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Discussion with Dr. Neeti Nair on her New Book “Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia”

Where:

Room 102, Old Academic Block, NLSIU
(Open to the NLS community)

When:

Sunday, December 24, 2023, 11:00 am

The Socio-Legal Review (SLR) is organising a book discussion with Prof. (Dr.) Neeti Nair on her new book Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia (Harvard University Press 2023) on Sunday, 24th December, from 11 am – 12:30 pm. The book discussion will involve a conversation between Prof. (Dr.) Karthick Ram Manoharan and Members of SLR‘s Editorial Board, and Prof. Neeti Nair. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session.

SLR is a peer-reviewed, student-run journal published by the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. It seeks to encourage interdisciplinary research that critically enquires into the intersections between the law and the social sciences, especially in the South Asian context. This year, one of the key areas of focus is legal history and historical analyses of the law and legal institutions. Hurt Sentiments offers a rich historical context to illuminate how growing legal recognition and political solicitation of religious sentiments have fueled a secular resistance in the Indian subcontinent in the aftermath of Partition.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Neeti Nair completed her bachelors from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and her masters and graduate studies from Tufts University in the United States. She is currently a professor of history at the University of Virginia and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. Her interests lie in the areas of Modern South Asia, Political History, Legal History, and Intellectual History. Her first book Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India (Harvard and Permanent Black, 2011) traces the politics of Punjabi Hindus in the first half of the twentieth century and raises the troubling, seemingly eternal question: was Partition inevitable? In the past, Dr. Nair has edited two special issues of Asian Affairs, contributed chapters to edited volumes, and written articles for the The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Economic and Political Weekly, and Modern Asian Studies.

About the Book:

Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia (Harvard University Press, 2023) is Dr. Nair’s second book. Through a history of foundational moments such as the Gandhi Murder Trial, the lawsuits against secular forces during the mobilization in Ayodhya, and debates on the meaning of ‘Islamic state’ and ‘secularism’ in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the book examine the shaping of state ideologies by “hurt sentiments” in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In the process, the book asks what it has meant for India to be a secular republic, for Pakistan to be an Islamic republic, and for Bangladesh to be a secular republic that also enshrines Islam as the state religion.