Dilip Simeon

Dilip Simeon studied history at St Stephen’s College, in the University of Delhi, in the late 1960’s. He completed his Masters’ degree in 1974 and joined the History Department of Ramjas College, where he taught until 1994. His dissertation on the labour movement of Bihar was published in 1995. In 1988, he was elected teacher’s representative to the Academic Council of the University of Delhi.

From 1984 till 1992 Dilip participated in a campaign for communal harmony and justice for the victims of the 1984 carnage in Delhi. He worked with the Nagrik Ekta Manch that performed relief tasks in the aftermath of the violence, and thereafter collaborated with other persons to set up a citizens’ organisation named the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan in late 1984, which remained active until 1993. From 2003 to 2008 he was a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library where he engaged in a study of violence and nihilism. , He has published extensively on historical and political issues in various newspapers and journals for over four decades.

Dilip has been a visiting scholar at campuses including Surat, Sussex, Chicago, Princeton, Leiden and Gottingen. In 2014 he was Centenary Visiting Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has lectured at many academic venues in India and abroad; as well as the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie. He has been part of conflict mitigation projects with the Aman Trust, which worked to study and reduce violent conflict. His first novel, Revolution Highway was published by Penguin Books in September 2010, and has appeared in a Hindi version, by Rajkamal Prakashan. He has been a guest lecturer at Ashoka University since 2016.