Interview with Prof. Shruti Kapila, Professor of History and Politics at Cambridge & Visiting Professor at NLSIU

We are happy to have you back on campus! Tell us more about your engagements with NLSIU during this visit.

It’s great to be at NLS and it’s really exciting because I’m a product of the public education system in India. I’ve primarily visited North India every time I’ve been here in the country. It was during December 2023 that I visited Bangalore, and NLSIU for the first time.  Dr. Salmoli Choudhary, who did a PhD with me at Cambridge, had organized lectures around political thought and the study of political ideas, and I had come for that. And during that visit, I engaged with various aspects of NLS – I did a public lecture, a seminar, also a class, and interactions with faculty and students, and it was very stimulating. I then came for a brief visit in February 2024 when NLS was co-hosting a conference on the Indian Constitution. During my previous visits, I was so moved and energized by the intellectual community and about the student body being unique (from all over the country, and all sections of society); so it was truly about being at an educational institution of excellence. I didn’t know anyone in Bangalore but I just felt the click here, and it was very strong. And that’s what attracted me to spend my sabbatical here. We had discussed this idea of me teaching at NLS with the Vice-Chancellor earlier this year, and the University helped facilitate this visiting professorship, which I’m absolutely thrilled to have.

Please share your thoughts on taking up this Visiting Professorship for the first time in India:

I say this is my first real job in India as I’ve never taken up a Visiting Professorship in the country. Of course, I write a column here, I interact with a lot of people and institutions, and deliver lectures in the country, but not really worked full-time with an institution here.

As I mentioned, I’m a product of India’s public education – I studied in Chandigarh, at the local government college there, and then did a master’s at JNU. And I’ve now taught for over a decade and a half in Britain. I’m very keen to have horizontal collaborations between where I work in Cambridge and here, and to engage with public institutions as well as other institutions. So I was motivated by that. It’s not simply about an ethical or a political principle, and some of it is there too, but it’s also a highly emotional reaction to be in an Indian public educational context. And I just thought this would be more engaging to be here in a fully institutional setting, create productive conversations around it, and bring my own offerings to the table, say, like the history of political ideas.

NLS is at the cutting edge of not just teaching but also research into the legal questions which are so foundational to the unfolding of democracy and the life of our Constitution.  So in every sense, it was a no brainer for me to choose NLS to take up this Visiting Professorship. There are very exciting conferences and seminars happening, and I’m participating in a few of them. It’s a thriving institution, and people have been very friendly and hospitable. I really enjoyed my interactions last time I was here, but it was also about the student body being very representative of India. And that matters! When I studied in JNU or even in Chandigarh, it was a great learning experience of Indian society. I was lucky to get some of the best teachers in JNU, but it was also the classroom, the spirit, and the meeting of students from across the country. I don’t mean this just in some sort of multicultural way of diversity and the joy of the harmony (which it is), but also the different perspectives it exposes one to. People have very different lives, different struggles and different stories. Quite apart from the fact whether one is left leaning or right, or liberal.

Tell us more about the course that you’re teaching at NLS?

I’m teaching two courses during my stay here at NLS. In the July trimester, I’m teaching a course on Indian democracy and its foundations and transformations. It roughly covers the period from 1930 (the inter-war period, the mass anti-colonial mobilizations) to 1992, which people generally tend to call the second democratic upsurge; developments like the Mandal Commission, the reforms coming together, or the Ram temple movement opened a different chapter in democracy. And in the next trimester, I will cover the period from 1992 to the present.

The study of Indian democracy has really primarily been done by political scientists and now increasingly by anthropologists. So you have two kinds of approaches – (i) the institutional, or the election-oriented approach and; (ii)  a second approach, which I think is quite interesting, coming from political anthropologists who look at the everyday life of democracy in relation to the State. So it could be the nature of people accessing public goods, or questions of mobilization and, I dare say, even violence. Those themes have been covered quite well by political anthropologists, and they tend to be focused on the question of the Indian state and the citizens’ relationship to it. Then you have electoral behaviour and the data around it.

I think we’ve actually kind of lost sight of the fact that politics is always a struggle of visions; politics is not just the crucible, but also the contestation of ideas. You may stand for certain things and your voter choice would have been on that basis. So I’m interested in that work of ideas, and the psychic or emotional attachments to certain ways of thinking. And I want to relate that to institutional practices, legal challenges, and all the big edifices of India’s democracy. So that’s the kind of perspective I’m bringing to the table, which I think is important. I’m quite interdisciplinary (to use that big word); the title of my job is Professor of History and Politics because I work with both these aspects in my teaching.

Some themes I’m interested to discuss in my classes: 

Changes over time: I’m interested in observing change over time. If you look at Indian democracy over the years, it is incredibly fast moving in terms of pace, of personalities, of narratives, of stories, but there are also certain underlying themes which I want to bring out. There are certain structural themes which have allowed India’s democracy to not just thrive or be competitive, but also has thrown up its own problems. We tend to think that all these great modern political innovations have taken place in the West. And to some extent, there is a facticity to it. But it would be a mistake to think that what you have here is just a spread of those western ideas. My first book, ‘Violent fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age‘, was a kind of reconstruction of India’s innovation – how India rewrote the ground rules of politics, modern politics. Because India has not shown any simple fidelity to a liberal project, a communist project, or a conservative project.

Questions that have engaged the country: In the Indian story, the caste question was centrally placed as a political question rather than simply as a social justice question. And I think those kinds of questions of power have really animated India. So the way political power has been understood, negotiated, performed, shared or even not shared, that has a very unique story here, and that’s the story I will tell through class lectures, and also in my upcoming book.

On personalities in Indian politics: India’s always had big personalities in politics. It’s a very compelling story to tell because there have been a series of big personalities, both men and women, so it’s always been fueled by personality, but also really powerful, compelling back stories.

On the power of politics in India: We’ve just had elections here in India. Quite apart from the outcomes and, which party has done what, we know that the political process and the realm of politics in India remains incredibly powerful. For instance, you may be a deprived group/entity, and your politics offers the best chance at uplifting your deprived community. That’s an indication of the power of politics. Now in the West, (and I certainly can only talk about Britain because I know it very fairly well, having lived there for 20 odd years), it is not clear whether the political realm is as powerful. So when we had the financial crisis in 2007, it was very clear that it was not just big businesses or banks, but technocracy in general, that had a sway. I think those kinds of differences are also important to map out.

So I want to equip the students with some of these concepts – that politics is not simply about contractual arrangements between institutions, and between the citizen and the State. And to explore how India actually innovates given political languages, say of contract, or liberalism, or even communism, and remakes them. So one has to tell that story to demonstrate how India has been at the cutting edge of that innovation rather than as a receiver of ideas.

Are you exploring different teaching techniques in the classroom?

I’m actually quite traditional in my teaching, if I may say so. It’s going to be slightly Cambridge-style, based on a lot of discussion and a lot of reading (I’m hoping), to think critically about texts, and to forge arguments with evidence. We all have opinions on Indian democracy, but that’s not the same as it being backed by evidence. How do you construct compelling arguments and narratives through the use of good evidence? I want to educate them in a way that makes what is highly familiar, unfamiliar. We all have views and people have very strong, emotional reactions to certain names or terms. So I want to bring some light to that heat, if I can put it like that. Who are these people? In what context were they saying what they were saying? To generate new perspectives and break some patterns of thought so that students are better equipped to deal with the figures that are part of our political conversation.

And I’m not didactic. In Cambridge too, at the height of Brexit, everyone had very strong opinions of progressivism, conservatism, and so on. And at the end of my classes, my students said “We don’t know where you stand“; they could not figure out my political colours. I’m not here to convert or run for any political office. So I think students may appreciate that. And it’s exciting for me to teach young Indians. They are the future.

Other than teaching, will you be engaging with any other activity during your time here in India?

Yes, I’m currently writing a book on the contemporary history and politics of India. It’s a worldwide edition for the study of ‘how do we understand India today?’ And one could say it’s a book on Indian democracy because independent India’s identity is primarily related to its democracy. So it’s politics, it’s democracy, it’s legal institutions, and the courts. So, this is a perfect place for me to be working on the book.

During my time in India, I’ll also be giving lectures related to this research, visiting various archives, and doing interviews related to my research in North India, in Tamil Nadu and here; I’ll be travelling a lot but Bangalore will be my base because I’m interested in what happens to India’s democracy with the introduction of big technology. And how the institutions of the State and public welfare delivery itself are changing, and what they might be doing to the democratic process. So I’m interested in speaking to people who are creating these platforms.

Would you like to recommend any book/podcast/other reading material to our students?

I like this podcast which became very big during COVID by my colleague Prof. David Runciman, and it’s called History of Ideas (on Spotify). And it’s now just come out as a book. So you get little potted histories in a very engaging style. Prof. Helen Thompson, also my colleague in Cambridge, did a podcast called Talking Politics which also became quite big, but this may be slightly dated.

Finally, what have you been able to explore in and around the campus so far?

I absolutely adore the library, it’s incredibly well equipped and very comfortable. And the library hours are great too. It’s always the beating heart of a campus, and you really do have a thriving library. I love the buildings, and the trees; it’s a beautiful and compact campus. I also love the food here, and there are some nice juice options in and around campus. In England, people spend huge amounts of cash getting the right smoothie you know!

In terms of explorations outside campus, I love the street food culture here, and you have some nice bookstores in the city, which I have visited earlier. I noticed two things you have a lot of in Bangalore – gyms and pubs. I like travelling around so I would like to take little day trips if time permits. The last time, I had visited Mysore, so maybe I’ll explore Hampi this time if possible.

To reach out to Prof. Kapila, please write to