Shivaji Mukherjee

I work on political violence and conflict in India, and do research on insurgencies in South Asia, particularly the Maoist insurgency, which is India’s longest lasting insurgency. I also have an interest in state formation, legacies of colonial institutions, and other types of political violence in South Asia like the Kashmir insurgency and Hindu-Muslim violence and vigilantism.

My research shows that historical legacies of state formation and land inequality matter to explain post-colonial insurgency and conflict, and urges the civil war scholarship to take history seriously. On this topic, I have published a book Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and also have several articles on this topic in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, World Development, Asian Security. I have also published on insurgency and counter insurgency in journals like Civil Wars and Oxford Handbook of South Asian Security.

I am currently working on topics related to ethnic and religious violence, governance by Non-state actors, and pre-colonial legacies and state formation in India.