Pratinav Anil
| Pratinav Anil | |
|---|---|
| Born | Pratinav Anil March 17, 1995 |
| 💼 Occupation | |
Pratinav Anil is a historian of India at the University of Oxford. He is the author of two monographs, India’s First Dictatorship, co-authored with Christophe Jaffrelot, and Another India, singly authored, both revisionist accounts of postcolonial Indian history published by Hurst & Co. He is also a reviewer for The Times.[3]
Biography
He apprenticed as a business consultant in Oxford and as a farmhand in the Val-d’Oise. As of 2024, he is a Lecturer in History at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.[4]
Publications and reception
Books
India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77
In 2020, Anil's India’s First Dictatorship, co-authored with Christophe Jaffrelot, was published by C. Hurst & Co. It argued that democracy fell apart so quickly in India in 1975 because its core values, including liberty, were poorly institutionalized in the Indian setting. Ajoy Bose praised the book in India Today "not just for [its] extensive research and intellectual sweep, but because of [its] contemporary relevance."[5] The book was shortlisted for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize and won the Karwaan Prize.[6]
Another India: The Making of the World's Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77
In 2023, Anil's second book was published by C. Hurst & Co. It is based on his PhD thesis at the University of Oxford. It weaves together biographical portraits of a wide range of Indian Muslims to argue that minority rights were neglected right from independence in India. Alpa Shah praised the book in the Literary Review for showing that "the seeds of Modi’s India were sown by Congress party governments in the decades after independence."[7] The Financial Times chose the book as among its best books of the year.[8] In a critical review for the The Telegraph (India), Deeptanil Ray accused Anil for his "unabashed, Perry Anderson-like disdain."[9]
Opinions
Anil was unimpressed by the defence of the British Empire mounted by Nigel Biggar, whom he accused of anachronism, "a certain credulity," and for "miss[ing] the bigger picture" in his review for The Times.[10] He has also been critical of the British Empire's critics, such as Sathnam Sanghera, calling his reckoning with empire "superficial" and "unencumbered by facts." He opened the piece with a clerihew poking fun of Sanghera.[11] In The Guardian, he attacked Charlotte Lydia Riley's history of the legacies of the British Empire for emphasising race, suggesting that it was class that mattered more in imperial Britain: "The causal link [between race and empire], though, isn’t nearly as neat as Riley suggests. Arguably, she’s got it backwards."[11] Anil praised Tomiwa Owolade in The Times for arguing that it's class, not race, that matters in Britain. Owolade, he wrote, "prudently steers between the Scylla of racialising everything and the Charybdis of denying racism."[12]
The right-wing commentator Sadanand Dhume criticised Anil in the Wall Street Journal for calling India a theocracy.[13]
Publications
- India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77. London: Hurst & Co, 2020. 508 pp. Published by HarperCollins in India and Oxford University Press in the United States.
- Another India: The Making of the World's Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77. London: Hurst & Co, 2023. 438 pp. Published by Penguin Books in India and Oxford University Press in the United States.
- "Emergency Chronicles", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 32, no. 1, 2022, pp. 265-72.
- "Cries and Whispers: Gunnar Myrdal in India", The Caravan, November 2023.
References
- ↑ "Pratinav Anil". The Wire (India). Retrieved 1 January 2025.
- ↑ "Pratinav Anil". University of Oxford. Retrieved 1 January 2025.
- ↑ "Profile of Pratinav Anil". Jaipur Literature Festival. Retrieved 2024-12-21.
- ↑ "Pratinav Anil Amazon Page". Amazon. Retrieved 2024-12-21.
- ↑ Bose, Ajoy (2021-03-30). "Why the world's largest democracy is fundamentally vulnerable to despotic rule". India Today. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
- ↑ "2022 Karwaan Prize winners". Scroll.in. 9 July 2022.
- ↑ "Pratinav Anil". Literary Review. Retrieved 1 January 2025.
- ↑ "Best books of 2023 — History". Financial Times. Retrieved 21 December 2024.
- ↑ "Telegraph review". The Telegraph (India). Retrieved 21 December 2024. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Anil, Pratinav (2023-01-26). "Colonialism by Nigel Biggar review — why both sides of the empire debate are wrong". The Times. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Anil, Pratinav. "When everything is empire". Engelsberg ideas. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
- ↑ Anil, Pratinav (2023-06-16). "This Is Not America by Tomiwa Owolade review — it's class, not colour, that matters in Britain". The Times. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
- ↑ Dhume, Sadanand (2024-02-28). "Narendra Modi Won't Turn India Into a Theocracy". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 21 December 2024.
External links
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