Rate My Professor Vinay Lal

Lal’s research specializations encompass South and Southeast Asia, world history, historiography, and history and theory, including political and legal history of colonial India, popular Hindi film, the Indian diaspora, Gandhi’s thought, genocide, and global politics of knowledge systems. He teaches undergraduate courses on British India, contemporary South Asia, the Indian diaspora, Gandhi’s moral and political thought, and world history, alongside graduate seminars on postcolonial theory, politics of knowledge, and comparative oppression. Author and editor of twenty-two books, key works include Insurgency and the Artist: The Art of the Freedom Struggle in India (2022), The Fury of Covid-19 (2020), Deewaar: The Footpath, the City, and the Angry Young Man (2011), The Other Indians: Politics and Culture of South Asians in America (2007), Introducing Hinduism (2005), The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (2003), and Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy (2002). His scholarship, cited by over 2,400 scholars, has been translated into multiple languages. Awards include Senior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, and election as Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science in 2000. Lal has contributed to over 250 publications, editorial series, and initiatives like Multiversity and the Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics, advancing decolonization of knowledge systems and nonviolent thought.