Gyan Prakash

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Rutvi Dattani


Gyan Prakash is a professor in the Department of History at Princeton University[1][2] as of August, 2022. According to his university profile, his research and teaching interests concerns urban modernity, the colonial genealogies of modernity, and problems of postcolonial thought and politics

In his book "Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point" he expresses contempt for the electoral and political demands voiced by the people.[3] Speaking about the transformation of the Maharashtra's city, Mumbai, in his book "Mumbai Fables," he laments the loss of power by communists and derides the rise of the democratically elected Shiv Sena.[4]

According to his bio and Google scholar, he has published no books, papers or research pertaining to the rights of Hindus, or the impact of or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva.

In 2021, he endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the following unsubstantiated statement:

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."[5]

On November 5, 2017, he signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[6] where he:

  • He misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[7][8][9]
  • Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions ​

Publications related to India[edit]

Books[edit]

  1. . Prakash, Gyan. Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press, 2003. [1]
  2. . Prakash, Gyan. Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. Princeton University Press, 1999. [2]

Journal Publications related to India[edit]

  1. Prakash, Gyan. “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism.” The American Historical Review, vol. 99, no. 5, 1994, pp. 1475–90. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2168385.
  2. Prakash, Gyan. “Orientalism Now.” History and Theory, vol. 34, no. 3, 1995, pp. 199–212. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2505621.
  3. Prakash, Gyan. “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 32, no. 2, 1990, pp. 383–408. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/178920.
  4. Prakash, Gyan. “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography.” Social Text, no. 31/32, 1992, pp. 8–19. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/466216.
  5. Prakash, Gyan. “Science ‘Gone Native’ in Colonial India.” Representations, no. 40, 1992, pp. 153–78. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2928743.
  6. Prakash, Gyan. “Colonialism, Capitalism and the Discourse of Freedom.” International Review of Social History, vol. 41, 1996, pp. 9–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26405499.
  7. Sharma, Hari P., et al. “APHC Leaders’ Visit to Kerala.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 36, no. 35, 2001, pp. 3330–3330. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4411040.
  8. Prakash, Gyan. “Can the ‘Subaltern’ Ride? A Reply to O’Hanlon and Washbrook.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 34, no. 1, 1992, pp. 168–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/178989.
  9. Prakash, Gyan. “Reproducing Inequality: Spirit Cults and Labor Relations in Colonial Eastern India.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 1986, pp. 209–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/312575.
  10. Prakash, Gyan. “The Idea of Bombay: Bollywood Epitomized Modernity for a Boy in a Distant Province. As an Adult, He Sees a Troubled City.” The American Scholar, vol. 75, no. 2, 2006, pp. 88–99. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41222581.
  11. Prakash, Gyan. “Who’s Afraid of Postcoloniality?” Social Text, no. 49, 1996, pp. 187–203. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/466900.
  12. Prakash, Gyan. “The Modern Nation’s Return in the Archaic.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 3, 1997, pp. 536–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344034.
  13. Prakash, Gyan. “Edward Said in Bombay.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 31, no. 2, 2005, pp. 498–504. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/430978.
  14. Prakash, Gyan. “On Mumbai Fables.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 46, no. 4, 2011, pp. 80–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27918069.
  15. Prakash, Gyan, and Philipe Sicard. “Les Lieux de Production Du Discours Savant.” L’Homme, no. 156, 2000, pp. 65–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25129749.
  16. Balasubramanian, R., and Gyan Prakash. “Addition of Two Sets of Integers.” Current Science, vol. 85, no. 8, 2003, pp. 1202–06. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24108620.
  17. Amin, Shahid, et al. “Remembering Pandian.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 49, no. 47, 2014, pp. 4–5. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24481012.
  18. Prakash, Gyan. “Everyday Tactics of Survival in the Unhomely City.” Quaderni Storici, vol. 50, no. 149 (2), 2015, pp. 501–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43780293.
  19. Prakash, Gyan. “Reviews of Books.” The American Historical Review, vol. 109, no. 2, 2004, pp. 611–12. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/530493.
  20. Prakash, Gyan, and Germán Franco Toriz. “La Reproducción de la Desigualdad: Cultos a Los Espíritus y Relaciones Laborales en el Este de la India Durante el Periodo Colonial.” Pasados Poscoloniales: Colección de Ensayos Sobre la Nueva Historia y Etnografía de la India, edited by Saurabh Dube, 1st ed., El Colegio de Mexico, 1999, pp. 457–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3f8nh8.16.
  21. Prakash, Gyan. Victorian Studies, vol. 45, no. 1, 2002, pp. 149–51. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3829571.
  22. Prakash, Gyan. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 475, 1984, pp. 216–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1043597.
  23. Prakash, Gyan. “Body Politic.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 17, no. 30, 1982, pp. 1193–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4371153.
  24. Prakash, Gyan. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, 1989, pp. 917–20. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2058210.
  25. Prakash, Gyan. Isis, vol. 105, no. 2, 2014, pp. 445–46. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/678011.
  26. Prakash, Gyan. Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 1, 2003, pp. 181–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3318370.
  27. Prakash, Gyan. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 473, 1984, pp. 223–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1043785.
  28. Prakash, Gyan. The American Historical Review, vol. 115, no. 5, 2010, pp. 1464–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23308102.
  29. Prakash, Gyan. Cultural Geographies, vol. 17, no. 2, 2010, pp. 289–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44251348.
  30. Prakash, Gyan. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 56, no. 1, 1997, pp. 223–25. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2646398.
  31. Prakash, Gyan. The International History Review, vol. 13, no. 4,

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Gyan Prakash page on Princeton University accessed on August 9, 2022
  2. ↑ Gyan Prakash page on Academia accessed on August 9, 2022
  3. ↑ Prakash. G (2018) Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point. Penguin Random House
  4. ↑ Prakash. G (2010) Mumbai Fables. HaperCollins India
  5. ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
  6. ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
  7. ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
  8. ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
  9. ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. ​where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"

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Deval Sancheti, Krishna Maheshwari, Sachi Anjunkar, Rutvi Dattani

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