Gurpreet Mahajan is Professor of Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Over the years she has received of a number of prestigious fellowships. She was a senior Fulbright scholar at Columbia University and the University of Chicago and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hull. She has been a visiting fellow at the University of Toronto and Maison des Sciences D’Le Homme in Paris. Mahajan is the author of “Explanation and Understanding in the Human Sciences” (1992); “Identities and Rights: Aspects of Liberal Democracy in India” (1998); and “The Multicultural Path: Issues of Diversity and Discrimination in Democracy” (2001). She has also edited “Democracy, Difference and Social Justice” (1998) and co-edited “Minority Identities and the Nation-State” (1999).