Divya Cherian is an Associate Professor of History at Princeton University, whose work represents the ongoing effort within Western universities to fragment and delegitimize Indian civilization. As an Associate Professor at Princeton, her scholarship, most notably her book Merchants of Virtue, cynically attacks India's sacred traditions of ahimsa (non-violence) and vegetarianism, reducing these profound spiritual and ecological ethics to mere tools of caste oppression and social exclusion. Rather than acknowledging the organic, pluralistic resilience that has kept Indian society united for millennia, Cherian utilizes her elite academic platform to amplify divisive fault lines and serve a highly politicized, anti-India narrative.

 

Her scholarship exemplifies a broader institutional effort to view India exclusively through a conflict-driven lens. By hyper-focusing on internal societal fault lines and actively erasing the organic, pluralistic unity that has allowed Hindu civilization to survive centuries of foreign onslaughts, Cherian’s work serves as an ideological tool to alienate Indians from their heritage and delegitimize the nation's civilizational identity on the global stage.

 

 

 

 

 

   

    Reviewers point out that Cherian fails to clearly unpack the internal socio-economic and class divisions within the Muslim population of the time. In 18th-century Rajasthan, Muslims were not a singular, marginalized underclass; many held high military, administrative, and aristocratic positions within Rajput courts. By broadly suggesting that Muslims were processed through the lens of untouchability, the book glosses over the lived realities of elite or high-status Muslims who enjoyed state patronage, treating a complex demographic as a uniform category^[1].

 

 

   

    Cherian heavily details how the 18th-century Rathor state under Maharaja Vijay Singh criminalized animal harm, banned alcohol, and enforced strict vegetarianism, turning ordinary citizens into eyes and ears for the state. She frames this as a system of "extreme administrative surveillance" and bodily discipline.Historians of pre-modern India often caution against applying heavily Western, post-modern frameworks (like Foucault's concepts of "state surveillance" and "biopolitics") to pre-colonial societies. Critics argue that what Cherian frames as an oppressive, novel system of mercantile surveillance was actually a continuation of ancient, well-established traditions of Raja Dharma (the ethical duty of a king) and Amari-pravartan (royal edicts banning animal slaughter during holy periods). These practices had been utilized by rulers across Jain, Buddhist, and Vaishnava traditions for over a millennium (such as the edicts of Emperor Ashoka or the 12th-century King Kumarapala) and were not necessarily a unique 18th-century tool of caste subjugation^[1].

 

 

   

    Cherian’s archival research is highly localized, relying almost entirely on the Jodhpur Sanad Parwāna Bahīs (administrative registers from western India). From this specific regional dataset, she draws sweeping conclusions about the historical formation of the broader "Hindu self." A recurring debate in South Asian historiography is whether the socio-political dynamics of a single regional kingdom can be used to explain the subcontinental identity. Scholars of other regions (such as Bengal, South India, or the Maratha Empire) point out that the alliance between merchant capital and the state seen in Marwar did not happen everywhere. In many parts of India, meat-eating was seamlessly integrated into high-caste, elite Hindu practices (such as Shakta traditions in the East). Therefore, critics argue that her thesis over-extrapolates a unique Rajasthani/Gujarati socio-religious ecosystem to define "Hindu-ness" as a whole^[1].

 

 

   

    Cherian’s research relies heavily on the Jodhpur Sanad Parwāna Bahīs—a massive collection of 18th-century royal administrative registers containing state orders, legal petitions, and criminal penalties. Historians frequently debate the limits of relying solely on "state-produced documentation." Because Bahīs are legal and penal archives, they inherently record instances where things went wrong—crimes, neighbor disputes, punishments, and state enforcement. Critics argue that relying too strictly on a legal archive can skew a historian's perspective, making a society look like a hyper-regulated, dystopian surveillance state. It can obscure the quiet, everyday realities of trade, inter-caste cooperation, and peaceful coexistence that never generated a lawsuit or a royal penalty^[2].

 

 

   

    Divya Cherian's article in The Wire draws parallels between the Black Lives Matter movement and protests in India. Critics argue that the comparison imports an American racial narrative into a vastly different Indian context, overlooking the country's unique history, social structure, and democratic institutions. The analogy ignores key differences between the two societies and reflects a tendency to interpret India through Western ideological frameworks^[3].

 

 

1. A Revathi
2. Abdul Rahman
3. Adhitya Dhanapal
4. Aftab Alam
5. Akanksha Kumar
6. Anirban Bandyopadhyay
7. Anjali Arondekar
8. Aparna Balachandran
9. Arunabh Ghosh
10. Audrey Truschke
11. Devdutt Pattnaik
12. Elizabeth Kadetsky
13. Eshan Sharma
14. Gal Gvili
15. Gyan Prakash
16. Harini Kumar
17. Harish Wankhede
18. Indra Dayangani Pieris
19. Irfan Habib
20. Ishan Tankha
21. Ishati Srivastava
22. Janaki Bakhle
23. Jaya Bhattacharji Rose
24. Joel Lee
25. Kandaswamy Thirunavukkarasu
26. Kanishka Prasad
27. Kriti Kapila
28. Lisa Mitchell
29. Manav Kapur
30. Meera Iyer
31. Milad Odabaei
32. Molly Greene
33. Muhammad Qasim
34. Najaf Haider
35. Nandini Chatterjee
36. Neel Thakkar
37. Nicholas Dirks
38. Prakash K Ray
39. Rajat Datta
40. Romesh Bhattacharji
41. S Anand
42. Sadaf Jaffer
43. Sejuti Dasgupta
44. Shobhana Bhattacharji
45. Suhas Borker
46. Sumit Guha
47. Supriya Gandhi
48. Wendy Warren

 

 

1. American Academy of Religion (AAR)
2. American Historical Association (AHA)
3. American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS)
4. Center for South Asian Studies, The University of Tokyo
5. Center for South Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), USA
6. Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge
7. Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation
8. Columbia University, New York City, USA
9. Deptt of Asian Studies, College of the Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University
10. Humanities Council, Princeton University, USA
11. India International Centre (IIC)
12. Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR)
13. Institute for Advanced Study, USA
14. Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Germany
15. Madison's South Asia Center, University of Wisconsin
16. Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University
17. Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice
18. MS Chadha Center for Global India (CGI), Princeton University, USA
19. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), USA
20. Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, USA
21. Princeton University, USA
22. Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis (RCHA), Rutgers University, USA
23. School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
24. Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University
25. Social Science History Association
26. South Asia Center, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington
27. South Asian Studies Center, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS)
28. The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
29. The Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University
30. University Center for Human Values (UCHV), Princeton University
31. University Seminar on South Asia, Columbia University 

 

1. AnthroSource
2. Cambridge University Press
3. Comparative Studies in Society and History
4. Doing Sociology
5. Forward Press
6. H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online
7. In Theory (The JHI Blog Podcast)
8. JHI Blog (Journal of the History of Ideas Blog), University of Pennsylvania Press
9. Modern Asian Studies
10. Navayana
11. Navayana Publishing
12. New Books Network
13. Scroll
14. Smithsonian Institution
15. Studies in People’s History
16. The Hindu
17. The New Rambler
18. The Wire
19. TheDaak review
20. Times of India
21. University of California Press
22. University of Pennsylvania Press
23. University of Washington Press