Leela Gandhi
Indian-born literary and cultural theorist
Leela Gandhi (born 1966) is an Indian-born literary and cultural theorist who is noted for her work in postcolonial theory. She is currently the John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English and director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University. She is the great-granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi previously taught at the University of Chicago, La Trobe University, and the University of Delhi. She is a founding co-editor of the academic journal Postcolonial Studies, and she serves on the editorial board of the electronic journal Postcolonial Text. She is a Senior Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University.
Early life and education
Gandhi was born in Mumbai and is the daughter of the late Indian philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi and the great-granddaughter of the Indian Independence movement leader Mahatma Gandhi. She has offered analysis that some of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophies (on nonviolence and vegetarianism, for example) and policies were influenced by transnational as well as indigenous sources. She received her undergraduate degree from Hindu College, Delhi and her doctorate was from Balliol College, Oxford.
She is also the great-granddaughter of C. Rajagopalachari.
“Leela Gandhi” enters the record as indian-born literary and cultural theorist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Leela, Gandhi and Indian-born can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5625451. VIAF identifies the subject as 116123395. The Library of Congress control number is n97104278. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leela Gandhi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.