Nandini Deo

Lehigh University, Political Science, Faculty Member

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Nandini Deo is a Professor in the department of Political Science at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, USA. Her research is at the intersection of religion, feminism, and social movements in South Asia. Deo’s first book The Politics of Collective Advocacy in India was co-authored with Duncan McDuie Ra and focused on the gains of NGOs networking transnationally. Her second book, Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India: The role of activism compares the rise and fall of women’s movements and religious nationalism as an outcome of activist strategies as they responded to changing political structures. Her latest book is Postsecular Feminisms, which looks at how critiques of secularism have created new opportunities for feminist engagement with religion and politics. Her current projects are a return to the politics of NGOs and civil society in India. Deo serves as a book review editor for Politics, Religion and Ideology. She is active in the Women and Politics and Religion and Politics sections of the American Political Science Association. Deo teaches courses on religion, gender, social movements, comparative politics, and political theory. She is originally from India and resides in Philadelphia.

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Religious Nationalism

The Sage International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender, 2025

Religious nationalism is a variation of nationalism that centers the religious identity of the na... more Religious nationalism is a variation of nationalism that centers the religious identity of the nation. It is often expressed through an assertion of particular gender norms and debates over gender serve as flashpoints for mobilization. This entry explains the origins and features of religious nationalism. It briefly surveys some controversies over gender in the articulation of religious nationalism around the world.

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Faith-based organizations and religious nationalism

Politics and Religion, 2025

Faith-based organizations that are rooted in India's diverse faiths give shape to their roles in ... more Faith-based organizations that are rooted in India's diverse faiths give shape to their roles in an operational space shaped by the Hindu nationalist government. This paper, based on interviews with 34 FBOs, compares how FBOs rooted in five different faith traditions perceive that operational space, and how they relate to the state based on their perceptions of these conditions. One key finding is that there are important similarities in these FBOs' perceptions and ways of responding. Another key finding is that ways of understanding and responses vary in ways that can be explained at least partly by the differentiated position of diverse faith communities in Indian society itself and the specific challenges faced by members of each faith tradition. That is, the specific context of marginalization or promotion of a religious community by the state positions FBOs to advance their objectives through collaboration, confrontation, or by keeping distant from state agencies.

format_quoteFBOs in India exhibit patterned responses to political constraints, balancing common and faith-specific pressures in their operations.format_quote

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Hinduism and democracy

Routledge eBooks, Mar 15, 2018

Starting from the South : Advancing Southern leadership in civil society advocacy collaborations

Based on team research, we identified five ways in which CSOs and donors can advance Southern lea... more

Women's Activism and Feminist Agency in Mozambique and Nicaragua

New Political Science, Mar 1, 2012

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Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism By Elora Shehabuddin. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. ix, 398 pp. ISBN: 9780520342514 (cloth)

The Journal of Asian Studies, Nov 1, 2022

Civil society advocacy collaborations and their contributions to CSO capacities and legitimacy to advance inclusive sustainable development and equality in the Indian context

Moral Movements and Foreign Policy. By Joshua W. Busby. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv+327. $85.00 (cloth); $29.99 (paper)

American Journal of Sociology, Jul 1, 2011

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Structure and Strategies: Two Faces of Civic Activism in India

Journal of Civil Society, Sep 1, 2007

This paper explains the success of civic actors in achieving their aims by reference to their org... more This paper explains the success of civic actors in achieving their aims by reference to their organizational structure. Based on a comparison of a religious nationalist movement and a women's movement in South Asia, I argue that organizational structure is closely linked to the success of a social movement. The lack of coordination and collaboration among women's groups in terms

Indian Women Activists and Transnational Feminism over the Twentieth Century

Journal of Women's History, 2012

Since 1975, the global feminist community has developed sites for networking clustered around the... more Since 1975, the global feminist community has developed sites for networking clustered around the United Nations' calendar. These meetings and their discourses have had a major impact on women's movements around the world. The Indian women's movement has engaged in transnational dialogue for the past century. This article looks at the history of transnational engagement by Indian feminists and argues that its most recent avatar-in tandem with the UN world conferences on womenhas been the least constructive. Early engagement was primarily focused on an exchange of ideas and personnel. The current engagement is shaped by financial dependency which has skewed the priorities of the Indian women's movement. Violence against women was an issue raised in 1993 in Vienna and became the central focus of activism in India despite the desire by many activists to focus on economic policies.

format_quoteThe Indian women's movement's focus shifted from economic justice to violence against women, reflecting changing transnational engagement forms.format_quote

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Is Globalization Our Friend? Women's Allies in the Developing World

Current history, Mar 1, 2006

Reforms most closely tied to the globalization of economies, considered separately from domestic ... more

Corporate Social Responsibility and Economic Responsiveness in India, by Damien Krichewsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 264 pp

Business Ethics Quarterly, Jul 1, 2020

Religion, nationalism, and gender: Perspective from South Asia

Asian journal of comparative politics, Mar 18, 2020

Religious mobilization often takes the form of engagement with "the woman question": how should w... more Religious mobilization often takes the form of engagement with "the woman question": how should women as carriers of culture comport themselves? This article shows that many of the debates over the role of women and religion in South Asia are misunderstood when they are seen as instances of religious fundamentalism. Rather, the theoretical framework to make sense of public religion and gender debates should be through the lens of postcolonial nationalism. The creation and consolidation of the nation is what is at stake-not the creation of the religious community as such. In order to make this argument, the article offers both a review of the literature on secularism and gender as well as short case studies from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. These three former British colonies have each struggled to arrive at a secular settlement and often the contestation over the place of religion has centered on the rules and roles of women in these societies.

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Civil society dynamics: Shaping roles, navigating contexts

by Nandini Deo and Rita Manchanda

To include knowledge-, needs-, and rights-based advocacy in our sample of cases, we studied CSOs ... more To include knowledge-, needs-, and rights-based advocacy in our sample of cases, we studied CSOs working on two themes: disaster risk reduction (DRR) and the rights of marginalized sections of society. We collected data in three Indian states (Gujarat, Bihar, and Jharkhand) and in the capital city, Delhi. Six full-time researchers carried out approximately 250 interviews with civil society and state actors, supported by the three principal investigators. In addition to these interviews, the researchers studied CSOs' internal documents, CSOs' websites, government policy documents, other public documentation, grey literature, and news media. Some of the researchers also attended CSOs' internal meetings and workshops. Below, we first present our main findings on the three angles explored (representation, collaboration, and state-civil society interactions), relating them to the specific assumptions, research questions, and policy questions laid out in the Assumptions Underlying Dialogue and Dissent research programme (Kamstra, 2017, pp. 37-42) and presenting recommendations that flow directly from the findings on these three angles. This is followed by a synthesis and a set of overarching recommendations.

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Debating women’s citizenship in India 1930–1960

Womens History Review, Oct 31, 2019

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Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India

Routledge eBooks, Oct 30, 2015

Negotiating Autonomy in Women’s Political Participation: The Case of Elected Women’s Representatives from Jharkhand

World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jun 20, 2019

Afghan Rights to Schools and Security: A Glass Half-Full

Social Science Research Network, 2011

... pointing to Islam in the 1990s as the explanation for the Taliban&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s oppr... more ... pointing to Islam in the 1990s as the explanation for the Taliban&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s oppression of women. The fascination with veiling as a symbol of Islam and with the pale blue burkas of Afghanistan was a prominent feature of post 9/11 investigative journalism (Hirschind and Mahmood 2002). ...

Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India: The Role of Activism

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Negotiating autonomy in capacity development: Addressing the inherent tension

by Nandini Deo and Rajeshwari Balasbramanian

World Development, Oct 1, 2020

A central goal of capacity development is transforming participants into autonomous agents. Howev... more A central goal of capacity development is transforming participants into autonomous agents. However, there is often an inherent tension between capacity development and autonomy because capacity development programs are frequently set up to fill an externally predefined lack in capacity. In this article, we argue that this tension can be addressed when capacity development is set up to advance what we call ''narrative autonomy" (Williams, 1997). Narrative autonomy centers on individuals' narrative interpretations as they reveal or create the meaning of their own identity and situation, creatively draw on available materials, and discern courses of action true to these interpretations. The advancement of narrative autonomy requires certain capacities and conditions. Expanding on existing participatory approaches that focus on capacity development occurring within relationships and informal processes, we show how capacity development programs can be set up to advance these capacities and conditions through the intricate relations between formal and informal processes. We illustrate our theoretical claims through an empirical study of a capacity development partnership program involving a feminist Delhibased civil society organization and seven local partner organizations in the state of Jharkhand. This program targeted women who had been elected to village councils. We show how the program advanced elected women representatives' narrative autonomy through informal relationships that undergirded formal capacity development, and how the formal training helped to provide a language for constructing these narratives and a context conducive to advancing autonomous action that was true to the women's narratives. By redefining the relationship between autonomy and capacity development, we move the theoretical debate beyond problematizing the aid-dependency power relations often seen in capacity development programs and provide a way forward for practice.

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