Role
Lecturer in History
Qualifications & background
B.A. (Hons) History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
M.A. in Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
M.Phil. in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Ph.D. in History, University of Cambridge
Professional membership
Member of the Royal Historical Society
Member of the British Association for South Asian Studies
Teaching interests
Imperial Britain and the British empire
Modern India -18th to 20th centuries
Law and colonialism
Research interests
Religion and law in the British empire, especially India and Malaya (Malaysia and Singapore)
Religious and social activism, community formation, minorities (especially Indian Christians)
The preservation of indigenous laws, legal pluralism, conflict of laws and jurisdictions
‘Personal laws’ or religion-based family laws; contests over religious rights and women’s rights; women as litigants
Principal investigator of University of Plymouth's IRNC (International Research Networking and Collaboration) funded project:
'Judging empire: the global reach of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council'
Further details: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=32920
UoP Research group membership
Centre for Humanities, Music and Performing Arts Research (HuMPA)
History
Grants & contracts
University of Plymouth's IRNC (International Research Networking and Collaboration) grant
British Academy Postdoctoral fellowship, September 2008 – August 2011 [Resigned 30 September 2009]
Postdoctoral fellowship, Department of History, King’s College London, September 2007–August 2008
Gates Cambridge Scholarship for Ph.D. studies (2002-5)
Overseas Research Students Award for the corresponding period
Publications
The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830-1960 (Cambridge Imperial and Postcolonial Studies Series, Palgrave, 2011) http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=312072
‘English law, Brahmo marriage and the problem of religious difference: civil marriage laws in Britain and India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52: 3 (2010), pp. 524-552
'Religious change, social conflicts and legal competition: the emergence of Christian personal law in colonial India', Modern Asian Studies, 44: 6 (2010), 1147-1195
‘Indian Christian personal law: the modern origins of yet another tradition’, Occasional Paper, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, UK, No. 4 of 2004
‘Fr. Henry Hosten, S.J.: an unacknowledged historian of India and his legacy’, Indian Church History Review, (Dec., 2003), pp. 77-90.
Reviews
Review of David Hardiman, Missionaries and their medicine: a Christian modernity for tribal India (2008) in Social History of Medicine, 22: 1 (2009), pp. 214- 215
Work in progress
'Religious diagnosis: Skinner v. Orde and a curious problem of legal governance in the British Empire', revising for re-submission to the
American Historical Review Reports & invited lectures
Splitting hairs: some reflections on law in eighteenth-century India’ presented at the King’s College –JNU colloquium held at the Institute of Advanced Study, JNU, New Delhi, 19 November, 2008.
‘Colonial secularism and the management of religions in South Asia’, at the annual conference of BASAS (British Association for South Asian Studies), Leicester, March 2008.
‘Limited civility: the religious history of India’s civil marriage law’ at a one-day conference called ‘Belief in Law: religious identity, colonialism and national policy’ organized by the Religion research cluster of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, February 2008.
Conferences organised
Empire: legality, locality, authority - a symposium at the University of Plymouth, 10 September 2010
