Christophe Jaffrelot

Education

He is a graduate of the institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, the université de Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne and of the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO). He has a doctorate of political science from Sciences Po in 1991, and has received a post-doctoral Habilitation degree.

He currently works at the Centre for Studies in International Relations (CERI) at Sciences Po and served as its Director during the period 2000-2008. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at CNRS, and a Professor at Sciences Po. He is also a visiting professor at the India Institute, King's College London and a Global Scholar the Princeton University.

He is the senior editor of the Sciences Po book series, Comparative Politics and International Relations published by C. Hurst & Co. He has been the editor-in-chief of Critique Internationale and serves on the editorial boards of Nations and Nationalism and International Political Sociology. He is also on the editorial board of The Online Encyclopaedia of Mass Violence.

He often writes columns for the Indian Express and The Caravan, and received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism. He was awarded the Brienne Prize for geopolitics by the Defense Ministry of France for his book Le Syndrome Pakistanais.

Jaffrelot's research is centred on South Asia, focusing on the aspects of nationalism and democracy, Hindu nationalism, caste mobilisation in politics and ethnic conflicts. His interest in India was kindled when he was still in school, through a philosophy teacher well-versed in Indian philosophy. He visited India when he was 20 and found the Indian society interesting in many different ways.

Publications

Reception

The book Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, based on his doctorate research, is considered Jaffrelot's magnum opus. Walter Andersen, a scholar who has studied the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said that "for the expert on South Asia, this book is an absolute must." Craig Baxter, another author, said that it was required for anyone with an interest in South Asia. Richard White noted that the book was "formidably well researched and explores all the main arguments and themes relating to the subject." Stacey Burlet commented that the book combined "an abundance of information" with "lucid analysis."

In the book, Jaffrelot developed two themes for understanding the operation of the RSS in particular and the Hindu nationalist movement in general. The first was that the movement defined an ideological identity based on a process of 'stigmatisation and emulation' of what it portrays as 'threatening Others' (Indian Muslims or Christian proselytisers, and the British or the West), which threaten the idea of the 'one Nation'. The second was the "instrumentalist" strategy of ethno-religious mobilisation, which was dubbed the 'Sanghatanist pattern' of implantation and party building. Through the 'sanghatanist pattern', the RSS and allied organisations aimed to penetrate Hindu society in all its areas and organise it as the 'one Nation'. The book covered the development of the first theme starting in the late 19th century with the formation of the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha, through the founding of the RSS in 1925 and the development of the Sangh Parivar after India's independence, leading up to the Bharatiya Janata Party's ascendance in the early 1990s. The book is full of important and valuable information and not an "easy read."