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Faculty Profile

Professor Kasturi specialises in the social and cultural history of modern South Asia.  Her research interests include gender and kinship, law and legal history, and popular religion. Her recent book, Embattled Identities, Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century Colonial North India (Oxford University Press, 2002) critically analysed the reconstitution of the family and martial masculinities amongst elite lineages in British India, against the backdrop of colonial ideologies, political culture and material realities.  In this context, Dr. Kasturi has also written about the engagement of kinship hierarchies with colonial legal discourses on property, succession and inheritance.  Her current research project “Crafting Hindu Publics: Ritual, Religiosity and the Public Sphere in Twentieth Century India” explores how popular ‘everyday’ socio-religious ritual practices have shaped the public sphere and civil society in colonial and post-colonial India.