Monika Boehm-Tettelbach

Monika Boehm-Tettelbach is a distinguished scholar of Rajasthan in north India. Her research focuses on early modern (17th- and 18th-century) north Indian literatures and religious movements, and on the interface of religion and politics. She was editor for north Indian languages in the new Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press, and she has launched a large project on sant religion (aniconic religion with a focus on the guru) in modern-day eastern Rajasthan. Boehm-Tettelbach has opened new areas of study, including work on the historically crucial figure of Raja Jaisingh II, ruler of Amer in the early eighteenth century after whom the city of Jaipur is named. She has also established an NGO that provides educational and vocational training for rural Rajasthani women. Her work has included landmark investigations of the Dadu Panth, a mixed ascetic and lay order original focused on the sixteenth-century singer-saint Dadu Dayal. She established a series, Khoj, for research in Indian vernacular literatures.