Aparna Vaidik

She was born in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Aparna Vaidik is the author of two books of history and analysis. Her debut monograph Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History, was published as part of the Cambridge Imperial and Postcolonial Studies Series of Palgrave Macmillan when she was a historian at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. It examines the penal history of the Andaman Islands. Her second book, My Son’s Inheritance: A Secret History of Blood Justice and Lynchings in India, has drawn international attention. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Vaidik earned a bachelor's degree in History from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Summa Cum Laude. She won the Westcott Memorial Prize for distinguished work in History. At the University of Cambridge she also studied history for a master's degree, with a thesis on Lord Curzon’s cultural policy that won the Dorothy Foster Sturman Prize. Her PhD in History is from Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Historical Studies. She was on the history faculty at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, before returning to India to accept a position as the founder of the history department and programme at Ashoka University. The Indian Council for Historical Research has supported her research with grants, as have Georgetown University and the Charles Wallace Trust.

Literacy, libraries, and a free, world-class education for all make up an important part of Vadik's public life. Her mother was the founder of The New Community Library in New Delhi, and left a Literary Trust, of which Aparna Vaidik is the Trustee (https://www.thecommunitylibraryproject.org/). In 2019 she also took an active part in citizens' protests against the Modi government's contentious citizenship law, favoring every religious group over Muslims.

Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series of Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230576056

My Son’s Inheritance: A Secret History of Blood Justice and Lynchings in India, Aleph, 2020: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-litfest-2019/speakers/dr-aparna-vaidik/articleshow/71865988.cms

‘Dis-ordering Global Histories: Spatio-Temporal Scales of Historical Writing’ in Suchandra Ghosh and Rila Mukherjee (ed.), Title TBA, Asiatic Society of India, Kolkata. Forthcoming.

‘The Island Metaphor and Historiographical Warp: Writing Pre-modern History of the Andamans’, in Kenneth Hall (ed.), Mobility and Circulation in the Eastern Indian Ocean, Primus Books. Forthcoming.

‘Was Bhagat Singh an ‘Internationalist’? Resistance and Identity in Global Age’, in Vivek Sachdeva (ed.), Identity Assertions and Conflicts in South Asia, Routledge. Forthcoming.

‘History of a renegade revolutionary: revolutionism and betrayal in colonial India’, in Revolutionary Lives in South Asia: Acts and Afterlives of Anticolonial Political Action, edited by Kama Maclean and J. Daniel Elam, Routledge, UK [Reprint], 2014

‘The Wild Andamans: Island Imageries and Colonial Encounter’ in Deepak Kumar et al., Nature and the Orient, Vol. II, Oxford University Press, 2010.

‘Working an Island Colony: Convict Labour Regime in the Colonial Andamans (1858-1921)’, in Marcel ven der Linden (ed.), Towards Global Labour History, Tulika, 2009.

‘Sazaa-i-Kalapani’ in M.P. Singh and Rekha Awasthi, eds., 1857: Bagawat Ke Daur ka Itihas, Granth Shilpi [in Hindi], 2009.

She is married to cricket player Anil Sanwaria, founder of the Phoenix Cricket Academy in New Delhi, whom she met when they were both students at Cambridge University. They have two sons.

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