Makarand Paranjape

Makarand Paranjape (born 31 August 1960) is an Indian poet and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

Makarand Paranjape was born in 1960 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore, followed by B.A. (Hons.) 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.

Paranjape is married to Devaki Singh, daughter of former Congress minister Arun Singh in 2006.

Makarand Paranjape has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students for almost thirty 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 120 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 200 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. He has been 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 is 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.

In March, 2016, his lecture on Nationalism on the backdrop of JNU crisis was widely praised. He asked the students if they want JNU to be democratic or left hegemonic place where contrarian voices were muzzled. He also pointed out factual inaccuracies in post bail release speech of JNSU president Kanhiya Kumar.

• Homi Bhabha Fellow for Literature, 1991–1993.
• Visiting professor, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 1996.
• Shastri Indo-Canadian Research fellow, University of Calgary, Canada, Summer 2000. Visiting Professor, Ball State University, Indiana, US, Fall 2001.
• IFUSS Fellow, University of Iowa, Iowa City, US, Summer 2002.
• Mellon fellow, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Summer 2003 and summer 2004.
• Coordinator, UGC Special Assistance Programme, 2003 onwards.
• Joint-coordinator, China-India inter-cultural dialogue, 2004–2005.
• GPSS research award, 2005–2006.
• Australia India Council fellow, 2005–2006.
• GPSS Major Award 2006–2009.
• Chair of the Jury for South Asia and Europe of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2007–2009.
• Visiting professor, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, April–October 2009.
• Shivdasani Visiting fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford, Michaelmas Term, 2009 (October–December).
• ICCR Chair in Indian Studies, National University of Singapore, August 2010 onwards.
• CAPES Visiting Professor, University of São Paulo, Brazil, August–December 2011.
• Meenakshi Mukherjee Prize for the best published academic paper in India, 2010–2011, awarded by Indian Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Association.
• Summer 2014: Awarded (but could not accept) visiting fellowship under the “Research Excellence Program of University of Santiago de Compostela – India (PEIN) for the year 2013–2014.
• October–December 2014: Inaugural DAAD-Eric Auerbach Visiting Chair in World Literatures at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
• January–April 2015: Visiting senior research fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore.