Georgetown Qatar professor’s new book offers insight on modern Indian politics

Doha: When Georgetown University in Qatar (GU Q) Professor Uday Chandra graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, USA, with a BA in economics, he never...

Doha: When Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) Professor Uday Chandra graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, USA, with a BA  in economics, he never imagined that his path to becoming a professor would lead deep into the forests of Jharkhand, India, to live among tribal communities.

This unexpected journey culminated in his first book, Resistance as Negotiation: Making States and Tribes in the Margins of Modern India, a work that challenges traditional notions of resistance and state power.

“I knew that economics was a valuable major,” he reflects, “but my interest lay in understanding politics and society using a wider range of techniques.” This realisation propelled him towards a PhD in political science at Yale University, where his curiosity about the dynamics of power and resistance began to take shape.

Professor Chandra’s dissertation, which won the prestigious Sardar Patel Award, focused on tracing how the notion of “tribe” has co-evolved with modern state-making processes in South Asia and beyond.

“My specialisation emerged fairly organically,” he says. “I went to rural eastern India to study youth in the growing Maoist movement at a time when the Indian prime minister had labelled the Maoists the greatest internal security threat since independence.