I specialize in teaching Hindi language and literature, offering courses that delve into South Asian history, cultures, and religions. As a scholar focused on early Hindi literature, my interests span the devotional, monastic, and court cultures of early modern India. My research has been featured in prestigious publications such as the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Modern Asian Studies, Bulletin of the SOAS, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East , the Journal of Vaishnava Studies as well as Hindi-language journals of literary criticism including Alochana, Sammelan Patrika, Sadaneera, and Chetana.

My first book, Sundar ke Svapn: ?rambhik ?dhunikat?, D?d?panth aur Sundard?s k? Kavit?, (Rajkamal, 2022, Second Ed. 2023) explores the making and lifespan of a religious community in early modern India. Demonstrating fresh perspectives on how to speak historically about the Hindi literary past it questions the categorization of Hindi literature into the binaries of ‘spontaneous’ devotional (bhakti) versus ‘mannerist’ courtly (riti) tropes which have remained prevalent in Hindi historiographies since the nationalist period. The book studies the devotional and literate community of the sixteenth-century poet-saint Dadu Dayal who flourished in north-western India during the heydays of the Mughal-Rajput multicultural milieu. Building networks with imperial and sub-imperial courts the community of Dadu Dayal grew in the towns located on the major trade routes in Mughal India. Dadu Dayal’s disciples got patronage from traders flourishing in Mughal trade and admitted saints of merchant castes backgrounds into their community. In such a socio-historical context emerged the poet-saint Sundardas who composed in the polished literary idiom of Hindi and whose life span covered almost the entire seventeenth century. By studying the large corpus of Sundardas, published and unpublished, the book demonstrates how Sundardas sought to create a new community of taste by participating in the literary innovations happening in the courtly circles. Sundardas was one of the early poet-saints who equated devotion (bhakti) with non-duelist thought, thus vernacularized the philosophical system which would later become the chief scholastic stance of modern Hinduism. For reviews of my book see The Hindu's FRONTLINE, The Book Review, Political Theology, The Wire, Samalochan, ???, Sadaneera, Garbhnal, Madhumati, Prabhat Khabar newspaper, Garbhnal-2, Naya Gyanoday, Alochana, and INDIA TODAY.

My second book, In the Shrine of the Heart: Sants of Rajasthan from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, (Heidelberg Asian Studies, 2023) is co-authored with Monika Horstmann. In the early modern period, the Sants emerged in North India as devotees of a formless interior god. The book introduces seven Sant authors living in Rajasthan in the period from the first half of the sixteenth to the late seventeenth century. It explores their complex cultural background, their literary conventions and principles, and their sectarian network. It also presents samples of Sant poetry in the original Hindi with English translations. By far most of the compositions in this volume have not been translated before, and of one of these the original text is published also for the first time. Sant poetry has been transmitted in oral and written form. It owes its continuing vitality largely to congregational and private performances. This fact has been illustrated by a number of audio and video samples in the book.

My next book, A Saiva Warlord Between Empires, is a translation of Padmakar's Brajbhasha poem Himmatbahadur Virudavali (18th century). This volume is forthcoming with Murty Classical Library of India (Harvard University Press) and is co-translated with William R. Pinch (Wesleyan University) and Allison Busch (1969-2019). [Manuscript submitted, August 2023].