Education

• BA in Sociology, Loyola College
• Post-Graduate Diploma, Asian College of Journalism
• MA in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University
• PhD in Government, University of Essex

Profile

Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan has been a faculty member of Social Sciences at NLSIU since October 2022. He was the Smuts Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2025–2026), where he worked on the Indian Emergency. He was earlier a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton (2020–2022), working on the European Union-funded research project titled “Freedom from Caste: The Political Thought of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in a Global Context”. He gained the certification of Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in 2021.

Earlier, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) and a Senior Lecturer at the School of Development, Azim Premji University. He has taught courses on political theory, philosophy, and thought from a global perspective. His earlier research engaged with questions of identity, with a focus on race, national self-determination, religion, caste, and gender. His two published monographs involved novel theoretical readings of the humanist anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon and the rationalist anti-caste thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy. His current research reflects on the Indian Emergency and its implications for political theory.

Research Interests

• Emergency, Crisis Governance, Security Studies
• South Asian Political Thought
• Political Theology
• Political Violence and Extremism
• Politics of Identity
• Anarchism, Marxism, Post-Marxism
• Film and Cultural Studies

Publications

Books

• 2022 Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.
• 2019 Frantz Fanon: Identity and Resistance. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.

Journal Articles

• 2021 “Radical freedom: Periyar and Women.” [version 1; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]. Open Research Europe 2021, 1:6. 
• 2020 “In the Path of Ambedkar: Periyar and the Dalit Question.” South Asian History and Culture, 11:2, 136-149. 
• 2020 “Freedom from God: Periyar and Religion.” Religions, 11(1): 10. 
• 2019 “Towards a Žižekian Critique of the Indian Ideology.” International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol. 13 No. 2, 1-22. 
• 2019 “Counter-media: TamilNet and the Creation of Metanarratives from Below.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 33:3, 386-400.  
• 2017 “Anti-Casteist Casteism? A Fanonist Critique of Ramasamy’s Discourse on Caste.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 19:1, 73-90.

Edited Volumes

• 2025, The Cambridge Companion to Periyar. Eds. A. R. Venkatachalapathy, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Karthick Ram Manoharan, National Law School of India University. Cambridge University Press.
• 2020, Rethinking Social Justice. Eds. S. Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan, M. Vijayabaskar, A. Kalaiyarasan. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. 

Edited Journals and Special Issues

• 2022 Special issue titled “Freedom from Caste: Anti-caste Thought, Politics and Culture.” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. Eds. Meena Dhanda and Karthick Ram Manoharan. 

Book Chapters

• 2026 “Dravidian Politics.” In Indrajit Roy and Manali Desai (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Indian Politics and Society. Cambridge University Press.
• 2025 “Periyar’s Anti-Aryanism: A Genealogy, A Synopsis, and A Critique.” In A.R. Venkatachalapathy and Karthick Ram Manoharan (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Periyar. Cambridge University Press, pp.129-146.
• 2025 “Periyar, The Women’s Question, and Maniyammai.” (co-authored with Vilasini Ramani) In A.R. Venkatachalapathy and Karthick Ram Manoharan (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Periyar. Cambridge University Press, pp. 167-181.
• 2025 “Introducing an Iconoclast.” (co-authored with A.R. Venkatachalapathy) In A.R. Venkatachalapathy and Karthick Ram Manoharan (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Periyar. Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-13.
• 2025 “Is This a Sudra Critique? Periyar and the Intermediate Castes.” In Constantine V. Nakassis, Francis Cody and E. Annamalai (eds.), The Radiance of Tamil: Ten Years of the Chicago Tamil Forum. Orient BlackSwan, pp. 40-58.
• 2025 “When the Subaltern Speaks Supremacy.” In Saurabh Dube and Ishita Banerjee Dube (eds), Handbook of Subalterns across History. Routledge, pp. 238-242.
• 2021 “Being Dalit, Being Tamil: The Politics of Kabali and Kaala.” In Tamil Cinema in the 21st Century: Politics, Genre and Technology. Eds. Selvaraj Velayutham and Vijay Devadas. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 52-65.
• 2021 “Understanding the Ideological Nature of Caste Violence in Tamil Nadu: Particularism and Universalism.” In Social Hegemony in Contemporary India. Ed. R. Thirunavukkarasu. New Delhi: Sage, 173-191. 
• 2020 “An Ethic beyond Anti-Colonialism.” In Rethinking Social Justice. Eds. S. Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan, M. Vijayabaskar, and A. Kalaiyarasan. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 159-178.
• 2020 “Introduction: The Legacy of a Dravidian Scholar.” (co-authored with S. Anandhi et al) In S. Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan et al. (eds.), Rethinking Social Justice. Orient BlackSwan, pp. 1-12.

Essay and Working Papers

• 2024 “Oppressed, Backward, or Subaltern? Revisiting Hardgrave’s The Nadars of Tamilnad.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 59. No 12, pp. 19-23.
• 2022 “Sudras and the Nation: Periyarist Explorations.” Economic and Political Weekly (Engage), Vol 57. Issue No. 44-45.
• 2021 “Is this a Sudra Critique? Periyar and the Intermediate Castes.” Working Papers of the Chicago Tamil Forum – Caste and Community in Modern Tamilagam (May 13–15, 2021). Version 6.1.2021.

Select Public Engagement (2023-Present)

• 2026 “When Ambedkar Trounced Mao.” Telos Insights.
• 2026 “Vijay and the reinvention of Dravidian politics.” Frontline.
• 2026 “How global Islam became a hollow ideal.” Frontline.
• 2025 “Dissent without borders.” Frontline.
• 2025 “The century of self-respect.” Frontline.
• 2025 “Carl Schmitt was right.” Frontline.
• 2025 “Fanon at 100.” Shuddhashar.
• 2024 “How anti-Hindi protests of the 1960s created India’s most successful regional political movement.” Frontline.
• 2024 “Did Periyar call for a genocide of Brahmins?” Frontline.
• 2024 “How Dravidian politics offers a bulwark against the exclusionary politics of Hindutva.” Frontline.
• 2023 “Samadharma: Periyar’s idea for India.” Frontline.

Book Reviews

• 2026 Rev. of Lineages of Brahman Power: Caste, Family, and the State in Western India, 1600–1900, Rosalind O’Hanlon. The American Historical Review. Vol 131. No 3, pp. 1390-1391.
• 2025 “Difficult Fraternities.” Rev. of Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need, Rajmohan Gandhi. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 60. No 15, pp. 28-30.
• 2019 Rev. of Murder in Mudukulathur: Caste and Electoral Politics in Tamil Nadu, K.A. Manikumar. Review of Development and Change. 24(2), pp. 287-289.
• 2019 Rev. of Panthers in Parliament: Dalits, Caste, and Political Power in South India, Hugo Gorringe. Journal of South Asian Development. 14, no. 2, pp. 244-247.
• 2018 Rev. of Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present, M.S.S. Pandian. Seminar. No 708, pp. 69-71.