University of Heidelberg

A number of expert interviews were conducted by members of the project whilst they were on research trips in India.  A sample interview with the writer and scholar, T.K . Oommen. can be downloaded here. The interview was conducted by team member and doctoral candidate, Mr. Lionel Koenig in Gurgaon, India, March 2009.

T.K. Oommen is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where he was a Professor from 1976 to 2002. As President of the Forum for India and the European Union, Professor Oommen has continuously been engaged in a dialogue on themes of common concern for India and Europe and has published widely on the complex relationship between the nation-state, minorities and multiculturalism. Among his publications are: Alien Concepts and South Asian Reality: Responses and Reformulations (New Delhi: Sage, 1995), Citizenship and National Identity: From Colonialism to Globalism (New Delhi: Sage, 1997), Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnicity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), and most recently Social Movements I: Issues of Identity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Social Movements II: Concerns of Equity and Security (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010). The only scholar from Asia and Africa to have served as President of the International Sociological Association, T.K. Oommen was also President of the Indian Sociological Society, and held the Ford Foundation Chair of ‘Non-traditional Security’ at the Delhi Policy Group from 2003 to 2004.

In addition to his academic work, Oommen has been member of the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee for the preparation of a Report on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India and was Chair of the Programme Advisory Committee of the Gujarat Harmony Project (2002-2004) in the context of which he advocated the imperative need for reconciliation as a prerequisite for the peaceful co-existence of different communities in multi-cultural societies.

His work in the programme resulted in the monograph Reconciliation in post-Godhra Gujarat: The Role of Civil Society (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008).

At present, T.K. Oommen is National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.