Achin Vanaik Associate

Our people — Associate

A TNI Fellow and Associate since 1987, Achin Vanaik is a Retired Professor of International Relations and former Head of Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi, and a life-long activist for nuclear disarmament. He is an active member in the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India), and in the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel working to pressure Israel to comply with international law. He is a founder of the Society for Marxist Studies (SMS), which holds two-week long residential schools for post-graduate students and social activists from across India.

Achin has authored, edited and contributed to many books ranging from studies of India's political economy, issues concerning religion, communalism and secularism as well as international contemporary politics and nuclear disarmament. His most cited book is The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization (Verso, 1997). His most recent books include Nationalist Dangers, Secular Failings: A Compass for an Indian Left (Aakar Books, 2020), The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism: Secular Claims, Communal Realities (Verso, 2017), and After The Bomb: Post-Pokharan II Essays (Orient Black Swan, 2015).

Achin was also Assistant Editor with The Times of India from 1978 to 1990, sat on the executive board of Greenpeace (India) for many years, and was a member of an Expert Group (the Ghosh Committee) set up to independently evaluate the India’s National Literacy Mission from 1993-1994.

Honours/Awards

He is a co-recipient, with Praful Bidwai, of the International Peace Bureau's Sean McBride International Peace Prize for 2000.

Latest work

The Tragedy Of India’s Authoritarian Descent The Case of Prabir Purukayastha

Authoritarianism

The alarming erosion of democracy in India under the Modi government.

Blog by

Achin Vanaik

Publication date: 13 January 2024
Populism, authoritarianism and agrarian struggles: Agrarian Conversations episode 3 Webinar recording
Agroecology

COVID-19
Around the world emerging new exclusionary politics are generating deepening inequalities, jobless ‘growth’, climate chaos, and social division. These processes have been intensified or exposed in many places by the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it, but they are not new. Since 2017 the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) has used engaged research to better understand these destructive dynamics, and the social and political processes in rural spaces that are generating alternatives to them. We aim to provoke debate and action among scholars, activists, practitioners and policymakers from across the world who are concerned about the current situation, and hopeful about alternatives and resistances.
Video by

Ruth Hall

Katie Sandwell

Achin Vanaik

Garrett Graddy-Lovelace

Ramona Duminicioiu

Ayala Ferreira
Publication date: 17 February 2022
The UNCLOS isn't perfect and it's time we acknowledge that

Exclusive Economic Zones have encouraged the process of privatising the seas, at the cost of protecting the oceanic environment.

Article by

Achin Vanaik

Publication date: 12 August 2020