Professional Affiliation

Professor of History, University of Virginia

Expert Bio

Neeti Nair is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India (Harvard University Press, 2011) and, most recently, Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia (Harvard University Press, 2023). She is also the co-editor of Ghosts from the Past? Assessing Recent Developments in Religious Freedom in South Asia (Routledge, 2021) and editor of Citizenship, Belonging, and the Partition of India (Routledge, 2024). She has written for numerous publications including Current History, Indian Express, The Hindu, The Print, Newslaundry. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Expertise

• Cold War
• Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
• Democracy
• History
• Human Rights
• Migration
• Population
• Security and Defense
• Society and Culture

Wilson Center Project

Capitals in the Margins: South Asia Since Partition

Project Summary

“Capitals in the Margins” will explore how India’s aspirations for “great power” status have been perceived by capitals in the “margins” such as Islamabad, Kabul, Dhaka, Colombo, and Kathmandu. In recent years, despite the occasional diplomatic initiative, not much headway has been made with advancing regional integration in “South Asia,” even as other global groupings such as BRICS and the G20, that also include India, are in the process of expansion. This study will explore the historical reasons for this lack of integration and consider some of its longer-term implications in the face of contemporary challenges posed by climate change. It will also study the influence exerted by domestic constituencies in the making of foreign policy. The project will trace shifting conceptions of the South Asian neighborhood since independence. This research is timely as the United States seeks deeper ties with India and we enter a new era of multipolarity.

Major Publications

• Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia, Harvard University Press, 2023
• Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India, Harvard University Press, 2011
• 'Toward Mass Education or an "Aristocracy of Talent": Nonalignment and the Making of a Strong India', in Gyan Prakash, Michael Laffan, and Nikhil Menon eds. The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia, Bloomsbury, 2018

Previous Terms

Sep 05, 2017 — Jul 27, 2018: Blasphemy: A South Asian History