Participant Info

First Name
Neeti
Last Name
Nair
Affiliation
University of Virginia
Website URL
http://history.virginia.edu/people/profile/nn2v
Keywords
South Asian History, International History, Partition Studies, Legal History, Nationalism, Colonialism
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a 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) and, more recently, Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia (Harvard 2023). I am also a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C.

Recent Publications

Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023

Editor, Citizenship, Belonging and the Partition of India, a special issue of Asian Affairs, 53:2, 2022

Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, and Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011; Paperback 2016

Introduction’ to Ghosts from the Past? Assessing Recent Developments in Religious Freedom in South Asia, a special issue of Asian Affairs, 49:2, 2018, pp. 199-204

Perspective: ‘Rising Religious Intolerance in South Asia,’ Current History, April 2018

‘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

What did Gandhi Stand For, And How Is His Legacy Faring in Today’s India‘, Huffington Post India, 10 October 2017

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

Media Coverage
https://openthemagazine.com/lounge/books/it-is-a-historians-task-to-explain-how-things-fall-apart-or-come-together-says-neeti-nair
Country Focus
India Pakistan Bangladesh
Expertise by Geography
India
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Colonialism, Law, Politics, Religion