Dinyar Patel is Associate Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai, India. From 2015 to 2020, he was Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where he received Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. Patel earned his PhD in History from Harvard University in 2015.
Patel’s first book, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press and HarperCollins India in May 2020, and won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize from the New India Foundation in 2021. The book is a biography of Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), India’s first nationalist leader and the first Asian elected to the British Parliament. Aside from detailing the moderate, pre-Gandhian phase of Indian nationalism—a period that has been significantly neglected by scholars—Patel’s book demonstrates how Naoroji contributed to the growth of global anti-colonialism by putting Indian nationalism in touch with Irish nationalism, British and European socialism, American Progressives, and African-American and West Indian political activists.
Patel is the co-editor of two published volumes: From Ghalib’s Dilli to Lutyens’ New Delhi, with Mushirul Hasan (Oxford University Press, 2014); and Dadabhai Naoroji: Selected Private Papers with S.R. Mehrotra (Oxford University Press, 2016). He written for the New York Times online, BBC News, Hindu, Scroll.in, and Himal Southasian. At the moment, he is researching and writing a book on Indian nationalism through 1920.
Research Interests:
My primary interests include the Indian nationalist movement, the history of Bombay/Mumbai, and the Parsi community. I’ve been working on a number of journal articles: one on the history of management education in India prior to the establishment of the IIMs; another on the imperial politics behind Parsi philanthropy in Qajar Iran, focusing on how Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians were drawn into “Great Game” politics; and a third on the history of the idea of swadeshi. Additionally, I have been working on my book manuscript on the history of liberal nationalism in India
Publications:
Khurshedben Naoroji: The singer who preached nonviolence to bandits
Harvard Worldwide Week Preview: Dinyar Patel on “India at 75: The Global Roots of Independence”
