10 Facts About Vinay Lal

Vinay Lal is a professor of history and Asian American studies at UCLA.

Vinay Lal writes widely on the history and culture of colonial and modern India, popular and public culture in India, cinema, historiography, the politics of world history, the Indian diaspora, global politics, contemporary American politics, the life and thought of Mohandas Gandhi, Hinduism, and the politics of knowledge systems.

Vinay Lal earned his BA and MA, both in 1982, from the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Master's thesis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Indian philosophy.

Vinay Lal's co-edited book, Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The Mythic and the Iconic in Indian Cinema, appeared from Oxford University Press.

Vinay Lal has been involved in various initiatives designed to enhance South-Asian cultural and political contacts, foster systematic critiques of dominant knowledge systems and the various imperialisms of the West, and suggest more ecumenical futures for all humanity.

Vinay Lal is the founding editor of the Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series, under which eleven works have appeared so far, and the Asian Thinkers, launched in 2011.

Vinay Lal has been associated with INCAD, the Intercultural Institute of Montreal, and the Coalition for an Egalitarian and Pluralistic India.

For some years, Vinay Lal wrote a column for the Economic and Political Weekly published as "Letter from America".

Vinay Lal is an acerbic critic of American foreign policy and many aspects of American society.

Vinay Lal is equally a critic of Hindu nationalism, and his op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, "Coming Out From Gandhi's Shadow", was the first piece in a major American newspaper to sharply criticise India's nuclear explosions.