David St. John is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Riverside, in the Department for the Study of Religion. His research interests include identity-making practices, end-of-life rituals, religious and constitutional law, decolonial theory in South Asia, South Asian history, gendered and ontological knowledge systems, and religious ethics in contemporary practice.
David’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the history of Jain identity building and self-representation during India’s late British colonial period. It is focusing on Champat Rai Jain (1867–1942), a leading lay Jain intellectual of the time, who promoted the development of a universal Jain identity. For the project, David is analyzing Champat Rai’s published works, contracts from publishing houses, and other archival materials. The aim of such an analysis is to show how Jain concerns evolved into strategies that shaped the way Jain identity was legally constructed.