Acknowledgments

The research for this book began over a decade ago and has benefited enormously from the insights and exertions of a great many people and institutions. In 2011, I joined a research group under the leadership of Peter van der Veer at the Max Plank Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, and over the three years that I spent on the Urban Aspirations in Global Cities project some the key ideas animating this book took shape. For their insights and engagements, I am grateful to Nate Roberts, Ajay Gandhi, Radhika Gupta, Shireen Mirza, Ishani Dasgupta, Leilah Vevaina, Jayeel Cornelio, Jin-Heon Jung, Angie Heo, Neena Mahadev, Tam Ngo, Shaheed Tayob, Yuqin Huang, Roshanack Shaery-Yazdi, Jinyang Yu, Rumin Luo, Uday Chandra, Sajide Tursun, Anderson Blanton, and Peter van der Veer. Also in Göttingen, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to workshop early iterations of some ideas in this book with scholars at University of Göttingen’s Center for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), where I was affiliated in 2014–15. Thanks especially to Patrick Eisenlohr, Nellie Chu, Rupa Vishwinath, Srirupa Roy, Lalit Vachani, and Sumeet Mhaskar. Ideas in chapter 1 benefitted as well from discussions during a 2016 symposium on “Money and Politics in India” hosted by the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks to Milan Vaishnav, Adam Auerbach, Michael Collins, Jennifer Bussell, Jeffrey Witsoe, Simon Chauchard, Neelanjan Sircar, Tariq Thachill, and Devesh Kapur for their insights.

In Louisville, I am grateful to Karl Swinehart, Simona Bertacco, and Srimati Basu for their feedback, especially on ideas in chapter 2. Chapter 2 (in some ways the heart of the book) benefitted as well from discussions with seminar participants at University Illinois at Chicago (2019), University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Modern India Studies (2019), University of Pennsylvania’s South Asia Center (2019), University of Leipzig (2019), Indiana University Bloomington (2019), Stockholm University (2020), and The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (2022), and Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale (2022). I am especially grateful to my coresearchers on the European Research Council (ERC) project “India’s politics in its vernaculars,” led by Anastasia Piliavsky at King’s College London. With the generous support of the European Research Council, I was able to enlist the expertise of the brilliant Sharvari Shastri in tracking and translating Marathi-language media coverage of the events in chapters 4 and 5, and the formidable Capucine Tournilhac, who helped me tighten my arguments and prepare the manuscript for submission. For their engagements during workshops in Cambridge in 2021 and 2023, I am grateful to Ram Rawat, Lisa Mitchell, Uday Chandra, Francesca Orsini, Lipika Kamra, Dilip Menon, Piers Vibetsky, Tomasso Sbriccoli, A. R. Venkatachalapathy, Milinda Banerjee, Edward Moon-Little, Dale Luis Menezes, Ajay Skaria, S. V. Srinivas, and, above all, Anastasia Piliavsky.

The book’s overall framing benefitted tremendously from the lively conversations that took place over the course of a wonderful week in Sintra during a Wenner Grenn workshop on Anthropology of Global Populisms in March 2023; the energy and ideas that emerged from our conversations in Sintra inspired me to engage more directly with the concept of “populism.” I wish to thank Danilyn Rutherford, Gary Wilder, Leticia Cesarino, Luciana Chamorro, Karem Ussakli, Jason Frank, Kabir Tambar, Kristóf Szombati, Nitzan Shoshan, Nusrat Chowdhury, Robert Samet, Naomi Schiller, Donna Auston, Banu Bargu, and especially William Mazzarella.

I spent much of the Covid-19 pandemic working remotely from Sweden, where dark winter days were brightened by my little writing group’s bimonthly Zoom meetings. For their brilliant interventions and suggestions on many of the book’s chapters, I am grateful to Rachel Sturman, Lisa Mitchell, Ursula Rao, Nikhil Rao, Ravinder Kaur, Srimati Basu, Tarini Bedi, and especially Llerena Guiu Searle, who provided invaluable guidance and feedback on way too many drafts of chapter 3. Also during those long pandemic months, I had the tremendous fortune to participate remotely in the American Institute of Indian Studies Lucknow-based Urdu program, where under the sagacious tutelage of AIIS’s Lucknow faculty, I learned to read and write the Nastaliq script. For her endless patience and good humor, I am especially grateful to our poetry teacher Sheeba Iftikhar—particularly for her help in translating the couplets in chapter 4—and to AIIS’s Urdu program director Ahtesham Khan for welcoming me into the program. And thank you as well to my Urdu reading group members Swarnim Khare and Rabea Murtaza for cozy afternoons spent together on Zoom, working our way through Saadat Hasan Manto’s Bombay stories. I am also tremendously grateful to AIIS for fellowship support from 2018 to 2020.

In 2021–23, I spent two delightful years writing up the latter chapters of this book while affiliated to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), with generous support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In Halle, my thinking was deepened through ongoing conversations with the wonderful group of researchers affiliated to the Anthropology of Politics and Governance department under the leadership of Ursula Rao. I am grateful to Samiksha Bhan, Claudia Lang, Jovan Maud, Hanna Nieber, Julia Vorhölter, Desirée Kumpf, Mascha Schultz, Tyler Zoanni, Michiel Baas, and especially to Ursula Rao. During the summer of 2022 in Halle, I had the opportunity to workshop ideas in this book during regular meetings and seminars with a remarkable group of visiting scholars; thank you to Carol Upadhya, Anindita Chakravarty, Jason Cons, Bidisha Chaudhuri, Srimati Basu, Robert Desjarlais, William Mazzarella, and Amy McLachlan. I am especially grateful to Viola Stanisch and Viktoria Giehler-Zeng for their kindness and constant support during my time at the MPI in Halle.

At the University of Minnesota Press, I wish to thank Editorial Director Jason Weidemann, Managing Editor Mike Stoffel, Production Editor Carla Valadez, Marketing and Engagement Specialist Shelby Connelly, and especially Zenyse Miller, who made everything smooth and easy. Thank you as well to Douglas Easton, who prepared the index, and to Rohit Kudale who drew the maps.

I have the tremendous good fortune to have colleagues and friends who have been willing to read so many chapter drafts and to think together through ideas. For believing in the book—and in my ability to write it—I am deeply grateful to Lisa Mitchell, Adam Auerbach, Rachel Sturman, Tarini Bedi, Llerena Searle, and especially to Jonathan Spencer and Laura Kunreuther, who read the manuscript in its entirety.

My greatest thanks is owed to the city of Mumbai, and to the people whose energy and creativity and unflappable good humor bring that brilliant city to life day after day.