Anup Dhar

Anup Dhar is a researcher currently (2009) based in Bangalore as an Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS). He started his career as a doctor in Kolkata, but was intellectually forced to change tracks and pursue questions closer to his heart and fundamental to his existence. As he has said: "The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 changed my life. Though the incident took place miles away from where I was located, I was intensely affected. I was stuck up within the hospital and Kolkata, the city that had till then boasted of communal harmony was burning as rioteers ran wild." For more on the demolition and the debates thereafter, please see Babri Mosque; Ayodhya debate.

Dhar, along with some friends of his from medical college, felt that some other set of questions needed urgent addressal. Subsequently, he gave up medicine, went on to do his M.A. in History and PhD in philosophy. Dhar has worked at the Kolkata Asiatic Society as a research fellow; he is currently working on his post-doctoral thesis. He is noted for his anti-state and anti-establishment stance, especially in Bengal.

Dhar has written and published on gender, sexuality, economics, psychoanalysis and education. He writes both in English and Bangla. His latest book, co-authored with Prof. Anjan Chakrabarti, Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: from third world to world of the third, was published by Routledge in August 2009. . In this book, the authors flag the concept of 'world of the third' as both different from the homogenizing 'third world' as also a trope to examine the layered nature of north-south and east-west discourses. He is also the co-founder of a research project titled CUSP (Culture-Subjectivity-Psyche: Rethinking Mental Health).