Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity
A recent feature article in Caravan magazine explores the prospect that the BJP will project Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, as its Prime Ministerial candidate in the 2014 general elections. Politics in—and economic models of—Gujarat are once again thrust into the national limelight with Modi’s possible candidacy. Drawing on his recent book, entitled Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity (2011), Professor Arafaat Valiani’s lecture will discuss the place of violence and political activism in Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement in 20th century Gujarat and the Hindu nationalist movement that emerged afterward. This lecture will also shed light on the question of ‘political community’ in the ‘new’ India.
Arafaat Valiani is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Oregon. Before taking up his appointment at the University of Oregon, Arafaat Valiani was Assistant Professor at Williams College, and he was a Kluge Fellow at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress. He earned his doctoral degree from Columbia University. He also earned a Masters degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics.