historical formation. Traditional settlers of this land such as the Kaibartas and Bagdis are some of the largest coastal caste groups of India, who still appear in the census with their subcaste status tied to their work as fisherfolk and guardians of levees and dykes. The chapter is a foray into the histories and lifeworld of people that colonial anthropologists once called the Dravidian "boat castes" and the "aboriginal" tribes of coastal Bengal as amphibious, subaltern figures, who are now the precariat of climate change and ocean rise
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.routledge.com/Terra-Aqua-The-Amphibious-Lifeworlds-of-Coastal-and-Maritime-South-Asia/Sen-Joseph/p/book/9781032252766
Primary URL Description: publisher site
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Terra Aqua: The Amphibious Lifeworlds of Coastal and Maritime South Asia
ISBN: 9781032252766

Revisiting Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Revisiting Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River
Abstract: Professor Sen will be talking about his book Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River, a sweeping, interdisciplinary history of the world’s third-largest river, a potent symbol across South Asia and the Hindu diaspora.
Author: Sudipta Sen
Date: 04/02/2024
Location: University of California Berkeley, Institute for South Asia Studies
Primary URL: https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229490-sudipta-sen-revisiting-gangesthe-many-pasts-of-an-ind
Primary URL Description: Institute for South Asia Studies website

Hierarchy in Protest: A Comparison of Dalit and Upper-Caste Agitations (Book Section)
Title: Hierarchy in Protest: A Comparison of Dalit and Upper-Caste Agitations
Author: Amit Ahuja
Editor: Sudha Pai, D. Shyam Babu, and Rahul Verma
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: Dalits in the New Millennium

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