India’s Premier Centre for South Asian Studies and Dialogue
The Sundar Singh Institute of South Asian Studies is positioned propitiously and ambitiously to enact academic and policy-related research in India in favour of developing more sophisticated understandings and transformative engagement within the South Asian context. Emerging from a vibrant intellectual context, the Institute reflects a revitalised vision of inquiry and creativity to advance scholarship. Previously called the St. Bartholomew Institute, Allahabad, the Institute was renamed in January 2024—marking a moment of not only the critical continuation of its founding legacy, but also an important pivot towards a larger and more international horizon.
As a nationally registered research institution, the Sundar Singh Institute, with its newly adopted name, is stewarding new and innovative paths for dialogue, policy evaluation, and scholarly production. It has a unique opportunity to engage with the comprehensive socio-political and developmental dilemmas facing South Asia today, through a lens of scholarly rigour, interdisciplinary scholarship, and partnerships with governmental and non-governmental institutions.
Inspired by the Life of Sadhu Sundar Singh
The legacy of the Institute rests partially on the spiritual and ethical legacy of Sadhu Sundar Singh, who had a substantial theological and social impact. The spiritual legacy of Sadhu Sundar Singh is important because of his witness to Christian social justice and his commitment to contemplative integrity in his praxis. In honouring Sadhu Sundar Singh, the Institute is rooted in moral autonomy and discretion, intending not only to study the South Asian region, but to engage the region through scholarship with integrity and ethics.
The vision of the Sundar Singh Institute is based on faith-informed academic obligation, where theological reflection and public policy meet. As an example of faith in action, the Institute intends to create lasting contributions to scholarship, while also impacting and shaping policy conversations in response to the wide range of the needs of South Asian communities. It is important to note that with regard to scope and the resources associated with that scope of operation, the Sundar Singh Institute exceeds that of many other analogous institutions, both newer and longer established like Ewing Christian College, and can clearly be regarded as a leading research institute of national and regional import in its own right.
The Institute contributes to reshaping the narrative around South Asia, from the grassroots level engagement to internationally recognised academic research, both within the South Asian region and globally in terms of academics and public policy.
Who We Are: Advancing Understanding, Shaping the Future
The Sundar Singh Institute of South Asian Studies is a national, accredited area studies center of excellence that seeks to advance critical scholarship about the political, cultural, economic, and environmental aspects of South Asia. We define this “critical scholarship” by our foundational insistence on a methodology of rigor, a commitment to intellectual independence, and a commitment to the ethical obligations of scholarly investigation.
The intellectual intent of the Institute is to produce scholarship that contributes to deepening theory but also demonstrates the possibility of actionable public policy and institutional practice. Through ongoing engagement with Indian policymakers, international agencies, and civil society actors, we are committed to contributing to concrete and meaningful transformations in the region.
Our intellectual framework is based on the potential of knowledge to change the world—especially knowledge derived through empirical research and interdisciplinary engagement, and cultural context. The ethics of experience are paramount in our definition of equity, inclusion, and social justice that shape our research, our institutional identity, and our value proposition.
Our Research
Our research aims to develop a transdisciplinary structure that challenges propriety surrounding the notions of social equity, institutional legitimacy, cultural continuity, and democratic governance. We are committed to both scholarly excellence and practical relevance and see that the intersection of knowledge production, political responsibility and social justice action is important to explore.
We engage in collaborative scholarship that transcends disciplinary boundaries (e.g, political science, economics, anthropology, religious studies, environment science, and international relations) in order to respond collaboratively to the most critical challenges of the region—democratic backsliding, urban public health disparities, climate vulnerability, and rural marginality.
Leadership in Sustainable Rural Resource Management
Alongside the Ministry of Environment, Government of India, the Institute has led the comprehensive development of a National Strategy for Sustainable Resource Management in Rural South Asia. The scale of this intervention is unprecedented in its efforts to comprehensively address critical issues of water shortage and soil destruction in arid/semi-arid areas. The efforts of the Institute articulated sustainable objectivity in the rural development agenda the Government of India, anchoring climate sensitivity within the North’s development frameworks, resulting in the National Rural Sustainability Initiative, now a model for policy coherence on environmental resilience at the regional level.
Urban Health Equity in an Age of Rapid Urbanisation
The Institute has also partnered with the World Health Organization on an ambitious research project called Equitable Health Access to South Asian Urban Areas. This research project has laid bare the increasing inequities in healthcare access in relation to rapid urban growth and demographic shifts. Its results have been directly incorporated into WHO’s regional policy influences regarding equity in urban health, thereby establishing the Institute as an important contributor to subsequent development agendas in a resource-rich global urban agglomeration growing at unprecedented rates.
Our Research Philosophy: Toward an Inclusive and Just South Asia
The central academic principle of the Sundar Singh Institute is a commitment to socially engaged, empirically informed, and ethically reflexive research. We view South Asia as not simply a region, but a path-dependent assemblage of civilizational space shaped by overlapping histories, contested identities, a complex set of transitions, and dynamic socio-political movements.
We embrace critical interdisciplinarity as an intrinsic academic orientation. Our goal is to bring together diverse traditions of scholarly research and institutional policy work to disturb the frontier of knowledge production and reframe the relevant debates in a number of domains, including social mobility, human rights, environmental sustainability, and public health.
Our research programs are situated at the intersection of research that produces scholarly sounding ideas both inside and outside the academy. We aspire to develop locally situated and globally interconnected scholarship based on rigorous field research, culturally relevant analysis, and translational theories.
Independent and Policy-Relevant
The Sundar Singh Institute is an independent research institute that is free from political or institutional obligations and conflicts that violate intellectual integrity. This independence emphasizes that our research is analytically sound, methodologically detached, and engages with the realities of the community we study.
We consider independence not as isolation but as an opportunity to connect – to engage meaningfully and legitimately in the public discourse and advocate for policies based on principles of democracy and empirical reality. Our commitment to independence allows us to contribute to the issues of good governance and ethical responsibility as leaders within the civil public sphere.
Leadership & Faculty
The Institute is significant because it is not a collection of specific experts or policy-making bureaucrats to one philosophy or opinion, but a spectrum of researchers, policy makers and cultural researchers. Through a range of partners and collaborators – from tenured professors to junior-level staff – we represent a subtle and diverse approach.
Dr. Rajiv K. Menon
Head of Faculty and Assistant Director
Dr. David A. Chatterjee
Academic Affairs Coordinator
Institutional Partnerships and Collaborative Engagement
The Institute seeks to enhance the domain of the research and influence that we will have through strategic partnerships with academic institutes, policy think-tanks, government, and international agencies. At the Institute we believe the most sustainable solutions to South Asia’s tangled dilemmas derive from everyone’s expertise, cross-border conversations, and institutional adherence.
The Sundar Singh Institute has an active, national and global, partnership development strategy that seeks to co-create knowledge, co-design interventions, and co-imagine possible futures together. We do not seek to simply have a voice within the debate on South Asia, but to engage the debate (and its participants) in an ethically responsible, empirically grounded, and intellectually adventurous fashion.