A Long Revolution? Indian Politics in Transition, 1989-2009

On April 29, 2009 Professor Mahesh Rangarajan of the University of Delhi will deliver a lecture titled �A Long revolution? Indian Politics in Transition, 1989-2009.� The lecture will take place at 4:30 pm in Room 203 of the MacMillan Center (34 Hillhouse Avenue). It is free and open to the public. Dr. Rangarajan�s lecture will address the ongoing General Elections in India, the world�s largest democracy. Over the past decade, Indian politics have been dominated by coalitions, led by either the Congress or Bharatiya Janata Party. However, these two leading parties have historically relied on support from regional political parties, which have become increasingly assertive, making coalition formation more difficult. Dr. Rangarajan�s lecture will focus on the implications of the current elections.

Dr. Rangarajan is Professor of Modern Indian History at the University of Delhi, India. He received his B.A. with Honours from Hindu College, University of Delhi in 1985 and then was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, from where he received his doctorate in Modern History in 1993. After receiving his doctorate, Dr. Rangarajan served as Assistant Editor of The Telegraph (Kolkata) for a year, before assuming a five-year post as Junior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, housed at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore. Additionally, Dr. Rangarajan has taught at Cornell University, Kolkata University and Jadavpur University.

Dr. Rangarajan is a well-respected political commentator and has served as a political analyst for the BBC. Most recently, he has written on the decline of India�s national parties in the run-up to the national elections. He is a well-respected and frequently featured commentator on Indian politics on NDTV and Aaj Tak, India�s leading Hindi news service.

Dr. Rangarajan is one of India�s leading environmental historians. His first book, Fencing the Forest (Oxford University Press, 1996) was a study of the colonial history of forests and agrarian change in central India. He also wrote India�s Wildlife History (Permanent Black, 2001), the first social history of wild animals and hunting in colonial India. He has also edited or co-edited several books on conservation conflicts in India. Dr. Rangarajan is currently awaiting the publication of Environmental History of India, a two-volume study which he co-edited with Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, the chair of Yale�s South Asian Studies Council. His book As if Nature Existed, co-written with John McNeill and Jose Augusto Padua, is forthcoming in 2009.

Dr. Rangarajan will also participate in the Terrestrial Environments and their Histories in Modern India Conference, taking place at Yale on May 1-2, 2009.

Dr. Rangarajan�s lecture is sponsored by South Asian Studies Council, The Rustgi Family Fund, Stanley T. Woodward Lectureship Fund; Isaac H. Bromley Lectureship and the Charles Gallaudet Trumbull Lectureship.