Pralay Kanungo’s research explores the entanglement of religion and politics through the prism of Hindu Nationalism. Being inter-disciplinary, comparative and ethnographic, this research attempts to explain the process and outcome of the interplay of ideology and practice.

Professor Pralay Kanungo is currently Fellow at Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt University (2018-2019) and Guest Professor at Sichuan University, Chengdu (2015-2020). He was Professor/ICCR Chair of Contemporary India Studies at LIAS/IIAS, Leiden University (2013-2018) and Honorary Professor at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne (2015-2018). Before coming to Leiden University, he was Professor and Chair, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, a Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi and Visiting Professor at Maison des Sciences De L’Homme, Paris.

Kanungo is the author of RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan (2002) and co-edited The Algebra of Welfare-Warfare (OUP, 2019) Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva (Routledge, 2011), Public Hinduisms (Sage, 2012) and The Politics of Ethnicity in India, Nepal and China (Primus, 2014).