Hi! I’m a Fellow by Examination at All Souls College, Oxford, where my doctoral work traces how India came to be associated with mysticism and spirituality between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. I am interested in how historical actors understood “mystical India” not only in binary opposition to Europe, but as a resource to develop alternative universalisms and reimagine their social and political order.
More broadly, I study the intellectual and cultural history of empire, following exceptions, limit-cases, and denied possibilities in the historical encounter between Europe and India since the early modern period. I have worked on the circulation of Jesuit missionary writings about Indian society to Enlightenment France and British India, the university politics of teaching Sanskrit in Victorian Britain, citizenship and personal status in the French empire, and the political thought of the Indian women’s movement.
I completed my MPhil in Intellectual History at Oxford, where I was a Rhodes Scholar (New York & Magdalen 2024), and my B.A. in History and Mathematics at Columbia, where I graduated as salutatorian. Before that, I grew up between Chandigarh, New Delhi, and New York.
This website contains my research and writing. In my spare time, I also enjoy knitting and visual art.