Charu Gupta: Noted Delhi University Historian of Women in Modern India Visits and Teaches at Yale

Charu Gupta is Visiting Associate Professor of History and South Asian Studies at the South Asian Studies Council, MacMillan Center, Yale University. Dr. Gupta has been in yearlong residence at Yale University since the Fall of 2008.

Born and raised in Delhi, Charu belonged to a conservative joint family but that did not deter her from sallying into the world of feminist politics. She also acknowledged her alma mater Miranda House as the catalyst that pushed her into History and particularly social history. Soon after she finished her PhD from SOAS, she moved to New Delhi to become Assistant Professor at Delhi University. Charu Gupta has also taught at University of Hawaii in 2006 and at University of Washington, Seattle in 2004. The combination of her academic training in Miranda House, her PhD in SOAS, and the teaching experience in the US she had, has made her understanding of the discipline of history far greater, but she still feels that she has a long way to go.

Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu (2001) published by Permanent Black, New Delhi & by Palgrave Macmillan, New York, was her doctoral dissertation which she turned into a book, shows how gendered notions about women’s sexuality and Muslim debauchery were used to pull together a heterogeneous populace into a coherent Hindu community in colonial North India. Her second book which she co-authored with Mukul Sharma, who is Director of Amnesty International, India, is Contested Coastlines: Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia by Routledge, Delhi and London in 2008. The book is about troubled and tragic journeys and livelihood insecurities of coastal fisherfolk arrested and jailed by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for having entered each other’s territorial waters.

As Visiting Associate Professor of History, Dr. Gupta offered two undergraduate courses during her residence here. In the Fall of 2008, Dr. Gupta taught Gender, Caste and Religion in Colonial India. The primary aim of the course was to locate social history within the intersections of gender, class and religion. This course was designed as a seminar and required submission of essays and presentations by students.  In spring 2009, Dr. Gupta taught Women in Modern India, with a particular emphasis on the public sphere and the course was thematic than chronological. It also dealt with conceptions of popular culture, sexualities, women’s movements and LGBT politics.

When asked about her impression about Yale students, particularly the undergraduates, Dr. Gupta was full of praise.  She said that students in her class were exceptionally responsive and that she had a satisfying teaching experience at Yale. At the same time however, she also added that though the students exhibited a sense of fascination for India, their image about the country remains fragmented. This is also compounded by the fact that contemporary Indian society is full of contradictions for a novice trying to deal with its complexities. “There is so much going on in India. It’s quite a paradox. Gay and lesbian politics, women ministers and on the other hand you have dowry deaths” quipped Dr. Gupta.

Current Work: Dr. Gupta is currently working on representation of Dalits in India. Her monograph titled, ‘Gendering Dalits in North India’ will soon be published. Through an analysis of the representation of Dalit men and women’s bodies, Dr. Gupta aims to problematize the arguments on hegemonic masculinities and middle class femininities as well, in this monograph. When asked whether she found support in the form of resources at Yale for her research on Dalit representation, Dr. Gupta said that the Yale Library did not have a lot of primary data for her specific research, though she hopes that the South Asian Studies Council will work collaboratively with the Yale library and increase their collection on the contemporary literature on India. She suggested that Yale could venture along the lines of University of Chicago, where the bibliography of books authored by visiting faculty would be tapped into and added to the South Asia collection. She suggested Permanent Black, a power house for Indian academic publications, to be the stop where one can get a fairly good idea on what is being currently discussed and published by in the Indian academy. 

Charu Gupta, would like to see stronger ties being developed between Yale University and academics from India and South Asian region in general. She proposed a more prominent role for the South Asian Studies Council in order to make these collaborations. As the semester is drawing to an end, Dr. Gupta is preparing to leave for India and to be back in her familiar haunts in Delhi. Though she admitted that she will miss her fellow colleagues here, she looks forward to spending more time with her family and her students at Delhi University, but she feels that her being here at Delhi University would be a resource for the Council as she has become one of its well-wishers and wishes to see the Council grow, more than ever before