Vasudha Dalmia Appointed as Yale’s inaugural Professor of Modern Hinduism

In January 2013, Vasudha Dalmia will become Yale’s first Professor of Modern Hinduism in the Department of Religious Studies. She recently spoke to the South Asian Studies Council about the trajectory of her scholarship at the intersection of religion, performance, politics and literature, and shared her research and teaching plans.

Reflecting on the development of her research interests, Professor Dalmia observes that it was while researching for her monograph, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth Century Benaras (1997), that it became clear to her that Harischandra, whom many regard as the father of Hindi literature and especially modern drama, “shaped what being Hindu meant in this period”, and that the study of literature, language and religion were closely linked. Nationalism, and “national modernity”, in the late 19th century, particularly in North India and the Hindi belt, Professor Dalmia notes, involved the process of creating a literary canon in newly emerging modern Hindi, which invoked the literature of the bhakti period as its immediate forerunner. It also involved the articulation of a Hinduism that found links with the bhakti traditions of the early modern period. Literature and religion were thus two sides of the same coin.

During her tenure at Berkeley, Professor Dalmia continued to work on literature, performance and religion, focusing in particular on Hindi literature in in the first half of the twentieth century. Her arrival at Yale, and appointment in the Department of Religious Studies, affords her the opportunity to place greater emphasis on the study of modern Hinduism. This focus is reflected in two current projects, the first a volume edited with Munis Faruqui: Religious Interaction in Mughul India. This is near publication. She is also working on a second edited volume with Martin Fuchs, Religious Interaction in Modern India. The two volumes together will make it possible, Professor Dalmia hopes, to see the continuities as well as the disjunctures between the early modern and modern periods in India.