Dr. Mukesh Kumar is an SNSF senior fellow and lecturer at the Institute. His research interests lie at the intersection of history and anthropology, focusing on socio-cultural, economic and religious encounters between various religious traditions in South Asia. Dr. Kumar received his PhD from the University of Technology in Sydney in 2019. Following PhD, his research projects have been supported by prestigious grants and fellowships, including those from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2019-21), ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2021-23), and the Swiss National Science Foundation (2024-28).

His first book, Between Muslim Pīr and Hindu Saint: Laldas and the Devotional Culture in North India (2024), has been published by Cambridge University Press. In addition to a co-edited volume on the Basel Mission, which is under contract with Leiden University Press, Dr. Kumar is currently working on two monographs: one addressing issues of caste, religion, and social mobility among the Billavas, and another focusing on urban religion, specifically the religious order of Sant Rampal in Delhi.

South Asian Religions, Religious Conversion, Devotional Hinduism, Social Mobility, Caste and Music, Yoga, Tantra, Sacred Spaces.

Kumar, M. (2024). Between Muslim Pīr and Hindu Saint: Laldas and the Devotional Culture in North India. Cambridge University Press.

Kumar, M. (2024). “From Heart to Mind: The Basel Protestant Mission and ‘Lower-Caste’ Billavas,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte (SZG)/Swiss Journal of History.

Kumar, M. (2022). “Moving beyond faith: Muslim Jogis and Religious Conversion in north India,” Contemporary South Asia, 30(4), pp. 568-585.

Kumar, M. (2022). “Cooperative Segregation and the Culture of Co-existence at an Integrated Religious Shrine,” History and Anthropology, pp. 1-24.

Kumar, M. & Yadav, G. (2022). “Anxieties of the Dominant: Legal, Social, and Religious in the Politics of Religious Conversion in India,” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 11(2-3), pp. 343-367.

Williams, P., Kamra, L., Johar, P., Khan, F. M., Kumar, M., & Oza, E. (2021). “No room for dissent: Domesticating WhatsApp, Digital Private Spaces, and Lived Democracy in India,” Antipode, 54(1), pp. 305-330.

Kumar, M. (2021). “Competition and Contestation at a Hindu-Muslim Shrine: The Case of the Sant Laldas in Mewat, North India,” In David W. Kim (ed.), Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories Across Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 227-262.

Kumar, M. (2020). “Neither here nor there: The betwixt and between religious imaginary of Lāldās,” in K. L. Jacobsen (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions, pp. 239-249.

Kumar, M. (2019). “The Art of Resistance: The Bards and Minstrels’ Response to Anti-Syncretism/Anti-liminality in north India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 29(2), pp. 219-247.

Kumar, M. (2019). “Cow Veneration among Meo Muslims of Mewat Presents the Complex Nature of Religious Identities,” Economic and Political Weekly, 54(1), pp. 1-12.