Deepra Dandekar
Profile
Deepra Dandekar is a historian of religion, migration, and gender in modern South Asia, and has joined the SAI at the Department of South Asian History as a Habilitandin in 2024. Prior to this, Dandekar worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) Berlin, on a DFG grant titled "Indian Ocean Retrotopia on the Western Indian Littoral" (2020-2023), the Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin (History of Emotions) on a project titled "Migration and Exclusion: Refugees to India after 1947" (2017-2020), and the "Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in Global Context" University of Heidelberg, on a project titled "Sufi Shrines as Transcultural Communicative Interfaces in Western India" (2012-2015).
Dandekar is a Ph.D in history and archaeology from the Deccan College Research Institute (Pune) and her Ph.D, awarded in 2010, is titled "The Satvai and Maulya: Childbirth Deities in Western Maharashtra". During the period of her doctoral research, Dandekar held a DAAD doctoral fellowship that was spent at the Department of Anthropology SAI Heidelberg (2007-2008). Dandekar has a Bachelors and Masters in history from St. Stephens College and the University of Delhi, and additional degrees in Women's Studies from the University of Pune.
Having published variously on the gendered politics, Muslim minoritization, Indian Partition narratives, religious conversion, and the vernacular intellectual history of converts, some of Dandekar's recent monographs include "Baba Padmanji: Vernacular Christianity in Colonial India" (Routledge UK, 2021), "The Subhedar's Son: A Narrative of Brahmin-Christian Conversion from Nineteenth Century Maharashtra" (OUP New York, 2019) and "Boundaries and Motherhood: Ritual and Reproduction in Rural Maharashtra" (Zubaan Books New Delhi, 2016). Dandekar translated the first Indian vernacular novel (Marathi) by Baba Padmanji from 1857 into English titled "Yamuna's Journey" (Speaking Tiger New Delhi, 2022). Currently finishing her fourth monograph tentatively titled "Tea with a Tiger: Dargah Bhakti and the Politics of Sufi Miracles in Contemporary Western India", Dandekar has fulfilled other academic roles and duties as well, as Steering Committee member of the "Hinduism Unit" at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and as member of the Board of Directors for the "Society for Hindu-Christian Studies" (AAR). Dandekar will additionally co-organize the "21st International Conference on Maharashtra: Culture & Society" to be held at the SAI Heidelberg in 2025, thematized under the title "Deha: Invoking the Body", and will assist in the academic organization of the ECSAS at the SAI in 2025. Since 2021, Dandekar works as the Editor-in-Chief of the international and biannual, peer-reviewed, academic journal "Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies" published by HASP (Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing).
Publications
- Dandekar, D. 2024. “Images of Concealment: Pandita Ramabai and the Mukti Mission”. Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 9(1): 30-49.
- Dandeakar, D. (With Tull, H.). 2024. “Pamphlets and Tracts: South Asia” (pp. 1254-1258). Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Vol. 22. Berlin/ Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
- Dandekar, D. 2024. “Deen and Duniya, and the Indian Partition: perspectives from oral history”. Contemporary Islam,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-024-00567-8
Ongoing Project
The New Indian Protestant Woman: Mukti Mission through its Photographs (1898-1922)
Mukti Mission is one of the few Christian rescue homes for destitute women and children that has survived independence and continues to function as a Christian Missionary organization in postcolonial India. Established in 1898 by Indian woman reformer and missionary leader Pandita Ramabai Dongre Saraswati (1858-1922), Mukti Mission is located in Kedgaon, a village outside the city of Pune in Bombay Presidency (later, Maharashtra). Seen as an institution that embodies Pandita Ramabai’s intellectual legacy, her achievements in the field of women’s education and Hindu-widow rehabilitation, Mukti Mission is hailed as a stellar 20th century institution characterized by women’s leadership that celebrates the patriotic contribution of religious minorities (Protestant Christians) to India. On the other hand, the scholarly overemphasis on Ramabai’s achievements has served to decentre an independent examination of Mukti Mission. There is significant photographic information available on the Mukti Mission as Pandita Ramabai used the recently-popularized technology of photography to document and present the world with a new model of Indian Protestant feminine citizenship. Ramabai and her daughter, Manorama, also appeared regularly within Mukti Mission photographs, their presence lending the image of the new Indian Protestant woman, power and authenticity. This project seeks to study Mukti Mission photographs in the period of Pandita Ramabai’s leadership (1898-1922) with an aim to unpack the Mission as an independent subject of scholarly examination.