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Professor Sudhir CHANDRA studies the interpenetration of religion, culture and nationalism by focusing on the conversion to Christianity of a number of gifted upper caste/class men and women in colonial India. Belying the long-prevailing stereotype that Indian Christians were ipso facto denationalized, these converts played a pioneering role in the multi-faceted nationalist awakening that led to the making of modern India. In that this stereotype pervades the Hindu psyche, which believes that Hindu means Indian, this study also brings to the fore the question of cognition per se.
He is the recipient of the Raza Fellowship (2017) for his book on the biography of Bhupen Kakhar, an Indian painter entitled “Ek Antarang Sansmaran”.