Makarand Paranjape


Makarand R. Paranjape is an Indian novelist and poet. He has been the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla since August 2018. Prior to that he was a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India for 19 years.

Early life and education

Makarand R. Paranjape was born in 1960 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore, followed by B.A. in English from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi in 1980. Thereafter, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from where he received his M.A. in English Literature and, subsequently, a PhD in 1985 on the topic Mysticism in Indian English Poetry.

Career

Makarand R. Paranjape has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students for over thirty-five years. His teaching career has spanned the better part of the globe. A large part of this has been spent in the United States and India, where he has lived and worked. He started his career in 1980, as Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He returned to India in 1986, joined the University of Hyderabad, first as lecturer and then reader. In 1994, he joined the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi as an associate professor. Since 1999, he has been a professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Centre for English Studies.
He has published over 175 academic papers in various refereed journals and edited books within the country and internationally. In addition, he is the author of several poems and short stories, over 500 essays, book reviews, and occasional pieces in academic and popular periodicals in India and abroad. He was a columnist in Sunday Observer, Business Standard, The Pioneer, and Life Positive and currently writes columns for Swarajya, Mail Today, and DNA.
He was twice the chairperson of the Centre for English Studies, JNU, and is a member of the Board of Studies, the Academic Council of JNU, and the Vision Committee of JNU; the Coordinator for UGC Special Assistance Programme, in the Centre for English Studies, JNU from 2003 to 2008; the principal investigator of the Project on Indian Perspectives on Science and Spirituality, from 2006 to 2009. He was the General Editor of a series of reprints of rare and out of print Indian English titles published by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. He is the founding Trustee of Samvad India Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit, public charitable trust, and also the founding editor of Evam: Forum on Indian Representations, an international bi-annual, multi-disciplinary journal on India.
He was the chairperson for the Europe and South Asia region of Pan-Commonwealth panel of judges for the 2008 and 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize; he also served as the Indian host judge for the 2010 Prize awarded in New Delhi.

Marriage

Makarand R. Paranjape married Devaki Singh in 2006. Singh is the daughter of Arun Singh, a former Congress minister. In 2013, Paranjape wrote a novel called Body Offering, which was about a middle-aged man's extra-marital affair with a woman 25 years younger to him.

Honours