Assistant Professor (2006)

Modern South Asia

On Leave: Fall 2009 - Spring 2010

Office Hours: n/a

Office: 218 Randall

Phone: 434) 924-6417

Fax: (434) 924-7891

Email: nn2vvirginia.edu

Education 

B.A. – St Stephen’s College, Delhi University, 1998
M.A. – Tufts University, 2000
Ph.D. – Tufts University, 2005

Appointments

University of Virginia, Assistant Professor of History, and Core Faculty, Center for South Asian Studies, Fall 2006 - Present

Tulane University, Assistant Professor of History, Spring 2006

Brown University, Visiting Instructor of History, Spring 2004 and 2005

Harvard University, Head Teaching Fellow in History, Fall 2001

Tufts University, Teaching Assistant in History, 1999-2002; Fall 2003 and 2004

Publications

Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India, under contract with Harvard University Press and Permanent Black.

'On the question of means and ends: terrorism and non-violence in colonial India' in Carola Dietze and Claudia Verhoeven eds., Terrorism and Modernity: Global Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Political Violence, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. 

‘Bhagat Singh as ‘satyagrahi’: the limits to non-violence in late colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, 43, 3, May 2009, pp. 649-681.

‘Hindu Mahasabha’, ‘Lala Lajpat Rai’, ‘Pt Madan Mohan Malaviya’, ‘Punjabi Hindus’, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’, ‘Sanatan Dharm’, ‘Sangathan/ Shuddhi’, ‘Swami Shraddhanand’, Encyclopedia entries in Ayesha Jalal ed., Oxford Companion to Pakistani History, Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

‘“We Left our Keys with our Neighbors”: Memory and the Search for Meaning in post-Partitioned India,’ Rosemarie Rogers Working Paper # 29, The Inter-University Committee on International Migration, MIT, November 2004.

Popular Press

'The Truth of Geography', Outlook India, 4 December 2008.<http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081204&fname=neeti&sid=1>

'Restraint v. Denial: The Struggle between India and Pakistan', Harvard International Review, 6 February 2009. <http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page=article&id=1820>

Book Reviews 

Stanley Wolpert, Shameful Flight: the last years of the British Empire in India, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, Journal of British Studies, 47, 2, April 2008.

Reeta Grewal and Sheena Pall eds., Precolonial and Colonial Punjab: Society, Economy, Politics and Culture, Essays for Indu Banga, New Delhi: Manohar, 2005, Journal of Asian Studies, 66, 2, May 2007.

Geeti Sen ed., India: A National Culture?, Delhi: Sage and India International Centre 2003, Contemporary South Asia, Volume 14, No 1, March 2005.

Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya eds., The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, Delhi and New York: Routledge, 2000, Seminar, February 2004.

Grants and Awards

Faculty Summer Research Grant, University of Virginia, 2007, 2008, 2009.

Research support in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Virginia, 2008.  

Travel Grant, Department of History, University of Virginia, May 2006 - January 2007.

Mellon-MIT Inter-University Program on International Migrations, 2002-2003.

Taraknath Das Foundation, Southern Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2002.

Research Grant, Department of History, Tufts University, 2002.

Certificate for Distinction in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University, 2002.

Summer Language Training Fellowship, Center for South West Asia and Islamic Civilizations, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2001.

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Award for Outstanding Academic Performance, Tufts University, 2001.

Select Presentations

Forthcoming: Invited to a workshop on 'Radical Politics in 20th century Punjab' at the European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, University of Bonn, Germany, 26-29 July 2010.  

Panelist at Roundtable discussion on Mrinalini Sinha's Specters of Mother India: the global restructuring of an Empire, Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, 25 April 2009.

'We left our keys with our neighbors: Memory and the search for meaning in post-partition Delhi', Socio-Cultural Workshop, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia, 22 January 2009. 

'Gandhian satyagraha as terrorism: the limis to non-violence in late colonial India', Conference on Terrorism and Modernity: Global Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Political Violence, Co-sponsored by the German Historical Institutes (DC, Paris, London) and Tulane University, 23-26 October 2008.

'Om Shantih, Ameen: religiously informed anti-colonial protest', 37th Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 18 October 2008. 

'"Unity cannot be purchased at the cost of Hindu rights": the Nation debated as Hindu', Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 5 April 2008.

'Bhagat Singh as satyagrahi: the politics of non-violence in late colonial India', Department of History, University of Virginia, 17 February 2006. Revised versions presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, San Francisco, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and Delhi University in 2006.

'Negotiating the Nation: Region, Religion and the Making of a Punjabi Hindu Politics, 1907-47', Concordia University, Montreal, 14 December 2004. Revised versions presented at Tulane University and Wellesley College in 2005. 

'"Things happen to upset plans": the problem of responsibility and Partition violence', 33rd Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 14-17 October 2004. 

'Crafting a Nation: The Political Identities of Lala Lajpat Rai, 1882-1928', Graduate Students Interdisciplinary Studies Symposium, Tufts University, 31 March 2001. 

Current Research

My book Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India, 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 critical anti-colonial national movements. But almost simultaneously they 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.