Brian Hatcher
Professor
Department of Religion
Tufts University
United States of America
Biography
Brian Hatcher's research interests include the expression of religious change among emergent Hindu movements in colonial and contemporary South Asia, the transformation of intellectual and social life in colonial Bengal, and the interrogation of modernity under the conditions of colonialism. He is particularly interested in recovering the agency of Indian intellectuals as they negotiated the normative ideologies, institutions and material technologies associated with British rule in South Asia. Currently he is conducting research on the networking and emplacement of Shiva shrines and Shaiva monastic complexes in western Bengal from the eighteenth to the twentieth century; on the textual and institutional articulation of the Swaminarayan movement in early colonial Gujarat; and on the discourse of reform as it has shaped both colonial attitudes and contemporary scholarship on modern Hinduism. He currently has a monograph under contract with Harvard University Press entitled Religion before India and is the recipient of a 2017 Senior Short-term Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies. Read an interview with Brian Hatcher.
Research Interest
Hinduism and Religion in modern South Asia Religion and Colonialism Modern Bengal
Publications
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"Current Approaches to Colonial Hinduism," in: Continuum Companion to Hinduism, edited by Jessica Frazier (London: Continuum, 2011). 171-199. Reprinted in paper as: Bloomsbury Companion to Hindu Studies, edited by Jessica Frazier (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014). 171-199.
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"Pandits at Work: The Modern Sastric Imaginary in Early Colonial Bengal," in: Trans-Colonial Modernities in South Asia, edited by Michael S. Dodson and Brian A. Hatcher (New York: Routledge, 2012). 45-67.
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"Situating the Swaminarayan Tradition in the Historiography of Modern Hindu Reform," in: Swaminarayan Hinduism: Tradition, Adaptation and Identity, edited by Raymond B. Williams and Yogi Trivedi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016. 6-37.
