Sudipta Kaviraj

Sudipta Kaviraj, born in 1945, is a distinguished scholar specializing in the domains of South Asian Politics and Intellectual History, frequently aligned with the disciplines of Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies. Presently, he holds a faculty position at Columbia University within the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.

Education
Kaviraj pursued his academic endeavors in Political Science at the esteemed Presidency College of the University of Calcutta. Subsequently, he attained his doctoral degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, thereby solidifying his scholarly foundation in the field. This early academic trajectory underscores his commitment to rigorous intellectual inquiry and his notable contributions to the discipline of Political Science.

Career
As a distinguished academician, he holds the position of Professor specializing in South Asian Politics and South Asian Intellectual History. Notably, he has served as the former department chair of the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department at Columbia University. Prior to his tenure at Columbia, he held the role of Professor in Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Furthermore, he has demonstrated his scholarly expertise as an Associate Professor of Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and as a Visiting Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford.

Additionally, his intellectual influence is evident in his founding membership within the Subaltern Studies Collective, a significant scholarly initiative with profound implications for the academic discourse in the field.

Opinions
"'The history of modern India tells us a complex, surprising, captivating, and yet unconcluded story of freedom. It is appropriate to express a Tocquevillesque astonishment at this historical phenomenon. If we look from age to age, from the earliest antiquity to the present day, we can agree with Tocqueville that nothing like this has ever happened before. We have not yet seen the end of this unprecedented historical process… For, the eventual shape of the destination of this process might be unclear, but the movement towards a greater expansion of freedom is irreversible.'"
 * The Enchantment of Democracy and India" (Permanent Black 2011)

Selected publications

 * The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India, 1993, ISBN 0-19-564585-5
 * Politics in India, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-564873-0
 * Civil Society: History and Possibilities, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-63344-3
 * "Imaginary Institutions of India", Permanent Black, 2010, ISBN 81-7824-357-1