Professor Faisal Devji
Dr Devji is interested in Indian political thought as well as that of modern Islam. Devji’s broader concerns have to do with ethics and violence in a globalized world.
Research Interests
- Indian and Pakistani intellectual history
- Hindu and Muslim political thought
- Globalization and violence
I am interested in the role of ideas in history, and in particular the development of political thought in modern South Asia. I have pursued these interests in my work on Gandhi's theory and practice of non-violence and on the re-making of Muslim politics from the late 19th century into the middle of the 20th. But I am also involved in thinking about the fragmentation and attempted reconstitution of such themes in the post-Cold War period of globalization, with Islamic forms of militancy providing my preferred site of study.
Featured Publications
Current DPhil Students
Teaching
I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding: Intellectual history, political thought, South Asia, Hinduism, Islam.
I currently teach:
Prelims |
FHS |
Indian special subject, "From Gandhi to Green Revolution" | |
Publications
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Changing Places: Religion and Minority in Pakistan
January 2020|Journal article|South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies© 2019, © 2019 South Asian Studies Association of Australia. This postscript to a special section of South Asia titled ‘Religious Minorities in Pakistan: Identities, Citizenship and Social Belonging’ explores the different ways in which the demographic categories of minority and majority came to define identity in colonial India through religion but not through caste, ethnicity or region. It argues that the violence associated with these categories derives from their interchangeability and lack of integrity, and makes a case for recovering a negative history of identification in South Asia. -
Renouncing Peace
January 2020|Journal article|Politics, Religion and Ideology -
The turn to empire in Asia
January 2020|Journal article|Inter-Asia Cultural Studies© 2020, © 2020 Faisal Devji. All rights reserved. As both a geographical and civilizational category, Asia is and remains a European creation. Its questioning is therefore part of the anti-colonial project in both India and China, where it is part of the sometimes fitful and contradictory way in which imperialism has been simultaneously inherited and repudiated. The economic and political emergence of both countries as global powers has made this inheritance relevant again, this time as a focus of identification, and their futures are bound up with how these states deal with the idea and reality of empire as their nationalisms begin to fragment. -
An elephant in the room
May 2019|Journal article|Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East -
From Minority to Nation
January 2019|Chapter|Partitions: A Transnational History of 20th Century Territorial Separatism