I work on South Asian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My first two books were on the middle class of colonial India, and engaged with questions about colonialism, nationalism, religion and communalism. Currently, I am working on changing ideas and practices of belonging, focusing on the Kumaon region in the foothills of the Himalayas. In this project I use local histories to question master narratives of colonialism and nationalism that dominate the historiography of the period, highlight instead histories of clans, and communities as well as the everyday concerns of families. My next project is a transnational historical biography of a teacher of Indo-Caribbean heritage, Dr. Marie Sommerville who was, quite literally, made possible by imperial transnational connections. Her own life exemplified the mobilities of postcolonial transnational migration. With her Indo-Caribbean looks, Marie negotiated British colonialism and American missionaries, and lived through creation of an independent India and the civil rights movement in the United States.
Books
Edited. The Middle Class in Colonial India. Oxford University Press Themes in Indian History Series. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010. Second and third hardback impressions 2010, 2011. Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Second hardback impression, 2002, paperback edition, 2005.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“India’s Middle Class”, The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History David Ludden ed. (2017)
“Juliet Got it Wrong: Names and Identities among Christian converts in Kumaon, 1850-1930.” Journal of Asian Studies. 74, 4, (November 2015): 843-862.
“Thinking About Modernity from the Margins: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial India.” In, Abel Ricardo López and Barbara Weinstein ed.s The Making of the Middle Class: A Transnational History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 29-44. The Specter of Comparisons: Studying the Middle Class of Colonial India.” In, Amita Baviskar and Raka Ray eds. Both Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes. Delhi: Routledge, 2011, pp. 83-107.
“Contesting Histories and Nationalist Geographies : A Comparison of School Textbooks in India and Pakistan.” South Asian History and Culture 1, 3 (July 2010): 357–377.
“Virtually There: Cricket, Community, and Commerce on the Internet.” International Journal of the History of Sport 24, 9 (September 2007): 1225 – 1240. Republished in Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, Shantanu Chakrabarti, Kingshuk Chatterjee ed.s.
The Politics of Sport in South Asia, by J. A Mangan, Boria Majumdar, Mark Dyreson. New York: Routledge: 2009.
“Indian Independence Movement.” In James V. DeFronzo ed. Encyclopedia of Modern Revolutions, Vol. II. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006, pp. 383-94.
“Re-Publicizing Religiosity: Modernity, Religion and the Middle Class.” In, Derek Peterson and Darren Walhof eds.
The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief and Politics in History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 79-99.
“The Indian Independence Movement, 1885-1947″ and “Regional Revolts in India.” In, Jack Goldstone ed., Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1998, pp. 232-36.
In Preparation
Belonging in the Himalayas: Community and Social Capital in Kumaon, 1815-1950. Monograph.
“Ways of Belonging: Clans, Community, and Social Capital in Colonial Kumaon, ca. 1850-1930.” Scholarly essay.
“Historicizing the Archive: Making of the Native Newspaper Reports in Colonial India.” Scholarly essay.
Non Peer Reviewed Essays (selection)
“That Chink in The Wall” Outlook Magazine (April 9, 2018).
“My Patriot Versus Yours” Outlook Magazine (February 19, 2018).
“Create, but don’t destroy” Editorial page article in The Hindu (September 24, 2015).
“What Does it Mean to Belong” Lead article in The Hindu (June 8, 2015).
“AAP and the 1935 Parallel.” Lead article in The Hindu (April 2, 2015).
“The Middle Class: A History of Our Present.” Invited essay for the October 2014 issue of Welt-Sichten, Germany.
“The Local and the Global: Overseas Travel and Communities in Kumaon, ca. 1911.”
NAU Global (Fall 2011), pp. 12 and 18-19.
“Colonial Notions of South Asia.” South Asian Journal, 1, (August September 2003), pp. 6-9.
“Net Vision: Following Cricket from the U.S.” Outlook Cricket Special: 75 Years of Indian Cricket (Winter 2004), pp. 106-07.
“Many Faces of a Fanatic.” (Original title, “Many Fundamentalisms”) Hindustan Times. September 25, 2002.
“Pride not Piety: The Middle Class Roots of Hindutva.” Himal South Asia, May 1996.
“The ‘Imperialist’ Tendency is Not New to India.” Times of India August 15, 1989.
“Be Indian the British Way” (a critique of textbooks used in Calcutta schools) The Telegraph (Sunday) July 22, 1984.
“ACKs [Amar Chitra Kathas]: Distorted History or Education?” The Telegraph (Sunday) November 13, 1983.
Book Reviews
Tales of Justice and Rituals of Divine Embodiment: Oral Narrative from the Central Himalayas. Aditya Malik. American Ethnologist 44, 3 (August 2018): 432-33.
The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his Empire of Truth. Dipesh Chakrabarty. Canadian Journal of History (Winter 2016): 661-63.
The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work Across the India-Pakistan Divide. Ayesha Jalal. Journal of Asian Studies 73, 4 (November 2014): 1152-1154.
Imperial Gurkha: An Account of Gorkhali Rule in Kumaun (1791-1815). Mahesh C. Regmi. Studies in Nepali History and Society 18, 1 (2013): 190-94. (delayed publication).
Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of Modern India. Jayeeta Sharma. Social History (UK) 38, 3 (2013). The Making of Awadh Culture. Madhu Trivedi.
The Book Review (India), XXXV, 3 (March, 2011): 82.
Middle Class Values in Indian and Western Europe. Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld eds.
Contributions to Indian Sociology 43, 2 (June, 2009): 327-29.
Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class. Keith David Watenpaugh.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 29, 2 (2009): 334-36.
Men, Women and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal. Swapna M. Banerjee.
Journal of Asian Studies 66, 2 (May 2007): 564-566.
Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947. Sumit Ganguly.
The Historian 67, 02 (2005): 341-42.
Subaltern Studies Vol. XI: Community, Gender, and Violence. Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan eds.
Journal of Asian Studies 62, 4 (November 2003): 1273-74.
Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab. Anshu Malhotra. H-Asia (September 2003).
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Nicholas B. Dirks.
American Historical Review, 108, 1 (February 2003): 180.