Makarand Paranjape

Makarand Paranjape (born 31 August 1960) is an Indian poet and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Early life and education

Makarand Paranjape was born in 1960 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore, followed by B.A. (Hons.) in English from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi in 1980. Thereafter, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from where he received his M.A. in English Literature and, subsequently, a PhD in 1985 on the topic Mysticism in Indian English Poetry.^[1]

Marriage

Paranjape is married to Devaki Singh, daughter of former Congress minister Arun Singh in 2006.^[2]

Career

Makarand Paranjape has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students for almost thirty years. His teaching career has spanned the better part of the globe. A large part of this has been spent in the United States and India, where he has lived and worked. He started his career in 1980, as Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He returned to India in 1986, joined the University of Hyderabad, first as lecturer and then reader. In 1994, he joined the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi as an associate professor. Since 1999, he has been a professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Centre for English Studies.^[3][4] He has published over 120 academic papers in various refereed journals and edited books within the country and internationally. In addition, he is the author of several poems and short stories, over 200 essays, book reviews, and occasional pieces in academic and popular periodicals in India and abroad. He was a columnist in Sunday Observer, Business Standard, The Pioneer, and Life Positive. He has been twice the chairperson of the Centre for English Studies, JNU, and is a member of the Board of Studies, the Academic Council of JNU, and the Vision Committee of JNU; the Coordinator for UGC Special Assistance Programme, in the Centre for English Studies, JNU from 2003 to 2008; the principal investigator of the Project on Indian Perspectives on Science and Spirituality, from 2006 to 2009. He is the General Editor of a series of reprints of rare and out of print Indian English titles published by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. He is the founding Trustee of Samvad India Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit, public charitable trust,^[5] and also the founding editor of Evam: Forum on Indian Representations, an international bi-annual, multi-disciplinary journal on India. He was the chairperson for the Europe and South Asia region of Pan-Commonwealth panel of judges for the 2008 and 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize; he also served as the Indian host judge for the 2010 Prize awarded in New Delhi.^[6]

In March, 2016, his lecture on Nationalism on the backdrop of JNU crisis was widely praised. He asked the students if they want JNU to be democratic or left hegemonic place where contrarian voices were muzzled. He also pointed out factual inaccuracies in post bail release speech of JNSU president Kanhiya Kumar.^[7]

Bibliography

Criticism

• Mysticism in Indian English Poetry. Delhi: B.R. Publishers, 1988.
• Decolonization and Development: Hind Svaraj Revisioned. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993.
• Nativism: Essays in Literary Criticism. Ed. Sahitya Akademi, 1997
• Towards a Poetics of the Indian English Novel. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2000.
• In Diaspora: Theories, Histories, Texts. Ed. New Delhi: Indialog, 2001
• Saundarya: The Perception and Practice of Beauty in India, Ed. with Harsha V. Sabda, 2004
• Text and Interpretation in Indian Thought. Ed., with Santosh Sareen. New Delhi: Mantra Books, 2004.
• English Studies: Indian Perspectives. Ed., with Amit Sarwal and Aneeta Rajendran. Mantra Books, 2006.
• Another Canon: Indian Texts and Traditions in English. London: Anthem Books, 2009: New Delhi: Anthem Books, 2010 (paperback).
• Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India. London: Anthem Books, 2009. New Delhi: Anthem Books, 2010 (paperback).
• Indian English and Vernacular India: Texts and Contexts. New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2010. Ed., with GJV Prasad.
• Bollywood in Australia: Transnationalism and Culture. Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2010. Ed., with Andrew Hassam.
• Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and the Afterlife of Indian English Authority. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2012.
• Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Amaryllis, 2015.
• The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.
• The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Random House, 2015.

Poetry

• The Serene Flame. Delhi: Rupa & Co, India 1991.
• Playing the Dark God. Delhi: Rupa & Co, India 1992.
• Used Book. New Delhi: Indialog Publications, New Delhi 2001.
• Partial Disclosure. New Delhi: Mantra Books, India 2005.
• Confluence. New Delhi: Samvad India, India 2007.

Fiction

• This Time I Promise It'll Be Different: Short Stories. New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1994.
• The Narrator: A Novel. New Delhi: Rupa, 1995.
• Body Offering. New Delhi: Rupa, 2013.

Edited Books

• Indian Poetry in English. Madras: Macmillan, 1993.
• An Anthology of New Indian English Poetry. Delhi: Rupa, 1994.
• Sarojini Naidu: Selected Letters. Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996.
• The Spirit's Manifest Home: The Story of Sri Aurobindo Ashram-Delhi Branch. New Delhi:Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997.
• The Best of Raja Rao. New Delhi: Katha, 1998.
• The Penguin Sri Aurobindo Reader. New Delhi: Penguin, 1999.
• The Little Book of Sri Aurobindo. New Delhi: Penguin, 2001. Dehejia. New Delhi: Samvad India, 2003.
• The Penguin Swami Vivekananda Reader. New Delhi, 2005.
• The Cyclonic Swami: Vivekananda in the West. With Sukalyan Sengupta. New Delhi: Samvad India, 2005.
• Dharma and Development: The Future of Survival. New Delhi: Samvad India, 2005.
• Science and Spirituality in Modern India. New Delhi: Samvad India, 2006.
• Earth Lessons: Three Essays on Saving the Planet. New Delhi: Vikram Sarabhai Foundation, 2008. (With Devaki Singh).
• Science, Spirituality and the Modernization of India. New Delhi: Anthem, 2008.
• Sacred Australia: Post-secular considerations. Melbourne: Clouds of Magellan, 2009; Indian Edition, with new Foreword and Preface, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2010.
• Sarojini Naidu: Selected Poetry and Prose. Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1993; 2nd. rev. ed., New Delhi: Rupa, 2010.
• Indian English and Vernacular India. Co-edited with G. J. V. Prasad. New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2010.
• Bollywood in Australia: Transnationalism and Culture. Co-edited with Andrew39 Hassam. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2010.
• Healing across Boundaries: Biomedicine and Alternative Therapeutics. New Delhi and London: Routledge, 2014.
• Swami Vivekananda: A Contemporary Reader. New Delhi: Routledge, 2015, ISBN 978-1-138-82206-1.

Translation

• Boats from the Marathi original 'Hodya' by Hemant Govind Joglekar. New Delhi: B.R. Publishers, 1994

Honours

• Homi Bhabha Fellow for Literature, 1991–1993.
• Visiting professor, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 1996.
• Shastri Indo-Canadian Research fellow, University of Calgary, Canada, Summer 2000. Visiting Professor, Ball State University, Indiana, US, Fall 2001.
• IFUSS Fellow, University of Iowa, Iowa City, US, Summer 2002.
• Mellon fellow, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Summer 2003 and summer 2004.
• Coordinator, UGC Special Assistance Programme, 2003 onwards.
• Joint-coordinator, China-India inter-cultural dialogue, 2004–2005.
• GPSS research award, 2005–2006.
• Australia India Council fellow, 2005–2006.
• GPSS Major Award 2006–2009.
• Chair of the Jury for South Asia and Europe of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2007–2009.
• Visiting professor, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, April–October 2009.
• Shivdasani Visiting fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford, Michaelmas Term, 2009 (October–December).
• ICCR Chair in Indian Studies, National University of Singapore, August 2010 onwards.
• CAPES Visiting Professor, University of São Paulo, Brazil, August–December 2011.
• Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize for the best published academic paper in India, 2010–2011, awarded by Indian Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Association.
• Summer 2014: Awarded (but could not accept) visiting fellowship under the “Research Excellence Program of University of Santiago de Compostela – India (PEIN) for the year 2013–2014.
• October–December 2014: Inaugural DAAD-Eric Auerbach Visiting Chair in World Literatures at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
• January–April 2015: Visiting senior research fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

References

External links

• The Official Makarand Paranjape Webpage
• Makarand Paranjape Webpage at JNU

See also

• Indian English Literature
• Indian Writing in English