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Manu Bhagavan

Manu Bhagavan - Professor - profile photo

Research Interests

  • 20th-century India; intellectual history; human rights; constitutional history; postcolonial studies

Education

  • Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin

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Affiliated Campus(es)

  • Hunter College

Teaching Interests

  • Modern South Asian history, human rights, intellectual history

Broad Areas of Dissertation Supervision

  • South Asia, Human Rights, (Inter)Nationalism, Intellectual, Postcolonial

Podcast

Selected Publications

Books

  • Woman of the World: Madam Pandit, India, and the Global Stage. Commissioned by Penguin Random House India, Penguin/Viking Imprint (under contract)

  • India and the Cold War (edited).  In progress.  Under agreement with UNC Press Global Cold War Series, edited by Odd Arne Westad. Target manuscript submission date: June 2017.

  • Hidden Histories: Religion and Reform in South Asia (edited, with Syed Akbar Hyder), Forthcoming from Primus Books, tentative release scheduled for July 2017.

  • The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World. HarperCollins India, February 2012. Palgrave Macmillan, 9/13/2013.

  • Heterotopias: Nationalism and the Possibility of History in South Asia. Edited. Oxford University Press, 2010.

  • Speaking Truth to Power: Religion, Caste, and the Subaltern Question in India. Co-edited with Anne Feldhaus. Oxford University Press, 2008. Published in paperback, July 2009. Second printing, May 2010.

  • Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern Question in India. Co-edited with Anne Feldhaus. Oxford University Press, 2008. Published in paperback, July 2009

  • Sovereign Spheres: Princes, Education, and Empire in Colonial India. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Select Articles

  • “Reflections on Indian Internationalism and a Postnational Global Order: A response to Partha Chatterjee.”  Invited contribution.  Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.  Forthcoming in issue 37.2, 2017.

  • “The Hand and the Fist: Human Rights and State Power in India.” Invited contribution, in Atul Thakur, India: Now & In Transition (Niyogi Books, forthcoming July 2017).

  • "Princely States and the Making of Modern India: Internationalism, Constitutionalism and the Postcolonial Moment." In The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 46(3), September 2009: 427-456.

  • "A New Hope: India, the United Nations and the Making of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Modern Asian Studies, 44(2), March 2010: 311-347. Also published in MAS online 13 June 2008. Copyright Cambridge University Press.

  • "Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary: Exploring the Cartography of Hindu Nationalism in Colonial India." The Journal of Asian Studies, 67(3), August 2008: 881-915. Also published online 23 July 2008. Copyright Cambridge University Press.

  • "The Hindutva Underground: Hindu Nationalism and the Indian National Congress in Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial India." In The Economic and Political Weekly, Special Article, 13 September 2008: 39-48.

Manu Bhagavan - Professor - profile photo

Contact

Affiliated Campus(es)

  • Hunter College

Books

India and the Cold War by Manu Bhagavan

India and the Cold War

by Manu Bhagavan Professor, History, Professor, Biography and Memoir

This collection of essays inverts the way we see the Cold War by looking at the conflict from the perspective of the so-called developing world, rather than of the superpowers, through the birth and first decades of India's life as a postcolonial nation. Contributors draw on a wide array of new material, from recently opened archival sources to literature and film, and meld approaches from diplomatic history to development studies to explain the choices India made and to frame decisions by its policy makers. Together, the essays demonstrate how India became a powerful symbol of decolonization and an advocate of non-alignment, disarmament, and global governance as it stood between the United States and the Soviet Union, actively fostering dialogue and attempting to forge friendships without entering into formal alliances. Sweeping in its scope yet nuanced in its analysis, this is the authoritative account of India and the Cold War.

Published September 2019
University of North Carolina Press, 2019

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Hidden-Histories-103x156

Hidden Histories

Primus Books, 2018

by Manu Bhagavan Professor, History, Professor, Biography and Memoir

Syed Akbar Hyder and Manu Bhagavan, editors

The essays in this volume examine 'hidden histories' related to gender, religion, and reform in modern South Asia. Chapters from an array of eminent contributors examine Indo-Muslim cultures and political mobilization, literary aesthetics, and education, broadly defined. Dedicated to Gail Minault, a pioneering scholar of women's history, Islamic reformation, and Urdu literature, this volume raises new questions about the role of identity in politics and public life, about memory and historical archives, and about innovative approaches to envisioning egalitarianism. it showcases interdisciplinary methodologies. Timely and thought provoking, this book will interest all who wish to understand how our diverse and plural pasts have informed our cosmopolitan present as we struggle to arrive at a better future for all.

Published March 2018

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India and the Quest for One World: The Peacemakers

India and the Quest for One World: The Peacemakers

by Manu Bhagavan Professor, History, Professor, Biography and Memoir

This book tells the story of India's quest for human rights in the years leading up to its independence from Great Britain and for more than a decade after. Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, and Hansa Mehta all strove to bridge the ideological differences between the East and the West, between capitalist and communist, to forge a common destiny for mankind that would be free of empire, poverty, exploitation, and war. They called their solution One World, in which state power would be checked and the freedom of individuals and groups expanded. Based on seven years of research, this is the first truly international history of newly independent India.

Published September 2013
Harper Collins India, 2012; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

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Related News

April 26, 2021

India's Struggle Against COVID

Professor Manu Bhagavan of Hunter College/GC discusses "India's Struggle Against COVID" on the International Horizons podcast.

February 28, 2017

Manu Bhagavan in Media on 'Crisis of Sovereignty'

Professor Manu Bhagavan (GC/Hunter, History) recently published an essay on the modern-day 'crisis of sovereignty' on the Brexit: Global Perspectives blog, which is affiliated with Cambridge University.