Talk:Preeti Chopra

By Renuka Joshi

Preeti Chopra is a Professor of Visual Studies, South Asian Art and Architecture, University of Wisconsin–Madison as of 8th June 2023. According to her university profile, her research interests include modern architectural and urban history, the spatial landscapes of empire, visual and spatial cultures and the history of South Asia, material culture, postcolonial theory and cultural studies.

She has published no books, papers, or research pertaining to Hindus, the rights of Hindus, the impact or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva, India, or the Indian Government as of June 2023.

In 2021, she along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation

"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 in 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."

Publications related to India

India in General & South Asia

1. Chopra, Preeti. South & South-East Asia. Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire. Edited by G. A. Bremner, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 278-317, plates 15, 16.
2. Chopra, Preeti. The Poetics and Politics of Space: Art, Memory and Change in the Indian City. Verge: Studies in Global Asias, vol. 2, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-27. Special issue on Asian Urbanisms and Urbanizations, edited by Madhuri Desai and Shuang Shen.
3. Chopra, Preeti. The Colonial Bombay Town Hall: Engaging the Function and Quality of Public Space, 1811–1918. City Halls and Civic Materialism: Towards a Global History of Urban Public Space. Edited by Swati Chattopadhyay and Jeremy White, Routledge, 2014, pp. 158-176.
4. Chopra, Preeti. ‘Where are you from?’ Belonging after Partition. Tanqeed: A Magazine of Politics and Culture, vol. 1, no. V, August 2013.
5. Chopra, Preeti. Free to Move, Forced to Flee: The Formation and Dissolution of Suburbs in Colonial Bombay. Urban History, vol. 39, no. 1, 2012, pp. 83-107.
6. Chopra, Preeti. Refiguring the Colonial City: Recovering the Role of Local Inhabitants in the Construction of Colonial Bombay. Buildings and Landscapes, vol. 14, Fall 2007, pp. 109-125.
7. Chopra, Preeti. Pondicherry: A French Enclave in India. Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise. Edited by Nezar AlSayyad, Avebury/Gower House, 1992, pp. 107-137.