Religion and State in South Asia

South Asia has been imagined in the western imagination, at least since the colonial period, if not earlier, as the land of religion and spirituality. In this course we will engage with the conditions that gave rise to and sustained this thinking about South Asia. Apart from critically engaging the role of orientalist school of thought and the colonial state, we will investigate how the religion and political practices are inextricably intertwined, and how it is difficult to think one without the other. While we will invoke the earlier colonial moment, our focus will be on the 20th century colonial and post colonial period. EXP, MCP, PRJ, PRS. REA, WRI