Sarath Pillai

Sarath Pillai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, where he completed his dissertation titled 'Federal Futures: Imagining Federation, Constitution and World in Late Colonial India.' His research explores colonial India's political imaginaries, particularly the contested idea of federalism and its opposition to unitary nation-states. Pillai has been recognized with the 2022 Sardar Patel Award for this groundbreaking work.

Education: PhD (with distinction) in History from the University of Chicago; Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School; MA in History from Delhi University.

Research Interests: Pillai investigates late colonial India's political debates, focusing on non-national groups like princely states and Muslim minorities. His work contextualizes India's colonial history within global anti-nation-state sentiments, challenging assumptions about the inevitability of the modern Indian nation-state. He employs multi-lingual archives from three continents to reconstruct contested visions of sovereignty and governance.

Awards & Support: His research has been supported by the American Historical Association, Library of Congress, Harry Truman Library, and Princeton University Library. The Sardar Patel Award (2022) honors his dissertation's contribution to reinterpreting India's constitutional and federal history.

Advising & Grants: Pillai's interdisciplinary approach bridges legal, political, and colonial histories. His work has been published in Law and History Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and public platforms like The Diplomat and Scroll.in.

Labs/Teams: Affiliated with CASI, which focuses on interdisciplinary research on India's political, economic, and social dynamics.