Paul R. Brass: An appreciation

Abstract

Paul R. Brass, the doyen of Indian political science in the USA for almost five decades, died at his home in Acme, WA, on 31 May 2022, at the age of 85, with his wife Susan by his side. For the last few years, Paul had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and was buried on 2 June. He is survived by his wife, daughter, Leah Sarah Livesey (Itzik), and son, David Michael Brass. Paul was born on 8 November 1936, in Boston, MA to Albert and Eva Brass née Bavely. He attended the Boston Latin School from 1948 to 1954. In 1958 he graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a B.A. in Government. He received his M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 1959 that was followed by a Ph.D in Political Science in 1964 also from the University of Chicago. In 1965 Paul started teaching at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, where he remained until 1999 when he retired as professor emeritus of political science and international studies. In a long and distinguished academic career that spanned five decades, Paul’s name became synonymous with government and politics in India, ethnicity and nationalism, communal violence, and latterly, biographical work. He published 13 monographs, several edited volumes and numerous articles and other publications. Among his most celebrated and widely read works are Language, Religion and Politics in North India (1974), Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (1991), The Politics of India since Independence (1994), The Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (1997), The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (2003), and An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1957–1967 (three volumes 2012). From the mid-1960s, while he was working on Uttar Pradesh, Paul took a keen interest in developments in the Punjab, and conducted extensive interviews with key participants involved in the Punjabi Suba movement. This research formed the core of his thesis in Language, Religion and Politics in North India which became the foundational text of the instrumentalist perspective on ethnicity and nationality formation and led to a celebrated debate between him and Francis Robinson whose work on Muslim separatism in northern India is associated with the contrasting primordial position. Paul was well ahead of his time in explaining the dynamics of nationality formation as a result of elite choices and explaining this phenomenon in a comparative, India and global context. For scholars of Sikh nationalism, this remains the primary political science text which has set the standard that remains hard to surpass.