Professor Satish C. Aikant

Professor Satish C. Aikant is former Professor and Chair, Department of English at Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University and a former Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has been a Visiting Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

A critic and a translator, his writings on postcolonial literatures, literary theory and contemporary culture have appeared in a wide range of books and journals such as The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Literary Criticism, Ariel, Postcolonial Text, Asiatic, Literary Criterion, Journal of Contemporary Thought, South Asian Diaspora, and Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

He has published two books, Critical Spectrum: Essays in Literary Culture (2004) and Postcolonial Indian Literature: Toward a Critical Framework (2018), the latter taking a comprehensive view of Indian literatures from a postcolonial perspective. He has authored over seventy publications, some of which include Indian Writers: Transnationalisms and Diasporas, Colonial Ambivalence in R. K. Narayan’s Waiting for the Mahatma, From colonialism to Indigenism: The loss and recovery of language and literature and Reading Tagore: Seductions and Perils of Nationalism, The Peripatetic Philosopher -a review of Adi Shakaracharya: Hinduism’s Thinker by Pavan K Verma, and Caste and Social Alienation in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, amongst others. His writings have appeared regularly in the Garhwal Post and Mussoorie Times as well.

He has been the recipient of Middle Award, American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad and Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has also carried out assignments at the Uttarakhand Public Service Comission relating to evaluation, examinership, moderation, translation of rules and regulations from Hindi to English and has been on interview boards for selection of teachers. He was editor of the journal Summerhill: IIAS Review from 2008 to 2013. Professor Aikant now lives in Kulri, Mussoorie.