Draft:Shruti Kapila

Shruti Kapila OBE
Born	India
Occupations	Historian political theorist professor
Awards	Officer of the Order of the British Empire (2024)
Academic background
Education	Panjab University (B.A.) Jawaharlal Nehru University (M.A.) SOAS University of London (Ph.D.)
Academic work
Institutions	University of Cambridge
Notable works	Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age (2021)

Shruti Kapila (born ) is an Indian historian and political theorist. She is a Professor of History and Politics at the University of Cambridge. Kapila's scholarship focuses on modern Indian political thought, global intellectual history, and the history of sovereignty, democracy, and violence. She also serves as a Fellow and Director of Studies at Corpus Christi College, and as Co-Director of the Global Humanities Initiative. In 2024, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the King’s Birthday Honours for her contributions to the humanities.

Life and academic career

Kapila was born in India to Ramesh Kapila, a former journalist with The Indian Express and Hindi writer Madhur Kapila. She completed her undergraduate studies at Panjab University, Chandigarh, followed by a Master's degree in Modern History at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She later earned her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Before joining the University of Cambridge, Shruti Kapila held a research post at the University of Oxford, where she contributed to academic work in intellectual and political history. She later served as an Assistant Professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts, United States.

In 2021, Kapila published Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age, a book that explores how political violence was central rather than incidental to the formation of modern India. The Hindu described the book as nothing short of a scholarly feat that challenges conventional interpretations of India's national movement. In a review for the Hindustan Times, political scientist Shaikh Mujibur Rehman noted the book's framing of Partition as a civil war and its critique of the dominance of Western political theory, while acknowledging that its focus on elite thinkers may overlook subaltern perspectives.

Apart from her academic work, she contributes political commentary to platforms such as the BBC, Al Jazeera, The Print and others.

Selected publications

• Kapila, Shruti; Devji, Faisal (2013). Political Thought in Action: The Bhagavad Gita and Modern India. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-03395-5.
• Kapila, Shruti (2021). Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-21575-4.
• Shruti Kapila, ed. (2010). An Intellectual History for India. Foundation Books. ISBN 978-81-7596-872-1.
• Kapila, Shruti (2007). "SELF, SPENCER AND SWARAJ : NATIONALIST THOUGHT AND CRITIQUES OF LIBERALISM, 1890–1920". Modern Intellectual History. 4 (1): 109–127. doi:10.1017/S1479244306001077. ISSN 1479-2443.
• Kapila, Shruti (2019). "Armitage on Civil Wars". Global Intellectual History. 4 (3): 318–321. doi:10.1080/23801883.2018.1553018. ISSN 2380-1883.
• Kapila, Shruti (2010). "A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE". Modern Intellectual History. 7 (2): 437–457. doi:10.1017/S1479244310000156. ISSN 1479-2443.

See also

• Political violence
• Political psychology

External links

• "Violent Fraternity: An Interview with Dr. Shruti Kapila". Toynbee Prize Foundation. 2 March 2022.
• "Interview with Prof. Shruti Kapila, Professor of History and Politics at Cambridge & Visiting Professor at NLSIU". National Law School of India University. 6 August 2024.