India Research Programme

Focusing on major Indian cities, the research group examines the relation between education and the urban as a category in Indian society, which has undergone rapid and complex processes of urbanisation in the seven decades since independence from colonial rule in 1947. The project is conducted by Principal Investigators from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bengaluru), along with the Head of the IRP.

This project examines historical tourist guidebooks and locally produced historical tracts that circulate around historical/heritage sites in Murshidabad in eastern India. The aim is to understand the mutually constitutive relationship between popular regional ideas of the past and the changing political sphere in India since the late decades of the previous century.

Taking the 1904 Ancient Monuments Preservation Act as a point of entry, this project examines the relationship between colonial law, its implementation by colonial bureaucracy, and the ‘making’ of historic monuments in India under British rule. The study focuses on Hindu religious structures. It looks beyond policy-making and analyses the many ways in which Indians exercised agency when faced with state power ‘on site’.

The India Research Programme regularly invites senior scholars from India through its Visiting Fellowship programme.  The fellowships are meant for scholars who are working on our areas of research or are project partners in our research networks in India, such as ICAS:MP. The fellowships consist of a short-term residency at the GHIL. During their time at the GHIL, the scholars will conduct research in UK archives and libraries and contribute to the intellectual life of the GHIL, usually by giving a talk in the Institute’s lecture series or similar events and taking part in research network meetings on joint projects. Senior visiting fellows are also an integral part of the IRP’s collaborations with research partners in Germany.

The Tandem Fellowship is a new programme that started in 2024. It is a collaborative programme that is run jointly by the GHIL/IRP and the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi.

The fellowship is open to early career scholars (postdocs/no later than 6 years from completion of PhD) from India and Germany, whose research is situated in the broad field of the history of the British Empire and Colonialism. Transcolonial perspectives are welcome. The programme aims to bring together one scholar from each of these countries to meet and exchange ideas in London and New Delhi. It offers scholars from these two countries the opportunity to spend 3 months in the UK and India to work on a joint research project or a part project. The fellowship is usually advertised in June of the year preceding the start of the fellowship.