Dr Preeti Gulati is an historian of ancient India, and she has worked on religion, identity and power. Her research interests lie in understanding the making of textual traditions, and religious and social dynamics in everyday life. She has done both her PhD (2022) and MPhil (2017) from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, under the supervision of Prof Kumkum Roy. Her doctoral thesis, titled Kings, Ascetics, and ‘Others’ – Food Codes and Practices in early India, c.200 BCE – 300 CE examined the making of social norms through the lens of everyday practice, by reading foodways as systems of communications that mark identities of ‘self’ vis-à-vis the other. Her research demonstrates how food-related practices – ranging from acquiring, producing, processing, distributing, and consuming food, to nature of items consumed or abstained from, their symbolism, and commensal practices – are key tangible and visible means to define one’s role and status within society, as well as in relation to each other. Her expertise lies in Sanskrit and Pali textual traditions, and unpacking the making of historical literary traditions in India. Her wider research interests lie in everyday practices, histories of ideas, and comparative textual studies.

Research

Dr Preeti Gulati’s doctoral research closely examined the motif of food across different literary traditions in early India, to understand how everyday life and activities were at once conditioned by, and also used to shape, ideas and boundaries of religion, power and institutions. Dr Gulati’s expertise lies in normative and narrative textual traditions ranging from the Dharmasutras, Valmiki’s Ramayana, the Vinay Pitaka, Jatakas, and the Arthashastra. She is currently working on a manuscript for publication, based on her research thesis, tentatively titled Identities on a Plate: Religion, Identity and Power in Early India. 

Publications