Dr. Naveen Chander

Naveen Chander is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Modern Indian Studies, working with Prof. Ravi Ahuja on a DFG-funded project titled “Divisions of Labour: Histories of Formalisation and Informalisation in the Transition to Postcolonial India.” His research focuses on questions related to archives, the labour movement and law, workers’ memories and oral histories, labour cooperatives, industrial restructuring, and labour-capital relations in the Delhi-NCR region.

Prior to joining CeMIS, Naveen completed a PhD in Political Science from Delhi University in 2014. His doctoral research explored the ideological and political dynamics of the Hindi language movement, tracing its evolution from the early 20th century to the post-colonial period. His work seeks to identify the diverse political tendencies that have shaped Hindi’s trajectory, both as a carrier of multiple and contested nationalist imaginations and as a hegemonic and democratic claim against the dominance of English in the field of education, emerging first in the anti-colonial movement and later becoming part of the democratization process in post-colonial India.

In addition to his academic contributions, Naveen Chander has worked as a senior researcher at the International Center for Advanced Studies (ICAS-MP) since 2017. In this role, he has overseen the development of an open-source digital archive on Indian labour history and a repository on labour regulation in the 20th century. He also continues to coordinate a multilateral collaboration among institutions in India, Germany, and the Netherlands, focusing on creating open-source digital archives on trade union politics and histories in 20th-century India. Some of the outcomes of these international collaborations are accessible online
Labour regulation in the long twentieth century
Archives of Indian labour
All India Trade Union Archives
Interview on AITUC archives (In Hindi)

External roles and memberships:

• Member of the Board of the Association of Indian Labour Historians.

Publications:
1. "Angrezi Hatao Andolan," in Abhay Kumar Dubey (ed.), Samaj Vigyaan Vishvkosh (Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences), New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan, 2015, pp. 332-334.

2. “Challenges and Possibilities of Substantive Democracy in India: A Critical Engagement Through the Asian Democracy Index,” Asian Democracy Review, Vol. 3, 2014, pp. 89-125. Co-authored with Bonojit Hussain

3. “Pachaas aur Saath ke Dashak Main Hindi Andolan,” in Abhay Kumar Dubey (ed.), Hindiki Aadhunikta: Ek Punarvichar, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla; New Delhi: CSDS/Vani Prakashan, 2014, pp. 707-735.