Prof. Dr. Rajeev Bhargava

Rajeev Bhargava is India's leading political theorist and the most articulate and spirited defender of Indian secularism as a unique, vernacular constitutional and institutional arrangement against the onslaught of Hindu majoritarian fundamentalism and post-modern and post-colonial critiques.

He received his Ph.D. from Oxford University and served for many years as professor of political theory and Indian political thought and head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi. Presently he serves as Senior Fellow and Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi.

His two most recent works, What is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It? and The Promise of India's Secular Democracy have just been released by Oxford University Press. He is also author of Individualism and Social Science (1992, 2008), editor of Secularism and Its Critics (1998) and Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship (2005), as well as co-editor of Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy (1999) and Transforming India (2000).

This year Professor Bhargava is a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin