Introduction
Sunil Khilnani is a Professor of Politics and Director of the King's College London India Institute. He is a scholar of Indian history and politics best known as the author of The Idea of India (1999). He was the presenter of a BBC Radio 4 series entitled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, which was later published as a book in 2016. He was a 2010 Berlin Prize Fellow, and he is a recipient of the Indian government's 2005 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award.
Life
Khilnani was born in New Delhi and grew up on the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia. He earned a first at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and PhD at King’s College, Cambridge.
He was Starr Foundation Professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and Director of South Asia Studies.
He is married to the writer Katherine Boo.
Works
Books
- Khilnani, Sunil (1993). Arguing revolution: the intellectual left in postwar France. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300057454.
- Khilnani, Sunil (1999). The idea of India. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 9780374525910.
- Khilnani, Sunil; Kaviraj, Sudipta (2001). Civil society: history and possibilities. Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521002905.
- Khilnani, Sunil (2016). Incarnations: India in 50 Lives. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 9780241208229.
Chapters in books
- Khilnani, Sunil (2009), "Democracy and its Indian pasts", in Kanbur, Ravi; Basu, Kaushik, Arguments for a better world: essays in honor of Amartya Sen | Volume II: Society, institutions and development, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 488–502, ISBN 9780199239979.