Home

M.A. (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

M.St. (University of Oxford)

A.M. (Harvard University)

Ph.D. (Harvard University)

 

Prof. (Dr.) Gitanjali Surendran

Professor

Email gsurendran@jgu.edu.in
Connect with me
Key Expertise I am a cultural and intellectual historian with interests ranging from comparative colonialism, political ideas, modernity and religion, to gender and urbanism. My primary area focus is broader South Asia i.e. India and its neighbourhood but I have also worked on colonial East Africa and Japan from 1600 to 1945.

M.A. (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

M.St. (University of Oxford)

A.M. (Harvard University)

Ph.D. (Harvard University)

 

Biography

Prof. (Dr.) Gitanjali Surendran Professor Jindal Global Law School. Gitanjali graduated from Lady Shri Ram College for Women in 2000 with a first class in BA (Hons) History. She completed an MA in modern Indian history from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2002. She received a Commonwealth Scholarship to read modern history at Oxford University for another masters degree which she completed in 2003. She joined Harvard University for a Phd in history in 2006. Besides receiving awards for her teaching, she has received grants from various sources including the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs, the South Asia Initiative and the Clive fellowship to complete her research. She was a Junior Research Fellow at the Nalanda-Sriwajaya Centre in Singapore in 2010. She was awarded the Phd for her dissertation ‘”The Indian Discovery of Buddhism”: Buddhist Revival in India, c1890-1960’ in 2013. She completed a monograph titled Anand Bhawan: An Intimate History for Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund in 2017 and is currently working on two other book projects – one based on her dissertation on modern Buddhism in India and the other a history of SPICMACAY.

Her research interests include modern South Asian cultural and intellectual history, environmental and gender history. She is also interested in public history and is exploring ways to bring academic history into public discourse. At JGLS, she has designed and taught basic courses on modern South Asian history as well as Indian legal and intellectual history.

History 1: Modern South Asian History – Themes in Historiography

History 2: Modern South Asian Legal History

Elective: BR Ambedkar and the Making of Modern India

Elective: Birth of the Modern World: Readings in World History

Elective: Indian Constitutional History: Ideas and Practice

Elective: Religion, Politics and Secularism in Modern South Asia

Anjali, Gita, “B. R. Ambedkar and Buddhism” in Anupama Rao and Shailaja Paik (eds), Cambridge Companion to BR Ambedkar, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming

Anjali, Gita, “Buddhist Universalism Across the Indian Ocean” in Seema Alavi, Sunil Amrith and Eric Tagliacozzo (eds) The Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean, Volume 2, forthcoming.

Anjali, Gita, Democracy’s Dhamma: Buddhism in the Making of Modern India, c1890-1956, in press, Cambridge University Press.

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Historical-thinking the Prajnata Way”, EducationWorld, September 2021, found at: https://www.educationworld.in/historical-thinking-the-prajnata-way/.

Anjali, Gita, “Caste on Campus: A Review of Ajantha Subramanian’s The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India”, Biblio, October-December 2020.

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Time to Rethink History Teaching”, EducationWorld, July 2020, found at: at: https://www.educationworld.in/time-to-rethink-history-teaching/

Surendran, Gitanjali, “An Ethnography of Living Together: Book Review of Constructing Commongrounds: Everyday Lifeworlds and Politicised Ethnicities in Sri Lanka by Anton Piyarathne”, Society and Culture in South Asia (Journal of the Department of Sociology, South Asian University), 5 (2), 364-381, July 2019

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Beni Madhab Barua and the Study of Buddhism in Calcutta” in Thomas Borchert (ed) Theravada Buddhism under Colonialism, Routledge, May 2018.

Surendran, Gitanjali, Anand Bhawan: An Intimate History, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 14 Nov 2018.

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Nehru and Today’s Politics”, op-ed, Times of India, 30 December

Gitanjali Surendran (in conversation), “The Other Silk Route: Spookery, Trade and the Great Game”, ArtEast Journal, Volume 2, 2018, pp 23-35

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Monk, Writer, Educator, and International Buddhist: U Paragu” in Justin McDaniel, Jeffrey Samuel, and Mark Rowe (eds) Figures of Buddhist Modernity, University of Hawaii Press

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Anagarika Dharmapala and Efforts at Forging a Buddhist World” in Sandogami Coperahewa (ed), Anagarika Dharmapala and India-Sri Lanka Relations: 150th Birth Anniversary Commemorative Volume 1864-2014, Centre for Contemporary India, University of Colombo.

Surendran, Gitanjali, “Frames of Mind: Book Review of Ananya Vajpeyi’s Righteous Republic”, Indian Express, 2 February 2013.
Email gsurendran@jgu.edu.in
Key Expertise I am a cultural and intellectual historian with interests ranging from comparative colonialism, political ideas, modernity and religion, to gender and urbanism. My primary area focus is broader South Asia i.e. India and its neighbourhood but I have also worked on colonial East Africa and Japan from 1600 to 1945.
Apply Now