Yogesh Chandrani

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Institutional Affiliation 

Colorado College

Education

• Ph.D., Columbia University
• M.A., Columbia University
• B.A., Hampshire College

Regional and Thematic Interests

Modern South Asia, Colonialism, Anthropology of Religion and Secularism, Ethnography, Postcolonial Theory, Religion and Modernity, Political Hinduism

Profile

I am a historical and political anthropologist of modern South Asia with particular interests in questions of religion and secularism, colonial modernity, nationalism, violence, memory and subjectivity. My current book project is an ethnographic and historical exploration of the Muslim question in postcolonial India. Entitled Legacies of Colonial History: Region, Religion, and Violence in Postcolonial Gujarat, the book provides a historical anthropology of the rise of political Hinduism and the routinization of anti-Muslim prejudice and violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The book draws on ethnographic and archival research in Gujarat and explores the reconfiguration of ideas of region, religion, space and belonging, and their implication in the production of the state's Muslim minority as Other and as threat. I explore how violence against religious minorities is an effect of historical transformations wrought by the establishment and consolidation of a modern regime of power in its colonial and postcolonial forms. Given this, I suggest that we rethink the dominant representations of the religious and the secular as antagonistic and argue that the reconfiguration of ideas of space, belonging and religion in Gujarat cannot be grasped without taking into consideration how they are fundamentally altered by technologies of modern power deployed by the colonial and postcolonial state. One result of this simultaneous reconfiguration of religion and region, I argue, is that it has become increasingly difficult to inhabit a Hindu religious identity that is not at the same time articulated in opposition to a Muslim Other in Gujarat.

I have also started preliminary research on questions of religious conversion and religious freedom in modern India. I explore how debates about conversion and religious freedom have been historically imbricated with emergent notions of authenticity and indigeneity and have played a crucial role in enabling the policing of the boundary between "Hinduism" on the one hand, and "Islam" and "Christianity" on the other in India.

I received my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University. I am the recipient of several grants and fellowships including the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship, the Columbia University Travelling Fellowship, the Columbia University Core Curriculum Fellowship, and a research grant from the Samuel Rubin Foundation (New York). Prior to joining Colorado College, I taught in the anthropology department and the Core Curriculum at Columbia University and at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.

Selected Publications

Publications

"A Conversation with Sanjeevini Badigar Lokhande," on Chapati Mystery,http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/univercity/xqs/xqs_viii_a_conversation_with_sanjeevini_badigar_lokhande.html, February 20, 2017

"Our Politics, Our Shame" in Daily News & Analysis (Mumbai & Ahmedabad editions), December 15, 2007

The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, co-edited with Carol Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo (New York: Columbia University Press & Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006)

"Introduction" to Eqbal Ahmad's writings on South Asia in Carol Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo, Yogesh Chandrani (eds.) The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)

World Security: Challenges for a New Century, Third Edition, co-edited with Michael Klare (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998)

Papers

Towards a genealogy of Gujaratni Asmita (Gujarati regionalism), paper presented at the conference on The Familiar Stranger: Exploring Sindh- Gujarat (Dis)connections, SOAS South Asia Institute, SOAS University of London, 18 January, 2019

Co-Organizer of Panel on "Secularism and Historical Decay: Global Spaces, Local Relationships, and the Travails/Travels of Justice in 20th Century South Asia," at the 45^th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. 21 October, 2016

Decay, Violence and the Politics of Urban Renewal in Ahmedabad, 45^th Annual Conference on South Asia, 21 October, 2016

For the Love of Rama: Religion and Nation at the Margins in India, paper presented at the workshop on Shared Sacred Sites organized by Science Po, Paris and Institute for Culture, Religion and Public Life, Columbia University. June 8-9, 2015

"Normalizing Hindu Majoritarianism," paper for a panel The Indian Elections: What will Change, Department of Middle East, South Asia and African Studies, Columbia University, New York, November 20, 2014

Towards a Genealogy of Gujaratni Asmita/Gujarati Regionalism. Paper for invited panel on Colonial Knowledge and India: From Margins to Metropole, Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 20, 2013

In the Asylum of Truth: Planning, Heritage and Violence. Paper presented at the conference on "Objects of Affection: Towards a Materiology of Emotions," Interdisciplinary Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, May 4-6, 2012