Douglas Ober
Honorary Research Associate, Center for India and South Asia Research, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia
Institution: Fort Lewis College
Douglas Ober is a historian specializing in South Asia, Buddhism, and colonialism. His research spans a broad range of topics, including Indian foreign diplomacy, religion and politics, histories of caste, and the politics of heritage and homelands. His first book, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India, was published in 2023 by Stanford University Press and Navayana (New Delhi). The book received widespread acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2023 Cundill History Prize, the 2024 Karwaan Book Award, and the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions (2024). He is currently at work on a second book that traces the global history of Indigeneity as both an idea and socio-political movement, with a focus on South Asia.
Reflections Upon 'Civilizationisms'
I treat “civilization” not as a neutral label but as a mobilizing story—one that took shape alongside eighteenth and nineteenth-century empires and which still drives political imaginaries today. In that formative era, thinkers from Asia and Africa spun vast narratives of their own cultural lineages—often in pointed dialogue with European self-portrayals—to claim status in a shrinking globe. Far from mere intellectual exercises, these accounts forged new models of state power, social belonging, and diplomatic legitimacy. But rather than ask how civilization shapes politics, I invert the question: how do political institutions, social movements, and cultural trends give rise to claims about civilizational belonging?
A vivid illustration lies in colonial and postcolonial India, my primary area of research. Internationally, India today presents itself as heir to a millennia of tolerance and pluralism; domestically, however, this narrative often masks a majoritarian social reordering. This dual deployment—an inclusive gloss for global audiences and a coded call to exclusivity for domestic constituencies—reveals how authoritarian-leaning forces cloak themselves in universalist language to secure legitimacy in a (seemingly declining) liberal world order.
As a historian, my primary interests lay in the seeds of these narratives. Colonial historians portrayed pre-colonial India as a once-flourishing Hindu and Buddhist realm whose greatness was sapped by centuries of Muslim rule, thereby justifying British rule as a benevolent “civilizing” mission. Indian intellectuals countered by rediscovering Sanskrit works, restoring Vedic rituals, and excavating ancient monuments—efforts that reconstructed a collective memory meant to rival imperial claims. Over the twentieth century, these recovery projects wove themselves into India’s political discourse and educational curricula.
My specialization in Buddhist history brings a parallel set of case studies. In Tibet and Bhutan, monastic orders have long anchored both spiritual life and temporal authority, projecting these high-mountain realms as custodians of an unbroken Buddhist civilization. Exiled Tibetan leaders invoke that legacy as they press for autonomy and/or freedom against a Han-dominated state that employs its own civilizational rhetoric; Bhutanese elites uphold it to portray their kingdom as the last living repository of pure Vajrayāna practice. In India, Buddhism has been variously mobilized—from Hindu nationalism and Nehruvian secular democracy, to anti-caste activism and Indian Marxism. One of the most powerful interventions came from B.R. Ambedkar, architect of India’s secular constitution, who turned to Buddhism as a civilizational counterweight to Brahmanical oppression. In recent years, this rivalry has sharpened: Narendra Modi’s centennial tribute in 2024 to Buddhist meditation master S. N. Goenka cast his vipassana practice as the “ancient glory of India.” In February 2025, the RSS-sponsored Buddhist pavilion at the Maha Kumbh Mela convened Buddhist monks and Hindutva propagandists to issue resolutions on the unity of Sanatan Dharma and the rights of Hindu and Buddhist (but not Muslim) minorities in South Asia. Beyond India, Theravada-majority states such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka embed Buddhism into their constitutions and civic identities, often valorizing it as the civilizational bedrock of their societies while excluding religious and ethnic minorities. Across all these settings, I trace how civilizational rhetoric underwrites everything from temple patronage to state-sanctioned majoritarianism.
These scholarly pursuits intersect with my classroom at Fort Lewis College—a former boarding school for Native American children, now serving a student body nearly half Indigenous. Teaching a required two-part “World Civilizations” survey, I confront a curriculum rooted in hierarchies of “advanced” versus “primitive,” “savage” vs “civilized.” Instead of sidestepping these terms, I transform them into a focal point for critical inquiry, encouraging students to unpack their colonial genealogies and imagine alternative frameworks for global interconnection.
Taken together, these threads underscore my belief that “civilization” remains one of the most potent—and contested—grammars of global authority.