Hans Ulrich Harder studied Indology and cultural anthropology at Hamburg, Heidelberg and Halle universities, and has been Professor of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, since 2007. His research interests include modern literatures in South Asia, particularly Bengali, religious movements, and colonial and postcolonial intellectual history. He has authored “Sufism and Saint Veneration in Bangladesh” (Routledge 2011) and “Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Srimadbhagabadgita: translation and analysis” (2001), and has edited “Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair” (with Barbara Mittler, Springer 2013) and Literature and Nationalist Ideology: Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages (Social Science Press 2010).