Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor, Middlebury College

Expert Bio

Ajay Verghese is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 from The George Washington University, and was a postdoctoral fellow from 2012-13 at the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. His research interests include Indian politics, ethnic violence, historical legacies, religion, and methodology. His first book, The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016, and his articles have been published in Modern Asian Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Development Studies, Politics & Society, Politics and Religion, and Sociological Theory. He received the Ted Jelen Award from the Religion and Politics APSA section, and an honorable mention for the Award for Concept Analysis in Political Science from IPSA. He is currently working on his second project, which examines Hinduism and politics in India, which has been funded by the Fulbright Program, American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Expertise

• History
• Society and Culture

Wilson Center Project

Secularization in the Hindu Tradition

Project Summary

This project examines how rapid economic development is changing religious identification, rituals, and beliefs among Hindus in India, and the political consequences of these changes. While the relationship between economic development and religion – broadly referred to as secularization theory – has been extensively studied in western contexts and among monotheistic traditions, comparatively little research has been done on India, one of the fastest-developing countries in the world, or on Hinduism, the third most populous religion in the world. My book utilizes surveys and interviews to argue that rising economic development is having no impact on Hindu religiosity in rural areas, some impact on urban Hindus, and that pious Hindus throughout India are more likely to oppose secularism, which in the Indian context means religious neutrality (dharmnirpekshta). This project will make major contributions to the study of long-run religious change in the nonwestern world, as well as the study of the future of democracy in India.

Major Publications

• Verghese, Ajay. 2020. “Taking Other Religions Seriously: A Comparative Survey of Hindus in India.” Politics and Religion 13(3): 604-638.
• Carreras, Miguel, and Ajay Verghese. 2020. “Violence, Insecurity, and Religiosity: A Multilevel Analysis of 71 Countries.” Terrorism and Political Violence 32(6): 1310-1328.
• Verghese, Ajay. 2021. “Ethnic Violence in India.” In: Weiner, Michael (ed), Routledge Handbook of Race and Ethnicity in Asia. New York: Routledge, pp. 31-45.