Ananya Vajpeyi

Biography

Ananya Vajpeyi works at the intersection of intellectual history, political theory and critical philology. She is currently writing two books: one, a history of caste categories in India from pre-colonial to modern times, and the other, her long-term project, a life of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956).Her first book Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India was named book of the year 2012 by the Guardian and the New Republic. It received the 41st Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press, the Tata First Book Award for Non-Fiction (2013), and the Crossword Award for Non-Fiction (2013). Most recently, Vajpeyi has been a Global Ethics Fellow with the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs, 2014-2017. Vajpeyi writes regularly for The Hindu newspaper and guest-edits an issue of Seminar magazine annually. She contributes often to Foreign Affairs and World Policy Journal.

Research Interest

The New York Times, an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books and an interview on www.foreignaffairs.com, with the Editor of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Rose. She has a chapter in K. Satchidanandan Ed. Words Matter: Writings against Silence (Penguin 2016). Her review essay about Patrick Olivelle's translation of Kautilya's Arthaśāstra appeared in the July 1, 2016 issue of Public Books. Her article ‘The Return of Sanskrit’ appears in the Fall 2016 issue of World Policy Journal. Her newest essays appear on Guftugu.in and in the Hindu Sunday Magazine.