In this presentation, David Ludden opens a discussion on the ethnogenesis of the vast majority of Bengali Muslims, as described in Richard Eaton’s pioneering 1994 book. Thirty years later, he reflects on the very long historical role of religion as a territorial technology in South Asia, and on the modern construction of imperial ethno-majoritarian national origin stories, which have been reinforced by Area Studies.

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Speaker

David Ludden

David Ludden is Professor Emeritus of History and South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor Emeritus of History at New York University. A leading historian of South Asia, his work focuses on agrarian history, globalization, and the historical foundations of political and economic change in the region. He is the author of several influential books, including Peasant History in South India and An Agrarian History of South Asia, and has served as President of the Association for Asian Studies.

Chair and Discussant

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot is Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute and also the Research Lead for the Global Institutes, King’s College London. He teaches South Asian politics and history at Sciences Po, Paris and is an Overseas Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was Director of Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po, between 2000 and 2008. He takes part in the editorial board of several journals and is the senior editor of a Hurst book series that he has founded in 1999, Comparative Politics and International Studies. He is a regular commentator on Indian and Pakistani politics in France, UK, north America and in India.

Kasia Paprocki

Kasia Paprocki is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research is broadly concerned with political economies and ecologies of development, and the social movements that address them. Her work sheds light on the ways that development interventions and knowledge systems shape communities and landscapes. Kasia is also an editor of the Journal of Peasant Studies. In 2025 she received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Geography.