'Nehru's Other Indias' - 2024 Nehru Memorial Lecture by Historian Priya Satia

Professor Priya Satia, cultural historian and award-winning author will explore 'Nehru's Other Indias' in the 2024 Nehru Memorial Lecture hosted by the King's India Institute. The Nehru Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture hosted by King’s India Institute and endowed by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust. We also maintain an archive of past lectures since 1966. 

In her talk, Professor Satia will explore the competing visions of post-independent India put forward by anti-colonial thinkers (British and Indian) in Nehru's time and their influence on Nehru's own idea of India's destiny. It will explore what the recovery of these alternative futures might mean in an India in which Nehru's own legacy is under a sustained attack.

This event is in-person only. The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

This is a free event, which means we overbook to allow for no-shows and avoid empty seats. While we generally do not have to turn people away, this does mean we cannot guarantee all ticket holders a place. Admission is on a first come, first served basis. Those without tickets will not be admitted.

About the speaker 

Professor Priya Satia 

Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History at Stanford University. She is a cultural historian of the material and intellectual infrastructure of the modern world in the age of empire. Her work examines the origins of state institutions, military technologies, ideas and practices of development, and the anti-colonial responses they inspired in order to understand how the imperial past has shaped the present and how the ethical dilemmas it posed were understood and managed.

Her work has explored these questions in studies of British policing of the Middle East in the era of World War One, the invention of radio during the Boer War, the British Indian development of Iraq, state secrecy in mass-democratic Britain, the gun-making exploits of a Quaker family during the industrial revolution, the Partition of British India, the imperial consequences of the historical discipline itself, and other projects. Her work on aerial policing has also informed her analysis of American drone use in the Middle East. An essay on her formation as a historian is available in the H-Diplo series "Learning the Scholar's Craft." She is the author of three books and is currently working on a new book project, The Lake of Liberation, on British colonialism in Punjab and its legacies.

Chair 

Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal

Niraja Gopal Jayal joined King’s India Institute as Avantha Chair in October 2021. She was formerly Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and also Centennial Professor (2019-23) at The London School of Economics, in the Department of Gender Studies. Her book Citizenship and Its Discontents (Harvard University Press and Permanent Black, 2013) won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association of Asian Studies in 2015. Professor Jayal undertakes research in the fields of citizenship, democracy and welfare in India.