I am an Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I am an intellectual, political, and legal historian of modern India and of the British Empire. My research interests include Gandhian thought; the Indian Constitution and Democracy; International Law and Human Rights, Colonialism and Nationalism, Indian foreign policy, and Asian anti-colonialism.
My book India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History, 1774-1950, published by Oxford University Press in 2010, explains the Indian Constitution and the postcolonial Indian polity through a comprehensive new interpretation of India’s colonial past. It explores the history of the category of justice and judicial institutions and practices in the making of the British Empire in India, the Indian anticolonial movement, and ultimately the Indian Constitution. It makes the novel argument that the Indian Constitution, framed by this history, came to be anchored not in freedom or individual rights but rather in the category of justice as equity. My research on key anticolonial thinkers and leaders such as Gandhi, Burke, Bose, and Tilak has also appeared in journals such as the American Historical Review, Law and Social Inquiry, and Law and History Review. I earned my Ph.D in History from the University of Chicago and my M.A and M.Phil degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India.
