
Neeti Nair
Associate Professor
Office Hours: Wednesday, 10-11 and by appointment
Field & Specialties
Modern South Asia
Education
B.A. – St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, 1998
M.A. – Tufts University, 2000
Ph.D. – Tufts University, 2005
Biography
I am an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia, where I teach South Asian history with a special emphasis on colonialism, nationalism, decolonization, and the afterlives of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. I am the author of Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India (Harvard and Permanent Black, 2011, pbk 2016). I am currently working on a comparative legal and political history of "hurt sentiments" and state ideology in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Publications
Books
Hurt Sentiments and State Ideology in South Asia (in progress, under contract with Harvard University Press)
India's Partition: Politics, Culture, Memory (under contract with Cambridge University Press)
Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, and Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011; Paperback 2016
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Reviewed in The American Historical Review, Journal of Asian Studies, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Oral History Review, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, Indian Historical Review, Canadian Journal of History, H-Net Reviews, Contemporary South Asia, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, The Hindu, India International Centre Quarterly, The Daily Star (Bangladesh), The Book Review (India), Asian Affairs, Social History, Choice, Countercurrents.org, South Asian Review, Refugee Watch Online, among other publications. Extracts are available here
Special Issue of Journal
Guest Editor (with Michael Kugelman), Ghosts from the Past? Assessing Recent Developments in Religious Freedom in South Asia, a special issue of Asian Affairs, 49:2, 2018
Peer reviewed articles
'Towards mass education or "an aristocracy of talent": non-alignment and the making of a strong India', in Gyan Prakash, Michael Laffan, and Nikhil Menon eds., The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia, London: Bloomsbury, 2018, pp. 183-200
'Indo-Pak Relations: A Window of Opportunity that has Almost Closed', Economic and Political Weekly, December 20, 2014, Vol. 49, No. 51
'Beyond the "communal" 1920s: the problem of intention, legislative pragmatism, and the making of section 295A of the Indian Penal Code', The Indian Economic and Social History Review, July 2013, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 317-340. Reprinted in The Law Weekly 2016-3-LW, Vol. 199, 1 JS - 20 JS and The Law Weekly (Criminal) 2016-1-LW (Crl) 48 JS - 68 JS
Articles on 'Hindu Mahasabha’, ‘Pt Madan Mohan Malaviya’, ‘Rangila Rasul’, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’, ‘Sanatan Dharm’, ‘Shuddhi’, ‘Swami Shraddhanand’ in Ayesha Jalal ed., The Oxford Companion to Pakistani History, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012
‘“Partition” and “minority rights” in Punjabi Hindu Debates, 1920-1947’, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Articles, December 24, 2011, Vol. 46, No. 52, pp. 61-69
‘Bhagat Singh as “satyagrahi”: the limits to non-violence in late colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, May 2009, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 649-681
Current Research
My first book Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India (Harvard and Permanent Black, 2011) traces the politics of Punjabi Hindus in the first half of the twentieth century. A religiously defined minority in undivided Punjab, these Hindus aligned themselves with Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs during various anticolonial national movements even as they simultaneously inched eastward, towards the rest of Hindu-majority India, styling themselves 'communalists' and their politics 'communal'. I study their politics, mark their particular motivations, and account for the suddenness with which Partition and Partition violence struck - both in history and in memory. I also raise and answer the troubling, seemingly eternal question: was Partition inevitable?
I am currently working on a book manuscript with the working title: Hurt Sentiments and State Ideology in South Asia, which is to be published by Harvard University Press. Through a history of foundational moments such as the Gandhi Murder Trial, the lawsuits against secular forces during the mobilization in Ayodhya, the enduring significance of the Objectives Resolution in the three constitutions of Pakistan, and debates on what constitutes Islamic behavior in East Pakistan and later, Bangladesh, I examine the historical forces shaping ideologies in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In the process, I ask what it has meant for India to be a secular republic, for Pakistan to be an Islamic republic, and for Bangladesh to be a secular republic that also enshrines Islam as the state religion.
I am also working on a coursebook titled India's Partition: Politics, Culture, Memory that has been commissioned by Cambridge University Press. This is based on courses on Partition that I have regularly taught at the University of Virginia.
My other interests lie in the fields of India-Pakistan relations, foreign policy, education policy, memory studies, and oral history.
Awards & Honors
Mellon Humanities Fellow, Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures, University of Virginia, 2020-21
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Research Grant, fall 2020
Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., 2018-20
Fellow, Public Voices, The OpEd Project, fall 2019
Public Policy Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, summer 2019
Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2017-18
Frederick Burkhardt Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, 2016-17
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship, 2016
University of Virginia Sesquicentennial Fellowship, spring 2016, 2009-10
American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Short-Term Fellowship, 2014-15
University of Virginia Faculty Stipend for Summer Research, 2020, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008, 2007
University of Virginia research support in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, 2020-21, 2016, 2015, 2010, 2008
Mellon - MIT Inter-University Program on International Migrations, 2002-03
Columbia University, Taraknath Das Foundation, Southern Asian Institute, 2002
Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, 2002
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Summer Language Training Fellowship, 2001
Tufts University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Award for Outstanding Academic Performance, 2001
Media Appearances
Interview with Matthew Berkman, 'Hurt Sentiments' and Forbidden Speech in India, Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy, University of Pennsylvania, January 21, 2021; Podcast here
MIT Center for International Studies, Democracies on the Crossroads?, Starr Forum, October 23, 2020
Interview with G. S. Mudur, 'CAA-NRC a road to Hindu Rashtra', The Telegraph, December 18, 2019
Interview with G. S. Mudur, 'Ayodhya case verdict: Secularism not easy to crush', The Telegraph, November 10, 2019
Writers Read, March 25, 2011
The Page 99 Test, March 22, 2011
Interview with Rukun Advani, 'Event, Metamorphosis, Memory: Opening the Curtain on a Minority View of Partition', Permanent Black Blogspot, January 5, 2011
Internet and Popular Press Publications
'For Congress, A History Lesson', The Indian Express, August 29, 2020
'Haksar's advice to Indira Gandhi can help Sonia steer Congress in the right direction', The Print, March 13, 2020. Published in The Print Hindi here.
'Missing Rahul in Delhi', The Indian Express, March 3, 2020
'For the first time, India is seeing secularism go from a top-down decree to a street slogan', The Print, January 3, 2020. Published in The Print Hindi and in Ananda Bazar Patrika, January 4, 2020.
'An Emergency Today', Review of Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point by Gyan Prakash, The New Rambler: An Online Review of Books, September 11, 2019
'Modi's Kashmir move is biggest test for Indian democracy - and for the silent liberals', The Print, August 5, 2019. Published in Hindi in The Print, August 6, 2019
'Under Narendra Modi, the once-close circle of Godse acolytes has only grown larger', The Print, May 19, 2019. Published in Bengali in Ananda Bazar Patrika, May 19, 2019
‘Old Laws for New Reasons: The Limits to Free Speech in India’, Berkley Forum, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, Georgetown University, August 23, 2018
‘Secularism and India’s Electoral Democracy’, Asia Dispatches, Wilson Center Blog, June 19, 2018
Perspective: 'Rising Religious Intolerance in South Asia,' Current History, April 2018
‘In many significant ways, Nehru’s vision for India seems passé’, The Print, November 14, 2017
'What did Gandhi Stand For, And How Is His Legacy Faring in Today's India', Huffington Post India, 10 October 2017
‘What does Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification mean for democracy in Pakistan and its politics’, The Print, July 28, 2017
‘Heroes of Hindu Nationalism’, Op-ed, India Today, January 12, 2015
'Freedom and Faith in India', Review of Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right edited by Wendy Doniger and Martha C. Nussbaum in Current History, April 2015, pp. 157-59 [pdf]
Book Reviews in the American Historical Review, Current History, Social History, Journal of Islamic Studies, Journal of British Studies, Journal of Asian Studies, Contemporary South Asia, The Tribune, The Print, The New Rambler, and Seminar. For details, see virginia.academia.edu/NeetiNair