Makarand Paranjape

Makarand R. Paranjape (born 31 August 1960) is an Indian novelist, poet, and Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS) in Shimla. In 2020, it was reported that 63 charges of irregularities were filed against him by the officebearers of the IIAS.[1] Prior to this, Paranjape was a professor of English at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.[2] The Sunday Guardian described Paranjape in a 2013 review (of his book Body Offering) as someone who, "with some luck, would write a great novel some day".[3]

Makarand R. Paranjape
Born31 August 1960
Ahmedabad, Gujarat
Nationality Indian
EducationMA, PhD in English Literature
Alma mater
  • St Stephen's College, Delhi
  • University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA
OccupationDirector of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (Shimla)
Known forFormer Professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi)
Spouse(s)
    Sarina
    ​
    (m. 1987)​
      Devaki Singh
      ​
      (m. 2006)​
      • Gayatri Iyer
      Websitewww.makarand.com


      IIAS controversy

      In 2020, it was reported that there were 63 charges of irregularities filed against Paranjape by an office-bearer of Shimla's Indian Institute of Advanced Study in the month of August, following which he has been engaged in a spat with the Chairman and Vice Chairman at the institution.[1] Paranjape offered a rebuttal to his critics through an interview with The Wire in April 2021.[4] However, it was later reported that he had violated the MoA (memorandum of association) of the institute as its Director, and that it was not any clash with other specific individual heads at the institution.[5]

      Political views

      Paranjape was sympathetic towards the BJP government in 2016 during the time of the JNU fracas[6] when he praised politician Subramanian Swamy for being a "strategic thinker" and "a very smart person" and defended Swamy's comments about JNU being a den of anti-nationals and urban naxals.[7] Following that, his name emerged as a potential candidate for the post of vice-chancellor at the historical Nalanda University[8] despite the fact that the former EFL University Professor Sunaina Singh was finally appointed to the post in 2017.[9]

      In 2019, a year after being appointed as Director of IIAS, he wrote an article[10] citing, praising, and echoing a previous article by Ramachandra Guha on how the Gandhi–Nehru family should move out of the Congress in order to oust Prime Minister Narendra Modi.[11] In the run-up to the 2019 General Election, Paranjape had also written an op-ed supporting the candidacy of the former party president Rahul Gandhi's sister Priyanka Gandhi.[12]

      He has also been critical of the Modi government's education policies and wrote negatively about its new National Education Policy in September 2020.[13]

      Personal life

      Makarand R. Paranjape was born in 1960 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys' School in Bangalore followed by a B.A. (Hons.) in English at 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.[14]

      Marriage

      Paranjape was married to Sarina in 1987.[15] He later married Devaki Singh in 2006, who is daughter of the former Congress minister Arun Singh.[16] It was reported in the press that the wedding festivities were attended by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, and Robert Vadra.[16] He is now married to Gayatri Iyer.[17]

      Works

      In 2013, Makarand R. Paranjape published a novel called Body Offering.[18] The novel is a tale of a middle-aged man's extra-marital affair with a woman 25 years younger to him. The Sunday Guardian dubbed the book as one "that walked in the long shadow cast" by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabakov's 1955 novel Lolita.[3]

      Paranjape had also published a coming-of-age novel called The Narrator in 1995, which is the story of how a young boy learns to write by masturbating.[19] He has also published several volumes of poetry as well as a collection of short stories in 1994 titled This Time I Promise It'll Be Different.

      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.
      • Transit Passenger/Passageiro em Transito. Sao Paulo: University of Sao Paolo Press, 2016. ISBN 9788577322800


      Contributions to Anthologies

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

      Career

      Makarand R. Paranjape had started his career in 1980 as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and returned to India in 1986 to join the University of Hyderabad, first as lecturer and then reader. In 1994, he joined the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Delhi as an associate professor, and between 1999–2018, he served as professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.[20][21] Paranjape was appointed as Director of IIAS in August 2018.

      He taught undergraduate and postgraduate students for over thirty-five years, largely in the United States and India, and wrote columns for Swarajya, The Print, Open magazine, Sunday Observer, Mail Today, DNA, Business Standard, The Pioneer, and Life Positive. He published over 175 academic papers in various refereed journals and edited books within the country and abroad. In addition, he was an author of several poems and short stories, over 500 essays, book reviews, and occasional articles in academic and popular periodicals.

      He was also General Editor of a series of reprints for rare and out-of-print Indian English titles published by the Sahitya Akademi (New Delhi), the founding Trustee of Samvad India Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit, public charitable trust,[22] and was the founding editor of Evam: Forum on Indian Representations, an international bi-annual, multi-disciplinary journal on India. He was chairperson for the pan-commonwealth panel of judges in the Europe and South Asia region of the 2008 and 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and served as the Indian host judge in Delhi for the 2010 prize.[23]

      Academic writing
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Cultural Politics in Modern India: Postcolonial Prospects, Colourful Cosmopolitanism, Global Proximities. New Delhi and Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. ISBN 9781138956926 & ISBN 9781315665450
      • Debating the 'post' condition in India : critical vernaculars, unauthorized modernities, post-colonial contentions. New York: Routledge, 2018.

      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.
      • Critical Post-humanism and Planetary Futures. New Delhi: Springer, 2016.
      • Nativism: Essay in Criticism. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2017.
      • New perspectives in Indian science and civilisation. New York: Routledge, 2020.

      Translations
      • 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
      1. "War Within: It's Right versus Right at Shimla's Esteemed IIAS" The Daily Guardian. Utpal Kumar and Kunal Roy. 8 September 2020.
      2. "Our Contribution to Society at Large Needs to Improve." The Tribune. 29 September 2018.
      3. "Paranjape's Novel Is More Erratic than Erotic." Aditya Mani Jha. The Sunday Guardian. 10 August 2013.
      4. "As Scholars Accuse IIAS of Opaque Practices, Chairperson and Director Go Head to Head." Akshaya Mukul. The Wire. 4 April 2021.
      5. "IIAS Saga Takes Ugly Turn as Top Functionaries Issue Statement Against Director." The Wire. Akshaya Mukul. 9 April 2021.
      6. "Did you check your facts? Makarand Paranjape has some questions for Kanhaiya, Leftists and JNU." Scroll. 8 March 2016.
      7. "Radical Groups Do Roost in Indian Universities But Government May Have Mishandled 'Sedition' Episode: JNU Professor Makarand R. Paranjape". Raj Singh. India TV News. April 8 2016.
      8. "RSS Man to Head Nalanda University?" Sreeparna Chakraborty. Asian Age. 25 December 2016.
      9. "Sunaina Singh Appointed Vice Chancellor of Nalanda University." The Wire. 29 March 2017.
      10. "Chorus Grows from Congress-mukt Bharat to Gandhi-mukt Congress. But Where Will the Family Go?" Makarand R. Paranjape. The Print. 17 December 2020.
      11. "Why the Gandhis Must Go Now." Ramachandra Guha. NDTV. 10 December 2020.
      12. "Sibling Support, Not Sibling Rivalry Behind Priyanka Gandhi Joining Rahul's Congress". Paranjape, Makarand. The Print. 24 January 2019.
      13. "Bad Education". Makarand R. Paranjape. Open Magazine. September 2020.
      14. Detailed Curriculum Vitaé
      15. Paranjape, Makarand (2013). "Prologue: The Open Door" in Acts of Faith: Journeys to Sacred India. Hay House. p. 6. ISBN 9789381398357.
      16. "Ties and knots". The Indian Express. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
      17. "Makarand Paranjape's Verified Twitter Update". 5 April 2020. Retrieved 8 December 2020. No date provided to the current marriage in the source.
      18. "Fifty Shades Darker!" Neha Jain. Millennium Post. 2 June 2013.
      19. The Narrator. Makarand R. Paranjape. Rupa Publications. 1995. Retrieved from makarand.com.
      20. Makarand Paranjape, short Biography Archived 6 September 2007 at archive.today Université Interdisciplinaire de Paris, (UIP).
      21. INDIAN LETTERS once a month with Mohan Ramanan: Paranjape The Practical mystic New Straits Times, 30 March 1994.
      22. Samvad India Foundation, website
      23. Commonwealth Foundation, website Archived 22 July 2012 at archive.today

      See also
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