Publications
Books
Forthcoming The Political Outsider: Curative Democracy and the Lineages of Populism in India. Stanford University Press. Under contract, final manuscript submitted on October 25, 2022. Expected publication date: 2024.
2022 Saffron Republic: Hindu nationalism and state power in India. Co-edited with Thomas Blom Hansen. Cambridge University Press.
2012 Visualizing Secularism and Religion: Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, India. Co-edited with Alev Cinar and Maha Yahya. University of Michigan Press.
2007 Beyond Belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism. Duke University Press, “Politics, History, and Culture” series.
2007 Beyond Belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism. (South Asia edition). Permanent Black.
2006 Violence and Democracy in India. Co-edited with Amrita Basu. Seagull Books/Berg Press.
Book chapters
2023/In Press “The Death of the Third World Revisited: Curative Democracy and World-Making in Late 1970s India.” In Jeremy Adelman and Gyan Prakash eds. Inventing the Third World: In search of freedom for the postwar global South. Bloomsbury.
2022 “Hindutva Establishments: Right-wing think tanks and the mainstreaming of governmental Hindutva.” In Saffron Republic: Hindu nationalism and state power in India. Cambridge University Press: 72-106.
2022 “What Is New About New Hindutva?” With Thomas Blom Hansen. In Saffron Republic: Hindu nationalism and state power in India. Cambridge University Press: 1-24.
2022 “New Hindutva and the UP Model.” With Thomas Blom Hansen. In Saffron Republic: Hindu nationalism and state power in India. Cambridge University Press: 107-129.
2022 “The Political Outsider.” In Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur eds. The People of India: New Indian Politics in the 21st century. Penguin Viking: 66-87.
2021 “Target Politics: Digital and data technologies and election campaigns—a view from India.” In Ravi Vasudevan ed. Media and the Constitution of the Political. Sage Publications: 285-310.
2020 “Secularism in Two Contexts.” In Smita Tewari Jessal and Halil Turan eds. New Perspectives on India and Turkey: Connections and Debates. Routledge.
2018 “India 2030 and the Limits of Competitive Futurism.” In Stefan Maier et. al. eds. Germany and the World 2030. Econ Press.
2015 “Nehruvian.” In Gita Dharampal-Frick, Rachel Dwyer, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach and Jahnavi Phalkey eds. Keywords in Modern Indian Studies. Oxford University Press and New York University Press.
2014 "When the Revolution Is Televised: Reflections on Media, Power, and Civil Society in India." In Partha Chatterjee, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Bodhisattva Kar eds. New Cultural Histories of India. Oxford University Press.
2009 “The Politics of Death: The Anti-Nuclear Imaginary in India.” In Itty Abraham ed. Atomic Power and Nuclear Publics: Culture, state, and society in India and Pakistan. Indiana University Press. (Indian edition: Orient Blackswan 2010).
2007 “Elsewhere: Urban space, national time, and postcolonial difference in the steel towns of India.” In Thomas Bender and Alev Cinar eds., Urban Imaginaries: Locating the Modern City. University of Minnesota Press.
2004 “Prose After Gujarat: Secularism, Violence, and Democracy in India.” Co- authored with Amrita Basu. In Mushirul Hasan ed., Will Secular India Survive? Imprint One Press.
2003 “Nuclear Frames: Official nationalism, the nuclear bomb, and the anti-nuclear movement in India.” In M.V. Ramana and Rammanohar Reddy, eds. Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream. Orient Longman Press.
Refereed journal articles
2015 "Mediated Populism and the 2014 Indian Elections." Co-edited with Paula Chakravartty. Special Issue of Television & New Media.
2015 "Mr. Modi Goes to Delhi: Mediated Populism and the 2014 Indian Elections." (with Paula Chakravartty). Television and New Media 16.4, 1-12.
2015 "Angry Citizens: Civic Anger and the Politics of Curative Democracy in India." Identities 22.3.
2014 "Media, Activism, and the New Political: 'Istanbul Conversations' on New Media and Left Politics." (with Aswin Punathambekar, Tarek Sabry, and Sune Haugbolle). Media, Culture & Society. 36.6, 1-12.
2014 "Being the Change: The Aam Aadmi Party and the Politics of Extraordinariness in Indian Democracy," Economic and Political Weekly. XLIX.15, 45-54.
2013 "Media Pluralism Redux: Towards New Frameworks of Comparative Media Studies 'Beyond the West'." (with Paula Chakravartty). Political Communication. 30.3, 349-370.
2011
“Television News and Democratic Change in India." Media, Culture & Society. 33.5, 761-777.
2010
“Temple and Dam, Fez and Hat: The secular roots of religious politics in India and Turkey.” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. 48.2, 148-172.
2006 “Seeing A State: National commemorations and the public sphere in India and Turkey.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. 48.1, 200-234.
2006 “A Symbol of Freedom: The Indian flag and transformations of Indian nationalism, 1906-2002.” Journal of Asian Studies. August.
Awarded the best article prize by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (2007)
2002 “Moving Pictures: The postcolonial state and visual representations of India.” Contributions to Indian Sociology. Vol. 36 (1 & 2), 33-63.
Reprinted in Sumathi Ramaswamy ed. Beyond Appearances. Sage Publications, 2003.
2001 “Nation and Institution: Commemorating the Fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence.” Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Vol. 3(2), 251-65.
1999 “Instituting Diversity: Official nationalism in post-independence India.” South Asia. Vol. XXII (1), 79-99.
Digital publications
2018 “The Democracy Archive.” Curated and co-created a multimedia open access archive of digital research resources (oral histories, primary documents, original audiovisual material) on key events and turning points in contemporary Indian democracy. Collections include “The Long Emergency” and “Campus Uprisings,” that respectively document media experiences of the Indian Emergency (1975-77) and student movements (2016-18). Funded by the BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research). See demx.in
Book reviews
2015 Review of Kabir Tambar, "The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Belonging and the Demands of History in Turkey" (Stanford University Press, 2014) in Perspectives on Politics.
2009 Review of Shabnum Tejani, “Indian Secularism” (Indiana University Press, 2008) in American Historical Review.
2005 Review of Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in Postcolonial India” (Duke University Press, 2003) in Indian Economic and Social History Review.
2004 Review of Sankaran Krishna, “Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood” (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1999) in Theory and Event.
2002 Review of John Garver, “Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century” (University of Washington Press, 2001) in Journal of Asian Studies.
Visual outputs
2020 Co-Producer, Indian Elections: Visual Diaries. A multimedia research archive on election campaigns during the 2019 Indian general elections.
2019 Executive Producer, Recasting Selves (dir. Lalit Vachani). A documentary film on caste and “skills training” in the new Indian economy.
2015 Researcher, An Ordinary Election (dir. Lalit Vachani). A documentary film on the Aam Aadmi Party’s election campaign.