Biography

Suchintan Das is a historian of modern India. He works at the interstices of global history, social and legal history of warfare, mass displacement, and counter-insurgencies, and comparative history of empires. He has completed his DPhil in Modern History and an MSt in Global and Imperial History from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, a Beit Scholar, an Oxford-Moussouris-Merton Graduate Scholar, and a Frere Exhibitioner. He also has an undergraduate degree in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he stood first in class in order of merit.

Suchintan’s doctoral thesis titled ‘Empire, War, and Mass-Detention: A History of Encampment and Internment in India (1937-67)’ examined how the vagaries of empire and warfare configured non-carceral and indefinite captivity without trial by executive fiat in colonial and post-colonial India. It is now being developed into a monograph. His current research focuses on uncovering the colonial origins and imperial transmission of what is known as ‘closed material procedure’ in the UK and ‘sealed cover jurisprudence’ in India. He is also interested in the lives and thoughts of two twentieth-century Indian polymaths, Rahul Sankrityayan and Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi.

Suchintan has published extensively on the history of global captivity, the Second World War, and the world peace movement. He has taught courses on Modern South Asia and the First World War at Mansfield College, the University of Oxford, and the Stanford University’s Montag Center for Overseas Studies. He is also a former convenor of The Oxford Transnational and Global History Seminar and the War and Peace Critical-Thinking Community at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.