Rajeev Bhargava

A noted Indian political theorist, Prof. Rajeev Bhargava has held professorships at several universities including Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Delhi and between 2005-2019 at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). He was also the Director of the Centre from 2007-14. He is currently an Honorary Fellow at the center and the Director of its Parekh Institute of Indian Thought. Prof. Bhargava is an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He has been a Fellow at Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Bristol, Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem, Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, and the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. From 2014-18, he was a Professorial Fellow at ACU, Sydney and Berggruen Fellow at Stanford, NYU, and Tsingua universities between 2015-2017. In 2022, he was a senior research fellow at the University of Leipzig.

Prof. Bhargava received his B.A. degree in economics from the University of Delhi, followed by an M.Phil. (Politics) and D.Phil. from Oxford University. Internationally renowned for his work on secularism and methodological individualism, some of his publications include Individualism in Social Science (1992), What is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It? (2010), and The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy (2010). Apart from conceiving and editing a textbook on political theory for undergraduates, Bhargava has regularly written for The Hindu. The compilation of these essays is now available as Between Hope and Despair (Bloomsbury, 2023). His latest book called Reimagining Indian Secularism will be published in July 2023 by Seagull. He is on the advisory board of several national and international institutions and was a consultant for the UNDP report on cultural liberty.