Contemporary India Research

Professor Sunil Khilnani
Contemporary India Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with NUS
India, it has been said, is the most interesting place in the world: a country of continental scale, immense civilizational depth, unparalleled diversity represented through democratic politics, economically now on the move and in the midst of multiple transformations. The central dilemmas of modern politics, economic development, and social change are all dramatized across the Indian landscape – while India's growing international profile poses profound questions for the global system. The King's India Institute has been established to deepen academic and practical understanding of modern India's rise - and its global implications.

The Institute's first taught degree, the MA Modern India, is a unique postgraduate course designed at once to engage students with this complex, fascinating and pivotal country, and to use the study of contemporary India as an intellectual laboratory through which to focus global theoretical and policy questions. Thus, India's specificities – whether concerning for instance, the country's democratic politics, its environmental predicaments and entrepreneurial forms, its security issues and dilemmas of secularism, its urban and public health problems, its varieties of cultural production and consumption, its economic growth and diverse social change, the role of its media, and consequences of its science and technology policy choices – will be explored in relationship to more general theoretical, political and policy perspectives.

The MA degree's intellectual foundation rests on two core courses that I will be involved in teaching. One examines India's economy, polity and society since 1947; the other surveys thematic and conceptual perspectives on modern India (encompassing for instance, nationalism, democracy, the state, law).Additionally, students have the option to pursue various specializations: politics; security and strategic studies; history, society & culture; history and policy of science and technology; media and journalism; and urban studies. Across these strands, our approach at the Institute is to study India in cross-disciplinary and problem-focused ways. The MA will thus equip our graduates to pursue diverse careers relating to India - whether in the academy, government, business, media and civil society.

The India Institute has strong links with India's universities and research institutions, government, private sector, media and civil society, and students are encouraged to take advantage of opportunities these offer. In addition, the India Institute is richly immersed in the intellectual and cultural life of the great city in which it stands – London, a city that is historically and still today the cultural nexus of the West and India.