Vinay Lal
Biographic Data
| ID | 378145 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vinay Lal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vinay |
| FAMILY NAME | Lal |
| SIGNATURE | LAL V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Man-Making Preceptor of Universal Humanity: Vivekananda in the Post-Colonial World
Ruth Harris, Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda. HarvardUP, 2022. $39.95 Swami Medhananda, Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism. OxfordUP, 2022. $135.00
Shruti Kapila. Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age
The Grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh: An Indian Muslim Women’s Protest and the Future of Satyagraha
The Indian dadis (grandmothers) of Shaheen Bagh, over the space of less than four months from mid-December 2019 to late March 2020, offered a palpable demonstration that the spirit of satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) cannot be extinguished. Indeed, as I shall suggest, the short-lived Shaheen Bagh movement cannot be seen other than as a momentous event in the global history of nonviolent resistance and as quite likely the most promising step in …
The Deep Futures of Subaltern Studies: Three reviews of Subaltern Studies 2.0: Being Against the Capitalocene
“Britain’s Own Muslim Polymath: ” On the Politics of Representing Ziauddin Sardar
This essay seeks to unravel the cultural politics that underpin the approbation of Ziauddin Sardar, one accepted by the author himself, as "Britain’s own Muslim polymath." It explores how Sardar models himself after the Muslim polymaths of Islam’s “Golden Age,” dwelling on the importance of knowledge and travel in the worldview of Muslim intellectuals. But it also points to the implied anomalousness of the idea of a Muslim polymath, the difficult…
Gandhi, ‘The Coloured Races’, and the Future of Satyagraha: The View from the African American Press
W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis, a journal of the ‘darker races’ that was the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was among the earliest African American intellectuals to take a strong interest in Gandhi. However, the African American press, represented by newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, was as a whole prolific in its representation of the Indian Independence move…
Politics and Economy of the Coronavirus Pandemic in Historical Perspective: A Webinar with Vinay Lal
In this webinar Vinay Lal discusses the coronavirus pandemic from a historical perspective. He argues that although there have always been pandemics the present one is historically unprecedented with respect to the massive scope of state intervention. He further discusses how modern states with their advanced healthcare systems could not deal with the viral disease. He also sheds some light on how technology and globalization are related to the p…
India and Civilizational Futures: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics II
India and Civilizational Futures is the second volume to emerge from the deliberations of the Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics, a group comprised largely of Indian scholars, writers, and intellectuals that was formed in late 2010 with the intent of considering how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indic civilization, and more broadly the Global South, might be deployed to introduce incommensurability and greater pluralit…
India and Civilizational Futures: Papers from the Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics II
Gandhi Against Caste
A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement by John Stratton Hawley
Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830
The terrain covered by Jonathan Eacott in the meticulously detailed Selling Empire enhances our understanding of how India was configured in the American imagination and economy, though he also seeks to place India within the global British imperial system. The backdrop to his book is furnished by a more enhanced conception of the Atlantic world and a newfound interest in Indian Ocean studies, in addition to the stimulus of what are called “inter…
Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness . By Ruby Lal
Journal Article Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness. By Ruby Lal Get access Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness. By Ruby Lal (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xvii plus 229 pp.). Vinay Lal Vinay Lal University of California, Los Angeles [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jour…
India and the Unthinkable: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics
Climate Change: Insights from Hinduism
Journal Article Climate Change: Insights from Hinduism Get access Vinay Lal Vinay Lal * *Vinay Lal, History Department, UCLA, 6265 Bunche Hall, Box 951473, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 83, Issue 2, June 2015, Pages 388–406, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv020 Published: 23 April 2015
State, Civil Society, and the Right to Dissent: Some Thoughts on Censorship in Contemporary India
Notes1. See the transcript for Session 92, “The Republic of Ideas.” Accessible via http://www.jaipurliteraryfestival.org (accessed 15 June 2014).2. The phrase “grievous hurt” is part of the language of the law and appears in various sections of the Indian Penal Code.3. Several dozen pieces, largely in support of Nandy, are collected together at ashisnandysolidarity.blogspot.com (accessed June 5, 2014). For a further more elaboration of my views, …
Mandela, Luthuli, and Nonviolence in the South African Freedom Struggle
[no abstract]
Gandhi’s Religion: Politics, Faith, and Hermeneutics
India is widely regarded as an essentially religious society and Gandhi is commonly thought to have been preeminently a man of religion. For some, he was far too saintly to be involved in the life of politics, while others persisted in the view that he was ingenious enough to understand that he could best advance his political interests in a country suffused with the religious spirit if he appeared in the garb of a religious man. What is not disp…
Hinduism in South Africa: Caste, Ethnicity, and Invented Traditions, 1860-Present
Gandhi’s Religion: Politics, Faith, and Hermeneutics
India is widely regarded as an essentially religious society and Gandhi is commonly thought to have been preeminently a man of religion. For some, he was far too saintly to be involved in the life of politics, while others persisted in the view that he was ingenious enough to understand that he could best advance his political interests in a country suffused with the religious spirit if he appeared in the garb of a religious man. What is not disp…
Hinduism in South Africa: Caste, Ethnicity, and Invented Traditions, 1860-Present
This paper examines the experience of Hindus and Hinduism in South Africa over the past century and half. It shows that while the influence of caste has generally greatly diminished, Hinduism continues to flourish, and even shows signs of prosperity in public spaces. If the reification of Hinduism is taking place, the faith is also opening itself up to other transgressive possibilities. Hinduism has not been static but continues to undergo transf…
The politics of culture and knowledge after postcolonialism: Nine theses (and a prologue)
Whatever the achievements of postcolonial studies, its practitioners were evasive about some fundamental questions that must be grasped if we are to strive for more ecumenical futures. This paper puts forward nine theses, commencing with the claim that postcolonial theory mounted an effective epistemological critique neither of the nation-state nor of history. It disavowed any substantive interest in civilizational dialogues and similarly shows i…
Scholar, Weaver of Tales, and a Friend to All: Reminiscences of Teshome H. Gabriel (1939-2010)
March 01 2011 Scholar, Weaver of Tales, and a Friend to All: Reminiscences of Teshome H. Gabriel (1939-2010) Vinay Lal Vinay Lal Vinay Lal teaches history at UCLA. His most recent books are Political Hinduism (Oxford, 2009) and (on the Hindi film) Deewar (Harper-Collins, 2010). [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Vinay Lal Vinay Lal teaches history at UCLA. His mo…
The Vanquisher and the Vanquished: Nagasaki and Two Uncommon Lives
Tsutomu Yamaguchi and Charles Donald Albury died within months of each other. The former lived to the ripe old age of 93, and passed away in January this year; the latter died in May last year, at the age of 88. Neither of them were household names in their respective countries, yet they were noticed in obituaries scattered across newspapers. However much newspapers have changed over the last few decades, surrendering their place to television, c…
Gandhi's West, the West's Gandhi
Gandhi had a life-long engagement with "the West." He was educated in Britain, had close Jewish friends in South Africa, and engaged in discussions with Christian clergymen for much of his life. In the midst of struggles against racism and colonialism, Gandhi never lacked friends and admirers in Britain, Europe, and the U.S. Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Ruskin-the "Holy Trinity"-are widely believed to have influenced him, but the idea of "influence" has…
The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora
Diaspora 8:2 1999 The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora Vinay LaI University of California, Los Angeles I: Democracy and Authoritarianism in Cyberspace Nothing has been as much celebrated in our times as the information superhighway. Everyone is agreed that never before has information proliferated so profusely, diminishing, as is commonly thought, the boundaries and barriers that …
Subaltern Studies and its Critics: Debates over Indian History
Ranajit Guha, (ed.) A Subaltern Studies Reader 1986-1995Peter Heehsm, Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian HistorySumit Sarkar, Writing Social HistoryAchin Vanaik, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity And Secularization
The concentration camp and development: The Pasts and Future of Genocide
Our conception of history remains largely tethered both to the notion of Europe as the epicentre of history and to categories of knowledge that may not be particularly productive of meaning in the present and near future. Eric Hobsbawm's short twentieth century is bookended by 1914, the year the Great War commenced, and 1991, which witnessed the break-up of the Soviet Union. Nationalists in countries such as India imagined Japan's victory over Ru…
Everyday Crime, Native Mendacity and the Cultural Psychology of Justice in Colonial India
Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830
The terrain covered by Jonathan Eacott in the meticulously detailed Selling Empire enhances our understanding of how India was configured in the American imagination and economy, though he also seeks to place India within the global British imperial system. The backdrop to his book is furnished by a more enhanced conception of the Atlantic world and a newfound interest in Indian Ocean studies, in addition to the stimulus of what are called “inter…
South Asian Popular Culture: Beyond and Beneath the Habitual
Section I: Resistances and Reflections
Could Edward Said have known at the time he wrote Orientalism that he would not only be revolutionizing the field of Middle East Studies and the disciplines at its core, but also a number of allied and aligned fields, one of which, Women's Studies, had not fully come into being? This presentation is about genealogies of knowledge, in this case Middle East gender studies. It is about counter-hegemonic thought, in this case, the rupture of the gene…
The Cultural Politics of Hybridity
Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939
Climate Change: Insights from Hinduism
Journal Article Climate Change: Insights from Hinduism Get access Vinay Lal Vinay Lal * *Vinay Lal, History Department, UCLA, 6265 Bunche Hall, Box 951473, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 83, Issue 2, June 2015, Pages 388–406, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv020 Published: 23 April 2015
The politics of culture and knowledge after postcolonialism: Nine theses (and a prologue)
Whatever the achievements of postcolonial studies, its practitioners were evasive about some fundamental questions that must be grasped if we are to strive for more ecumenical futures. This paper puts forward nine theses, commencing with the claim that postcolonial theory mounted an effective epistemological critique neither of the nation-state nor of history. It disavowed any substantive interest in civilizational dialogues and similarly shows i…
Gandhi's West, the West's Gandhi
Gandhi had a life-long engagement with "the West." He was educated in Britain, had close Jewish friends in South Africa, and engaged in discussions with Christian clergymen for much of his life. In the midst of struggles against racism and colonialism, Gandhi never lacked friends and admirers in Britain, Europe, and the U.S. Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Ruskin-the "Holy Trinity"-are widely believed to have influenced him, but the idea of "influence" has…
Unhitching the disciplines: History and the social sciences in the new millennium
Gandhi, the civilizational crucible, and the future of dissent
Discipline and authority
Hill stations: Pinnacles of the Raj
Gandhi, ‘The Coloured Races’, and the Future of Satyagraha: The View from the African American Press
W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis, a journal of the ‘darker races’ that was the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was among the earliest African American intellectuals to take a strong interest in Gandhi. However, the African American press, represented by newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, was as a whole prolific in its representation of the Indian Independence move…
Nakedness, non‐violence, and the negation of negation: Gandhi's experiments in Brahmacharya and celibate sexuality
(1999). Nakedness, non‐violence, and the negation of negation: Gandhi's experiments in Brahmacharya and celibate sexuality. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 63-94
The security fantasies of the Indian nation‐state: Black cat commandos, gunmen, and other terrors∗
Sikh Kirpans in California Schools: The Social Construction of Symbols, Legal Pluralism, and the Politics of Diversity
A Meditation on History
Some ten years ago Amitav Ghosh, then a graduate student in anthropology at Oxford, chanced upon a letter written in AD 1139 by a merchant, Khalaf ibn Ishaq, and addressed to a friend and fellow merchant by the name of Abraham Ben Yiju. Khalaf ibn Ishaq was at that time living in Aden, and it is perhaps, as Ghosh avers, 'nothing less than a miracle that anything is known about him', for ibn Ishaq was just one of many merchants involved in the Ind…
Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition
The aim of this book is to present in their historical context the debates that have been taking place in the Muslim world recently. It describes the place of Iranian culture in contemporary art and thought and the increasing influence Muslims are having on Western societies. In an introductory autobiographical chapter, Mehdi Abedi introduces readers to the world of Shi'ite believers. Beginning with the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 he describes…
Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939
A Meditation on History
Some ten years ago Amitav Ghosh, then a graduate student in anthropology at Oxford, chanced upon a letter written in AD 1139 by a merchant, Khalaf ibn Ishaq, and addressed to a friend and fellow merchant by the name of Abraham Ben Yiju. Khalaf ibn Ishaq was at that time living in Aden, and it is perhaps, as Ghosh avers, 'nothing less than a miracle that anything is known about him', for ibn Ishaq was just one of many merchants involved in the Ind…
Advaita's Waterloo
From Pax Americana to Pox American
Sikh Kirpans in California Schools: The Social Construction of Symbols, Legal Pluralism, and the Politics of Diversity
The security fantasies of the Indian nation‐state: Black cat commandos, gunmen, and other terrors∗
Discipline and authority
Sanctions and the Politics of Dominance, Multilateralism, and Legalism in the International Arena
The Cultural Politics of Hybridity
Hill stations: Pinnacles of the Raj
Nakedness, non‐violence, and the negation of negation: Gandhi's experiments in Brahmacharya and celibate sexuality
(1999). Nakedness, non‐violence, and the negation of negation: Gandhi's experiments in Brahmacharya and celibate sexuality. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 63-94
Gandhi, the civilizational crucible, and the future of dissent
Everyday Crime, Native Mendacity and the Cultural Psychology of Justice in Colonial India
The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora
Diaspora 8:2 1999 The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora Vinay LaI University of California, Los Angeles I: Democracy and Authoritarianism in Cyberspace Nothing has been as much celebrated in our times as the information superhighway. Everyone is agreed that never before has information proliferated so profusely, diminishing, as is commonly thought, the boundaries and barriers that …
Gandhi and the Ecological Vision of Life
The Burden (And Freedom) of Photography
Walking with the Subalterns, Riding with the Academy: The Curious Ascendancy of Indian History
Terrorism as a Way of Life
Terrorism as a Way of Life
It has been a truism in politics that friends and enemies are never stable categories, and the ruthless advocacy of self-interest, which is not calculated to introduce idealism into political relations, is intrinsic to the logic of the nation-state. Great Britain, which wags it's tail when the master shouts, and has in consequence become an embarrassment to nations with even a modicum of pride, might appear to be an anomaly: it has long enjoyed a…
Subaltern Studies and its Critics: Debates over Indian History
Ranajit Guha, (ed.) A Subaltern Studies Reader 1986-1995Peter Heehsm, Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian HistorySumit Sarkar, Writing Social HistoryAchin Vanaik, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity And Secularization
Unhitching the disciplines: History and the social sciences in the new millennium
Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India (review)
Subalterns in the Academy
This chapter discusses the emergence of subaltern history and offers an interpretive history and critique of the subaltern school of historians in India. It offers some clues about how the achievements and shortcomings of Subaltern Studies might be viewed in general. In detailing the circumstances under which subaltern history arose, the role of the Cambridge School, which subaltern history set out to contest, cannot be ignored. Ranajit Guha, the…
The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India
Political science (39 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Law (34 works) · Politics (30 works) · History (28 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Indian History and Philosophy (19 works) · Gender Studies (18 works) · Law (17 works) · History (13 works)