Aditya Behl

Aditya Behl is an Associate Professor and Chair of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on ethnographic practices in Mughal India, particularly through the lens of the 17th-century Zoroastrian text Dabistan-i-Mazahib, which interrogates colonial narratives of religious tolerance and self-representation.

• Affiliation: Chair, South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• Award: Andrew W. Mellon Penn Faculty Fellow in the Humanities (2006–2007)

Behl's work examines how travel writing and ethnographic classification shaped historical understandings of Mughal religious dynamics. His analysis challenges simplistic interpretations of ecumenicism, revealing complex hierarchies of judgment embedded in intercultural encounters.

Research Focus:

• Ethnographic methods in pre-modern India
• Religious pluralism and exclusion in Mughal historiography
• Self/other dichotomies in cross-cultural narratives