Centre for Political Studies

For the last fifty years the Centre for Political Studies has been at the forefront of teaching and advanced research in the discipline of political science. It has done so by retaining the focus on the study of Indian political institutions, at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of an excessively narrow focus that the institutional approach itself may be prone to. The lens of the centre has been adjusted to understand the larger political processes and social trends that institutions have been subjected to and how they have responded to these, at times successfully through a combination of the creative and innovative and at other times, not so successfully as they may have succumbed to the stresses placed upon them. In addition to studying political institutions dynamically in this manner, the Centre for Political Studies has also attempted to understand the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of institutions.

This has involved the attempt to combine harmoniously the fields of political theory and Indian politics, rather than tending to view them as separate and sparring areas of study. As a result of this there is in addition to the Indian politics component in the courses of study a large array of courses concerned with the philosophical and the conceptual. The Centre for Political Studies has not refrained from looking outwards at the world and in doing so has constantly reconfigured the study of comparative politics and international relations. In the case of comparative politics this has been especially significant as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Socialist command economies of Eastern Europe somewhere at the mid-point of its fifty year existence has a major rethinking of this field of study. The core courses that the Centre for Political Studies offers to its students seek to capture the major concerns of the discipline. In addition, the numerous optional courses cater to the specialisations of faculty members especially as these respond to the ever changing concerns of the political.

The Centre for Political Studies can count as past, and current faculty members some of the most eminent and distinguished scholars, internationally recognised and respected for the quality and consistency of their academic output. Many of them have not remained confined to the so-called cloistered confines of the academy and through their constant engagement with larger audiences in the popular press and media have assumed the critical role of public intellectuals, thereby extending their scholarship far beyond learned journals and the rarefied discussion in academic seminar rooms. There is also the remarkable contribution of CPS alumni in numerous realms such as academia, government, journalism, the social sector et. al. that continuously adds to the profile and standing of CPS as every year numerous students graduate and take up larger responsibilities in their respective fields of endeavour.

Since 2006, a generous Lifetime endowment fund has been created for the Centre by eminent political theorist Professor Bhikhu Parekh. The Fund has been supporting four important programs and academic activities of the Centre: merit-cum-means Scholarship to a limited number of MA 1st and 2nd year students based on a rigorous selection process; Annual Lecture by a distinguished and renowned scholar; Research Methodology Workshop for research students of Centre.

Over the past fifteen years, the Annual Nirman Foundation Lecture has been delivered by globally acclaimed scholars like Madhav Menon (2006), Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (2007), Upendra Baxi (2008), Marc Galanter (2009), Partha Chatterjee (2010), Charles Taylor (2011), Chetan Bhatt (2012), Sudipta Kaviraj (2014), Arindam Chakraborti (2015), V. Geetha (2016), Usha Ramanathan (2017), Rajeev Bhargava (2018), Prasenjit Duara (2019), Leela Fernandes (2020) and Arjun Appadurai (2021).

The Centre for Political Studies (CPS) is a notable highlight of social science research in Jawaharlal Nehru University . The chairperson is head of the centre, which is currently being held by Professor Narender Kumar.

• Unequal Worlds: Discrimination and Social Inequality in Modern India by Vidhu Verma.[2]
• Citizenship in India by Anupama Roy.[3]
• Government as Practice: Democratic Left in a Transforming India by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya.[4]
• South Asian Islam and British Multiculturalism by Amir Ali.[5]
• Brexit and Liberal Democracy: Populism, Sovereignty, and the Nation-State by Amir Ali.[6]
• Dr. Ambedkar and Democracy: An Anthology by Christophe Jaffrelot and Narender Kumar.[7]
• Politics and Religion in India by Narender Kumar.[8]

• https://www.jnu.ac.in/sss/cps