Professor Nandini Chatterjee

Professor Chatterjee has a dark brown bob. She is wearing glasses, a blue top and a black cardigan. She is standing in front of a multi-coloured abstract background and smiling.
Professor of Indian History and Culture

I work on law and cultural exchanges in South Asian empires - especially the Mughal and the British. I trained as a historian of South Asia at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, before undertaking my PhD at the University of Cambridge. I have published extensively on law and colonialism in South Asia and on Mughal socio-legal history, using Persian-language legal and administrative documentary material. My works sits at the cross-roads of Islamic law, Persianate and post-Persianate empire and South Asian regional traditions. I am currently co-editing a 6-volume Cultural History of South Asia covering all historical periods, for Bloomsbury Academic.

I have a deep love of languages, and am intrigued by the dynamic interaction of script and sound, such as the variations of the Arabic script over soundscapes. I have a keen interest in digitisation of historical sources, citizen-led archiving and memory practices. Some of my public-facing work may be seen on the Cast in Stone website and the Lawforms website.

I am one of the editors of the English Historical Review and a prize committee member of the American Society for Legal History.

 

 

 

 

Supervision interests 

  • Mughal empire
  • Islam in South Asia
  • Law and colonialism
  • Histories of family
  • Critical Heritage Studies
Research Interests

Research Disciplines:

  • History
  • Law
  • South Asian Studies

Research Keywords:

  • South Asia
  • Mughal Empire
  • Islam
  • Legal history
  • Colonialism
  • Memory

Countries:

  • India
  • Bangladesh
  • Pakistan
  • Afghanistan

Research Cluster:

 

Contact Information

Email: nandini.chatterjee@ames.ox.ac.uk

 

CV and publications

Books

  • Negotiating Mughal Law A Family of Landlords across Three Indian Empires (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
  • The Making of Indian Secularism Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830-1960 (Palgrave, 2011)

Articles

  • (with Alicia Schrikker and Dries Lyna), “Paper Empires: Layers of Law in Colonial South Asia and the Indian Ocean,” introduction to the special issue, Law and History Review, 41: 3 (2023), 417-426
  • (with Leonard Hodges) “The power of parwanas: Indo-Persian Grants and the Making of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Southern India”, Law and History Review, 41: 3 (2023), 479-500
  • “Un islam non colonisé. Le champ textuel de la of shariʿa et la système juridique colonial en Inde”, translated as “Uncolonised Islam: the textual field of shariʿa within and beyond the colonial legal system in India”, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 69 (2021-2), 71-96
  • “Archives as Windows: a Zamīndār’s Records in a Colonial Court,” Quaderni storici (2, 2021), 309-339
  • (with Fahad Bishara), “ Introduction: the Persianate bazaar” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 64:5-6 (2021), 487-512
  • “Translating obligations: tamassuk and fārigh-khaṭṭī in the Indo-Persian world”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 64:5-6 (2021), 541-582
  • “Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires: The Uses of an Indo-Islamic Legal Form,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58: 2 (2016), 379-406
  • “Reflections on Religious Difference and Permissive Inclusion in Mughal Law,” Journal of Law and Religion, 29: 2 (2014), 396-415
  • “Hindu City and Just Empire: Banaras and India Ali Ibrahim Khan’s Legal Imagination,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 15: 1 (Spring 2014) online only
  • “Law and the Spaces of Empire,” co-authored with Lakshmi Subramanian, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 15: 1 (Spring 2014) online only
  • “Muslim or Christian? Family Quarrels and Religious Diagnosis in a Colonial Court,” American Historical Review, 117: 4 (2012), 1101-1122 Part of AHR Forum – Law and Empire in Global Perspective.
  • “Images of Islam: A Murder in Colonial Calcutta,” Journal of Comparative Law 7: 2 (2013), 78-95
  • “English Law, Brahmo Marriage and the Problem of Religious Difference: Civil Marriage Laws in Britain and India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52: 3 (2010), 524-552
  • ‘Religious change, social conflicts and legal competition: the emergence of Christian personal law in colonial India', Modern Asian Studies, 44: 6 (2010), 1147-1195

Book chapters

Forthcoming

  • (With Dominic Vendell and Elizabeth Thelen), “Cultures of Documentation in Early Modern South Asia: Mughal, Maratha and Rajput archives”, in Ramya Sreenivasan and Richard Eaton eds. Oxford Handbook of the Mughal World.
  • “Changing regimes of law in the age of competing empires in South Asia,” in Prasannan Parthasarathi, Mrinalini Sinha and David Gilmartin eds. Cambridge History of the Modern Indian Subcontinent, Volume 1.

Published

  • “Sharīʿa translated? Persian documents in English courts,” in Mahmood Kooria and Sanne Ravensbergen eds. Islamic Legal Crossings in the Indian Ocean World (London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 88-110
  • “Liberty as Recognition,” in Winnifred Sullivan et al. (eds) Politics of Religious Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 158-169
  • “Law, Culture and History: Amir Ali’s Interpretation of Islamic Tradition,” in S. Dorsett and J. McLaren (eds), Legal Histories of the British Empire: Laws, Engagements, Legacies (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 45-59
  • “The Political Theology of Indian Christian Citizenship: An Instance of Secularism as Culture”, in Black B, Hyman G, Smith G (eds) Confronting Secularism in Europe and India: Legitimacy and Disenchantment in Contemporary Times (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 77-92

Working papers / blogs