Mahesh Rangarajan

Mahesh Rangarajan has a BA in History from the University of Delhi. He has an MA and PhD from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

He has been a Professor in Modern Indian History at the University of Delhi and also taught at the universities of Cornell and Jadavpur and at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. He has also served as Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.

A selected list of his published papers include -

• ‘Imperial Agendas and India’s Forests: The Early history of Indian forestry, 1800-1878’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 21(1994), pp. 147-167.

• ‘Environmental Histories of South Asia: A review essay’, Environment and History, Vol. 2 (1996) pp. 129-144.

• The Politics of Ecology: The debate on people and wildlife in India, 1970-95’,Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31(1996), pp. 2391-2410.

• ‘The Raj and The Natural World, The campaign against ‘dangerous beasts in colonial India’, Studies in History, Vol. 14(1998), pp. 266-299.

• ‘The role of administration in extermination: Fresh evidence on the cheetah in India’, Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol. 95(1998), pp. 328-32.

• ‘Hindutva’s accursed problem’, Seminar, No. 485(2000), pp. 37-40.

• Polity, Ecology and landscape: fresh writing on South Asia’s past,’Studies in History, Vol. 17, no. 1 (2002), pp. 135-148.

• ‘Parks, Politics and History, Conservation Dilemmas in Africa’, Conservation and Society, Vol. 1, no. 1. (2003), pp. 77-98.

• -‘Polity in Transition: India after the 2004 general elections’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 40, no. 32, 6 August 2005, pp. 3597-3605.

• ‘Fire in the Forest’, Economic and Political Weekly, 19 November 2005.

• With Ghazala Shahabuddin, ‘Relocation from Protected Areas: Towards a Historical and Biological Synthesis’, Conservation and Society, Volume 4, no. 3 (2006), pp. 359-378.

• ‘Ideology, the environment and policy: Indira Gandhi’, IIC Quarterly, Vol. 33, no. 1 (2006), PP. 50-64.

• ‘Reviving the Congress’, Seminar, January 2007.

• ‘Why Mayawati matters’, Seminar, January.

• ‘Region’s honour, Nation’s pride: Gir’s lions on the cusp of History’, in Divyabhanusinh ed., The Lions of Asia, Delhi: Black Kite Books.

• Ghazala Shahabuddin and Mahesh Rangarajan, ‘Conservation-Induced Displacement in India's Protected Areas,’ in Mathur, HM ed, Displacement and Development, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

• Gunnel Cederlof and M Rangarajan, ‘ Predicaments of power and nature in India: An introduction‘, Conservation and Society, Vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 149-154.

• ‘Striving for a balance, nature power and science under India’s Indira Gandhi, 1917-1984’, Conservation and Society, Vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 227-239.

• Srinath Raghavan and Mahesh Rangarajan, ‘Engagement sans entanglement’, Seminar, January 2010, No. 605, pp. 61-66.

• ‘Lineage and Democracy’, Seminar Annual, January.

A list of his books include:

• Fencing the Forest, Conservation and Ecological Change in India’s Central Provinces, 1860-1914, Oxford University Press, Delhi and Oxford, 1996; OUP Paperback, 1999.

• Ed., The Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife, Volume I, Hunting and Shooting, Oxford University Press, Delhi and Oxford.

• Ed., Volume II, Watching and Conserving, Oxford University Press, Delhi and Oxford.

• Co-authored with V.K. Saberwal and A. Kothari (2001), People, Parks and Wildlife: Towards Coexistence. New Delhi: Orient Longman.

• India’s Wildlife History: An Introduction Permanent Black in association with the Ranthambhore Foundation, Delhi, 2001, Paperback, 2006.

• Vasant Kabir Saberwal and M Rangarajan, Ed. Battles over Nature, Science and the politics of conservation, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2003, Paperback, 2006.

• Edited, Environmental Issues in India: A Reader, Delhi: Pearson Longman, Published January 2007.

• Ghazala Shahabuddin and Mahesh Rangarajan edited, Making Conservation Work, Securing biodiversity in this new century (Delhi: Permanent Black, June 2007).

• William McNeill, Jose Padua and Mahesh Rangarajan Ed. Environmental History As if Nature Existed, (Delhi: OUP, 2010).

• ed., Bharat main paryavaran ke mudde, Hindi translation of the Reader by Rita Sridhar, (Delhi: Pearson, 2009).

• Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan Ed., India’s Environmental History Volume I, From Earliest times to the Colonial Era. Volume II: Colonialism, Modernity and the Nation, (April 2012, pp. 1200).

• Mahesh Rangarajan, N. Balakrishnan, Deepa Bhatnagar eds., Selected Works of C. Rajagopalachari, Vol. 1, 1907-1921 (Hyderabad: Blackswan Pvt Ltd., 2013).

• Mahesh Rangarajan, MD Madhusudan and Ghazala Shahabuddin edited, Nature Without Borders,( Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2014)

• M Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan ed. Shifting Ground, People, animals and mobility in India’s Environmental history, (Delhi: OUP, 2014).

• Mahesh Rangarajan, Nature and Nation, Essays in Environmental History, ( Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2015).

Picture Courtesy: Ashoka University Youtube Channel